https://www.thephdlifecoach.com https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-35-what-to-do-when-you-dont-stick-to-your-systems <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So many people set up new to-do list systems, or decide to time block, or come to one of my workshops about how to review your week, and then don’t stick to the system. We then often beat ourselves up, declare it a fail, and never go back to it. In this episode, I give you a much more productive way to figure out what to do when you don’t stick to your systems. We identify WHY you might be finding it difficult, and WHAT you can do to use your systems more consistently (and recognise what you’re already doing). If you’ve ever ditched a new planner after two weeks, this episode is for you!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/11523015-2-why-you-don-t-need-a-new-planner" target="_blank"> why you don’t need a new planner! </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach. And if you're listening live, this week is launch week. I'm so excited. Many of you'll know I launched the PhD Life Coach membership once every three months, so that's the only time you can come in and join. And this week is that week. So if you're already on my email list, you will be getting sneaky messages about that all through the week. You'll getting all the information you need. Reach out if you have any questions, things like that. If you're not on my newsletter, why not? You're missing out on my free coaching, all sorts of things. In fact, if you were listen to this lot, if. I have free coaching sessions tomorrow, one first thing in the morning, UK time, one in the afternoon to kind of cover off all my different time zones. </div> <div> So if you've ever wondered what it's like to be in a group coaching session, in the membership that we do all the time, you get to come. For free. You might be coach yourself, you could watch other people getting coached, get to see what it's like, get some help. We're gonna coach mostly about procrastination and I know you will do that. So if you haven't already got the details of that, drop me a message when you've listened to this. It is on Tuesday, the 28th of April, so if it's past that, you are too late to come to the free sessions, but we are open until the 1st of May. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am not gonna spend lots of time in the episode today telling you all the features of the website. But we have a new fancy app now, which is exciting. So you get everything there, right there in your phone and you can find all the details on the phd life coach.com. So do make sure you go and check that out. If you're listening to this and it's not the 27th of April and you're like, oh no, I missedit, we'll be opening up again end of July for the quarter that runs August, September, October. So keep an eye out for that as well. </div> <div> But what we are talking about today is so relevant to what I've been doing in the membership for the last quarter and to what we are doing in the next quarter. In fact, a bunch of this content used to be in a workshop that I run in quarter two, but I decided it was so useful for everybody and I wanted people to have it before the quarter started that I've brought it into this podcast for you today instead. And that is what happens when you don't stick to your systems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So over the last three months, my gorgeous members in the PhD life coach membership have been working on developing their systems, their task management assistant. Where do they put their to-do list items? How do they get tasks and put them onto that, you know, where do they, these different tasks come from? How do they know they found them all? How do they organize their time, their calendars? How do they decide what they're doing over the next three months and how do they actually track whether they're getting there or not? How do they know what they've actually done? That's what we've been doing in the last three months. </div> <div> If you're like, oh no, sounds like I should have been in your membership for the last three months. That's okay. I can continue to support that stuff if you come into the membership, you have access to all the back recordings. Not that I'm gonna encourage you to watch 'em all, but I can direct you to the right ones and you can still get coached on all of those things. And to be honest, my members also get a kind of ready made quarterly planning document that includes the planning stuff at the beginning. It includes weekly planning, weekly reviews, all the way through, so you don't have to create any systems for yourself. You can use the existing ones too. So we've been focusing on that, which has been amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I had, one of my members told me yesterday that, I'm not making this up, this was in one of our coaching sessions yesterday. She's doing data analysis at the moment and she says, my Vikki, I have to tell you, my productivity has doubled since I'm in the, been in the PhD life coach membership. I have got through so much more of this because of being more intentional about how I'm spending my days, what my tasks are, and getting on with them. So that was gorgeous to hear. So they've been making huge progress, but because they're a bunch of high achieving perfectionists, like most of you lot, they still come to me and they still say, but I don't always stick to it, Vikki. I dunno what to do because there's these good ideas. I've been intending to do the quarterly planning document, but I don't always fill it in. What do I do about it? So today's session is what do you do when you don't stick to your systems? And I'm even gonna bring in psychologists out there. You will recognize a little bit of this. I'm even gonna bring in a little bit of psych theory just to back up all the things that I'm saying. So let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> First thing is that before we diagnose that you have a problem with sticking to any of your systems, I want us to do a few little checks. The first check is I want you to check how you are defining, sticking to. Because if your definition of sticking to a system is that you always do what you intend to do, exactly when you intend to do it for the amount of time you intend to do it. And you always do your plan at the same time on a Monday, and you always do your plan every Friday, and you always add things to your task list as soon as they come in, and you always tick them off as soon as they're done. And you always finish your whole task list for the week and dah dah, if that's your definition of sticking to, it's no blimin' wonder, you don't stick to your systems, okay? No one does that. Even these crazy, crazy productivity bros on the internet, they don't do that. Or maybe I'm just being super not neurotypical. Maybe some people do. Maybe some people do, but very few people do, and hardly any of you who listen to my podcast are gonna be able to say you do all those things if you define sticking to your systems as being perfect, This is one of the big reasons we are not sticking to our systems. Okay. I'm saying sticking with like speech marks around it 'cause sticking to can mean a whole variety of things. If our definition is perfection, we are almost always gonna fall short. So I want you to think really seriously about what level of adherence? So this is something. So I'm an exercise scientist by training. As many of you all know, we talk about adherence in the exercise literature. When we do an exercise intervention and we give people training programs to do it would be really, really unusual for our kind of desired adherence, our required adherence to be a hundred percent. It would be really unusual if it's an exercise scientist, we're going to exclude anybody who doesn't stick to their exercise plan at a hundred percent adherence. </div> <div> Be ludicrous. Your studies would fall apart. Okay. Maybe the odd one in very elite athletes, but not many. Whereas usually we'll say, okay, 80% adherence to the intervention, or something like that counts as they've done the intervention. We might explore why people have adhered, why they didn't, We are gonna do that today, but we first have to make sure we're not holding ourselves to a standard we are never going to meet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, what counts as sticking to my systems, the main thing that counts as sticking to my systems is that the systems are there and broadly up to date. I feel like I'm sticking to them if, when I realize I haven't stuck to them, I can get back onto it reasonably quickly. And essentially, when I am trying to use the system, I consider that sticking to the system. So I use role-based time blocking that I've talked about on the website before. I have a role-based approach to my task management systems. Again, you'll learn about all these things in the membership. And I don't do it perfectly. I don't always designate roles. I don't always stick exactly to what I said I was gonna do in my time blocks, but I mostly do, and the system mostly underpins that. It's the difference between, okay, I get teased for being messy. 'Cause I tend to leave things lying around. But I'm the sort of messy, where everything in my house has a place, it's just not always in it. I'm not somebody that, there's 500,000 things that just don't have somewhere they live. No shade, if that's you. Right. This isn't a like a judgment thing, but my version of being organized at home is that everything has a place that it goes. That mostly makes sense. Then when I'm sticking to those systems is when I broadly put things back at some point to those. But does it mean I'm only being sticking to those household type systems if everything's in its place all the time? </div> <div> No. Or I would never be sticking to those systems. They exist. They're there. I know what they are. I use them whenever I can. Sometimes it gets slightly more chaotic, but then when I want to sort it out, it goes back into those systems. And the same is true with this. So think about how you're defining adherence. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing I want you to really ponder, and this is gonna be especially true for all of you who love reading Self-Help and love listening to my podcast and other people's podcast and everybody else's podcast, and da, and suddenly. The systems that you've set up are complex and long-winded and would take more time than actually doing the work sometimes, and you're not quite sure whether you want to do them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You sort of want to be the sort of person who does it, but not all the time, but not right now. But maybe you should be. If you set up stupid complex systems, we are not gonna beat ourselves up for not sticking to them. I say this with love and respect 'cause I have set up many a stupid complex system. I have set up systems where if you don't stay on top of them every single day it falls apart. I've set up systems where if you haven't colored it in properly, it doesn't count. You know, my bullet journal phase, that didn't last long 'cause I spent too much time doing craft and not enough time doing bullet journals. If your system's complicated, if your system is trying to be something you're not, if your system is telling you that you should be, I don't know, doing thought downloads for four hours every day. </div> <div> Stupid system, don't beat yourself up for not doing stupid systems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how are we defining, sticking to it? And are your systems stupid? Anyway? We want something again, advice you today. Uh, your systems aren't stupid if you like them, but are these systems that weren't designed with your current life in place? It's exactly the same as intending to have a house where everything's put away in spic and span and you've got four children under three. Not gonna happen. Is it possible to Yeah, if you had twins, that's a lot of children, but you know what I mean. Okay, so. Check in why you have these systems, why you are even planning to use these particular systems, and are they actually realistic for you as a person in the phase you are in at the moment? So we check what standards we're holding ourselves against, IE, what systems we wanna be using, and what level of adherence we're expecting before we even do anything else at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We then start to think, okay, what can I do, and I'm gonna go into a whole bunch of stuff about self-efficacy in a minute. I'm gonna explain to you what that means, from the scientific literature, how we build self-efficacy, and how you can build your self-efficacy about systems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But before we even get into that, I'm gonna give you one suggestion for free. And this suggestion is based on everybody I've ever coached. It's based on my own experience, and that is you probably need to simplify your systems. When you look at these stupid systems that I mentioned, even if you are like, no, no, this is realistic. I do have time to do this. I spend four hours a day scrolling Instagram. So if I just spent two of those hours doing this, then I went, no, but you are scrolling Instagram for a reason. It's not quite a straightforward saying, oh, I'll just stop scrolling Instagram and I'll do this instead. If I was perfect, I would have time. Simplify your systems. Okay. We want systems that are as straightforward to or used as possible. We wanna streamline them. We want them to be things that are good. I just did a workshop just yesterday and this morning about weekly reviews. Um, by the way, if you weren't at that and you wish you'd signed up for it, just drop me a message and I'll send you the link to the recording. 'Cause it was really good. Um, and so many people were like, oh, but you've told us we can only have four weekly review questions, five weekly review questions, but there's nine that I think are relevant. It's like, yeah, most of them are relevant. Most of them would be great, but if you try and fill in nine questions every week about how your week has gone, you're probably gonna do it for two weeks and then never do it again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even if it might be nice to have these fancy bells and whistles, we need to simplify so that it becomes something that actually the amount of effort is proportionate to the benefit we get from it and the likelihood of us doing it. So simplify your systems. </div> <div> Now let's personalize it a little bit more. 'Cause for all of you, it will be slightly different reasons. And so what we wanna do now is we wanna get curious. This is something I bang on about in the membership all the time, which is that we often get judgmental before we get curious. Oh, I just don't stick to systems. I'm bad at systems. Other people are good at it. I'm bad at it because I'm bad at it. I'm chaotic. I'm useless. Everybody hates me. I'm never gonna be able to PhD. I'm never gonna succeed in academia. All those little thought spirals that we go into, we judge ourselves. If I was just a bit more disciplined, if I was just a bit less lazy, if I was just, just, just, just, just, then I'd stick to my systems, but I'm not, so, I don't, okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We wanna channel curiosity instead of judgmentalness, we wanna say, okay, I wonder why. Why am I not sticking to my systems? Is it something about the systems, as we've discussed already, are they too complex? Are they not in keeping with who I actually want to be as a person? Are they not actually very realistic for my stage in life? </div> <div> Now when we don't have faith that we can do a particular thing when we don't believe we can do a particular thing that's called having low self- Efficacy for that particular task. So many, many of you and most of my members, certainly the ones that are a bit newer and haven't sort of built it up have low self-efficacy for their ability to follow a system. </div> <div> They believe they're not good at it. They believe they can't do it. And one of the things that's really useful is to explore that a little bit more with curiosity so that we can understand what elements are falling down. Is it our kind of skill level expectation? We're expecting ourselves to be able to run really complex systems that are just not appropriate at the moment. </div> <div> Or is something else breaking down? And if it's something else breaking down, it's useful to understand what, so that we can work out what skills we want to develop and how we want to build our own self-efficacy around this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm gonna give you three examples of things that I see kind of break down when it comes to sticking to systems. The first is the kind of things come up. So we start with good intentions. We've probably designed something that is mostly feasible in most weeks anyway, that we quite like, is in keeping with who we are, all of those things. And we sort to do it except when we've got a deadline or when we're feeling ill or when we have problems with our families or when everything just gets a bit chaotic or when the marking comes in, when the students come back, whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When stuff happens, then we don't have self-efficacy that we will do it. And we sometimes call this coping self-efficacy. So it's not just our ability to do the task itself, it's our ability to do the task, If stuff is happening around us, so like in exercise, if you ask me what is your self-efficacy, that you could go on a mile run, fine. High self-efficacy, I am very capable of going. I'm mean, it'd be slow. Don't get me wrong. I'm gonna be trudging it out guys, but absolutely fine. Go and do a CrossFit class, absolutely fine. High self-efficacy, if you ask me my self-efficacy that can you still do those things regularly when you're in a busy period at work or when you've got stuff happening with your family or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's better than it used to be, but it's lower. Okay, and this particular example is problem focus coping. We are lower in problem focus coping skills, that we are less able to do these things when there's these other pressures around us. If that resonates with you, We wanna be really specifically trying to build our problem focus coping skills, and I'm gonna talk in a minute about how we do these things. </div> <div> The second one emotion focus coping. So, and these are highly related, right? But emotion focus coping is to what extent do you believe that when you are bored or when you are sad or when you are tired or when you are frustrated, you'll be able to use your systems. This is one that breaks down a lot. So for example, in my end of week review sessions, a lot of people recognized that the one thing that will put them off doing a end of week review is the frustration and embarrassment, that kind of sense of shame that they haven't done all the things they said they'd do, and therefore they're gonna avoid the review because they're avoiding those emotions. That's low self-efficacy in emotion focused coping. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's not so much about whether these people have time to do it. They're not saying, oh, I just don't have time. There's too many things happening. They're just avoiding the emotions associated with doing it, and that's more emotion-focused coping that we want to be working on in that case. Have a think which of these is resonating most for you? You might be saying all of the above, which is absolutely fine too. </div> <div> And then the third sort of coping self-efficacy that we're gonna talk about today is support seeking. So to what extent do you feel able or willing to ask for support when you are not sticking to your systems? To what extent do you have somewhere you can go that will help you to stick to those systems? So as an example, I think I've mentioned this in the past, but anyway, one of the support focus coping that my mom used to do when I didn't tidy my bedroom was that she would get my friend over. So my friend Anna would come over and she'd sit on my bed and we would gossip and I would tidy my room while we gossiped and I would get so much done. </div> <div> And it was 'cause my mom had these skills in support focus, coping, where she knew that she could bring in this support and it would help me to get it done. . And I still do that a bit Now. I make my husband talk to me. If I've got boring house jobs that I need to do, he has to come with me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So think about to what extent are you willing to pull in support when you need it for these sorts of things. Lots of you won't be, because lots of you will be embarrassed that you are not currently doing this. You'll be under the false impression that everybody else has this sorted and that you should have this sorted and that therefore there isn't really anyone. </div> <div> You can ask. It's hard to talk to your supervisor and say, yeah, I just don't really plan my week. It's hard to admit that sometimes, Right? And if other people are like, I remember talking to people about it and them just go, oh, you see on a Monday, I just write down my tasks I need to do, and then I do them and I tick them off on a Friday. I'm like, marvelous. But I don't work like that. That's not how. This goes. So if you don't have that, then we want to work on your support focus coping, and that is about both having access to and willingness to access appropriate support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So have a think which of these are resonating with you. And as I say, it may well be that all of them are resonating, which is absolutely fine. What we ask ourselves then is, okay, so I'm recognizing I've got low self-efficacy when it comes to sticking to my systems. Let's just pause before we get into what we do about that and think what impact that has on you. When you have low self-efficacy, low belief that you are able to stick to systems, what impact does it have? </div> <div> The impacts that I see in my members are an unwillingness to try new systems. So some of my members are like, yeah, I don't even wanna talk about it, Vic, 'cause I know I'm not gonna do it. So it feels like a waste of time. Others almost go the opposite way, that they immediately blame the system. So if they think they don't stick to systems and then they start a system and they don't stick to it, they immediately go, oh yeah, this is another one that hasn't worked, but this next one might work. </div> <div> So I'll do that one. So it's this weird sort of, I don't have the efficacy. I could stick to that one, but I do have this kind of vague blind hope that there is a version somewhere of a system that I will stick to perfectly. I also see so much self-judgment, like so much telling themselves if I can't just stick to tasks. If I can't even fill in my task list, I'm never gonna be able to finish a PhD. I mean, I'm living proof this isn't true, I finished my PhD, I went all the way to full professor and I don't think I ever finished a task list in my, okay. But we tell ourselves these stories and that's a consequence of this low self-efficacy to do with organization. And then extrapolating that out to beat low self-efficacy in other things as well. If I can't this, then I definitely can't that. Take a second just to think what impact it has on you believing that you can't stick to systems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do we do? How do we increase our self-efficacy? Well, There's a bunch of ways to do this, and the psychological literature has spent quite a lot of time exploring how we can increase self-efficacy in a whole variety of different sorts of behavior changes. I'm most familiar with the exercise literature, but it's been explored in all sorts of different areas. </div> <div> But if we think about it in terms of our self-efficacy that we can stick to systems, i've got four different ways from the literature that you can increase your self-efficacy. </div> <div> The first is what's called increasing your mastery experiences, and this is gathering evidence that you are capable of sticking to an element of your system. Not sticking perfectly, none of that, but looking for evidence. Oh, I did do this bit. I did stick to that part. I did say to it for this long. I did do it that many times. Reminding yourself how much you do use your systems Often, especially when we're holding ourselves to these a hundred percent adherence standards and everything, we completely overlook the evidence that we do stick to things. Mastery experience, building your mastery is building this sense that you do sometimes at least stick to these things. </div> <div> The further on from that is also recognizing when your systems have worked for you. So it's about when you've used them and what benefit you've got from that. So actually I don't always stick to my systems, but on Wednesday I did update my task list and it actually made me feel much clearer about what needed to do, and I actually got on and got two priority tasks done that would help. Build your mastery experience and if your brain goes and I never stick to my systems, it's okay. Say a thank you brain for your less than helpful contribution. I appreciate you, but I don't believe you. I don't believe you. You guys have all completed excessive amounts of academic experience. You have all been highly successful in your own different ways. You definitely sometimes stick to your systems. Now you might have a whole load of practice that doesn't help. I totally accept that. That's why you're here. But you definitely do sometimes, and if you have this sort of all or nothing thinking that I never do, it's even more important that you go I probably have once. When have I once stuck to a system for at least a little bit. Build our mastery experiences. If you struggle to identify those, that is actually a symptom of not having systems. It is really hard sometimes to recall what we've done when we don't have good systems, and that's one of the things we've been building in the membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is building your vicarious experience. This is where we see other people doing things that work and importantly other people like us. Just like, you know, everybody thinks that kids watch the Olympics and are now inspired to take part in sport and it's sort of true for a little bit. But when those people are very, very different from you, it doesn't last as well as when you see people like you doing something. Middle-aged people are much more likely to get involved in sport if they see other middle-aged people getting involved in sport than if they watch the Premier League or whatever. And the same is true here. If you are always looking at people who go, oh, I just fill in my Bullet journal at the exact same time, well, I have my matcha tea and. Whatever. If you only look at those people, that's not a vicarious experience 'cause it doesn't feel like it could be you. They're just like this little alien over there that it all comes easily to. I want you to look for people who are similar to you, who struggle with systems, but want them, need them, crave them, but find them difficult. People who feel a little bit chaotic but are trying to improve it. I want you to find those people. And see them starting to develop systems, starting to see them use it. </div> <div> And if you're going, where do I find these people? You need to join the membership because the membership is just such a safe place for this. 'cause everybody is there to develop the same things. Everybody has admitted by being there they haven't got all the answers and that it's not all going perfectly for them, but they are also committed to trying. And so we have a community where you can kind of chat with each other and things like that. And we have member led coworking sessions so often you're actually just chitchatting in Zoom too. We have people coming, going, you know, I filled in a hundred lines on my to-do list that they, over the last however long, and I'm so proud I've kept using it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or I put all my time blocks in for three weeks in a row. I haven't started to the ball, but I did it. And they, people get to share their little experiences and you get to see. Oh, okay. Well, I've seen that person being coached and they definitely don't have it all together. And they definitely say a lot of things that sound a lot like me. And now they're actually using that system a little bit and they're sticking to it a little bit. I wonder if I could too. And it's suddenly much more motivating. It builds your belief that if somebody like me can do it, then maybe I could do a bit of it too. And that's building your vicarious experiences.  </div> <div> A third way to build self-efficacy is social persuasion. Is other people convincing you that you are able to do this. This is receiving positive feedback from people and not poo-pooing it, actually allowing it to seep in allowing us to believe that it's true. The problem is that most people don't see you fill in your to-do list or to do your time blocking or to plan your week or plan your quarter. Most people don't see you do it like in real life, right? Maybe in your supervision meetings, your supervisor might say, oh, I'm really impressed that you've blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? We grab those. We believe, don't go, oh no, I've pulled wool over your eyes. We're gonna grab those and use them as social persuasion evidence. Okay? But often when it comes to the systems side of things, we don't really talk about it. So we don't get a lot of social persuasion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, this happens massively in the membership because in coaching sessions, one of the things, one things that happens all the time, okay, I think my members are probably getting bored of it now, but it's good for them, is that somebody will come on and go, oh yeah, yeah. That article that I, well, you coached me on a couple of weeks. Yeah, tell I've, I've submitted that and that's been accepted, so that's all good. But now the problem is, and I'm like. Uh, can we pause just for a second? The paper that you were coached about last time has now been accepted. It's now been whatever. You know, my supervisor said it's fine for my thesis, whatever it might be. Let's just pause here for a second. Let's just recognize how you made that happen, what systems you use that made that actually happen. How you managed your own emotions, how you faced the problems that came up, how you sought support. </div> <div> Let's actually pull all that, and this is part of social persuasion, is people saying, no, no, hang on a second. Look what you've done here. Look how well you've done and helping you see that other people can see you using this. </div> <div> And then the fourth way we can build self-efficacy is around managing our emotions. And that's not about, people often think that managing our emotions is like getting to a stage where we don't have emotions. That's not the point. The point is being able to experience our emotions, our sort of true and sincere emotions. Be able to experience them without panicking, but also without making them into some huge deal and like, uh, extrapolating from them wildly. So one of the things I see most in this context is that when people feel shame or embarrassment that they haven't used their systems, they avoid their systems to avoid the shame and embarrassment. They're so scared of those emotions of sharing an embarrassment that they would rather never go back to their systems than face them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the big things I teach with systems is don't over-dramatize falling off. Everybody is gonna, at some stage not use their systems perfectly. And if when we do, we make it me. Oh, look at me. I've never stuck to my systems again. </div> <div> I say uses, this is more evidence. I can't use systems. Stupid system anyway. Stupid me anyway. Blah, blah, blah. Okay? The more we do all of that, the harder it is just to get back on? The little kid that falls over and doesn't wanna get back on the football pitch 'cause they fallen over. Whereas if we can fall over and then jump back up and go, okay, I'm gonna carry on playing football, okay, yeah. Fell over. Oops. I'm all right. Brush myself off, crack back on. The more we can do that with our systems, the less time we're actually away from our systems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things I've noticed massively over the last couple of years for me is I do still fall off my systems regularly. I do still forget to put things in my task list or not quite stick to my time blocks as intended or whatever. But I get back on them much faster. And when you get back on them much faster, you waste so much less time reinventing them. I don't do that at all anymore. Much less time reinventing them. Much less time beating yourself up and more go, oh, I've paid to stop using my task list for a couple of days. Okay, I'll start using my task list again. </div> <div> Let's go. And that's about managing those emotions. It's about not feeding the emotions that this means I'm rubbish and that I now feel shame and frustration and all these things and going okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm a bit embarrassed I haven't been using it. Not that embarrassed, but I can start again and that would be okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we're thinking about mastery experience, evidence that you can do this at least some of the time, and that it does help when you do. Vicarious experience surrounding yourself by people who are like you and who are starting to work on these things and starting to see success. So you believe if it's possible for them, could be possible for you too. Social persuasions surrounding yourself by people who give you feedback on how good it is that you are doing the things that you're doing and how much this shows you sticking to your systems and managing your emotions so that we don't have to make it a massive drama every time something goes wrong. </div> <div> Those are always that you can build your self-efficacy around anything, but in this case, specifically around your ability to stick to systems. All the way through, we need to be paying attention to what we are doing, where we are using our systems and gaining benefit from them. We need to give weight to that. So many of you discredit the evidence that you have to Oh, yes, but it was only because the kids were in school, so it wasn't so bad. It was only for one week. It was only because my supervisor helped me load. Whatever it might be. Let's not discredit it. We're gonna pay attention to all the times we do use our systems. </div> <div> We're gonna give weight to all the times we use our systems. We're gonna make it mean something, and we're gonna integrate it into our stories about ourselves. Because the more your story about yourself is that you can't stick to systems, Whatever stick means, the harder it is to do any of this stuff. If our stories can be, I sometimes find it challenging to stick to complex systems, so I'm building smaller systems, simpler systems, and doing my best to stick to them whenever I can. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's so much better than I never stick to systems and I'm a hot mess. Notice in these stories we tell about ourselves, we are not saying, I'm the most organized person in the world. You are not. None of us are. But we're telling a story that is true. This is something I find difficult and that is positive, but I'm selecting things that are useful for me and that I'm capable of doing, and I have evidence that I can. </div> <div> Now, if when you're listening to this, you're like, okay, this sounds all really good, Vikki, and I'm feeling super motivated after your little pep talk, but this sounds like a lot to do on your own. It kind of is. To retain this kind of remembering, to look for your mastery experiences, to have access to vicarious experiences, have access to social persuasion, to learn how to manage your emotions in the moment is not straightforward. I hope that today has given you lots of food for thought and lots of things you can start to build on. </div> <div> And if you take nothing else, simplify your systems. Stop beating yourself up. That's the take home. The sort of too long didn't read bit. Um. If you are like to do more than that, actually feels really hard and I don't know how I'm gonna support myself through it. That's where I want you to think about the membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The membership is the structure that makes it much easier for you to do all of these things, and quarter two is designed to help with this. So for the people who've been in, who are coming in, like at the beginning of Q1 and going through first quarter, we build their systems second quarter. We support them to stick to their systems more effectively. </div> <div> So we're talking procrastination, we're talking motivation, we're talking managing distractions, increasing focus. All that stuff that we really struggle with. If you're like, yeah, but I missed Q1 Vic, so is it really worth it? Yes, a hundred percent. The whole point with the membership is you can start at any point and it totally makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we'll get you to a basic level of systems. We won't have gone through all the depth of it that we did in Q1, but we'll get you to a basic level of, here's some systems to try, and then we'll really focus on helping you understand why you procrastinate, understand how your motivation affects how much you stick to these things, and how we can kind of grasp control of that and move on, and you'll do it all, not only with my expert support, but also with this amazing community all around you. You'll hear them getting coached. You'll hear their successes, you'll hear their little crises. You'll support each other through it. You'll get access to all the online materials that I have for all the different things that you might be struggling with. </div> <div> And access of course, to my gorgeous co-working community where they organize their own co-working sessions. They run pretty much, not entirely around the clock, but mostly. So if you are on the other side of the world to me, please do not assume there won't be co-working in your hours. There usually are, and if there aren't, I have a lot of members down that way now and who would be very, very happy to co-work with you too. So if you wanna have any more information, please do come along to those free coaching sessions on Tuesday, the 28th of April. If you hear this in time, check out my website, the PhD life coach.com, and you'll click on the membership button at the top and it will give you all the details there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can sign up through the 1st of May if you are going, this sounds amazing Vik, but for very specific reasons, There's no way I could afford it. Please get in contact with me urgently and I mean urgently like today, tomorrow, because I am gonna give out a few scholarships this year, but I need to hear from you soon so that I can let people know who I have chosen. </div> <div> So let me know by the end of the 28th. If you need a scholarship. You just need to send me a short explanation. Unfortunately, just I'm a non-funded PhD student's. Not enough because there's a lot of you, , so if there's other reasons that make it particularly complex for you, then please do fill that in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Otherwise, I try and make it as affordable as I possibly can. So check it out, and I hope to see several of you in the membership soon. Take care. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-35-what-to-do-when-you-dont-stick-to-your-systems thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-34-how-to-understand-your-own-procrastination-a-special-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you think you are the only person in academia struggling with procrastination, then you need today’s episode! Hear from Susie and Zareen, two students in my PhD Life Coach membership, as we discuss hiding from the big scary thing, never feeling ready enough to start, and shiny object syndrome.You’ll hear real coaching, with real students, and get some specific tips to help you with your procrastination.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/18305525" target="_blank"> Why you should notice the paradox of imposter syndrome. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and today is the third in my little series of real coaching sessions with real membership students I'm very excited to welcome Zareen and Susie. Hi, both of you.  </div> <div> Zareen: Hi there. </div> <div> Susie: Hello.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so as usual, I'm gonna get you guys to introduce yourselves and then I will coach one of you while the other watches and then we'll swap over. It's gonna feel a lot like in our coaching sessions, and we'll hopefully be super useful to all the listeners too. So Zareen, do you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself?  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes, sure. So I'm Zareen and I'm a third year PhD student based in the uk. And I am working on a project looking at health inequalities in the field of stem cell transplantation.  </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Okay. Thanks for that Zareen and Susie? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susie: Hi, my name's Susie and I'm in my second year of PhD exploring post-adoption support for single adoptive parents in the uk.  </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing, good stuff. And we are here today because we are all procrastinators, as many of us I think listening will also recognize. So we are gonna be thinking about a couple of different issues around procrastination and overwhelm and focus and things like that. This is also gonna tie in really, really well to the theme of the upcoming quarter of the PhD Life Coach membership. So this will go out on April the 20th if you are listening to it live. </div> <div> Vikki: And the membership is open for new members next week. We open on April 27th. So if you are listening to this and going, oh man, I do all those things too, you definitely need to make sure that you are on my email list and that you check that out. Come join us in the membership. You can always message me if you want to hear more details. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we are gonna go to Zareen first. So Susie, if you can pop off your camera and sound, that would be amazing. Cool. Hi Zareen. So obviously we had a little chat before you came on and everything. But tell everyone a little bit more about the things you're struggling with at the moment.  </div> <div> Zareen: Um, okay. So what I'm struggling with at the moment is just I think having these unachievable targets and timelines. And so what I do is, instead of sitting and planning and understanding how long everything will take and deciding on whether I can achieve it in the time that I have and removing or reducing something that I put everything in the calendar, then I get super overwhelmed and stressed when I can't achieve it. And then I start to procrastinate because I know I can't do it. I, I just don't do it. I, I just don't get it done. And also. I, I work from home. I am a mother. I find all sorts of other excuses. There are all sorts of other bits that come into it. And the end result is that I, I don't manage to finish things, or if I do, it's in a very stressed way, you know, to, to the second to the minute. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: I'm kind of completing this presentation before I have to present, and it's not the best. And it's all very stressful. And I feel bad because I just think, oh, I could have done this better if I'd only focused on one thing instead of five things. If I'd recognized that two weeks ago I would've done a better job and I wouldn't have been stressed and I would've delivered. </div> <div> Zareen: So I think that's sort of what I'm facing. And not just now, but I've, I've struggled with this throughout, in both my personal and professional work life.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I think everybody listening is gonna recognize this in their own lives. For sure. I wanna understand a little bit more about the impact this has on you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So when you've had a week or two where you've sort of said you'd do more than you've ended up doing and then you've procrastinated and things, what do you end the week saying to yourself?  </div> <div> Zareen: Um, I, I just feel very well, lots of negative emotions and thoughts really. I just think, how am I always ending up in this situation? I clearly don't know what I'm doing. I don't have the skills, other people can do it yet, and be ready, be prepared. And I always end up in this situation. It must mean that I'm just not good enough. I can't do it. I dunno what I'm doing.  </div> <div> Vikki: Do those thoughts feel true to you in that moment? </div> <div> Zareen: Yes, because I can see the result in front of me and I haven't finished it. I am struggling. So it's almost evidenced by the lack of work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you mentioned that, so you obviously gave a whole bunch of different like critical things that you say to yourself, a bunch of statements there about you're not good enough that other people can do it. Again, things that I know the listeners are gonna really resonate with. But there was also a question, and that question right at the beginning was, why do I always do this?  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Have you ever paused to try and answer that question? </div> <div> Zareen: Um, I'm trying to do that more now, but I have to confess that I haven't or I sort of think about No, actually I just launched myself. I don't think too much about it, but since the membership, I've been starting to think about things a bit more.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Because often we hear these questions whizzing around, why do I always end up doing this? But it becomes part of a general kind of barrage of criticism rather than a, no, actually, why do I? </div> <div> Zareen: Yes,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm an intelligent person. I've, you know, I got onto my PhD, I clearly have skills. Why do I keep doing this? And taking it actually as a curious question rather than as a, an additional insult to ourselves can sometimes be really useful.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Is there anything that comes to mind when we ask that question? Why do I keep doing this?  </div> <div> Zareen: I think it's because maybe I don't want to do this one task. I find it scary. I find it maybe not enjoyable or I'm gonna find it hard to get into, but once I'm into it, it's okay. But the bottom line is I find it scary and I don't want to do it. And so therefore I put other things or add a lot of things to my day or to my calendar in order not to face it. But it is the most important thing I have to do that day, that week. But I think I just find it too scary, too difficult, too hard. That's why.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So those other things that you are adding in, are you adding them in telling yourself, oh, this will be more fun. You know, I'll do some of this and a little bit the other thing? Or are you also feeling like those have to be done?  </div> <div> Zareen: Um, I feel that they have to be, in some cases, I feel, yeah, no, I would say that I think, I feel that they have to be done. They absolutely have to be done before I approach this task.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm.  </div> <div> Zareen: If I don't do these things, then I want to be prepared enough to face this task. I think generally that's what it is.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So it is not just random other tasks, it's tasks that you are telling yourself, I need to do these before I start. </div> <div> Zareen: Often it is, yes, most of the time.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because sometimes when we jam too much in, in that planning stage, so you'll know in the membership we call it boss mode. When we're in boss mode at the beginning of the week or at the beginning of the quarter or whatever, and we are deciding what's in and what's out for the upcoming period, one of the things that I've seen a lot is when people put, and I'm guilty of this myself, I have to say, I shouldn't say guilty should I? I'm not guilty of it. It's something I do. I don't feel guilty about it 'cause I'm learning. But it's something that I do too that, when there's a lot of things and they all feel important, choosing can feel really uncomfortable because choosing means either accepting that something's not going to happen. </div> <div> Vikki: Or accepting that actually, if we're gonna pick, I'll probably have to pick the big thing that's scary and I don't really wanna do it. And what I see a lot in people I'd be interested to see how you resonate with, is we're avoiding the uncomfortableness of that decision and we're kind of going, oh, actually, sorry, I can't really pick, I need to do all of them. Fine. Is that something you resonate with?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Yes, I think so. I sort of have this reality that , I will somehow manage to do all of it, including the important, difficult one. So as not to face what I do really need to do. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, yeah. So we're avoiding making the decision. Actually, I probably do need to just get on with this one big task, and we're avoiding having to make that decision, and instead we're telling ourselves I've got to do all these other things as well. And that's really useful to recognize. Those of you listening there'll be different reasons for all of you. So for me it's very rarely about there being one big scary thing that I'm avoiding. And it's much more likely to be that there's a hundred things I want to do and I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do all of them. And I want to do all of them. I just don't want to have to pick between them. So people listening will have different types of decisions they're avoiding. But it sounds like for you, this avoidance of something that feels big and scary is a big deal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Yes. I think, definitely that's one of the things I'm struggling with. But maybe this is for a second coaching, but in some cases there is also, I have a lot and I need to get it all done and I'm just gonna add it all in, even if I can't do it. So there's also that aspect, but yes, one of the main things I struggle with is avoidance of the big task.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Well let's stick with that for today. Obviously, you being a member, you can bring Yes. The other element of it to a coaching session or you can put a question in questions for Vicki and I'll record your voice note as well. Perfect. So that is all good. So let's think then, about this big task. Why does it feel so scary?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Um, often it needs a lot of work, a lot of thinking, and I just feel I'm not ready. I don't have enough to write about or to present. So I have one example and that was, one of my abstracts was accepted for a oral presentation, and instead of focusing on, and it was only a 10 minute presentation, instead of focusing on one aspect of my work, I decided I was going to include all of it, even though the other bit of the data was not ready. So I spent a couple of weeks trying to get the data ready to then realize a week before the conference that I, I couldn't. But then by then time had passed, and I didn't really have much time to prepare on what was ready and what I should have presented.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, yeah. And what was it you were avoiding there? </div> <div> Zareen: I think I was telling myself I didn't have enough to present, because I felt what I have done so far was not important enough. I needed to already have the big final result ready.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: And often I have been feeling like this, that what I've done so far is not good enough and I need to have more. It's not enough. It's not enough.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And that sort of story really then compounds when we've got into this cycle of putting in too much to do, getting overwhelmed by it, procrastinating, not getting it done and doing it all over again because it kind of reinforces this story. We've got that we are not doing enough and that we're not good enough and that we're not moving fast enough and all of those things. I'm interested what emotions you experience when you think, I don't have enough, there's not enough here to make it good. What emotions do you experience?  </div> <div> Zareen: I just think how, how can I have reached this stage? I'm starting year three and I still don't have enough data. I'm not still a lot in a good position when others are, have nearly written up their thesis. How can I be in this situation? What am I doing wrong? Um, this is a disaster. I would never finish it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm gonna pause you 'cause these are a whole lot more thoughts. </div> <div> Zareen: Yes. Okay. Okay.  </div> <div> Vikki: When you think about emotions,  </div> <div> Zareen: emotions,  </div> <div> Vikki: right? So how does it feel in your body? What emotions do you experience when you're telling yourself?  </div> <div> Zareen: Um, stressed.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Zareen: Um, agitated, um, disappointed in myself. Um, yeah just really disappointed in myself and really stressed.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Okay, so we paused there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the reason I ask about emotions rather than just thoughts is partly because one of the things I've noticed working with PhD students and academics is that we're incredibly good at being cognitive. We can think all these thoughts, thought, thought, thought, thoughts, thoughts. And then we ask people about their emotions and they usually respond with more thoughts. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And just taking a second to go, hang on. How am I actually feeling right now is a really useful practice in and of itself, even aside from where we're gonna go with this in this coaching session. When you hear your brain spinning with all these thoughts. Being able to pause and say, what emotions am I actually feeling right now? </div> <div> Vikki: Let's just start from there. Rather than telling myself more and more stories about why this is so terrible and why I'm so awful, let's just pause. What am I experiencing? Okay. And then the other reason that's so useful in this context is that procrastination is emotion avoidance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: We procrastinate when we're experiencing an emotion that we don't like, and we're trying to make it go away. And so in order to understand why we're procrastinating, we have to understand a little bit about what emotions we're avoiding. So it sounds as though you are trying to avoid feeling stressed, avoid feeling agitated, avoid feeling disappointed by telling yourself. Yeah. Yeah. But if I do all of this, then I'll have enough and it will all be okay. </div> <div> Zareen: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And that's suddenly, I don't know how you receive that, but for me, that suddenly feels really logical. Right? At the moment, I feel stressed and disappointed, but I have a plan, and if I follow the plan and I do all these things, then I won't feel stressed and disappointed anymore because I will have everything I need to make this good. </div> <div> Zareen: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, yeah, I think that's how, it sort of plays out as well in reality. </div> <div> Vikki: The trouble is if we then can't do all the things. We never actually get to that moment of relief or not without a huge, like, stressful burnout to the last second experience. Right. So is this in that moment, the procrastination is the absolutely logical thing. If I'm freaking out 'cause I haven't done enough and I'm disappointed and it's not gonna be good enough, the solution to that is I need to do more and I'm gonna do it this week and say, by the end of this week I'll be fine. Perfectly logical in the moment. It just doesn't work out that way because we all know that when we try and do too much, then it becomes overwhelming. Then we procrastinate some more, then we don't do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. How could you start doing a big scary task? So say, preparing this presentation or similar that you've got coming up without having to hide from those feelings of disappointment? </div> <div> Zareen: I think I just need to be honest with myself and also just sort of prepare a bit more and be, and just not, not launch myself straight away and just face it. I think I just need to sit down and make a start. Instead of saying, oh, I can't make a start, I'm gonna do these other things, and sort of, you almost lie to myself saying, well, I need that to do this. I just need to make a start. And just have more realistic timings. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Have you told yourself, I just need to prepare more. I just need to sit down. I just need to be more realistic and I just need to get on with it before. </div> <div> Zareen: Uh, yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. This, this isn't a solution. Okay. And for anybody listening, if you hear yourself a saying, just a lot, the word just implies it's easy. This is not easy. We're gonna avoid the word just because otherwise it makes it feel as though this should be straightforward. And if it's not straightforward, there's something wrong with you. This isn't straightforward, but equally, we're not going to address this by telling ourselves this would be okay if I was just better.  </div> <div> Zareen: Mm.  </div> <div> Vikki: If I was just more realistic, if I was just more on it, if I plan further ahead, this would all be fine. Because if we did those things, we wouldn't be sitting here. Right?  </div> <div> Zareen: True.  </div> <div> Vikki: What I want us to go back to is the idea, what would I need to say to myself in order to start this task when I'm feeling a bit disappointed and a bit agitated? So not, how could I be so prepared that I don't feel disappointed and agitated anymore? 'Cause then it's easy to start. You are feeling agitated and disappointed about this thing, but you also want to get it done. If you had a child who was feeling a bit disappointed, who was feeling a bit sad with how much they'd done, but they do need to do this thing and they're a bit agitated, what things might you say to them to help them to get started?  </div> <div> Zareen: Just a lot of encouragement, to say, look, your abstract was accepted. You can do this. It's clearly interesting work that you're doing and you have enough, otherwise it wouldn't have been accepted. So, you can do this. You're ready. And you can absolutely do this. Yeah, encouragement.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how would that feel to say to yourself?  </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah, it would feel, it'll feel great, but I don't do that very often. I'm just very negative about myself.  </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm. Why do you think, is it that you just don't think to do that? Or do you avoid it?  </div> <div> Zareen: Uh, I think, I just don't think to, to do it. I, I don't, yeah. No, I don't think to say those things to myself. I'll say it to another person.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm.  </div> <div> Zareen: Um, but I wouldn't say it about myself. I dunno. Um, I think, I just feel, maybe it's, I guess I, I, why wouldn't I say it to myself? I mean, obviously in this scenario now it makes sense that I should be saying it to myself, but I think I've just never thought of myself as being Im important or valued or, yeah. I think I've just not put myself on the list and that I'm important enough to say those things to myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Do you think you are when you stop and think about it?  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes, I think so. I. But I tend to be a bit more negative about myself than really encouraging and saying, yes, you've done really well and you're doing great work. I never say that. So it's hard to, to actually say that to myself. </div> <div> Vikki: One of the things I noticed partly about how you described it, but I've seen this before as well, is people who criticize themselves go from one extreme to the other. So the examples of encouragement you gave there was telling yourself you did great work. And if you are somebody who's used to criticizing yourself, telling yourself the work's great, when you are not sure whether it is or not  </div> <div> Zareen: mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Is a really big jump.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And I think sometimes it's useful to find something that's encouraging, But feels true because I'm gonna guess in those moments you've done great work isn't gonna feel true to you. I suspect it is true. I suspect if I came and objectively looked at what you were doing, I mean, health inequalities is such an important topic and I suspect you're doing some really interesting stuff, but if it doesn't feel true to you,  </div> <div> Zareen: no, that's true. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Zareen: Just be lying.  </div> <div> Vikki: Let's not aim for that.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One of the things I find helpful is saying things like, this might not be the best presentation ever, but I'm gonna pull it together with what I've got. I can make it as interesting as I can with the data I have. Is it gonna be perfect? Who knows? Might be great. Might not be, I don't know, but I need to make it and this is the data I have. And sometimes rather than wasting time trying to tell ourselves it'll be okay when we don't know. It's kind of going, I don't know if it'll be okay, but I still need to make it. So let's have a go. How good can we make it?  </div> <div> Zareen: I think it's because I also want it to be perfect.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm.  </div> <div> Zareen: I want it to be perfect. Why can't it be perfect? It has to be perfect. Everybody else manages to do it.  </div> <div> Vikki: Everybody else manages to do perfect presentations.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Have you been to a conference? I feel like you've seen non-perfect presentations, but seriously, you've heard boring presentations.  </div> <div> Zareen: I have.  </div> <div> Vikki: You've heard presentations with weak data. You've heard presentations where they jammed far too much in and it made no sense. Yes. You've heard presentations where you couldn't hear what they were saying. </div> <div> Zareen: Yes, I have.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. It's, we've gotta spot some of these stories as they go through our heads. </div> <div> Vikki: Everybody else does perfect presentations. It's like anyone who's ever been taught at a university knows that's definitely not true.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah, that's true.  </div> <div> Vikki: In fact, if people are resonating with this part, and for you specifically, if you haven't heard it already, there's a podcast episode that's called something like the Paradox of Imposter Syndrome. Yes. It's a really fun one around this kind of tendency that we have to tell. I'm useless, I'm terrible, I'm really bad. I'm behind everybody. I'm definitely not good enough to get a PhD. Yeah. But I should also be able to do a perfect PhD that gets no changes and changes the world.  </div> <div> Zareen: I think that's exactly what I, I say to myself that, that represents it. Vikki, I think what you just said there,  </div> <div> Vikki: and when you see it, it's suddenly this. How can I simultaneously tell myself that I have to create something groundbreaking and perfect? 'cause otherwise I'm not living up to my potential, but that also, I'm a useless pile of rubbish that doesn't deserve to be here. </div> <div> Vikki: Like,  </div> <div> Zareen: yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: When you see those things, then suddenly you can't take your thoughts quite so seriously anymore. 'cause it's like, well, they can't both be true. How about, I'm a reasonably competent PhD student who's doing a presentation, that will be all right. I think a lot of people would do really well to be aiming for. I'm gonna do an all right thesis and an alright presentation.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And you know what? It'll be all right.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yeah. Yeah. I think so.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So I think in that moment, I think you've gone a really long way in noticing why you are putting up too much. Okay. So when you are in boss mode, when you are planning your weeks. And you are kind of going, Ooh, think there's too many things. This looks like a bit of a squish. I want you to ask yourself, what am I avoiding? Which is the task that I'm telling myself I'm not ready to do yet?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Zareen: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And what do I need to say to myself to have a go at it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'cause even if it's true that there are additional things that you could do, they're almost always better off being done afterwards. They're almost always better off being done afterwards. So when you've had a go at pulling the presentation together, when you've got your broad narrative, when you can see how much there is that fills what time you have already, do you then need more data? In which case, great, let's go back, get more data. But we've got the first part of it.  </div> <div> Zareen: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: And the same for reading as well. For those of you who are having to write at the moment that if you are writing you'll go, I just need to read more. I just need to read more. If you write some first, you'll have a much better idea as to what you need to read. </div> <div> Vikki: Whereas when it's this need to just read more, whatever that means, that's when we ended up going down rabbit holes, which is a perfect switch. 'cause that's what we're gonna be talking with Suzy about in a second. So how was that Zareen?  </div> <div> Zareen: That was really good because I started off all a little bit confused, but I dunno. I think I just, yeah, I feel I can really try and experiment with this and, try and sort of approach it this way a different way next time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the gorgeous thing, obviously because you're a member, this isn't the sort of thing where you have one-off coaching and then you go away and go, oh, fixed Vic, thanks. Amazing. Yeah, I know longer plan too much and procrastinate. But you get to experiment with this experiment with asking, what am I avoiding here? How could I do a bit of that? See how it goes. And then like I say, you can put a question into questions for Vicki and I'll record you an answer or come back to another live session and we can kind of delve into what comes up when you've tried these things. </div> <div> Zareen: Yes, absolutely. I think I will need to do that because it can't just be fixed in one go.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. This is a, this is an ongoing thing that is the sort of benefit of having access to it in that sort of ongoing way.  </div> <div> Zareen: Perfect. Thank you.  </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So, Susie, do you want to come back on? There we go. Amazing. How did you find that?  </div> <div> Susie: Wow, that was so interesting. Oh my gosh. I, I did make a lot of notes because, the same time as recognizing so many traits that Zareen referred to it really stood out how high her expectations are of herself, and so that completely resonates with me. </div> <div> Susie: And targets, oh my gosh. When she was talking about unachievable targets and timelines, I did recognize that because I feel that the only thing, it sounds so stereotype, but I feel like the only thing that forces me to focus is a deadline and then it's last minute. So when she was talking about presentations. Yeah, that's it. It's so interesting. Yes. That when we have some kind of deadline or we're going to suddenly be visible, we can't hide, you know, behind our screens at home. And I'm not saying she does this, but get away with, you know, being distracted by other tasks or by being a mother or trying to fit in, like she said, a million things. </div> <div> Susie: And for me, that brought up the word scattered because that's how I feel. So things she was saying, I was able to listen to Zareen and take on board. I was also able to observe aspects of myself, um, but see like many solutions through what you were saying and through what she was saying. But again, like she said, unable to actually apply that when it's just yourself in your space. </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And this is what I mean, you have just encapsulated everything I love about group coaching because I think coaching is brilliant. Getting one-to-one coaching. Love it. It's one of my favorite things to do. Yeah. But seeing somebody else say it just gives you that tiny bit of distance that mean you, I think you said the word, observe it. You get to observe it in a way that's really hard to do. On yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susie: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: You see it not, oh, I say that, I do that. Oh. But that tiny bit of distance enables you to sort of come up with solutions that are much harder to see when you're thinking about your own life. It's much, oh, I could do this. It suddenly becomes easier somehow in that space. </div> <div> Susie: Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking, as I was listening constantly, I was just thinking, oh my gosh. But what you are doing is so kind of highbrow and how amazing. What an extraordinary contribution and look at what you're achieving, even if you don't think it's very much. So I wanted to kind of celebrate her achievements and get her to as well. </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> Susie: And yet when it comes to me, and people might say that I don't believe it.  </div> <div> Vikki: But you believe it about Zareen.  </div> <div> Susie: Oh, I do.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And you've only, I mean you guys don't know each other particularly I don't think from the membership, do you? No. So, that's what the other thing that's fascinating when, you know, Reen was saying that she could encourage other people but struggle to do it for herself. </div> <div> Susie: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's then also remembering that you would find it easy to encourage Zareen and to talk about all the things that she's doing brilliantly. And I'm sure she's watching now. I'm sure that she will feel the same way as we coach you. And that's the other thing I think is that sometimes you see other people that are doing the exact things that you are doing, but that when you do them, you are telling yourself that you don't deserve to be here and you should probably give up, but you would never in a million years, I assume, say, to Zareen. Oh yeah, I think you should, you know, if you're not finishing your task lists every Friday, you should probably quit.  </div> <div> Susie: No way. No, not in a million years. I'd do the absolute opposite. </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. I'm just gonna add in one further tip, 'cause I don't think it's connected with what you are talking about, and I think it is to what we were talking about with Zareen, which is if you find it really, really hard to plan realistically, and you still have too much on your plate at the beginning of the week, the other alternative is not beating yourself up for not finishing everything on your list. </div> <div> Vikki: I can't remember the last time I finished everything on my list. I am still working very much on facing the things that make me feel uncomfortable, making the decisions at the beginning of the week so that I'm not making them late. All of the things that I talk with you guys about is very much a work in progress in my life. </div> <div> Vikki: But the bit that I am now, I'm gonna say brilliant at is on a Friday. If I haven't finished them. Okay. I haven't finished them. The things that were urgent got done and the rest of it didn't. And that's okay. And that is always there is the problem is when we've got both, that we are refusing to give realistic plans and we are refusing to give ourselves slack. </div> <div> Vikki: If we don't meet our unrealistic plans, we can't have both. We can either make realistic plans or we can give ourselves a bit more like, okay, well it was an unrealistic plan. I got quite a lot that on though, didn't I? Kind of vibes at the end of the week. And that can sometimes be a starting point to then going back and being more realistic in your planning. </div> <div> Susie: That's interesting because the word that came to me as you were saying all that I know that was for Zareen and what she was talking about as well, was prioritizing. And sometimes I don't actually know how to prioritize.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, yeah. And it is, that's a whole thing. And we are gonna be doing some stuff about prioritizing. We did some in the membership this quarter, as you might remember. We are gonna be doing some more in next quarter as well. 'cause Yes, absolutely. And that is, I think the thing that has made it easier for me to accept I don't get everything done, is I do now know what my priorities are and I do get those done. And if everything else was somewhat unrealistic, then so be it. That's life.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Anyway, let's switch on to your situation. 'cause I know you empathize a lot with what Zareen was saying, but there was also some other things that you were specifically experiencing at the moment.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah. I get very, uh, drawn in and distracted by shiny things, and I use that term, because whatever that shiny thing is that relates to maybe something else within my research, it's gonna be far more interesting than the survey I'm constructing or the forms that I have to build for my interviews or, you know, consent, all that kind of thing. And it might be that something comes into my head and so I think, oh my God, I have to look that up. Or it might be, honestly, it might be triggered by a word on a page. And I, I will, it's like a compulsion to look that up.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susie: And so I will get drawn in that I will enter a whole other world of very fascinating things. </div> <div> Vikki: And when do you, so one other thing, I dunno whether you were at the session where we talked about this, but I'm really interested in the timeline of losing focus. In fact, I think it's next quarter we talk about it. So I don't think you will have been at the workshop. It's coming up. I'm really fascinated by the timeline of getting distracted. So if we think about this as like a, a timeline, and at the beginning you are doing the task that you intended to do, okay? And you see your word, whatever it is, your shiny thing and your incredible creative brain has a ping about it, because that's the problem here, right? This is the problem is that you've got a creative brain that thinks of things when it sees something, okay? So you notice something, you immediately go and look it up, is that if it goes ping, that's exciting.  </div> <div> Susie: I do.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Okay. So we've got a very short, those of you watching on YouTube will see me doing like a timeline across the screen. If you haven't watched on YouTube yet, go find it. So we've got a very short amount of time between having the distracting inciting incident as it were, and you reacting to it so you then go off. Okay. How quickly are you aware that you are doing something that not what you originally intended? </div> <div> Susie: Um, not sure how quickly, to say I'm not aware would be a lie because I am aware. Okay. I'm, I'm drawing myself away from, like you said about. Procrastination being emotion avoidance. I'm avoiding something that's boring. I don't wanna feel boring.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> Susie: Or do something that's boring. I find that tedious and difficult. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Susie: And it, again, it goes back to what you said about discomfort. Uh, it makes me feel, uh, because I want to escape. That's how I feel.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susie: I don't like being, it's very, I can't believe I've chosen to do a PhD because I feel slightly imprisoned. And I'm not good at that feeling. And so it makes me feel frustrated, fidgety. And again, I use that word scattered.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Susie: So this shiny thing, I am aware I'm doing it. But it's more interesting and I don't really think all this through, but it may, um. What do you call it? Just take away. It may be rebalance me. I don't know. It may take me to a different emotion, which is more positive than where I'm at. Or maybe I'm a standpoint with whatever I'm doing, and I just need to get out of it into something else.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay?  </div> <div> Susie: So I kind of create this, this escape route.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. Again, I think that shows real insight into what you're doing here. We sometimes talk about the push and pull of procrastination, that there's usually something pushing you away from the task that you're intending to do, and then there's usually something that pulls you towards the task that you are doing when you're procrastinating. </div> <div> Vikki: So when Zareen was talking, it sounded like there was a lot of push away, that there were tasks that she just didn't want to do, and so she was doing other things to avoid those with you. It sounds a little bit of both that you wanna be, you wanna avoid the boring tasks, but there's also these shiny creative ideas that feel way more fun over here. </div> <div> Vikki: So we jump almost immediately. We're almost immediately aware that we are procrastinating, we are doing something other than we intended. How long then before you decide? No, no, I've got to go back to what I said I was doing.  </div> <div> Susie: I will probably get up and go and make a cup of tea or something.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so that's how you like break it almost? </div> <div> Susie: It is. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how long is that you typically?  </div> <div> Susie: Mm gosh. Oh, it could be half an hour. An hour.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Susie: Because I might even go out for a walk because that restores me as well.  </div> <div> Vikki: But in terms of the what I'm interested in is the time between you starting to engage with the shiny thing and you going, no, no, I need to break this. So whatever you then go and do.  </div> <div> Susie: Could  </div> <div> Vikki: be  </div> <div> Susie: an hour.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So you could be in your shiny thing for about an hour and then you go, no, no, this is, this is not what I'm meant to be doing. And you've got, it sounds like you've got a couple of tactics that help you, going for a coffee, going for a walk. And then you have that, that's then however long a coffee or a walk take.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: How do you then find, getting back to the original task?  </div> <div> Susie: I kind of talk to myself and say, right, you've got to do this because, you said you were going to send it to your supervisor. So, you need to fulfill that. So you've gotta get on with it. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So you have, we'll have a think about what tone you're using when you talk to yourself and things, whether that's an encouraging Yes. Let, we could get this done, let's go kind of vibe, or you've got to, but you've got some self-talk that enables you to then get back on it again. And then how long would you typically be able to stay back in the boring in inverted commas task before a different shiny distracts you? </div> <div> Susie: Well, interestingly, that can vary because I can go back to a really tedious, a repetitive task, like a survey or like a Excel spreadsheet putting in loads, just loads of authors and things like that.  </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm.  </div> <div> Susie: If I get really into it, I suddenly have some kind of mini breakthrough. I will stick at it. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Susie: And I will think, right, okay. I've just got 10 more lines to get in there and going and do it. If I reach some point where I have to go and look something up around that, and it's more complicated and I can't find it. Depending how I feel, I might give up and I think, oh my God. I might give up or I might keep going.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Perfect. </div> <div> Susie: It does vary.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And that's completely normal, right? The reason I'm asking you about this timeline is because most people think that I need to stay focused is kind of a single task, stay focused, just keep doing what you're doing.  </div> <div> Susie: Yes. </div> <div> Vikki: And in reality is that, have you ever heard me talk about the type group analogy in any of the sessions I'm gonna explain, so don't worry. If I'm repeating myself, then it's for the benefit of the listeners.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I use tightrope walking as an analogy quite a lot because people think that good tightrope walkers don't wobble. </div> <div> Vikki: But good tightrope walkers do wobble. They just wobble a little bit less. They recognize they're wobbling more quickly. They correct more accurately, and then they keep going for longer. Whereas beginner tightrope walkers do big wobbles, don't notice they're wobbling until they're really wobbled, panic and either don't correct or overcorrect and then do the same again. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay? And they think they need to learn not to wobble, and it's not true. They need to learn to notice what makes them wobble, do that less, notice that they're wobbling, correct, more calmly without judgment. And it is that sort of notice and correct, notice and correct that enables tight row walkers or any of these like balance performers to do what they do. </div> <div> Vikki: And the same is true with So that timeline that we went through are all points of intervention. We've got the point of intervention of how can I make this boring task feel a bit less boring or make myself more willing to do something that's boring? So we kinda got that bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How can I notice more readily that the task I'm now doing is not what I intended? Because sometimes people are like, oh, no, no, this counts. I'm looking something up. It's definitely writing.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: How can I notice this is procrastination. How can I stop doing that task more quickly? How can I return to the other task more quickly? And doing all of it with less judgment? Because when we then make a massive drama about it. That's like when you, you know, you fall off the tight rope, oh, I'm such a rubbish, tight rope walker. I can never get back up there again. Doesn't Make you better at tight road walking. Yeah. Whereas if it's, oh, okay, I wobbled, but I can jump back. No worries. Happy days. Off we go again.  </div> <div> Vikki: Much different. </div> <div> Susie: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: How does that sort of analogy sit with you? Does that sort of enlighten anything?  </div> <div> Susie: It does, it does. Um, I wrote a few notes about what you were saying earlier and about the self-talk and taking smaller steps as well, actually and breaking things down into, you know, going from one massive chunk into little bits. Almost staying in the present a little bit more. And just feeling, okay, I'm just going to do this. I have to think about the entire PhD. I have to think about, oh my God, all those years ahead and you know, I've gone part-time and, no, no, that is absolutely disastrous.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susie: I mean, that is almost food. It's a feast for procrastination.  </div> <div> Vikki: A hundred percent. 'cause you can't, you can't do all that. When you look at it all at once, it's like, I've never met anybody who's walked into a supermarket and said, oh no, I'm going to have to eat all this food. No, you're not. You're gonna get the bits you need now. You're gonna eat those and it's gonna be great. We'll be fine. We'll come back and get some more later. And the same is true. If you look at the entirety of what you need to do over the next three years, then it's a huge amount of work. But we've got three years. </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that comes into the helping with when we are planning the tasks. Like, okay, I know me, I know I don't like boring tasks, so I'm gonna be doing a boring thing. How can I make it feel a little bit more interesting? You know, give myself little goals to get to and whatever. But then there's also, and I dunno whether you picked it up when I first said it, the notion of being willing to do something bored.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: What does that mean for you?  </div> <div> Susie: Well, actually being willing to aligns with the whole, the entire purpose of the PhD so I can easily become more willing and less procrastination when I just remember, well, why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, I know. </div> <div> Susie: And that commitment, it helps me recommit and remember my original intention actually. And yes, that really does kind of realign me in a way. And it makes me focus. The other thing, I have a difficulty with related to the procrastination and writing, is that when I'm writing, like Zareen said, I don't think it's good enough, but also because I'm in social sciences, I don't feel like a natural social scientist. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susie: I feel sometimes, oh my gosh, I should be in humanities. I'm writing and they say, oh, can you simplify this? It's not clear enough or simple enough. It needs to be less, like a lived experience essay, I sometimes think this is almost an excuse to, to stop, I have those arguments with myself, which, which is a procrastination thing really, I think. I think I'm in the wrong faculty. Oh, shouldn't be doing it. I'll never be able to write properly. And then that is like, well, the day's over, really. </div> <div> Vikki: Why is the day over? What do you say to yourself when those thoughts come up? 'cause that's totally understandable, right? Especially if you are in a discipline that's different to what you're used to. What do you then say to yourself?  </div> <div> Susie: I say, well, they've now said, even though my research is qualitative, but there's aspects of it where I will have to do some stats. Well, did they know that I can't do that? They actually know? Which part of my supervisors believe that I will actually be able to do that? Or I arrive at supervision, as if I am at a job interview and they are going to say, well, Susie, it's been great. You've done some good work here, but yeah, not really, not worth continuing.  </div> <div> Vikki: So when those thoughts come up, we very much accept them, feed them, sort of extrapolate from them, and then that makes it hard for you to carry on working.  </div> <div> Susie: Which is, it's, that's terrible because then I say to myself, oh, why are you being so negative? Because I'm, because I strongly believe in visualization. I think we're well done. You've just projected an entire visual of you failing this whole thing. So that's ridiculous. So then I have to get my invisible like, broom to which I literally do to sweep away that thought. </div> <div> Susie: And create, and I do hackle myself to say, right? Just sit a moment, see yourself, and I've looked up my particular university's graduation gown and cap. Put a picture on the wall so that I can go. No, no. That's what you're gonna be wearing. Dunno when, but that's what you're gonna be wearing. So I have to do that. </div> <div> Vikki: You have techniques that you use?  </div> <div> Susie: I do, I do. But it seems a mountain that I have to climb every day. And quite, I mean, it's when my, one of my supervisors said at the beginning, this is a journey of endurance, nothing else. And the endurance bit is getting yourself back on your feet, out of your tent and climbing the thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think it's so interesting that you've got this invisible broom you talk about, which I love as a technique. I think that's fabulous. But the amount of time and the amount of kind of self-judgment that happens before you start using it sounds like quite a lot. That you go through a bit of self-criticism about your actual writing, let's say then you criticize yourself about having generated something negative and then the invisible broom comes out. I'm just wondering, are there ways that we could shorten that time lag? So like that when your brain goes, oh, you'll never be able to write like a social scientist. We go, oh no with the invisible brain, that's not helpful and we replace it with not, I can definitely do this, but with, okay, what do I need to learn then? What bit do I need to do? Because I'll do it. Let's figure it out. I'm just wondering how you could get that broom memo quickly. </div> <div> Susie: Yeah. I think as you said, part of it is awareness and action. You know, there seems to be a delay, as you say, with my awareness of it since the time I was judging it. And to close that gap. So maybe now you've highlighted that there seems to be an unnecessarily long gap perhaps. I could write that down. I can put that on the wall 'cause I'm so visual and I can put that on the wall.  </div> <div> Vikki: Picture of your, I was about to say a picture of your invisible broom. I'm not sure how you show an invisible broom, but we may have to have a picture of a visible broom. So that you are kind of reminding yourself No, no, I can swish these thoughts away. </div> <div> Vikki: And we are not people always. People who don't know much about sort of coaching and the things that we do here, they often, oh, is it just toxic positivity? Just telling yourself that everything's fine and I can do anything and da da, and it's like, it's not, I don't want you to replace the thought of I can never be a social scientist with, I'm already a brilliant social scientist. </div> <div> Vikki: You are. Probably not, you are probably still writing like a humanities person. That's okay though, because these are things we can learn. And so what we're looking for is not, oh, I'm really good at this. We are looking for, okay, well let's get specific what's so different about how a social scientist writes than a humanities? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How can I understand the difference more clearly? How can I adapt what I'm doing to be a bit more like this a bit more of the time and see it as a kind of a training need essentially, rather than a sort of inherent trait that you can't change.  </div> <div> Susie: Totally, totally. And whilst you are talking, it's made me realize how uplifting I find this whole process. And actually by joining a little group, it really does dissolve some of those intense challenges that we endlessly analyze on our own. Well on my own. And Zareen seems to do the same, in these spaces where, you know, you haven't got another buddy to resolve it. And it is like getting in my invisible broom out here. It's very uplifting. And when you find that right energy in, in the group, I think it's, I mean, it's just so positive.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely, definitely. Well, again, I think that's the perfect moment to bring Zareen back on. Then we'll bring the group back together.  </div> <div> Vikki: Here she comes.  </div> <div> Zareen: Hi.  </div> <div> Vikki: How is that Zareen? </div> <div> Zareen: Hi. That was great. That was so interesting seeing someone else being coached and also on, I found so, so many similarities to what we were just talking about in my session. And I think what struck me about the whole session is the importance of emotion and awareness and being okay with doing these boring task and being aware of how we feel and how to fix it. </div> <div> Zareen: Because I think that's what I've been avoiding thinking about it, um, how I feel. What I need to say to myself, I've just been ignoring all of that because I want to continue, but, I found so much similarities from what Susie was saying about losing focus, to try the big shiny thing. So it's to avoid the thing that is boring and is gonna make you feel uncomfortable. So yeah, I definitely related to it. And also when she said about endurance, I had started thinking that the PhD is a marathon. And that you have to take it bit by bit and it's, you can't just do it all in one go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Talking of endurance, do either of you do endurance races or anything Susie does. Okay. So, Susie, when you are, what's the longest race you do? Marathon. You do marathon. Okay, perfect. Now this is relying on whether you're a healthy marathon runner or not. We shall see in a second, but what sorts of things do you think psychologically healthy marathon runners say to themselves during the race ice? </div> <div> Susie: They break it down. So 42.2 kilometers, 26.2 miles, they break it down and that's what they tell you to do. They break it down into, you know, little five Ks. So I'll just do this next 5K. And someone told me to wear your number on the front with your name in really big letters and like this little group. But on a larger scale, being part of something bigger. It is absolutely. I mean, it's beyond encouraging, so when people shout out your name, it keeps you going. Yeah. And breaking it down and not looking at the entire block of miles that you've got to complete. And not worrying about the time. You know, there's, well, certainly not for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And for some people they are, but it's the difference between going Right. I think I'm on pace at the moment. I'm gonna do, yeah. I'm gonna focus on lifting my knees up or whatever is the technique you are kind of focusing on. Reminding you, this is what I trained for, i'm doing it the way we always do. The ones that are doing well, physically and psychologically are not gonna be going. Who are you to think you can do a marathon? Why on Earth? did you sign up for this? Now, some people are, I've done half marathons and I've definitely thought that some of the time, but I wouldn't recommend it. But the ones who are thinking in ways that are helping them are reminding themselves. That they can tolerate feeling uncomfortable. You know, that's one of the biggest things we are learning to run, is being able to realize that you can be outta breath and still run. </div> <div> Vikki: It doesn't mean you have to stop and relieve that heavy breathing. You know, the people that have not exercised at all, if you get out of breath, you have to stop. No, you get outta breath, but you reach a baseline. It's the same with PhD work, right? And this is not about just pushing through and destroying yourself, but saying, you know what? I am kind of bored, but I can do it for another half an hour. I can tolerate this level of boredom for another half an hour, and then maybe we'll take it a little bit easier or whatever. So I think when we're telling ourselves that something's endurance, it sort of reinforces this sense that it's a slog. </div> <div> Vikki: But I mean, Susie, if you do marathons, you must love some elements of it to some extent. And finding joy in doing, you know, seeing the views, seeing the people, being part of all of these sorts of things, recognizing the bits you love about it as well. You know, endurance sports shouldn't just be a painful slog and PhDs shouldn't just be a painful slog. We can look for the glimmers of the fun bits, the bits that, the reasons why we chose it, Susie, the reasons why it's important, Zareen, you know, and just the bits that are fun, the bits we get to do. We get to recognize all those bits and remind ourselves of all those bits. And I think the more we do that, the less, there's this kind of, oh, I gotta slog through this massive thing, sensation. </div> <div> Susie: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've got two final tips before we finish up. First is I think having that long-term big picture thing to focus on. Brilliant. But I want you to also have in mind what you are gonna feel like at the end of this session or the end of this day when you've got done the things you said you'd get done. 'cause it's a little bit like I'm at that age where I'm starting to think about healthy aging and all that fun stuff. And I'm doing this so that when I'm 80 I can still do fun things. It's kind of motivating. But if we can bring it, there's a lot of evidence in the sports science literature that if you bring in that kind of the distance you're looking at and you say, if I do this one exercise session, I'm gonna feel satisfied. I'm gonna feel more energized, I'm gonna get immediate benefits. And I think remembering that. So having your graduation pictures definitely, but also being able to visualize yourself at the end of today, having done the things you said you'd do, having that can really, really help. So that's tip one. </div> <div> Vikki: Tip two, just for the shiny object syndrome. I'm gonna give you a completely unrelated analogy here, but it, I think it works. So I had a bit of a problem with buying things on Amazon. Not really expensive things, but like usually craft tools of some description or books or various hobbies that I decided I definitely have time for alongside my 400 other hobbies. </div> <div> Vikki: And they'd be like, 20 pounds here, 20 pounds there, but it adds up, right? Anyway, January I started and this is a hundred percent true, I promise. I started a note on my phone that's called Wishlist, Christmas 2026, and when I think, Ooh, I should get that, I dump it on my Christmas list for next year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now I will edit that by the time I get there and I won't ask for all of it but it is working so well. </div> <div> Vikki: One of the things that I talk about, there's a workshop that you guys have access to called, how to Write When You're Struggling to Write, and it goes through seven different roles of writing. We haven't got time to go into them here, but you guys will be able to look it up. But one of them is personal assistant and what I would highly recommend you do is that if so Zareen for example, if you are telling yourself. Oh, I really need to check so and so because I can't do this until I know that. Write it in your personal assistance notebook. And Susie, if you are finding super shiny, interesting things, you write it in your personal assistance notebook as something they can read for you later. Okay, so we're going, oh yeah, we are not going. No, no. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. </div> <div> Vikki: We're going, oh yes, that does sound useful or that does sound interesting. I'm just gonna pop it over here now. And then we can actually schedule time for you to be in personal assistant mode or rabbit hole mode, if you want to call it. Where it's like, you know what? I'm allowed to go down rabbit holes. It's a Tuesday night, I'm going down a rabbit hole. Happy days. It's in the diary look, it says rabbit hole. And then you go and look at, okay, well what of the things that I've jotted down that might be interesting rabbit holes? Do I wanna go down? I wanna do that one. Happy days, let's go. So how, rather than fighting your brain and telling you to forget it, saying, I'm putting over here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We're gonna look at it when the time is right, but the time right now is for making my presentation or sorting out my survey or whatever it is. Okay, we will do it. It's over there. It's on a list. Come back to it another time. But right now I'm doing the important task. That can be a really useful sort of tool to manage those thoughts. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Susie: Yeah. Really good idea. Yeah. I love your wishlist. Christmas 26.  </div> <div> Vikki: You've gotta save much on it. I seriously saved myself so much money. There's probably 40 books on there at the moment, plus random other things.  </div> <div> Susie: So, so good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I've already deleted some things off it. That's the other thing that's interesting, right? Is this isn't then a completely, in fact we're gonna talk about this, the workshop we've got on Wednesday. So by the time this goes out, we'll have done it is about capturing and organizing tasks. And we also have to remember that everything we put on a list we don't have to do. 'cause the other thing I've realized with my Christmas list is having looked at it already, there's some things that I've deleted off going, yeah, I'm actually never gonna do that, am I? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you know, that moment has gone and I've deleted it. And if we don't have a system for that, then we end up with each huge lists that we are never, ever gonna get through. That is this sort of developing both the mindset and the systems at the same time so that we can learn to manage ourselves and do the things that we actually want to do. </div> <div> Susie: Yeah. So good.  </div> <div> Zareen: Sounds  </div> <div> Susie: great.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Well, thank you both so much for coming on. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening. I'm sure you have resonated with lots of what has been said today. If you did, do make sure that you check out the membership. We open next week. You could come and check out the Capturing and Organizing Your Tasks webinar, the how to Write, when you're Struggling to Write Webinar or any of the rest of the stuff. Come to a coaching session with these guys with me, and join our amazing community. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.  </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-34-how-to-understand-your-own-procrastination-a-special-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-33-how-to-cope-in-academia-with-menstrual-dysfunction-a-double-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the second of my April coaching series, we hear from Til and Alex who both experience pre-menstrual dysfunction that impacts their ability to work on their PhDs. We discuss how they’re affected (including how it exacerbates their ADHD) and coach around the tricky balance between achieving their goals and looking after their health. This is a must-listen for everyone, whether you have these symptoms yourself or you care about and/or work with someone who does.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16857497-3-30-doing-a-phd-with-a-chronic-illness-with-special-guest-krystina-francois" target="_blank"> doing a PhD with chronic illness.  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And this is another in my little mini series of coaching sessions with current members of the PhD life coach membership. And this week we are talking about something that we've never taalked about on the podcast before, but which affects a good portion of the audience, and that is the range of premenstrual experiences that people can have and how it impacts their PhD lives and their productivity and motivation and emotions and all of those things. And we have just happened by chance also to have ended up with a couple of people coming on who have these challenges, but who also have A DHD so we will be thinking a bit about how those things interact with each other now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: As usual, you know that coaching is not about me giving advice about things, and this is one where I'm gonna put a big fact disclaimer out there that I am in no way an expert in this topic. I do experience premenstrual symptoms myself, although not to the same level that we're gonna be talking about today. So I have some lived experience. I'm not gonna be sitting here saying, oh, the best advice, the evidence-based whatever, is to do this. What we're gonna be doing instead is talking through how it affects these members and how they can make decisions based on their own lived experience as to how they want to manage these difficulties. </div> <div> Vikki: It's gonna give you a really good insight as usual into what it's like being in a coaching session in the membership. So we are going to talk with one, I'm gonna give them a second to introduce themselves in a second. We will talk with Alexandra first and then we will talk with Til afterwards and you'll get to hear how they learn from listening to the other person getting coached too. </div> <div> Vikki: So thank you both so much for coming on. Alexandra, do you wanna just introduce yourself first?  </div> <div> Alex: Yes. Thank you for having me. So, my name is Alex. I am a second year PhD student from the uk. I am looking at the psychological and physiological effects of exercise in general, healthy, elderly and psychiatric elderly populations. </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And what stage of your PhD are you at? Remind me.  </div> <div> Alex: So I am second year now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Second year. So we are right in the midst. Perfect. Okay. And Til,  </div> <div> Til: hi, I'm Til, I'm from Melbourne, Australia. I'm also in my second year, and I look at comedy and mental health. </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Okay. So what we're gonna do til we're gonna ask you to turn your camera off for a moment, and I am gonna speak with Alex first and then we will get you back on in a little while. So Alex, maybe let's start telling us just a little bit more about how this condition affects you and particularly in relation to your PhD work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yes. So I have PMDD, so premenstrual dysphoric disorder and ADHD. And um, so I guess with the symptoms of PMDD, it's a severe response to normal hormonal fluctuation. So in the luteal phase of my cycle, so just after ovulation, so the late phase of my cycle, I experience extreme mood swings, low mood anxiety, panic attacks, extremely low motivation, insomnia, trouble concentrating, and severe ADHD symptoms and I guess sometimes it gets to the point where I really struggle to get out of bed. So that then kind of impacts my PhD because obviously, you know, when you had missed data collection and having to do like general PhD admin work. And also I'm a research assistant on another project. I still have to show up and turn up for those responsibilities. But it's really hard to do that when you can't even do normal daily tasks such as getting outta bed or even brushing your teeth. So it is a struggle for at least two weeks of the month, maybe sometimes more.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And for anybody listening who's concerned, obviously Alex is well aware that today doesn't replace other psychiatric care and medical care and all of those things and everything who are dealing with the sort of the severity of some of these symptoms, we are gonna be focused really on what does this mean for you attempting to do your PhD and your work while experiencing these symptoms? So how do you do it at the moment?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: Um, I honestly don't know. So I cannot attain treatment for PMDD due to other health issues. So that in itself is an issue. I've recently started titration on ADHD medication so I think I'm eight weeks in now, so that has slightly helped, although it doesn't help as much in the luteal phase. I guess at the minute I have a really supportive supervisor and she has told me to kind of take time off when I'm really struggling and to make the hours up, but that's been really hard to do at the minute due to, like, my cycle is really irregular at the minute for some unknown reason. </div> <div> Til: I dunno if I'm going into perimenopause. So it is a real struggle and I think at the detriment to my own kind of self-care, because sometimes it can be one extreme. Like I'll be trying to make up for the lack of work when I'm really struggling by working 15 hour days. And that in itself takes a toll on my mental health in other ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: At the minute, I guess, i've just been setting checklists of like order of priority of the work that I need to do and just trying the best that I can. But it's a lot harder now in second year now that I'm trying to run two simultaneous data collections and a data analysis and my other part-time roles as well. So I'm kind of a bit clueless on how to make things better for myself to help like improve my overall wellbeing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And you mentioned making up time a bit there. Tell me a bit more what you mean by making up for it.  </div> <div> Alex: So my supervisor suggested that instead of trying to push through when I'm struggling and my output not being as high and it being more detrimental to me, she suggested to take, you know, a few days off and then to work longer hours and we only had that discussion maybe a couple of months ago, so that's like two cycles ago. So I did try and implement that and I think the problem with ADHD is when you are very passionate about your subject, you are all or nothing. So I've had a few days off, felt very guilty about doing that even though my supervisor said it was fine. So then I've tried to compensate by working 15 hours a day, which then, you know, affects my sleep and I don't feel like I'm managing that very well 'cause it's one extreme to the other. And also the guilt surrounding that as well. Taking time off.  </div> <div> Vikki: Tell me about that guilt. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: I think a lot of guilt for me is from feeling like I am not living up to what a standard PhD student would look like. So, typically what I would perceive a PhD student would be someone you know who works consistently. Like these are my old kind of like ideologies around what a PhD student should look like. And obviously I know that that is kind of rigid and wrong thinking. So then I start to feel guilty about, you know, I'm not living up to this expectation of what a PhD student should be. And then I think because I'm quite a high achiever in the sense of I like to push myself, I see having a day off as like detrimental to my PhD. And I feel like I'll be behind on my PhD work when in fact, no, it would actually benefit me in the long run. But it's really hard to escape that feeling of guilt.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. And do you feel that guilt sort of all through your cycle as it, I know you're not having the time off in the other bits, but as in when you are in a phase of your cycle where you are not experiencing extreme symptoms, do you still feel like you shouldn't be having time off that it would make you feel guilty to have time off during your difficult times? Or is it when you're in the midst of that dysphoria that you feel guilty?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Um, no. So I, I still feel guilty even in like my good phase, so to say. And I think that is just because of my own expectations of myself and my ideology of how I feel like I should be working. So it's, it's constant. It's just worse during that worse phase. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And you mentioned, or you called it wrong thinking. I'm not sure we're gonna label any thinking as wrong, but what did you mean by that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: To me, if another student had to take time off due to a certain health condition, I would not look at it like that. I would be really supportive of that, so I think it's more so the thinking around myself, and I know it's wrong because if another student was to do that, you know, I would think that that was a very good idea. But when it comes to myself, you know, there's that perception of I'm not doing good enough because I'm having time off. So I know it's wrong thinking as in the sense of well, if I feel like that's okay for other students and would actually be a good idea because it would benefit them mentally and physically, well then why not myself. But it's really hard to see it like as a good thing for myself.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. Why do you think it feels different for you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Um, because I know that I place really unrealistic expectations on myself. And I feel like if I'm not working at a hundred miles per hour, then I am really hard on myself. 'cause I think the problem with having ADHD and you know, PMDD or other health conditions in general, I feel like you have to work a little bit harder, you know, due to the symptoms that we have. And yeah, I just, I feel like if I'm not working at a hundred miles per hour when I am feeling okay, then I'll get behind. So I do place like really unrealistic expectations on myself, and I know, I know that I do. It's just how do you change that mindset?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that is the a hundred million dollar question, isn't it? Right. How you, how you change mindset. And one of the things I think is really useful to start with is deciding what you want to feed your brain with. So we have these thoughts that pop up, right? I should be working harder, I shouldn't have to have this time off and all those things. And I believe it is actually pretty hard to stop those thoughts popping up. They come from a lot of places. They're reinforced by our histories, they're reinforced by our social conditions, the hierarchical institutions we work in and all these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's really hard to stop those thoughts bubbling up. But I do believe we have a choice about which thoughts we continue to feed ourselves. So do you have other thoughts that you also believe that sometimes feel plausible, they might not be the first thought you go to or whatever, but that when you consciously choose them, they feel true to you? </div> <div> Alex: Oh, yes. Massively. So in PMDD, I can't explain it, but I have this way of thinking where I feel like, it doesn't matter what anyone else says, like if I'm stuck in my mindset, that's just how I feel. So during PMDD, I'm actually really quite horrible to myself with self-talk. So. It can be so many different things, but it can be such as like if I'm having a really bad day and I'm struggling, you know, I'll be quite horrible to myself in my thought process. Like, oh, you're just lazy. Why can't you just do this? Well, the main thing, the, the biggest thing for me, and this presents the whole month, but especially in PMDD, is you are not good enough.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: And there's a lot of imposter syndrome there of you are not good enough for this PhD. You're not good enough in general. Like that's probably the biggest one.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. How do you respond to that?  </div> <div> Alex: Um, so.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Not when you're in the midst of, when you're in the midst of dysphoria, I'm sure you respond to it just by believing it and diving straight. Yes. Yeah. And that's fine, that's absolutely understandable. But like when you are at your most kind of regulated, you're at your most thinking about it sort of intellectually almost, what's your response to those thoughts?  </div> <div> Alex: So when I'm regulated, I kind of accept the thought and just kind of let it pass. Like be present with it, but let it pass without kind of influencing any emotion. And then depending on what it is, I'll kind of counteract that with like, what evidence do I have for that fault? And sometimes it'll just pass. And generally it's quite easy to kind of get out of that thought process when I am regulated, because I'll just look at the evidence against it. </div> <div> Vikki: The evidence that you are good enough?  </div> <div> Alex: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And how much of the time does that feel accessible to you?  </div> <div> Alex: Um, it is very much dependent on so many external factors. So generally, like when I'm regulated, things are going quite well, it's very easy, easily to kind of like remove that thought. But if I'm having a bad day, it's really hard to get out of that thought process. Especially when I kind of go on a downward spiral. Say if there's like multiple factors where things are going wrong, like I get very emotive with it and then it just sends me on this very negative thought process and then it just continues and spirals and gets bigger. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I think sometimes one of the things I notice, and I wanna get back to this notion of guilt in a minute, 'cause I think that's really, really crucial here. But one of the things I've noticed a lot when people tell themselves they're not good enough is that the counteracting thought they go to is evidence that I am good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that feels really logical, right? If it feels painful for me to think that I'm not good enough, then I should reassure myself that there's lots of evidence that I am good enough and I just notice sometimes that that is quite a big jump though, from I don't believe I'm good enough to actually, maybe there is evidence that I'm good enough and I just wonder whether there's anything that sort of sits in between that might feel more accessible than actually maybe I am good enough. </div> <div> Alex: Yeah, I mean there must be because the fact that it doesn't particularly work when there's negative external variables going on. There must be what it is though I do not know.  </div> <div> Vikki: So things I've seen is gonna sound strange. Thoughts that I found useful and I've seen people find useful are things around. I don't know if I'm good enough.  </div> <div> Alex: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I'm gonna do this bit next anyway.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because this notion that, I don't know if I'm good enough, derails us from doing things, relies on the fact that we have to believe that we are good enough in order to do those things.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that bit, I'm just not quite sure is true. I don't think it has to be true. And if we believe we can only do things to move our PhDs forward when we think we're good enough, then we have to work on making ourselves feel good enough all the time. And the problem is we're in this weird world where we're working right at the edges of our own knowledge, in the edges of other people's knowledge a lot of the time. Right. And so it's quite a big jump to whatever good enough even means. Because it's also pretty difficult to define in our, in our world.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: I just wonder whether there's a way of almost putting it to one side of, I have no idea. Might not be, who knows? What's the next thing I need to do?  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So I guess kind of, kind of flipping it a little bit and instead of just saying, yeah, that does make sense. So instead of trying to bridge that gap and trying to make myself feel like I am good enough, just saying, well, I dunno if I am, but I'll try and do my best anyway because I know ultimately with the support that I have from my supervisors, you know, I'll get to where I need to be. </div> <div> Alex: So instead of trying to overreach and use that evidence of why I'm good enough, because to be honest, you know, when you are a second year PhD student. You are still very much learning about the whole PhD process itself. So you know, there's gonna be things that you aren't good at anyway. So I do think that is a good way to reframe and approach it.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because I mean, and I think you're totally right. Because what even does good enough mean for a second year PhD student? It definitely doesn't mean knows everything, right? Because you've still got a load of your PhD still to do. You've got your academic career if you're gonna choose one. So it's never gonna be knows everything. And I think it's really hard to define what good enough for a second year is 'cause apart from anything else where you are at in second year varies so much. You know, some, I mean, you talked about you're doing data collection and things like that. Some second years are coming to me saying, I'm not even collecting data yet. I'm still looking at literature. I don't have a clear research question. And they would think you were really ahead. And then other people are like analyzing and feeling like they're, very on top of thing. It varies hugely where you're at. And remember those, we have an international audience, so remember those of you in the US second year is about middle of a UK PhD. I wanna go back to this idea of guilt though. Because you said that that's there, even when you are not feeling the sort of dysphoria symptoms and things like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And I wonder whether there's a similar kind of place. Where on one hand we've got, I should be working more than this. I should be doing what a quote unquote normal PhD student would be doing all the way through to I guess the other extreme of that is I'm doing fine that this is what, you know, this is what it is. I'm just wondering whether there's a sort of middling place with these guilt feelings, these guilt thoughts as well.  </div> <div> Alex: Um, there must be. I've just, I've never thought about it in that context. So I guess, I mean, from my most recent experience, so, my supervisor's very helpful and she's very good, especially when I'm kind of dysregulated. So recently I've just sent my first paper off for publication or to a journal to you know, and as I said, I'm just about to start two data collections and analysis. And I said to her like, I'm really struggling with kind of with all of that feeling like I'm not where I should be and then that's when the guilt comes in. And she just said to me, like, obviously as you said, students are gonna be at different points in their PhDs. It doesn't mean anything. But she said to me like, how can you not objectively see with the amount of work you've done you are kind of on the right path of where you should be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: And even then, like with her words and she's very, very helpful. I still feel this guilt a lot and it's really hard to get out of that mind frame as well. Because I still really struggle with getting out of that. So I think the extreme of, before when we were saying like when I would use evidence against it, I can't even use that because I think guilt is a massive thing for me. </div> <div> Alex: So I guess the middle ground that you suggested would be really helpful because it would probably be more attainable. So I guess with your experience with coaching and working with a lot of people, like how would you address that?  </div> <div> Vikki: Well, let's have a think about what the kind of, so at one end we are saying, I should be doing more than I am. And therefore kind of deserve to feel guilty about this because I should be able to perform the way a quote unquote normal student would.  </div> <div> Alex: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And I guess the other extreme, it's what I'm an excellent PhD student who's doing all the things they should be, I guess is the, maybe the other extreme. So let's think about what might sit along that continuum between, I definitely should be doing more than this.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And, but that comes before we get to, I'm doing a great job.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah. So, I don't know, just saying I'm ticking off the boxes that I need to in survive and count. </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Alex: I guess, I guess that would be like the next one along for me would just be, you know, doing the main important things that I need to be doing and ticking those boxes while also having some semblance of work-life balance would be the next one for me, and I guess further from that, slightly would be being able to increase output whilst maintaining like mental health, self-care, but only when I feel able to. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Like,  </div> <div> Alex: I guess,  </div> <div> Vikki: so we've got a sort of I am prioritizing,  </div> <div> Alex: yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: I'm ticking off the things I need to tick off.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: I'm doing my best to look after my health.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Do those things feel true for you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: They feel what they should be, but they feel what I'm not doing as in like, prioritizing my health. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And it, is it the guilt that makes it hard to do? </div> <div> Alex: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. What thoughts would help you prioritize that health, do you think? What would that look like?  </div> <div> Alex: So being kinder to myself and speaking to myself how I would speak to other people because how I speak to myself, there's no way I would ever speak to someone else like that because I just know that it's not feasible. </div> <div> Alex: So yeah, I guess it's just trying to learn to be kinder to myself and speak to myself how I would speak to other people. Like if someone else come to me for advice and I'd say to them, you know, are you prioritizing your health? Um, and I guess it's like I'm a personal trainer as well, so, you know, it would be how I'd speak to like my PT clients and it's knowing how to apply that to myself without feeling guilty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: So I guess in that respect, speaking to myself, like saying things like, you know, you have a health condition, give yourself some leeway. Your supervisor has told you you are doing fine. And has said to you like, take time off when you need to to make your health better. </div> <div> Alex: And she's also said to me like, explicitly, if you are not like at the most optimal health that you can be, then you're not gonna be able to put out optimally into your PhD. And that's something she keeps trying to reinforce that my health comes first, because then I can't be the best version of me for my PhD, but yet I'm still sacrificing my health thinking that it's going to help my PhD. </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm.  </div> <div> Alex: When actually it probably not because I'm not at my best version because effectively I'm worsening my health.  </div> <div> Vikki: Do you think you've accepted that this affects what you can do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: No. No. And you know, I've never actually thought, you've probably the first person who's ever asked me that. Um, you know, my ADHD diagnosis was only in December. I've had PMDD for quite a while, but I think because of like, you know, my own experiences with like medical misogyny and, you know, just, you know, societal expectations. I've always felt like, yeah, I, I haven't accepted, I definitely have not accepted that, you know, these conditions do impact me and therefore it is okay to make accommodations for myself. I haven't accepted it and I'm still trying to power through as someone who can function typically. So, yeah, that's actually kind of blew my mind. They've said that and I've had that kind of thought. Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: Because it strikes me that guilt comes when you think you should be doing something different.  </div> <div> Alex: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And that if you are somebody who hasn't accepted, and I think it's understandable, especially with, you know, relatively late diagnosis on the ADHD and as you say, all the perceptions there are out there in the world with the PMDD stuff. </div> <div> Vikki: That sort of guilt to me feels like it's got this premise of I should be able to do more than this. I should be able to be behaving the way that somebody without health conditions would be behaving.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah. I actually think you've fully hit the nail on the heads there. Like, I've never thought of it like that and I think I've got a lot of internalized, what's the word is, is the word able ableism? </div> <div> Alex: I've got a lot of internalized ableism about myself and yeah, I have definitely not accepted it in the slightest whatsoever and, you know, I'd speak openly about having these conditions, but I don't think I've actually accepted myself that I have them and that it does impact me because I am trying to operate and function as someone without health conditions. </div> <div> Alex: Literally, as you just kind of said. And that is probably just right now has been a very big revelation for myself. 'cause I've never thought of that before. So thank you.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And this is something we can continue to talk about in the membership sessions and things, right? Yeah. Because I think sometimes when you hit a moment like that, it's useful to take a breath and be able to kind of reflect on it yourself, maybe discuss it with loved ones or anything like that. And just take a minute with those thoughts. Because if we can start to recognize, oh, because you are not stupid, right? You know that if it was somebody else, like when Till comes on, there is no way, I know you are not gonna be sitting in the background going, well, she should just pull herself together and get on with it, shouldn't she? I know there's no way. So there has to be a reason you're not applying that to yourself.  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so. Continue to have a ponder on this sort of acceptance thing, this piece that maybe you are still telling yourself that if you just find the right system and the right way of doing things and sufficient motivation, you can behave exactly the same as somebody who doesn't have health conditions. </div> <div> Vikki: And then we can revisit it. Obviously you can come to a live coaching again, or as you know, you've got your questions for Vicki channel as well. So if you want to put questions in there, then I'll do your voice note too. And we can continue to then go, okay, if that is the case, if this is about me not accepting it, where do I want to go from here? How might it feel different if I'm planning my workload from the perspective of somebody who actually is impaired a couple of weeks a month at least, and needs a plan that goes from there, what would that look like?  </div> <div> Alex: Yeah, thank you. I, I actually feel like I could cry now 'cause um, yeah, I've never thought of that before, so that's really helpful. Thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. You take care. What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna ask Til to come on, and if you want, if you want to pop off and just have, you know, have a glass of water, um, have a moment then please do, do feel free. Thank you. </div> <div> Vikki: Hey. So how was that, how did you find watching somebody else getting coached on these issues? </div> <div> Til: Yeah, it was very interesting, very useful, very relatable. I don't know if Alex can still hear me, but, um, certainly with what you were just talking about in that sense of not accepting, your limitations or that you are living and experiencing things differently. I relate to that too. I don't know that I have fully accepted that. </div> <div> Til: And I think for me, part of that is not knowing what the alternative actually looks like. Before I did my PhD, I worked nine to five. I worked a nine to five all through my undergraduate degree. Before that I was in high school. So, you know, I've had a very nine to five life and a PhD and so thinking outside those boxes, um, and outside the externalized, requirements of office jobs and school and those sorts of structured environments in into a, you know, humanities PhD where my time is essentially my own, um, is really challenging and I still haven't worked out to the extent that I've accepted </div> <div> Til: this about myself with the ADHD or you perhaps around the the PMDD or PME as well? I still don't know what other options are, which is partly why I joined the membership. And then I think the other thing is as well that, that I was thinking about when Alex was talking is that, that like we do have this huge capacity for going at 150% and it's not sustainable, but you also, at least I find, I also know that I can go at 150%. And so like, why aren't, why aren't I doing the time or at least a hundred percent all the time, but why is it, why is the ADHD experience so inconsistent? and yeah, once you add in menstrual cycles and things like that, but yeah, a lot of what both you and Alex said really, really resonated there, I think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah absolutely. A couple of things out of that, I think in terms of the acceptance piece, I wanna make really clear. I know, but I think both of you know this, but for the listeners the solution here is now not going, oh, I just need to accept it. Right? Okay. I accept it. Problem solved. But what we do instead is kind of recognize, oh, the fact I don't accept it at the moment makes it really hard for me to plan for it. To allow for it. That might be where some of these high expectations are coming from. 'Cause sometimes you can just feel like you're being a little bit. I don't understand why I'm like this. 'cause I know I should be making allowances, but I can't and I just don't know why. </div> <div> Vikki: And even just having a little bit of a, oh, that might be why kind of moment. We don't have to necessarily switch immediately to, oh, okay, therefore I accept it and everything will be okay. But we get to go, okay, that's making this more difficult. Right? What could we do? And I think you are also completely right to flag I think this interaction with ADHD is fascinating because I think that ADHD has this somewhat unique feature of having sometimes the capacity to work at an incredible level to just smash it out and sit and that, and I get this done, I get that done and those moments, and I am not gonna be somebody who calls them a superpower or anything like that because I think as a whole, that's not a helpful notion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But we have these moments where it does go like that. And it's really hard not to hold that as your benchmark as to that's what performance should look like. That's what I'm capable of. And it's this sort of expectation that that's what it should look like all the time. When in reality that is usually way above a standard person's productivity and focus and all of those things. </div> <div> Vikki: And I think recognizing that is, is really, really useful. So let's move on then to you Til. And Alex is gonna be watching this and we'll bring her on again at the end. So tell us a little bit more about your experience and how this is affecting you. </div> <div> Til: Yeah, sure. So, um, I don't have a formal diagnosis of PMDD but I relate to the symptom list, um, and I've possibly sit somewhere between PMDD and what I've seen referred to as, premenstrual exacerbation, which is basically all of your existing underlying chronic health conditions feel worse, in the lead up to your period, and then when you're on your period at the start, at least. So I get a bit dysphoric. I get a lot more emotionally sensitive, a lot more tired, a lot more irritable, a lot more overwhelmed. And it's much harder to concentrate. My ADHD medication doesn't work as well during this time so it makes it really hard to just like, sit down and do stuff, which is something that I struggle with already. But during that time it feels worse. And I think I have a bit of a tendency to, when I'm at a slightly lower point, raise my expectations for myself and be like, oh, if I am, you know, at 40%, I should be at 140%. But it, that, that pressure doesn't necessarily result in, in any, in any action. It often just results in avoidance and internal spiraling. So, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. And you mentioned when we were talking before we started recording, that your cycle is somewhat predictable at the moment and so we thought we would think about kind of almost planning for these times. So with Alex, we talked a little more about what it's like in the midst of this time. But because yours are predictable, we'd focus on thinking about that.  </div> <div> Til: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: So tell me how, if at all, you plan for this at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: I dunno if this is an ADHD thing or just, you know, maybe it's not worth pathologizing, but, but it'll be a day or two out and I'll be like, I feel like shit. And then I look down at my pill packet and be like, oh, that's why I feel shit. Yeah. Okay. Like, whoops.  </div> <div> Vikki: Everybody hates me. I don't understand why everybody hates me. Oh yes, absolutely. And then when you realize, right, you, you look down at your pill packet and you go, oh yeah, maybe it's that. Maybe everyone doesn't quite hate me. What happens then in terms of, 'cause obviously in the membership, especially this quarter, we've been thinking a lot about planning, about setting goals, about our sort of systems for deciding what we do when. And I wonder whether when you look down and go, oh, at your pill packet and realize that you are heading into that phase, whether that changes anything </div> <div> Til: at the moment it's not changing anything. I think it probably should be. I would say that I would expend more effort and energy than usual trying to keep myself on routine in life rather than in PhD work. So I would spend more effort trying to make sure that I make it to the gym and go to bed on time and make home cooked meals and those sorts of things. Which in some ways then leaves me with less energy to focus on maintaining any PhD routine. But yeah, I think that's where I try to focus.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And do all of those feel helpful for you? Is expending more energy to do those things coming from a place where they actually help you during your, during your sort of premenstrual period time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: Yes. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, cool. Because one of the things that we want to make sure is that any of the things that we're kind of putting effort into making sure they still happen are things where that effort is worthwhile and useful for us. So the only one that my ear flagged up a little bit, and I just wondered whether this is a space for, this is outside of PhD stuff, but looking after us, mind and body is part of it, right was around the homecooked food. So I think the continuing to get yourself physical activity is somebody with ADHD continuing to get yourself physical activity even when you don't particularly feel like it physically, sounds great to me. Um, sleep great. Brilliant. Good food. Yes. What's the deal with this, the homecooked version of good food here? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: Well, it's cheap and easy.  </div> <div> Vikki: And do you find it easy to get yourself to do it and things, even when you're feeling dysphoric?  </div> <div> Til: The process of actually cooking? Yes. All of the admin to get to that point. No. Hate going to the supermarket, I don't know if it's a COVID thing, just develop a aversion to it, trying to do it once a week maximum. But, so I think the planning component of cooking, okay. No, but I, but. Will expend mental energy thinking about that, um, feeling like, well, if I haven't already planned and made a choice about what I'm doing for dinner, yeah, I'll spend a lot of time throughout the day like, what, what all the supermarket do I need to go to? Do we have all those ingredients? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, how could we, so one of the things we talk about in the membership a lot as you're aware, is being a good boss for yourself, right? Is thinking, okay, what would make this easier for me? What would make this feel better? And I think what can be really useful is if you were a nice about, you know, so Alex talked about having a lovely supervisor who's really helpful and think with all of this stuff is thinking, right? If I was a boss who had an employee who I knew was coming up to a period of time where they were gonna be experiencing mood difficulties, physical symptoms, all these things, and I wanted them to feel supported. What things would I put in place for them? Okay. And let's start with food and then we'll get onto PhD stuff in a second. If you were a boss, what things would you want to help this person put in place food wise to make it feel a little easier for them. </div> <div> Til: Regular meal breaks and like, just setting aside the time so that they know that it's there and they don't have to think about it.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Making it as yeah, easy as possible. Making it feel like they don't have to think. So what would that look like? What could you do for yourself in advance that would make it feel like you don't have to think? </div> <div> Til: So batch cooking and freezer meals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is that something you enjoy? Does that feel plausible? Does that feel like, yeah. Never. Great idea, but never gonna get around to it.  </div> <div> Til: Plausible. It just, it just makes me feel sad eating freezer meals, like multiple days in for.  </div> <div> Vikki: Why does that make you feel sad? </div> <div> Til: Because it's not freshly cooked. I get a fair amount of joy from the actual active cooking.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Til: And I don't have a microwave, so, it's harder to reheat freezer meals. They get soggy. It's not as nice.  </div> <div> Vikki: So you don't necessarily wanna take away the act of having to cook.  </div> <div> Til: Not necessarily, but I want to take away some of the mental load that comes with the, the lead up to the cooking.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So how could you do that?  </div> <div> Til: Make my partner do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Til: Ask really nicely and they would  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> Til: Is one option. But yeah, like sharing some of those things. And then pre-planning meals outside of work time. So like on a Sunday, that sort of thing. Not in a cooking sense, just in a, these are the sorts of ingredients that will be in the house and there will be enough vegetables in the crisper for the rest of the week, so don't need to go back to the supermarket. There will be enough milk for a cup of tea, those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Cause sometimes even just deciding, I'm just gonna eat the same things when I'm on my period. These are the five meals that I eat. So that there's minimum, it's like, okay, it's that time of the packet. We need to make sure we've got X, Y, and Z in the house. Because I'm having, and I'm not saying eat the same thing every night, but if you had like four or five meals that you eat during that time, I've tried to get in the habit and I've actually forgotten this time. So I need to remember that. I was trying to get in the habit of just always buying myself steak in the first couple of days of my period. Not because I necessarily believe it's the perfect sort of source of iron or anything like that, but it feels as fun a reason as any to buy myself nice food. Yeah. But anything that feels like that for you, right? Where it's like, you know what, I like this. I like making it, it's easy to make. It's stuff that maybe can be made with stuff that's in the cupboards rather than having to buy it the day I make it or whatever. </div> <div> Vikki: So we are thinking about where we are expending effort that doesn't feel good and saying, okay, how can we just smooth that? How can we make that feel simpler so that there aren't really decisions. That week we just grab a week's meal plan and we always do that meal plan the rest of the month we can be imaginative and try new recipes or whatever if we enjoy it. But that week we do those recipes 'cause we like them and they're nutritious and they're easy. </div> <div> Vikki: How does that feel is a sort of,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Til: sounds good. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: So let's think about translating that then into PhD work. How could you change the way you plan your PhD work when you know you've got this kind of coming up? </div> <div> Til: Hmm. I mean, I think there are some things that fit the analogy better, like in terms of thinking about specific tasks that can just be, you know, like a meal plan for the PhD. Is some reading and then I write up my notes from the reading and summarize it, and then can look at certain types of data or do some archival research. 'Cause that involves, a bit less analytic thinking. Those sorts of things come to mind. In a super helpful counter thinking way then I immediately was thinking about, well, some of that then depends on what phase of the PhD I'm in, and trying not to borrow worries from the future too much and just bring it back to the phase I'm in. So, yeah, data collection summaries and archive analysis and a bit of reading. But not more than like an hour of reading at a time. Otherwise I'll just fall asleep while doing it. </div> <div> Vikki: So knowing what types of tasks tend to feel more accessible to you and feel more like things that it's like, okay, I can crack on with those bits. How about the quantity of work you expect from yourself? </div> <div> Til: Yeah. That could probably drop a little as well. If I still wanna feel like I'm doing a certain amount of hours a week or something, switching to tasks that are a lot less initial effort. So because I write about comedy, watching a comedy special is a legitimate form of research that I could definitely always do more of. So things like that, um, are probably quite helpful reminders as well in terms of kind of low, low physical energy tasks, that are still engaging. </div> <div> Til: I find it quite hard to assess how much I actually get done in a week and assessing what my actual capacity and capability is really difficult for me at this point in time. And part of that is linked to what Alex was saying about, you know, we, we are still students. This is, this is all a learning process, so there's still a fair bit of that for me. So I think that's the other, that's the other big unknown for me when I'm planning my weeks at the moment in general. Let alone then trying to assess, okay, well I know I'm, gonna be at reduced capacity this week. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So it sounds as though the idea of deciding that you would work fewer hours feels like it  </div> <div> Til: stresses me out.  </div> <div> Vikki: Tell me more about that.  </div> <div> Til: You saying that I'm like, well, but I already, I already feel like I'm not working enough hours </div> <div> Vikki: And then what happens if you end up not working the hours you intended to work because you're having the symptoms? </div> <div> Til: I feel bad about it. Similar feelings to what Alex was describing. Guilt, frustration. I think, I think I have a little bit more acceptance around some of it, but it's, it's a question of extent or degrees. I think like moving beyond, I'm either at 150% or I'm at 0%. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Til: But I would like to have more kind of, you know, 60 to 80% days and create some sort of consistency. That's just one of my key goals at the moment, still being able to do some things when I'm feeling bad. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. So it's not a total kind of, um, self-flagellation exercise, uh, at this point in my life, but yeah, it's still frustrating.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think it's so interesting that you are saying that you want to find more days where you are doing 60% or 80%, but that you are also still quite resistant to the idea of reducing the hours you're planning to work that day. </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that's really useful. And again, I think that's something for us to continue to work on in the membership because one of the things I notice a lot with members is that they'll tell themselves, I should be working normally. I've got this thing, but I don't have time to deal with that. </div> <div> Vikki: I should be working normally. And what they then end up doing is either doing all those hours, but finding them not productive and not getting, or not doing those hours because they then eventually convince themselves that it hurts too much or they're too distracted or they're too whatever and them feeling bad about the fact they didn't. </div> <div> Vikki: Rather than kind of deciding in advance, you know what, today's a three hour sort of a day and doing your three hours, and then being able to actually enjoy the remainder of the day, or at least look after yourself during the remainder of the day because you are intentionally not working. And sometimes you know the difference between doing three hours work on a day you intended to do eight hours work and how that feels versus doing three hours work on a day where you intended to do three hours work And how that feels. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They're just poles apart. They're exactly the same amount of work done. But they feel incredibly different. Now I'm gonna let you in a little secret 'cause I know you guys like to know how I'm a work in progress with all these things alongside you guys. I'm still quite bad at planning for this. </div> <div> Vikki: So I, at the stage, at the moment where I still have quite regular periods and I still plan a reasonably normal week because for some reason I always slightly believe that this month's gonna be different. Why At my age I think it's getting better. I don't know. But anyway, that's a whole other story. So I've still got work to do in terms of the actually planning for this week to be like that. So, like yesterday I ran my two sessions yesterday for you guys. I did not do a lot else. I have to say. And you know what? I am fine with that because it was definitely what I needed and I'm now shifting things around in the rest of the week to make sure the urgent things get done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And there's no part of me that's telling me I should have done more yesterday. I'd love to get to the stage and I'm working on getting to a stage where I'm planning this in advance so I don't have to do the last minute shuffles of it, but I'm much, much better now at saying, you know what, that was what I needed. I needed that quiet time. I can do a few hours of this. I can do my face-to-face bits. I can do a few hours of these couple of bits of jobs, but I'm not expecting a full day of myself. I find that enormously easier now than I used to, and it feels so much better than telling yourself you just have to be normal. </div> <div> Til: Hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so I want us to practice that kind of looking ahead and going, okay, even if it's just today, we're not looking that far ahead today. These are the symptoms I'm experiencing. Put my good boss hat on. What's actually reasonable today? And I think the fact you've used the kind of 60%, 80% language yourself without me bringing that up, asking yourself, what would 60% look like today? If this is not gonna be a nothing day, what is 60%? What might that look like? How could we speculate? How does that feel? </div> <div> Til: Yeah. Very reasonable and achievable it doesn't stress me out as much. Think we have to remember after having reframed it a bit. Pardon? It doesn't stress me out as much. Now that you've reframed it a little bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Because often it is like, well I'm probably only gonna do 60% anyway, so I can either do 60% while pretending I'm trying to do a hundred percent and sitting at my desk hating myself. Or I can do 60% and then actually leave, or I can do 60% in manageable chunks and do other things in between. So some of it is, I think the acceptance that it's probably not gonna be a hundred percent day, even if I plan it as a hundred percent day and even if I sit here attempting to make it a hundred percent day, it's probably not going to be. So I think that can sometimes sort of help is reminding ourselves, I wish it was a hundred percent due, but it is not gonna be. So what are we gonna plan?  </div> <div> Til: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Because I think the more we can try and be intentional and meet ourselves where we're at. It makes it actually, ironically easier to do the little bits because I think there's something that rebels against. If you are going, oh, no, no, you need to work. Normally there's part of your brain that's like, but I don't wanna, everything hurts and I feel rubbish. That kind of fights back against it whereas if it's like, you know what? Let's just do two hours or three hours on this one thing. We'll take it slow, we'll work it through. </div> <div> Vikki: Then it's a little easier to kind of go, yeah. All right. That seems reasonable. Yeah, we can, we can do that bit. 'cause that does actually feel vaguely achievable and I won't be beating myself up afterwards. Okay. And we will talk in a future coaching session, more about keeping track of what you have done in a week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I dunno if you're using our quarterly planning document and everything. But us practicing that recognition of what we are achieving is hugely important and something that we can continue working on in future sessions. Okay, perfect. Alex, are you in a position to come back on? Are you good? Fabulous. How was that? Watching Til getting coached?  </div> <div> Til: Um, really good. So I just wanted to say I could relate to a lot of what Til said, so thank you because it actually made me feel less alone. Just having someone with like similar shared experiences, it definitely helps and I feel like a lot of your suggestions Vicki, were really helpful, but in true ADHD fashion, my brain has gone completely blank. I just feel like the last hour, 20 minutes I have kind of felt really relatable to everything that's said and there was a lot of really useful stuff, but my brain has just gone really blank. So I'm gonna have to go back and watch through this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, not a problem at all. Obviously in this case, 'cause we're recording for the podcast, you've got the perfect resource. You are gonna get an audio, video, and transcript version of this. Now, as you know in coaching sessions, normally we don't record them, mostly because of sort of privacy and things like that, but also because I know where you guys are like and you all want to watch all of them. And so I don't want you to end up with a huge backlog of coaching calls. </div> <div> Vikki: But yes. Something I a hundred percent recommend where I really encourage people during the coaching sessions to not just sort of passively watch the way you might watch sort of reality show, but to be thinking, right, what do I want to take from this? And jotting down those notes. And we often, as you know, will be chatting in the chat box as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So that's quite a nice way to be sharing. Oh, actually I wanna remember that is in the chat box is another good way to do that. And obviously you guys can find each other in the community as well, so if you want to carry on any of these conversations, you wanna have coworking sessions together, anything like that, you can find each other in the community too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I just wanna finish by saying thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for discussing this and all the compassion that you've shown each other and the sort of understanding that you've opened up in yourselves as well. I really appreciate you coming on and I know lots of people will have felt very seen or have felt a new understanding for something that they've never experienced before too, which I think is, is equally important. So thank you both so much for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.  </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-33-how-to-cope-in-academia-with-menstrual-dysfunction-a-double-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-32-how-to-do-tasks-youve-been-putting-off-a-special-double-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the first in a series of live coaching episodes, where I work with students currently in The PhD Life Coach membership on issues that affect their academic lives. This week we’re starting with an old favourite - procrastination! Thoko and Deb are at different stages in their PhD journey but both struggle with procrastination and focus. We discuss why we often procrastinate planning, how we avoid working on tasks that involve accepting external critique, and why walking in the rain can be a great analogy to understand how to do tasks we’ve been putting off.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/14306297-2-18-how-to-stop-procrastinating-part-1" target="_blank"> how to stop procrastinating. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And this is one of a series of episodes that I'm making at the moment where we do coaching with actual members of the PhD life coach membership. So they have kindly volunteered to come on to get coached about something that is challenging them at the moment. There's a whole series of these gonna happen, three or four different episodes and today we are really thinking about procrastination. So thank you so much Thoko and Deb for coming on. Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: Hi, I'm Thoko. And I'm based in South Africa and I'm doing my PhD on austerity and fiscal policy. I'm really excited to be here and to go through the weeds of the procrastinating that I'm doing.  </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And Deb. </div> <div> Deb: Hi, I am Debbie. I'm based in Wales, in the uk and I am doing my PhD in technology enhanced learning. So I'm looking at social support in social networking sites and wellbeing and things like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And you are towards the end, aren't you, Deb?  </div> <div> Deb: Uh, yeah, apparently so, yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Apparently so, and Thoko, remind me what stage you are at. </div> <div> Thoko: I'm right at the beginning finalizing my proposal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I thought that was the case. So we've got different sort of ends of the PhD spectrum, but so quite similar issues. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna start out with, okay, so Deb, I'm gonna ask you to turn your camera off, but you will be watching in the background, same as you do in the coaching calls. So you're thinking about how this applies in your life as well. So we'll see you again in a minute. So Thoko, tell me a little bit more about something specific that you are procrastinating at the moment.  </div> <div> Thoko: So the main thing that I've really noticed around my PhD work was the step between the writing the draft and then getting feedback and then working on the feedback that I received. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: And the main thing was that I defended my proposal and I got feedback on the proposal that I just can't seem to get started going on and I can feel that there's a real block in being able to incorporate the comments and to produce what I want as a lovely, beautiful proposal that's ready to go. </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So tell me more about what that block feels like.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: Pretty irritating actually, because it feels like it should be a fairly simple process. I think my supervisors, I have two wonderful, very supportive supervisors who I think expected this to be done in a week, incorporate the comments and resend it. </div> <div> Thoko: And it's been kind of three months, and I've only managed to sort of start on the revisions, on an airplane flight that I took for two hours where I was stuck in the airplane and I couldn't get up really easily and move around and move away from it. I almost say I have a picture of what I want the proposal to look like, but when I sit down to work on it, it doesn't look like the picture. </div> <div> Vikki: So tell me more about how this actually goes. So this is on your to-do list as something that needs doing. Do you not decide that you're going to do it today or do you decide you're gonna do it but not sit down to do it? Or do you sit down to do it, open it, stare at it? Where does it sort of break down?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: So it lives on my rolling to-do list. I've even tried to incorporate, you know, from the membership learnings to make it more specific. So like, make the comment to-do list. 'cause this is not, it's verbal comments, not written comments. And so to make them written so that was one activity and I haven't even done that. So it rolls. And then I do everything else. So I'm like, oh, I'm uploading my data onto Atlas Ti. I am reading articles on my methodologies. I'm reading and I'm working quite hard on the PhD, but I'm not doing the very thing that needs to be done to enable me to continue this year in my second year, which is to just revise this proposal. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. So you've narrowed it down to something quite specific. So it's not that you've got this respond to comments as a kind of notional thing but then whenever it comes to the decision making about what to do today, you are doing different tasks.  </div> <div> Thoko: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How do you like justify that to yourself? What's the story you tell yourself? </div> <div> Thoko: For quite a bit of the time. So I would say from like January, February, a lot of my excuses was, no, no, I need to read more so that when I make the changes, I update all of, 'cause one of the main comments was quite a, it was a time range comments. So it means I needed to up update quite a bit of the content. </div> <div> Thoko: Which I started in December already, but I was like, oh no, I need to keep doing this, so that there was that, then there was, oh, I need to work a little bit more on my methodology section. And so I need to read more on the methodology. So I'm doing all the kind of easy stuff than the sit down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: And I think, you know, if I'm honest, and I feel quite self-conscious about it is that I just assume that my proposal would pass straight away. I didn't expect to have comments. So I had bought a bottle of champagne to be like, I've submitted my proposal and then I was like, told, no, no, you must make changes. </div> <div> Thoko: I was like, what? This is crazy. So there's a little bit of a, I'm also maybe a little bit mad about having to make the changes. And I'm also eager to get onto doing the actual PhD, so I justify the reading as well. This is also partly getting me on the road, so I spent most of my February doing my ethics clearance and all of that kind of stuff but not working on this substantive bit. And to be fair, I don't think I've really consciously put it on the table in the way that you have of asking the question of why am I not doing this today?  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Because when we have stuff that's generically on the to-do list for some point soon, but we never actually ask ourselves the question, is today the day? Then it can live there for ages without us quite noticing that we are never bringing it onto the table. I'm interested in these emotions that you've got around it though. So you say you didn't expect to have to make changes and that that's quite frustrating. Is it that you don't like the changes that they've suggested? Or is it that you just resent the fact there are changes being made and that you've gotta do more work on it?  </div> <div> Thoko: No, I think it's more a case of I didn't do a good enough job and maybe I can't do this. </div> <div> Vikki: So you don't mind the first time round the things they're suggesting you change? </div> <div> Thoko: No, no, no.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's not that you're like, but I don't wanna change that. I don't wanna do it like that. Okay, fine. So you're making it mean that you didn't do a good enough job.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah. And so will my second version meet their expectations? Can I live up to what? </div> <div> Vikki: So sometimes when we have a thought that's holding us back like that, I didn't do a good enough job, we get to look at it and we get to say, is that true? And to ask answer whether that's true or not. I wanna ask you what you mean by what would a good enough job have been?  </div> <div> Thoko: So I'm somebody who's used to getting distinctions. I don't get told correct your work. And I think that is the big adjustment from masters to PhD, I think, is that the PhD is about reworking, rewriting, reworking. And I think this is new terrain for me. And so essentially I felt like I failed. Like they basically gave me a, an F minus and I now need to resubmit. Yeah. It's, it sounds silly saying it, but that's kind of where I'm at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because why would it be a problem? Because the thing is, okay, they haven't graded it. So we know it's not a fail per se, but and I say this with love and respect, it wasn't good enough to just go through.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: It needed changes. So to some extent, there's some facts there, right?  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: That maybe it was a good enough first attempt. Love that. I'm sure it was, but it wasn't good enough. It wasn't detailed enough, or it wasn't whatever was missing enough. To go through with no changes. Why is that a problem? What do you make that mean? </div> <div> Thoko: That I'm not good enough to do the PhD.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And this is why it's so important to pick this apart. Yeah. And to notice that all procrastination problems are some sort of emotion thing going on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because the problem here isn't that it wasn't good enough because it needed changes, so it wasn't good enough as it was. </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: The problem is that you are then generalizing that to mean that you are not good enough.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: What distinctions can you see between it's not good enough to get through with no changes versus I'm not good enough to do my PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: So the one is based in facts like you're saying, which I haven't. I actually felt that in my chest when you said it, I was like, Ooh, okay, that's true. I don't like it, but it's true. But I know at a head level, Of course I'm PhD material. They wouldn't have accepted me otherwise. I've met all the requirements for the program. </div> <div> Thoko: So the second part of that story is not based in fact and that I'm actually learning how to do a PhD. I think the, the double edge here is that I then think when I'm sitting down or I'm thinking about it, is like how if I wasn't good enough in the first place, do I now produce a good enough in the second place? </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Yeah. And the answer you've come to that so far is I need to read more.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah. And I need to not do it and like avoid it, that way I don't see it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Perfect. And that's exactly what procrastination is, right? Is avoiding emotions that we don't like or trying to solve those emotions in ways that aren't actually helping. So you are either completely avoiding the task so you don't have to think about it, or you are solving, quote unquote, this idea that you are not good enough by going, okay, well if I read more then I'll be good enough. And at some stage I'll then be able to do this while avoiding these uncomfortable emotions 'cause they won't be there. 'cause I'll be good enough then because I'll have read enough.  </div> <div> Thoko: Magically. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And I'm, I take it, that's not working at the moment.  </div> <div> Thoko: No.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No. Perfect. Okay. So what we get to think about instead is what do I need to think in order to do some of those corrections, to do that first step? So, I love the fact you've already identified that the first job is to turn their verbal feedback into a list of, to-dos. What, in fact, I'm gonna ask it slightly differently. What emotions do you need to be willing to tolerate in order to do that? </div> <div> Thoko: The feeling of having failed. But knowing that, that, that's not the game I'm playing anymore. I'm doing a PhD, I'm not playing the grading game. That only happens right at the end. Right now, I'm in the, you know, iteration production, kind of thinking through the ideas. And essentially those comments were about making sure that the PhD can pass. </div> <div> Thoko: 'cause if you set up the proposal wrong, then you can end up with a PhD that that isn't possible, right? Because it's the guide. The proposal is the guidepost for the PhD. So really sitting with that, that feeling of, okay, so it wasn't good enough the first time around, but that doesn't mean you are not good enough, really pushing that. And it, yeah, it feels quite, quite, quite overwhelming knowing the distinction. But knowing I'm not taking the feeling away. Right.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And that, okay. I'm gonna give you a strange analogy for this, but I think it might help. So whenever we're trying to do something that we've got big emotions about, what we wanna be doing is a kind of two-pronged approach. On one hand, we wanna be reminding ourselves of thoughts we believe, or actions that help, us to change the way we're thinking about it. Okay, so you've come up with some really good ones, reminding yourself they're doing this to help you. Reminding yourself that in a PhD, this isn't a sign that you failed, that this is about iterations and moving it forward, reminding yourself that you are capable of going through this list and writing it down. All those things, right? We get to do those things, but often people try to only do that, and if they don't make the negative emotions go away, they still don't do the task. But the double pronged part is also then accepting the, we are not gonna magic all those emotions away. We are gonna remind ourselves of thoughts that help, which is gonna minimize it. </div> <div> Vikki: But we are probably also gonna have to tolerate some of these emotions too. So the way, the analogy that came into my mind while you were talking is when you look out the window and the weather's terrible, and you know you need to go out and do something, and you're like, oh, I just don't want to, it looks awful out there. It's raining, it's windy, it's horrid, it's cold. And we take a two-pronged approach. We say, okay, I'm gonna put a raincoat on. I'm gonna put decent shoes on. I'm gonna put a hat on. I'm gonna put things around me so it doesn't feel quite so bad. And that is the thoughts that you have, that is the, I'm gonna put myself in, you know, you remember, put yourself in a coworking session so you're being supported by people around you we're doing things to make it not feel so bad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But we're also saying, and I'm probably still gonna get soggy and a bit cold, but you know what, I can deal with being soggy and a bit cold for a couple of hours or whatever. Okay. And that's the bit that I think people forget is that we can try and make it feel better to some extent, but we also need to say to, and I'm willing to tolerate feeling a bit rubbish while I do this. </div> <div> Thoko: Right.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So let's just think about this very first part. So I presume you've got a recording or a transcript or something of the verbal. Excellent. So just thinking about translating that into a list, you've come up with a bunch of thoughts that might help. What emotions might you still have to tolerate, even though you're telling yourself this is important, you're telling yourself this is to help, this isn't a sign you're failing, what emotions are we still gonna tolerate?  </div> <div> Thoko: I think the big one is the not feeling good enough. That's gonna be the main one. And believing that I can make the changes to the standard that they want.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Be careful what you're doing though, because we are thinking specifically only about the task of breaking the verbal feedback down into specific comments. </div> <div> Thoko: Mm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And you are talking about whether you are capable of making the changes.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. One of the things with procrastination is we wanna pull it all in. It's a little bit like when you look at your messy house and say, you know, oh, I can't tidy all this up. Instead we say, okay, can I put the clothes away? Or whatever, right? So if you are saying, yeah, yeah, I can make all these changes, we don't need to reassure ourselves about that right now. 'cause that is not your job right now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: Right.  </div> <div> Vikki: Your only task is getting that verbal feedback into a list of changes.  </div> <div> Thoko: Right.  </div> <div> Vikki: So one of the thoughts you can do when your brain goes, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make those changes. Then you go, my job is only to make what the changes are clear. I'm gonna worry later about whether I can answer them or not. That's not a today problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: How would that feel to kind of separate that out a little bit?  </div> <div> Thoko: I think that's extremely useful. 'cause I think I'm piling on the stories. And it's interesting because in my to-do list, I've had the write out the verbal comments and then right underneath I've got the, and make the changes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. That shouldn't be on your to-do list yet.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And make changes. Not on the to-do list until you've got the changes. </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: How long do you anticipate it to take to turn the verbal changes into a list?  </div> <div> Thoko: Well, it's uh, probably like two hours max because I've got an hour of recording, so an hour taking notes. Stop, start if that, yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Are you willing to tolerate feeling overwhelmed, to tolerate feeling uncomfortable in a variety of ways for two hours in order to get that list turned into an actionable list? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: Absolutely, because I've been feeling every day to-do list doom, which is worse. So the having it like hanging over my head is much worse than just two hours of what you're saying, like a rainy day of being out in the rain like that. I can do that. That feels doable. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And the rest of it comes later. The adding the next task in comes later. Because this is the downside of a really clever brain, right? Any of us who've got these big, clever brains who do all these clever things, we can see all the things. We can see all the steps. And so part of us thinks we should be able to believe we can do all of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We don't have to believe we can do all of it. We just need to believe we can do this next bit. And as you say, the problem with procrastination, the nightmare with procrastination is we're trying to avoid these emotions, but in doing so, we then have emotions about the fact we're procrastinating, and so one of the things I find quite useful to remind myself, and it sounds really depressing, but I promise it helps, is there's crap on both sides here, right? It feels awful to not do the thing and keep telling ourselves, I should be doing the thing. I'm not doing the thing I, it's been so long now, dah, dah, dah. And it feels awful to do the thing because I'm gonna have to face seeing exactly what it is that they want me to do, and writing it out in a list and whatever. So we get to say, okay, it feels crap on both sides of this.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Which version of this do I wanna experience?  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because our brains sort of think that by avoiding these tasks, we can avoid these emotions, but we just give ourselves these emotions for not having done it instead. </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: What can you say to yourself? So same as when we're out in the rain, if we're going, this is so depressing, I shouldn't be getting wet. This is awful. I hate England, blah blah, blah. All of that. What can you be saying to yourself during this two hours where we're gonna tolerate, we are gonna try and put our raincoats on. We're gonna try and say nice things to ourselves, but we're gonna tolerate that it might not be the best two hours of our lives. What are you gonna say to yourself during and after it so that you feel as good as you can? </div> <div> Thoko: That I'm actually a really good student and that I should remember that I'm learning that I'm a good student and I'm learning. This is all about learning. If I could do a PhD, then I wouldn't have to do a PhD.  </div> <div> Vikki: Exactly.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. How do you feel about in fact, have a look while, while I'm talking to Deb in a sec. You can have a look in your diary and decide when these two hours are gonna happen.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah. Cool.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Thoko: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much. Uh, Deb, do you wanna come on and up? If you put your camera back on for me, how was watching that for you? What did you take for yourself?  </div> <div> Deb: Oh, I felt all of those things with you, Thoko. I wrote some stuff down, all the stuff that you were saying about things being on the to-do list and living there. They just live there and they don't necessarily need to be on there yet. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's me. I thought Thoko was really perceptive about the stuff, you know, she, she seemed to have some real light bulb moments in that, which I thought was brilliant. . So many things resonated, like the whole avoid avoiding or trying to solve something. I'm definitely doing all of that. And your analogies were brilliant. I wrote down big messy house. Yeah, I have that. I have a big messy house actually in reality, but also in my PhD and definitely the today problems. The tomorrow problems. I think reflecting on the things you were saying, and we'll go onto this in a minute, but reflecting on the things you were saying, I was thinking Yeah. I think that's at the heart of, my problem at at the moment. Um, and I love the raincoat. Put wellies on. I love that.  </div> <div> Vikki: perfect. I'm so glad. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to do these episodes is people often say, I don't quite understand how these group coaching sessions work. I don't understand why I'll get something out of seeing somebody else getting coached. But I think there's something about seeing somebody else say the thoughts that you are like, ah. I thought that too, and I thought I was the only one that thought that seeing somebody else, and then you also have that little bit of distance. It's much easier for you to see what Thoko should be, di should, should be doing. Yeah. Than it is to see it with yourself. And then it's like, oh, okay. I can see for you why that would be great. Maybe that would be great for me too. And you get to sort of translate it back in yourself. So thank you. Thank you for your reflections on that. So let's think about you. What's specifically challenging for you at the moment?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: Well, the whole specific thing is a problem for me at the moment because I'm definitely doing this thing that you just talked about, about, I'm looking at the whole mess, you know, and I know logically it's not a big mess. I know there are parts of it that are not a big mess, but that's how it feels because it does feel a bit of an overwhelming situation. So in terms of where I am right now, I feel like I've been doing this my entire life, and I'm just so over it and so ready to finish it that I just wanna get it done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: But, I flip between thinking, yeah, I can do this. Yeah. This is, I've had a good day. I understand this. I can do this, I can finish this. And then I wake up the next morning, I think what I'm doing, and I literally go and I could go like that in an hour, let alone in days. So, I suspect that is from the, just feeling overwhelmed by it all. I actually will time out in, at the end of June this year, I've been doing it that long, get rid of me. So, I have to put in an extension request. So, that request came through like a couple of days ago and I'm just like, oh, another thing I've gotta do now. So I now, and I've put the form in and they've now come back and said, oh, we need more information. So they want me to give like a plan as to when I'm gonna do things. And I think that made me a bit like a rabbit in the headlights. 'cause that was a bit like, but if I write it down, then I've gotta get it done kind of thing. </div> <div> Deb: So I've got that as a bit of a problem. And then my other problem, I'm doing the procrastination definitely, but I'm jumping from one thing to another thing instead of getting that thing done. So at least I can tick something off. And I think the other thing as well is that while Thoko was talking, I was thinking about this is, it's obviously this massive imposter syndrome, which just sits on my shoulder all the time. And I kind of started this PhD thinking, well I'm gonna do a taught PhD. So I do like the first bit, so at least if it all goes wrong, I get a couple of modules under my belt. And I think subconsciously I kind of thought that that's what would happen. I thought I would never get to this stage, and weirdly I find myself here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: So I think there's definitely a bit of that with the whole, you know, oh, am I actually capable of finishing this thing? And I, like Thoko was saying, I know logically, yes, I must be. But when it's happening to you. You just doubt yourself, don't you? So in terms of, I said, see, specificity is the problem for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: So I think it's, it's, I know I need to get this plan written out, so I know that, and that is the frightening thing for me. 'cause I'm gonna have to commit to that. So I know I need to do that, but then I also need a strategy, I suppose to do, do this thing that you were talking about the, I don't, I don't have to do all the things. I don't have to write all the things tomorrow. I just need a plan to get me there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> Deb: Does  </div> <div> Deb: that help?  </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> Deb: Sorry, does, that's very,  </div> <div> Vikki: no, let's think about it in terms of the planning then.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So you've got to write this plan. What length extension are you asking for?  </div> <div> Deb: Well, I asked my supervisor what, what was the best approach? Was it to kind of say the shortest amount of time that I felt I needed or the longest amount of time. And she was like, no, I think you need to put in say, a year so what I've put in for is a year, but obviously now I need to plan that year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And tell me more about why making that plan feels difficult, like you're putting off making that plan.  </div> <div> Deb: Um, well I haven't, uh, in my defense, I haven't been putting an off for too long. 'Cause I've only had this for, I've only been sitting with it for a couple of days and I work full-time study part-time. I've had a really busy couple of weeks in work. So I feel like I haven't touched my PhD stuff for a few days, you know, and I think what it is deep down is that I know I'm gonna have to face all the stuff that I need to do. </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Deb: And by making myself plan it out, that makes me face it. Whereas at the minute I can just push it into a big shape and say I have this stuff to do.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Deb: Don't actually know what stuff is in it, but there's a big lot of stuff. I think that's what it is.  </div> <div> Vikki: That sort of avoiding seeing it all.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: Because what are you worried you will see?  </div> <div> Deb: I'm worried, I will see the sheer amount of time that it's gonna take, I suppose,  </div> <div> Vikki: and what's wrong with the amount of time it's gonna take,  </div> <div> Deb: That I already feel guilty for the amount of time it's already taken. And this is gonna be an extra bit of time. So because I don't, with the best will in the world, I don't think I would be in a position, I might be in a position to get a full draft done by the end of June. Possibly depending on how you term draft. But I wouldn't be in a position to finalize it. And obviously if I was gonna be in a position to finalize it, they were needing to look for examiners and things now, and I'm not with the best will in the world at that stage.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So, I'm intrigued by this notion that you're sort of partly arguing why you can't quite make it by June, but are also intimidated by making a year long plan from June.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's a fun combo.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah, it is. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because if you think you can nearly probably get to first draft stage of everything by June. And the thing that's holding up really is examiners and things like that. Why does making a year long plan feel difficult?  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because that's a year from June, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: Oh, that's a good point. I was thinking it would be a year from now. Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, I assume if you're asking for an extension, I mean, double check that. I assume if you're asking for an extension, it's a year from the end of your registration.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the other thing is when I say I could get a full draft. I mean, the stage I'm at is , I've got a draft of my chapter one, a draft of my introduction, draft of my theoretical framework. No, my methodology, my theoretical framework is a bit of a nightmare 'cause I need to revisit that. And i'm in the middle of trying to write my findings, so I'm, again, I'm from one to the other, to the other. That's the thing. I don't really, I wouldn't say I have anything tied up with a nice little bow that's done. And I guess all of these things are tabs in my brain that are open.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Perfect. What if a plan was a way to decide which tabs are open?  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah. That would, that would be helpful  </div> <div> Vikki: because it strikes me at the moment that you are seeing a plan as a pressure that the plan then forces you to have stuff done by certain times, and that there will be judgment from yourself if no one else, if you don't hit those bits of the plan and things. And so it strikes me that this plan has become this thing we're avoiding because we don't want the pressure associated with it. We don't want the kind of reality of that in our face.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: Yes. Yeah. That's exactly it.  </div> <div> Vikki: But it also strikes me that a lot of the things that are frustrating you at the moment, the jumping from thing to thing, not knowing what you need to focus on, trying to think about all of them at once, having too many tabs open, feeling like a headless chicken are the result of not having a plan.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah. It's like my plan went out the window. That's the thing. And I think I just need, I mean. The procrastination element does come in there is that over the last however many years, I have loads of pretty Gantt charts. Just don't work for me. You know? And that's another thing as well, is that over the years, if I could go back to my, go back to when I started and give myself some advice, it was to be more organized. Because I feel like everything is everywhere.  </div> <div> Vikki: You know? You know, that means that you know more now than you did when you started.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah. And when we were talking earlier with Thoko, I was like, yeah, I remember being in that position where Thoko is now and then, 'cause you can't see ahead, right? You can't see it, but you could look back and it's like, yes, I do know more. I do know more. I am in a different position.  </div> <div> Vikki: But we focus on the, we should have known it then rather than being proud that we've learned it now.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. That's just a sign. If you look back and think, oh, I wish I'd done X, Y, Z, that means you know more now, which is a great thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so one of the things we can do with when we're procrastinating a task is change the way we are thinking about that task. And so here, if the making a plan is a way of justifying why you need an extension about it, it'll put pressure on you. It'll be something I have to commit to. I have to perform, I have to whatever, then yeah, absolutely. And I absolutely accept you haven't been, you're not procrastinating it per se. 'cause you've only just just had it. But it's this thing that you don't really want to get on with. I think if we can start thinking about that task as something that is gonna give you the brain space you need. </div> <div> Deb: Yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: That is gonna give you the clarity that you need. It's gonna give you something to go back to so that when your brain is going, I need to do this and I need to do this, and I need to do this, you look at that and you go, no, I need to do this thing. That's what's the, or that's what's on the plan at the moment. </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And that it's actually a supportive framework rather than a kind of punitive one.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: How does that feel? Does that feel plausible?  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That a plan could bring some clarity.  </div> <div> Deb: It does. As you were saying it, I was thinking, I'm one of these people that I actually don't like to have commitments in my diary because I might not want to do that that day. This is obviously playing itself out, isn't it?  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I mean, you get to decide, right? If you want to not make commitments do it when you feel like it and that works for you. Let's just do that, right, and stop telling yourself that you should have more of a structure. But I'm guessing at the moment from all the things you've said, that doing it when you feel like doing it isn't working that great for you at the moment?  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Well it's doing when I feel like it, but doing, when I've got it's again, this thing about got the time to do it, you have to make the time to do it. And I know that. But then the kind of overwhelm turns itself into I'm at my desk, but I'm not necessarily doing the bit that I need to do. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Deb: It like Thokos list.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. So one of the things that I want you to think about your plan as is a sort of series of boxes that you are gonna throw things into. I've done this for this year. There's so many things I want to do to develop the membership further. I've got another sneaky secret thing that members know about if you're in the community but the people on the podcast don't yet. I've got lots of things that I want to be doing this year and they're notionally thrown into Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, and so when in Q1, my brain's like, oh, I want to do whatever. It's like, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I know that's more exciting. 'cause Q1 is processes and like legal stuff and tax stuff is very boring. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I'm like, I wanna do this. Nope. That's a Q2 job. It, that's a Q2 job. We're doing that later. We're in Q1, we're doing these tasks right now. And so we have them notionally thrown into things then whether it's something I'm excited to do or whether it's something I'm worried about doing, I can do the, no, no, that's a Q3 problem. We're worried that's, that will happen then. And it enables you to much easier choose between the things you're doing now. 'cause you're choosing between a much smaller array of things. Okay. So what would be, let's not think about the whole plan, but if you were saying between now and the end of our quarter, let's say we've got like five weeks left of the membership quarter, what's in this little bucket of time? </div> <div> Deb: Hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: I think where I am at the moment, where I'm psychologically I want to feel further into my findings and I think that that will give me something to hang things on. 'cause in my plan, I am going back to thinking, oh, right, okay. I need a specific way of tackling things and writing that in my plan. And of course it's occurring to me now as we are talking, that actually, my plan starts now, which is I'm gonna carry on and I'm gonna finish this 'cause this is what I had in my head. I want to get to the end of this, my findings that I'm writing. So if I get to the end of that, then that gives it, I suppose it, it's like you say, isn't it? It's put a few bits of clothes away. So that's the, that's one of the bits that I can then take off my list. So that's what it would look like for me over the next five weeks.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. So what we want with a plan, we want it to be increasingly granular the closer it gets to us. So what we wanna be thinking about, if we're making a plan over a year, the stuff that's happening in the next month or so, we want to be pretty detailed. </div> <div> Vikki: We want to know specifically what we're focusing on, specifically what we're doing, da da da. The other stuff, you know, I can't remember whether you came to my dealing with a to-do list webinar this week or not, but one of the things we talked about there was vague tasks. You can have vague tasks like write discussion in your Q3 plan, that's fine, but by the time it's Q3, we need to break that down. We don't need to break it down now.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So, when you are thinking about making your plan, one of the big things that helps with procrastination and making plans not get overwhelming is the further ahead it is, the less detail you need. So we are dumping big chunks at this stage in those, and then we go, okay, the one or two big chunks that are in the quarter I'm in at the moment are these two. And they need breaking down into much more detail.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Because I'm, you said procrastination's part of the problem, but I'm also jumping between tasks. I'm gonna take the liberty of suggesting that jumping between tasks is procrastination.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because you are jumping when that one becomes uncomfortable. Or when the thought of this other thing becomes uncomfortable enough that you want to jump across and  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So if you are behaving in a way to avoid emotions, it's still procrastination. Procrastination is not just scrolling on your phone.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Deb: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And the more we can be clear, okay. Findings between now and the end, 'cause we've got Easter and stuff coming up as well, between now and the end of our quarter. My findings are my task. I need to make this plan. Get my Yeah. Get that done.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And I'm finding plans and the findings.  </div> <div> Deb: Findings, yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And then when your brain says, oh, but I should be whatever we say, this is my task, this. And if it's uncomfortable, we think about things we talked about with Thoko, how can I say things to myself that make it feel a little bit less uncomfortable? How can I tolerate some of those emotions and be okay afterwards? But by having a clear focus that we're pulling ourselves back to  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Makes it so much easier.  </div> <div> Deb: Yeah. Yeah. You're right.  </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Thoko. Do you wanna come back on? How was that? How was watching Deb?  </div> <div> Thoko: Oh, it was so lovely, Deb. Thank you so much for sharing. I think one of the things I really, um, took away from this is I'm exactly the same with plans and I think I've used them as a kind of stick. And so to start thinking about it as a supportive framework and also more detailed, closer dates and then less detail further out. It seems to be a little less daunting than trying to think of all the bits and pieces for the whole story. And I totally resonate with the jumping between tasks and that being procrastination and a little bit of imposter syndrome. And coming back to something that, Vikki said earlier is, the, um why are you avoiding decisions?  </div> <div> Deb: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thoko: So why are you avoiding saying, I'm just gonna focus on this, you know, and that's quite a powerful tool actually to have in our toolbox now because, I've never thought of it as an avoiding a decision, but now I can be like, okay, you're sitting here reading another reading, printing another reading. What decision are you avoiding? You know? So I hear you. But it's so exciting that you're in the final stretch. That's very exciting. So I'm rooting for you.  </div> <div> Deb: Thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love this. And this is what I love so much about our community is that no matter what stage you're at, what different countries you are in, what different topics you're studying, so much of this we have in common and we can support each other through. And I'd really encourage both of you to use the coworking space when you're trying to get on with these things and stuff, and so that you have the rest of that community around you. So thank you both so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you everybody for listening. I'm sure you have got lots out of it and I will see you all next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-32-how-to-do-tasks-youve-been-putting-off-a-special-double-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-31-how-to-get-going-on-work-without-external-accountability <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the hardest things in academia is the lack of accountability for the most “important” work. We know we must write, but there’s rarely external deadlines and so many other things feel more urgent. One of the PhD Life Coach membership students asked how to get going on a task without external accountability and this is an extended version of my answer to her. I’ll discuss why external accountability helps, how we can put these frameworks in place for ourselves, and how to overcome common pitfalls.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/14480997-2-22-what-to-do-if-you-want-more-reassurance" target="_blank"> what to do if you want more reassurance </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and this week I'm gonna be answering another question submitted by one of my members. So as most of you will know, I have the PhD life coach membership, which students can join quarter by quarter. And one of the things they get access to is the option of submitting questions, that they want some advice on, they want some what new ways of thinking about they submit them. And I record a short voice note. So this is one I did a few weeks back for one of our members, but it was a topic that comes up quite a lot and it was one that I had a little more to say about, So I decided that I would do it as a more extended episode and share it with all of you guys as well. </div> <div> And the question this member asked was about external accountability, but she specifically said, I'm struggling to get going without external accountability. Now, we all know that when you're doing a PhD or even in the more unstructured times of an [00:01:00] academic career, one of the things that can be really difficult is not having that kind of external structure that you often had through the earlier parts of your education. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where there were kind of real deadlines that meant something if you miss them and people sort of chasing you up and class schedules and all these things, and even quite a long way into your academic career, you may find you have external accountability for some things, you gotta turn up and teach your classes, right? But often there won't be much external accountability for the other stuff. So submitting papers, submitting grants, all those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this student particularly asked about struggling to get going on tasks when there wasn't any external accountability. And before we start getting into the what you can actually do about that stuff, and we are gonna do that, don't worry. Before we get into that , I just wanted to share why I was particularly impressed with this question. </div> <div> One of the things that we try and build in the membership is the sort of self-awareness that helps us [00:02:00] to ask really precise questions. That helps us to really understand why the things that we're struggling with feel so difficult. Why are we struggling with them? And this question, even though it was quite a short question, really pinpointed a couple of pieces of self-awareness that I was really impressed with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first is recognizing that the problem appears, at least to be a lack of external accountability. Often when people are sort of earlier stages of their self development journeys, they're saying things like, I just can't get my work done and I dunno why, and things like that. And when we're in that stage, it can be really hard to plan any way forward at all. Because we're in this position where we are saying, you know, I wanna do the thing. I'm not doing the thing. I don't understand why I'm not doing the thing. So what do I do? And that's quite hard to answer, right? But this student had really pinned it down as being actually, when there's external accountability, I find it much easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when there's not, [00:03:00] I find it more challenging and then suddenly we're starting to get a problem that is more crystallized, more specific. You guys have all done this with research questions, right? When we have a research question that's nice and precise, it is much easier to figure out how we're gonna address it than when we have these big, loose, fluffy research questions and the same's true with self-development stuff. So this student had really pinpointed the role of external accountability, and the other thing that they had really pinpointed was that the problem was often getting started. </div> <div> And I thought that was really insightful because when we are unhappy with our kind of work practices, our kind of ability to be productive and things like that, again, we're often not very precise about what we mean. Often we say things like, oh, I'm just not getting enough done, or whatever, without really pinning down the problem. This student recognized that it was the getting going that was the problem. That sort of initiation energy that's needed to start a new [00:04:00] task rather than her ability to sustain focus on something once she got going. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She also went on. In the voice notes that I do for the membership. I read out the actual question, I'm not gonna do that here, but she also went on to recognize that because she has problems getting started, She often then has problems stopping because she doesn't trust that she's gonna get started again. Her sort of lack of belief that she's capable of initiating a task means that once she gets going, she almost gets to the mustn't stop, mustn't stop. Mustn't stop stage. Overshoots how long she'd planned to work for. Ends up working later than she intended, then feels tired tomorrow and finds it difficult to get going again, but it's driven by this lack of faith that she'll be able to start again. And so I thought it was just a really good example of how when we have a much more precise understanding of the problem, it becomes something that's much, much easier [00:05:00] to address. </div> <div> Okay. Now those of you who get my newsletter, you will know that you get a summary of the podcast that gives you all the key take home points. If you're not on my newsletter, by the way, why not? You miss out on these summaries? You miss out on the reflective questions and you don't get to hear when they're exciting, free and paid opportunities for you to participate more. </div> <div> So if you haven't joined yet, make sure you go to the PhD life coach.com website and right on the front you'll see a button for joining the newsletter. Anyway, this stuff I'm talking about here, this isn't even in the newsletter. The stuff in the newsletter focuses entirely on the external accountability stuff, but as a little extra reflective prompt for you, I want you to think about any challenge you are having at the moment and ask yourself to describe it as precisely as you possibly can. So if you often tell yourself, I procrastinate too much, I lack motivation, I get overwhelmed and then don't get anything done. If [00:06:00] those are the big generic things that you're telling yourself, I want you to practice describing them as specifically and kind of in pedantic detail as you can. Try and narrow the focus, narrow the focus, narrow the focus until it sounds like something that describes specifically you. It's really, really good practice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm also gonna add, I'm gonna let you in a little secret here 'cause I don't think I've told you guys this yet. The next quarter of the membership, which starts at the beginning of May, it opens to new members at the end of April. Our focus is gonna be procrastination, motivation and overwhelm. So if you are resonating with this, if you are thinking, yep, those are exactly my problems, you really need to check out the membership. If you're an academic, if you are in the very early stages, you're not supervising other students, then you're still eligible. So if you're a postdoc, then you can still come on in. If you're a PhD student, you can absolutely come on in. If you are more senior than that, then [00:07:00] please do at least let your students know about the opportunity. You'll hear more about it over the next few weeks, and in fact, the podcast is going to focus over the next few weeks on sharing some coaching sessions with the actual members that we have at the moment, so keep an ear out for that. </div> <div> Anyway, have a practice. See if you can define your question as precisely as this member was able to. So what are we gonna do about it? Without external accountability, they are struggling to get going. The first thing we're gonna investigate even more deeply, what is it about external accountability for you that makes it easier to do these things? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because that differs, right? It's not inevitable that external accountability will make you do something. In fact, I'm the sort of person, and possibly it's something to do with my undiagnosed ADHD. Who knows. My mother would call it bloody mindedness. That external accountability can sometimes push me away from getting something done. If somebody's chasing me [00:08:00] up about something, I may be less likely to do it unless there's a badge or some sort of sticker, in which case I'm definitely doing it. But generally that might push me away. So what is it? Is it that you like pleasing other people? Is it that having external accountability put some time urgency on something and you need that time urgency to get started? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it that when there's external accountability, it's usually much more clearly defined, more obvious exactly what it is you need to do by when, so it's simplifies some of that executive functioning. What is it about external accountability that makes it easier for you to get going on something than when you don't have that accountability? Sometimes it's simply about that sense that we allow ourselves to get away, quote unquote, with saying, oh, I'll do it later, I'll do it later, Whereas we wouldn't want to say those things to somebody else. So sometimes it's not so much about wanting praise, but about that kind [00:09:00] of self presentation to somebody else. We don't want somebody else to think that we're someone that makes excuses that we're someone that doesn't do the things we say we do, where we'll still do that to ourselves potentially. So have a think what it is for you. </div> <div> The reason that's so important is that if we can get clearer, there's a lot of story about clarity here today, isn't there? If we can get clearer about what it is that's helpful about external accountability, we can think more about how we can replicate that when there isn't that formal external accountability there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now that doesn't mean putting in external accountability. I often get approached by people for coaching and when I ask them, what is it that you're looking for from coaching, they say, I want some external accountability. You know, my supervisor's not that present. I want somebody that I'm accountable to. And I almost always say no to those people. Or at least I certainly don't say yes. Without a [00:10:00] conversation about why I don't think me providing external accountability is the solution here, because if we just transfer external accountability to somewhere else, we still don't learn to be accountable to ourselves in any way. And when the external accountability is somewhat fake, ie I haven't got any control over the, you know, if, if you tell me you're gonna do something and then you don't do it, sure you've gotta rock up and tell me that, but you could just not come. Right? And so there's very little actual accountability there. So when we try and put fake accountability in place, it usually doesn't work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what we get to do instead is what are we getting outta that external accountability and how could we create that for ourselves? So if it's about a sense of structure, how can we create our own sense of structure? A lot of my members, for example, use the member led coworking sessions where they can just log in. Do a zoom call. Tell somebody what they're working on and get [00:11:00] on with it. And that just provides enough structure, enough sense that they're in it with other people for them to get on. </div> <div> If it's about task clarity that when somebody else has asked you to do it, it's usually much more obvious, what you need to be doing. Then we get to ask ourselves, okay, how can I make this task that I'm not accountable to other people for? How can I make it feel much clearer, much better defined so that the route to getting it done feels much more obvious to me? </div> <div> Sometimes it's more about the way that the external accountability person supports you. So with nice external accountability, maybe they help you feel calm, they help you feel reassured, they remind you what you have achieved, and then we get to think, how can we do those things for ourselves. If reassurance is something that's really important from an external accountability partner, how could we give ourselves reassurance? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I have a whole episode on that, by the way. I'll link to it in the [00:12:00] newsletter. We get again, to think how can we represent these things for ourselves? So rather than wishing we have external accountability, we instead get to think, how can we create those qualities ourselves. </div> <div> Now the next thing we are gonna do is really think about the fact that it was the getting going that was the problem, and we can ask ourselves again what would help us to get going, specifically if we had external accountability. Maybe it's clear instructions, maybe it's achievable goals, maybe it's a sort of positive compass telling us what direction to move in and we again get to replicate those things. What we wanna be careful of though, is that the things we put in place to help us get going aren't the things that undermine us later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, one of the techniques that I've seen a lot of people use is this notion of, let's just do 15 minutes. We can [00:13:00] do 15 minutes. Let's just do 15 minutes. Right? And that can feel like a really good strategy because you're not having to think about, okay, I'm gonna sit down for four hours and do amazing work, or whatever. We're breaking it down gently, but when we promise ourselves that we'll do. Just 15 minutes and then after 15 minutes we tell ourselves to keep going, and then we somehow end up going on for ages, partly because we don't trust that we'll start again next time then that is actually often a big betrayal of your own trust, that you've sort of got yourself going on the promise that it'll only be a short work block and then you've kept going 'cause you've sort of got that momentum going and you feel like, you know, oh, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Well, I've got it might not start again, but the problem is that reinforces that it's hard to start next time because you start not believing yourself. It's like, okay, random analogy, alert. I once did a adventure race in Borneo, 'cause obviously who doesn't [00:14:00] randomly do a adventure race in Borneo anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the gorgeous local helpers who was running the race forest, it was like a multi-day event thing. Um, whenever you went round a corner. He would say just a hundred meters. No matter where we were on the course. Right. It's just a hundred meters. It's just a hundred meters. And it gotta a stage where he just didn't believe a word he said because it was never just a hundred meters. It was usually a really long way. And it, it became a running joke, right? And I think he did it just to entertain us, but it meant we didn't believe him. We didn't trust the word he said. And this happens to ourselves when we say, oh, we'll just do a short work block, and then we end up working for way longer than we intended. </div> <div> And it's something that weirdly, we praise ourselves for, oh, I only intended to work for half an hour, but I ended up working four hours. Aren't I clever? Aren't I dedicated? I say, no, no, not really. You are making it so that you are somebody who you can't trust. You [00:15:00] are making it so that next time you start, you don't believe yourself when you say it's only gonna be half an hour, and so whilst you're saying it'll only be half an hour, you are knowing that really you're intending to do more, and that makes it even harder to start next time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I would really encourage you to do is to try and set in place tactics that help you to start that don't undermine that faith in yourself that you can develop. So things like reminding yourself why you want to do it, reminding yourself that you are capable of doing the next step, reminding yourself we are starting with 30 minutes and then we are gonna reassess. 'cause that's very different than saying I'm only gonna do 30 minutes. What it means though, is after 30 minutes, you need to genuinely reassess and genuinely decide whether you're gonna carry on at that stage or not. And you have to genuinely agree with yourself that if you choose not to carry on, that's still a [00:16:00] win. That's still 30 minutes done. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are trying to set in place motivations for all of this that are rooted in us having a choice about this, that are rooted in us feeling competent, feeling like we're capable of doing things, and feeling like this is something that's important and meaningful to us. </div> <div> The other practice that I want you to build alongside this, if you are practicing making it easier to get going, I want you to also practice stopping when you said you would as well. Okay. I don't want you to practice one without the other because if you could get better at getting yourself going, but you're still not good at getting yourself to stop and believing that you'll get going next time, that's when we build this culture of overwork that just doesn't really serve us, and that doesn't build this sense of faith in ourselves. </div> <div> So if you are trying to get better at getting yourself to start when you intended to start, I want you to also practice stopping when you intended to stop. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the big tips for doing that are reminding yourself that you're practicing both things at [00:17:00] once. Reminding yourself that learning to stop is part of learning to start again, and then thinking to yourself, right, if I'm stopping now, how can I make it really easy for myself to start again tomorrow or just start again later on. Because often we think I won't have the motivation. </div> <div> I am on a roll. I know what I'm doing and I'll forget what I was gonna say. All these sorts of things, right? So those are the questions I need to answer for yourself. If you get to the end of a work block session and you are feeling like actually, You know, or I, I probably should just keep going. I want a bit of a role, I mean, to ask yourself, what would enable me to pick up this role tomorrow? </div> <div> What would remind me why it's interesting? What would make it easy for me to remember what the next step is? What would make it easy for me to remember exactly where I'm up to? One way to think about it is to think about it in terms of handover notes. </div> <div> So, any of you who have worked in a clinical [00:18:00] environment will know that when one shift of doctors or nurses or whoever come on, there is usually a period of time where they kind of go round together and hand over one shift to the next. So they update them on each of the cases. They let them know what's been done, they make sure their records are sorted so that the incoming shift know exactly where they're at. I want you to think about preparing for the next shift in the same way, even though you are the next shift, so that as you come towards the end of a block that you've been intending to work, you are thinking about how can I set this up so that it's easy for me to pick up next time I pick it up? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so we're working on getting, going and finishing on time, at the same time, because one will feed the other. </div> <div> That sort of record keeping, that sort of handover documents can also help with this sense of accountability because if we haven't got accountability to others, if we're not [00:19:00] reporting to others. One thing that can be really useful is to keep a way of kind of reporting to ourselves so that we are much clearer whether we've done what we intended, where we're up to, what going our way, what we're gonna do about it, and all of the things that an external accountability person might help you navigate. If we've got our own records, if we can see what we've been doing, then again, it becomes much easier to provide that sort of accountability and support to ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing I'm gonna recommend today, and this is gonna sound a little strange, but it is massively helped me. Now I say it's helped me. You guys all know I'm a work in progress, right? I'm not perfect on the self-accountability things, by any extent, but I'm a lot better than I was as with a lot of things and the thing that has helped me more than any other is deciding that being accountable to myself is the point. And let me explain what I mean by that. I used to argue with [00:20:00] myself all the time, so I would make a plan. I would decide that I should do A and then B. And then when it was time to do A, I would convince myself as to why it's exactly not the time to do A, yeah, I should probably do B because that would be better and that makes more sense and it would better to do B than A. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I would have these arguments with myself and often in these arguments, I'd end up doing neither of them because I plan to do A, but I probably should do B and I can't really decide which. So I do neither. Genius. Love it. I'm sure some of you will empathize with that. And the thing I realized that snipped off the argument more than anything else was saying, I will do a, because it's what I said I would do. Not because it's the best answer, not because it's the most logical, not because it's the most efficient, no other reason other than it's what I said I'd do. And I kind of want to be somebody who does what they said they'd do. And now does that mean I never changed my mind and I never [00:21:00] don't, do what I said I'd do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, obviously, but I stick to what I said I'd do inordinately more than I ever used to because I've made the accountability., The point. I'm going because I said I would. I'm doing that thing now because I said I would. I'm starting at this time because I said I would. </div> <div> And then what we get to do is we get to reinforce what a gorgeous thing it is when we do what we said we'd do. And for lots of you, the other thing they say, oh, but what happens? You end up like, you know, you don't start exactly when you said you would, and so then you're behind on your schedule and dah, dah, dah. I just go back into my schedule. Okay, what did I say I'd be doing at 11 o'clock? Okay, we're doing that then whether I did what I said I was gonna do between nine and 11. Who knows, but I said I was gonna be doing this at 11, so that's what I'm gonna crack on with right now. When we make being accountable to ourselves, the specific thing we're trying to [00:22:00] do over and above any of our actual individual goals, then suddenly we can kind of take away a lot of the self negotiation, take away a lot of that discussion, and do the thing we intended to do. </div> <div> Now where that all comes back to, and this is something we've been working on in the membership this quarter that's happening at the moment, is we then have to really be careful when we're making our plans that their plans we actually want to stick to. Because if you are somebody who struggles without external accountability, a big chunk of that is probably you make ludicrous plans at the moment because you don't hold yourself accountable to them anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you just plan some stuff without really thinking about whether it's everything you need to do, without really thinking about whether it's achievable or not. And then because you're not being held accountable to it, you just don't do it and then we wonder why we are not doing the things we said we [00:23:00] would. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we are working on building the sense of accountability to ourselves in the absence of external accountability by replicating what we want from external accountability for ourselves, then part of that is making realistic plans that take into account the real human you, the real different responsibilities that you have, so that the initial plan is as close as possible to something you want to stick to. So that you can then use the, I'm doing this because it's what I said I'd do, and it was a reasonable plan, As your logic throughout, if you believe it's an unreasonable plan before you start, that's very hard to stick to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just as if you are external accountability person, the person who's holding you to this, if you thought they were unreasonable, you thought they were unfair in what they were asked. You would probably be much less inclined to kind of scurry to meet what they're asking of you. But if that's [00:24:00] somebody who has set you realistic, understandable, fair goals and targets, we're much more likely to try and achieve it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We want to be replicating that for ourselves. So that was a sort of extended answer of the short voice note that I gave my member when she asked this. I hope that you found it useful. I know working without external accountability is one of the hardest things. It's one of the things that we need to develop all the way through our PhDs and our academic careers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope it's given you some food for thought. If you are on my newsletter, do reply to the emails. Let me know what you think and how this is applying in your life. Now, keep an eye on the podcast because over the next few weeks we are gonna have some coaching episodes. So I have asked my members for volunteers who would be willing to get coached for the podcast on a variety of different topics so it will give you a real insight into common issues that PhD students experience that you can learn from, apply for yourself, but it'll also give you some insight what it's [00:25:00] like to be in the membership and being able to hear other people getting coached on topics that are relevant to you. So make sure you tune in for those. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 30 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-31-how-to-get-going-on-work-without-external-accountability thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-30-how-to-write-when-youre-confused <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Writing can feel like you’re banging your head against a wall sometimes. Trying to craft sentences, when you’re not entirely sure where you’re going, and then spending hours working and ending up with nothing to show for it. In this episode I unpick the self-talk that makes this more painful than it needs to be, I introduce the concept of “thinking writing” and give you some specific tasks to experiment with. I don’t promise to stop you feeling confused - but I will move you from “confused and that’s a problem” to “confused and that’s OK and I know exactly what to do next”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15257099-2-40-how-to-use-a-do-know-don-t-know-list" target="_blank"> how to use a do know, don’t know list. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week is inspired by one of my members' questions. So in the PhD life coach membership, students are able to submit questions to me in our little private members community, and I will record short voice notes for them answering that specific question, and all the other members can hear the voice notes. And I do a bunch of these every week, and sometimes though I feel like they're such interesting questions and such, commonly experienced questions that I kind of steal them and bring them over here so I can share the answers with all of you guys and have a little bit more time to go into them in more detail. And that is what we're going to be doing today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what was the question that piqued my interest? It was, how do I write when I'm confused? So this person said that they can only get on with their writing when they know what they're saying and that they find that it flows really well. This is not somebody who struggles with their writing. They said it flows really [00:01:00] well once they know what they're gonna say and they get on with it, but that if they write when they're not sure what to say, it ends up being messy and nonsensical and they don't get anywhere. And so they want to know, how do I write when I'm confused? So I'm actually gonna divide this answer into three sections in a vague attempt for this not just to be me rambling. Anyway, so I wanna think first of all about what, anybody, so this person who asked the question, but any of you guys too, what you are making it mean about yourself that you are experiencing this confusion. It's the first part. The second part is I wanna think more about our kind of perception of the writing process. What is it? What's it for? What means it's going well or going badly. And then finally, I wanna give you some really specific tips about how you can move ahead when you're confused, so that as soon as you stop listening to this [00:02:00] podcast, you can go and start writing something that you're currently feeling confused about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So. That's my plan. Okay. As usual, I might go off on a tangent partway through? Who knows what will come out of my brain, but we're going with it for now. So first of all, what are you making it mean that you are confused? This is one of the most common things that I hear from you listeners, and that I see in my members and other clients is people making it mean if I am confused, I must not be good at this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's totally understandable, right? As we go through school and other parts of life, if you don't understand something, it usually is because you are in some way not keeping up with the teacher. There's something that you are kind of struggling to get, and we very much see right or wrong, uh, that being like on us, that that's our fault. </div> <div> That seems to be very much on us, right? That that's a [00:03:00] flaw in us in some way, and that if we were good enough at this, we would not be confused. But the fact is, as you get further and further through academia, whether you're doing your PhD, whether you are now an academic, as you get further and further through and you start wrestling with more complex problems, being confused becomes not so much something about you and your capabilities, but more about the complexity of the thing that you are wrestling with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because sure, sometimes confusion can be because we don't have the requisite skills and experience and understanding to understand this thing that we are looking at. That is sometimes the cause of the confusion, right? But often the cause of the confusion is because we are looking at something quite complex and we are seeing, oh, this person says this, but that person says [00:04:00] that and they can't both be true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I am a bit confused what is it that I'm seeing here? What's going on here? What is there evidence for? When I look at the data, if it showed this, then it would say that, and if it showed this, then it would say that, but it's saying this other thing or it's saying this thing that we didn't expect it to say. So what does that mean? I'm confused. Or I'm trying to piece together this story, this argument for the first time. No one's ever articulated this before and I haven't yet decided what I think about it, I, I'm still confused as to exactly what's going on here, what this, you know, these artifacts, this data collection, whatever it is, what it means. That's about the task you're trying to do rather than about your abilities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's also about the stage of the project you are at. In the [00:05:00] past when we were at school and things like that, usually the length of the tasks we were doing were not necessarily that long, and so you're kind of expected to get past that confused bit pretty quickly so that you could get on and get it done. </div> <div> But in a PhD or in an academic career, often we're in that confused part for really quite some time because figuring out what do we know, what do we need to know in order to decide how we're gonna present this or even decide what we actually think? Those periods of time can be quite protracted. That can be measured in weeks, months, even years. And so. What previously was a quick problem to be solved. Oh, I'm confused. Let's get some help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. I am less confused so I can move on. Now can become rapidly something where we're actually, we're in a state of somewhat [00:06:00] confusion if we call it confusion, if we frame it as confusion, but certainly the state where we're like, I don't know exactly how I'm gonna do this, or exactly what I'm trying to argue, or exactly what this is gonna end up looking like. </div> <div> Yet we can be in that period for really quite a long period of time. Okay, and so we're in this situation where the confusion no longer usually means anything about us and our abilities. It means something about the complexity of the task we're trying to do and the stage of that task that we're at. But if in our heads we still think it means something about us and that if we were better at it, we wouldn't be confused. Then it becomes a really uncomfortable place to be because it's not just then that we are confused about the thing we are then also judging ourselves hard for not being able to do the thing. We're not being able to figure out what we're gonna do with this complex issue. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I heard this a little bit [00:07:00] in the question that came in from my member because they talked about how when they're feeling confused, their writing comes out messy and nonsensical. And I was like, well, yeah, of course it does, but that doesn't mean you are messy and nonsensical. That doesn't mean you're not gonna figure this out. That's a version of the thinking process, and we're gonna talk about that more in a minute. That's the place you are at at the moment, and that doesn't mean anything about you and your abilities. It doesn't mean anything about your prospects. It doesn't mean anything about where you are gonna get next. </div> <div> It just means you're in this messy bit where you are trying nonsensical ideas. Sometimes they won't turn out to be nonsensical. They'll start as nonsensical and then you'll realize there's actually more sense in them than you realized. And other times they'll be nonsensical, but you'll realize that and it will open up a door to something else that makes more sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. We have to be careful about making it mean something [00:08:00] about ourselves. 'cause when we make it mean something about ourselves and our own prospects, then we bring the judgment in, then we bring the criticism, then we bring the, I should be moving faster. I should be making sense. I should have figured this out by now. And then we don't enjoy the academic process. 'cause actually that grappling with complex ideas is the academic process. And I know I've talked about that a few times on the podcast over the last few months, but I think it's really worth reiterating that is the academic process. And so this part of being confused, usually confusion is a sign that you are thinking about something interesting. Something that it's like, oh, it's actually not clear what this is or how to present it or how to move forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'd love for you to practice if your brain is going, oh yeah, I'm pretty confused about that going, yeah, of course. We're confused. It's complicated. We're gonna figure this out. And almost [00:09:00] embracing that confusion, seeing it as a sign that you are grappling with something that doesn't have a straightforward answer. </div> <div> Because frankly, if it had a straightforward answer and we knew exactly what we were gonna say immediately, it might not be worth reading. It might not be worth us writing it. If it's obvious to everybody, oh yes, this is the way forward, it might not actually even be that useful? The fact that we're grappling with something confusing means we're grappling with something interesting where it needs a perspective, where it needs a kind of filter and interpretation and a viewpoint, and that's what's interesting. </div> <div> So confusion is a sign that you are doing something interesting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is thinking about what we mean by writing. Because an awful lot of people only count it as writing if it is something that will end up in the end product. Either, you know, people know you've gotta do drafts, right? So I'm not saying that you guys think that you're gonna [00:10:00] write something and then off it goes straight into your article or straight into your chapter or whatever. </div> <div> But usually we think that writing is an attempt towards that, that it's working out a version of what could be in the final piece of text that we are then going to edit, improve, expand, reduce, even remove, but that is written with the intention of being the first sort of attempt at that final version, and that's great, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those things are important. Outlining what's gonna be in your final chapter, drafting your article, editing your article, all these things we know these are the important steps of writing. But what people often underestimate is the extent to which writing isn't only about producing an end product. Writing is also about understanding what's happening in your head 'cause the problem with thoughts is that we can't see [00:11:00] them. And when we can't see them, and especially with gorgeous intelligent brains like all of you guys have, is those thoughts can whiz in 47 directions inside our head, and they're very hard to grasp hold of, and they're very hard to play with and to see and to make decisions about and all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Writing is a way of making thinking visible. Writing is a way of getting it outta your head onto a piece of paper so that you can make decisions about it, and that doesn't even just mean brainstorms. I'm gonna talk to you in a minute about some specific techniques for all of this stuff. This doesn't just mean brainstorms. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what we're essentially trying to do here is recognize that writing can solely be a thinking process. I would love for you to prioritize writing that is never, ever going to go in your thesis or a published article. </div> <div> And you might say, [00:12:00] Vic, I barely have the time to do the real writing. I definitely don't have time to do the writing for fun. I definitely don't have time to write stuff that's never gonna get used, and I would argue I've been there. Okay, before I argue anything I'm gonna say I get that I massive and I still argue against that part of my brain. Okay. I have the coach part of my brain that says all these sensible things. You lot get to listen to my podcast once a week. I hear these things in my head all the time. You think that would be useful? But it's only part of my brain 'cause the other part of my brain is still going. Yeah. Yeah. But we haven't got that much time, so should we just get on with the bit that needs writing? Should we just get, get on with what's gonna go in the podcast rather than what could, or whatever. Okay. So if you are going, I don't have time for that, Vikki, because I don't have time for the actual writing I need to do, let alone other writing, I am talking specifically to you. If that was your thought, tune on in, 'cause this is specifically for you. If you think you don't have time [00:13:00] to do the thinking writing bit because you haven't got time to do the actual writing, writing bit. You need it more. Not less. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's the same that I sometimes get members contacting me saying, you know, love the membership, find it so useful. But I'm struggling to fit in coaching sessions. Um, I just don't really have time. If you don't have time for coaching, you need a coach. You a hundred percent need a coach because coaching makes everything else go faster. And writing as thinking makes every other step of the writing process go better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you are finding yourself, criticizing yourself, saying, when I'm confused and I'm writing it doesn't make any sense, I can't use it. Then we get to say no because that's not its job. Its purpose is not to end up in the thesis. The writing I do when confused is not with that end product in [00:14:00] mind directly. </div> <div> Where this is gonna translate into that, it's about understanding and untying that confusion. The writing is the tool, not the end product. And that's again why I think we get so judgmental when we are confused about our writing, 'cause we're expecting it to look like an end product when it is a tool. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So then I hear you ask the third thing, what do I actually do then, Vic, if I'm using the writing as a tool to understand my confusion and to decide what I wanna do going forward. What does that actually look like? Because in most of my members and the people I've worked with, their writing looks like drafting. </div> <div> So when you say write stuff that will never be in their thesis, never be in a grant, never be in their article. They don't know what to write, and that's okay. 'cause we don't really practice this stuff. Right. You get so much practice at sort of, um, focused writing towards an end goal, like an essay or whatever as we come through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we very rarely get asked to do or [00:15:00] get. Sort of experience and practice at doing this sort of thinking writing. So what do we do? First thing we do is we make it feel different than target focused writing, than writing as an end product. Because our, our love little brains, they might be super clever, but if it feels the same. We're sat in front of a computer typing same as we would. If we're producing an end product, then our brains get really confused and start judging ourselves against that criteria, and we don't wanna do that. So let's make it feel different. Now, there's a number of ways you can do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I love paper and pen. I particularly love big paper and bright colored pens. And by the way, A DHD is, stay with me. Stay with me. 'cause I know where you're going. You don't have to run off to Amazon, you don't need new pens. Please don't go and find some color coded system that's gonna work. And those of you who don't have a DHD, we like, well now, of course not. I'm listening to a, to a podcast. Why would I do that? Everybody else I know you. Okay. My members do this in workshops and I have to say, stay [00:16:00] here. So when I say bright colored pens, I don't mean you need new felt tips. I mean, you grab whatever you've got in your house, just ridiculous pens. Whether it's those little short stubby ones that you get in like Ikea or whatever, or whether it's crayons that your kids use, or whether it's that Sharpie that you bought once for something or other. </div> <div> I don't care. Just make it some random ass pen. Okay? Write in pencil. Who writes in pencil these days? Let's write pencil. Grab a pencil. Happy days, whatever. Do not go and buy more pens. This is not the point. I'm on a bit of a low buy mission at the moment, and I'm trying to bring you guys along with me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's a tangent, but it's a short one. So we're coming back. So grab some other pen, pencil and try writing using that. Writing in somewhere different than usually right? Writing, standing up rather than sitting down writing by shouting into a voice note machine and getting the transcription cleverness to do its thing. </div> <div> If you do feel that you want to be on your computer and that you feel you can separate it. One of my gorgeous [00:17:00] ex-member, used to write in Pink Comic Sands for this part of it. So we are trying to write in a way that is specifically and intentionally not good academic writing. So that's thinking about changing the materials to make that obvious. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way you can do it is writing in not an academic voice at all. So writing how it comes out your head. Writing in a way that is explicitly not academic. Writing in the way you'd explain it to your children. Writing in a way that just feels conversational. And again, we are not trying to produce something we are gonna use, but we're sort of talking through our thoughts. And you can do that in a, it's called metacognition. When you're thinking about thinking, you can do it in a metacognitive way where you are writing about what you're thinking. So you're saying, um, you know, the data showed x, Y, ZI think this could possibly mean blah, blah, [00:18:00] blah, blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if I was gonna argue it that way, I would say, da. But it could also mean this. And if it was that, then I'd say, and you can actually write down, I'm finding it quite hard to choose between these. 'cause this one has strong arguments of X, Y, Z. Write, write, write, write, write. Um uh, but that one has strong arguments of A, B, C. Write, write, write, write, write. So we're writing all this down. Right. But we're writing like what we are thinking, not some like early draft of a mini textbook thing. So we're writing using unusual materials or in unusual places. We're writing in an unusual style, IE how it comes out of our heads rather than into academic thinking. </div> <div> We can even set ourselves little unusual challenges. So you could, if you are looking at it going, oh, I just dunno what this means. If you can get to a stage where you can say, or it could mean this, or it could mean that, then you could say, okay. I'm gonna write for 15 minutes [00:19:00] as though I really strongly believe it means this, and I'm gonna find all the evidence I can. I'm gonna make the most compelling argument I can, and I'm going all in on that. I'm gonna be a tyrant who only believes that, and then set yourself for 15 minutes i'm gonna write the other way. I'm gonna write as though I strongly believe that version that it could mean this. And then we do 15 minutes where we're like, okay, I'm gonna be the best diplomat ever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Who finds the place in between who avoids all or nothing thinking, who thinks something in between the two who maybe avoids the controversy or addresses it indirectly or something and I'm gonna write like them for 15 minutes? And you might say, well, I'm on a minute, Vic, I've, that means I've been writing for 45 minutes and I haven't produced anything useful. </div> <div> But what you've produced is progression in your thinking. And if you are confused, that is what we are looking for. We're not looking for end product producing now. We are looking for progression and increasing clarity in our thinking, because I promise if [00:20:00] you try to argue something from both perspectives, as you go through, as you start looking for evidence, as you work on it, you will find that there are some bits that feel more compelling than others. There's some where you're like, okay, yeah, actually this is quite convincing. And others you're like, I feel quite awkward arguing it this way. And you will start to notice how you feel when you write it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'll start to notice where you've got more evidence. You'll start to notice which version of this feels true and authentic to you. And that's how you start progressing your thinking. And then, I mean, this person's already told me that once they've got a clear idea, they're pretty good at just smashing it out. I know that's not true for all of you. We've got other podcasts to help you with that. But once you've got to a stage where your thoughts are much clearer, then it is so much easier. 'cause now we can start to make an outline. Now we can start drafting around that outline. We can start editing around that outline. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We've got something to [00:21:00] refer back to because we're saying, okay, this article needs to present that viewpoint because I've decided, and if you're watching on YouTube, I'm kind of doing the little inverted comma speech marky things "decided", and I'll tell you why in a second. We've decided what our viewpoint is. Suddenly it's actually easier to draft 'cause you've got a viewpoint you're trying to convey rather than waffling around being unsure what your viewpoint is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I said I put inverted commas around decided, and that's because these don't have to be final decisions, right? These don't have to be okay. Once I've done my thinking, writing, I dive on irreversibly into my drafting process, and from then I'm stuck with what my viewpoint and I've just gotta make it work. No. Obviously not. We're dynamic people. If once you've sort of started writing it in a more outlined and drafty way in more academic tone and things like that, you're like, I don't think this is as compelling as I thought it was, or actually, I like my viewpoint, but here's an extra nuance I want to add, or extra evidence I want to add, then of course we [00:22:00] change it then. Right? We're still thinking when we're doing all of that stuff, but it's a lot easier. If we've made at least some of that confusion, less confusing by going through the thinking writing process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope that is helpful. I want you all to have a ponder. What is one thing that you are feeling too confused to write about at the moment, and how could you try out one or two of the tasks that I've just shared with you to see if you can make your thinking visible, play with your thinking. Feel free to like cut stuff up and move it around. Do different ideas in different colors. Let's be a bit creative about this stuff. Have a go. And if you're not on my newsletter, jump on my newsletter. Just go to my website, the PhD life coach.com, and you can sign up right there on the front page, and then reply to my newsletter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let me know what you're trying and how it is helping you straighten out your confusion. Thank you so much for [00:23:00] listening, everybody. I hope that was useful and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-30-how-to-write-when-youre-confused thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-29-why-you-shouldnt-wait-for-a-polished-draft <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the most annoying phrases I hear is “my supervisor only gives feedback on polished drafts”. This is usually accompanied by stories of wasting weeks stressing about whether the work is polished enough, only for the supervisor to later declare it “missing the point” or other such criticisms. In this episode I discuss (ok, I rant about) why waiting for a polished draft is a fundamentally flawed policy and what we should do instead. I give advice for supervisors who think that this is the easiest/best way (I know you’re not doing it to be unhelpful!) and for students whose supervisors still do this. Check it out if you’re in this position, or if you just want to hear me get a bit feisty!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16647384-3-25-how-to-edit-your-work-without-hating-yourself" target="_blank"> how to edit your work without hating yourself.  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, I'm not gonna lie, I've been procrastinating recording this. I'd got a plan for what I was gonna do and for various reasons I wasn't able to do it this week, and I've not been in a great mood. I'm not sure why. Sun shining mostly. Not sure why the grumps have hit, but the grumps have hit a little bit. </div> <div> And one of the things that I'm really working on is being able to still do the things I need to do, even when I don't particularly feel like it. And that is something that I do struggle with. And so yesterday I was meant to record this podcast. I didn't. But today it's like, right, I'm gonna record this podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I thought, what would I say to my members if they had a task that they didn't really feel like doing, but that they wanted to get done? And I decided to try and practice what I preach. So what would we talk about? We would talk about why we want to do the thing, whether we're willing to do the thing, that we don't necessarily have to be motivated to do it. [00:01:00] We just have to be willing to do it. And one of the things we've been talking about more recently is using your strengths, meeting yourself where you are at and moving forward from there. So I thought, right, what would using my strengths and meeting myself where I'm at, look like, and I realized that the one thing that was is I have a lot of opinions and I'm feeling a little grumpy. So I thought, why not? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're gonna get one of my opinions today. Uh, so let's go. This is partly aimed at supervisors. If you are a supervisor who does the thing I'm about to get grumpy about, then I'm gonna spend the next 20 minutes or so trying to convince you as to why you shouldn't. If your student who supervisor does the thing that I'm getting grumpy about, then I am going to help you build your logic when you ask for them to do it differently. And I'll give you some kind [00:02:00] of coping strategies if they refuse to change. So that's what we're gonna do today. I'm gonna channel my grumpy and have a little rant. Let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what's the thing? The thing, and it comes up in my membership. It comes up in my one-to-one coaching, and frankly, it comes up when I do supervisor training and people defend it. And that is not giving feedback until you have a polished draft. Whew. Deep breath, Vikki. This winds me up more than pretty much anything else in the supervisory world because I think it wastes everybody's time. I understand where it comes from and I will talk with you where I think it comes from, but it is such a time waster in practical ways, in emotional ways, and it's a time waster for both supervisor and student. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first of all, where does it come from? Well, what I hear from a surprising number of [00:03:00] students is that their supervisors won't give feedback on any writing until it's polished. And by polished they mean sounding like it's actually a piece of academic writing. So it's in the correct sort of academic tone, whatever that means in your discipline that it doesn't have spelling errors and typos and grammatical mistakes and repetitive, you know, it's elegantly written and I get it. Supervisors, if you're listening, I know you are tight for time. I've been there. I massively get how tight of time you are and when we read something that we were expecting to be polished, that is then really scruffy. It's really easy to get cross about that because it's really easy to then think that you have to spend lots of time correcting it. So making it mean something about how much time and effort you need to put into it. It's really easy to make it mean [00:04:00] something about. That person's work, it's really easy to read it and be like, oh, this is so scruffy. They've clearly not put any effort in, and it's so, it's really easy to then end up making assumptions about the people who've submitted it to you or whether they're taking it seriously and whether they're capable and all these sorts of things. And so I understand the frustration of unexpectedly receiving a scruffy draft when you're expecting something else. I can then also kind of see the logic. It's like, okay, well if I then tell them to make sure that it's polished, then that won't happen. Okay. So it's one of those situations where there's a very valid problem, but we've jumped to the wrong solution because we think the solution is asking them to submit polished drafts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there are so many problems associated with waiting until students submit polish drafts. One of the things I teach in my [00:05:00] membership is that writing is actually made up of a whole series of different types of tasks. From writing just about the things you're reading, writing about the things that you are thinking, and none of that writing goes into your final writing. This is more kind of writing as processing and decision making. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's outlining, there's rough drafts, there's macro editing where we are really thinking about the content, whether it covers everything, whether the proportions are about right, and all those sorts of things. Micro editing where we make sure that it accurate and that it's, you know, appropriate for our discipline and things like that. And then there's kind of a proofreading element and so on, and we don't move through those in a linear way. We move through them quite iteratively. But they're all different tasks, right? And the problem with asking for a piece of polished writing before you give feedback is that somebody is therefore moving between all of those steps without feedback at [00:06:00] any point until they get to the last bit, and then you give them feedback on that bit. </div> <div> And then what happens is you are like, oh, I don't think you should include any of this stuff, but you should have included this stuff that you omitted. And suddenly they've polished paragraphs that you are now telling them to take out they've not written things entirely that you think should be included, and so all of a sudden you are giving them really demoralizing feedback because something that they've spent ages toiling over to make it sound good, is being removed entirely, and they've realized they've entirely missed other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Requesting polished drafts also completely shifts the focus of what you are asking for when you're getting feedback. Because if you tell somebody it has to be polished before it comes to me, you're saying it needs to be good. Okay. It needs to not only cover the stuff, I think it should [00:07:00] cover in the ways I think it should, but it should sound the way it should. It should be correct and accurate and proofed read and all those things. And so what the student's brain is then saying is, is it good enough? Is it good enough? Is it good enough? Is it polished enough? Okay. That's the question they're asking themselves. And the problem when a student is going, do I think it's good enough? Do I think it's do it good enough? Is that the vast majority of PhD students don't often think their work is good enough, or at least don't have a good, um, kind of yard stick to measure what good enough really is. What that really means. And so what then happens is we end up having huge amounts of time between rounds of feedback because they've got to do the entire drafting and outlining process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they've got to edit it and they've got to polish it and they've got to proofread it and they're probably then gonna procrastinate sending it to you 'cause they're worried it's not good enough. And so keep fiddling with the [00:08:00] text and keep checking things and moving things around a little bit and stuff until eventually they either panic enough that they submit it or they eventually think that it might just be good enough and they're not sure what else they'll do anyway and so they submit it. It means we take a huge amount of time in between setting the piece of work and getting anything to look at, and there's so many places that they can go wrong in that process. I did mention I was grumpy, didn't I? I told you this again, ranty. Anyway and so we waste so much time. We waste so much effort and we don't teach the principles of good feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the usual pushback, and I've had this in supervisor training sessions that I've run, i've had this as a pushback. The usual pushback against looking at earlier drafts is I can't focus on the content if there are mistakes. And I have two responses to that. [00:09:00] The first one is if it's clear what the person is asking for feedback on, and we're gonna talk about that in a second, exactly what I mean. If it's clear what the person is asking for feedback about, you absolutely should be able to, because if the question is, is it good enough? It's hard to answer that when there's lots of mistakes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if the question is, does my broad argument make compelling sense, you can absolutely answer that, even if there's typos and mistakes in it. Okay. So that's my first one is if we are really clear what the feedback is about, why we're asking for feedback at this time point, then absolutely the mistakes don't make any difference in it, whether it's in elegantly written, whether there's typos and things doesn't make any difference. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other is if it is just that typos annoy you and you feel the need to correct them, I am gonna say this with love 'cause I do have a lot of supervisors that listen to [00:10:00] this. That's a you problem. That is a you problem. You get to learn to regulate your own emotions about the fact that typos annoy you. Perhaps delve a little bit into why they bother you so much and what perfectionist standards you maybe need to work through so that you can look at something and give feedback without it being perfectly polished. </div> <div> An analogy that often helps people see this is I want you to imagine you're a commissioned artist. Okay, so you're an artist who paints paintings that other people request. So it's not that you just make them and sell them to people, that people come to you and say, I want you to do a painting of my house, or a painting of my dog, or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you then paint it to demand. Now the client could say, oh, I won't know if I love it until I see the finished picture. So do the whole thing all the way through. Do the composition, do the drafting, [00:11:00] do the choosing of the colors of the paint. </div> <div> Do finalize the actual painting. Make it all beautiful. Varnish it, frame it. And then I'll tell you whether I like it or not. Ludicrous, no commissioned artist would ever do that. Okay. What would happen instead is that you would have discussions where you're like, I'm thinking about doing it like this. You might show a series of sketches that you've done go, do you like the dog laying like this, or do you want it sitting up ? Do you prefer this or that? I'm thinking of these sorts of paint swatches. What do you think? Are these the colors you enjoy? You do all of that stuff. It's the same for you to an interior designer. You wouldn't say, I want you to make a polished version. Do my whole house. And then I'll tell you whether I like it and whether you need to change it or not. No, they make mood boards. They do all the different, you know, they do the designs, they'd show examples you know, little bits of this is what a final bit might look like, but not all of it.[00:12:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we would absolutely expect that. And the reason we'd expect that is because if we give feedback regularly on specific things, then we are so much more likely to be working together in the same direction. And that's what we want, right? We want supervisor and students to feel like they're working together in the same direction with the same common aim. </div> <div> So what we want is not to be waiting for polished drafts. We want to be able to have feedback that's appropriate for the stage at every stage of the feedback process. Does that mean that as a supervisor, you should be reading every scruffy draft that they produce? No, because a scruffy draft is not necessarily the best way of getting feedback on the specific thing that you need feedback on at any one time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so instead of thinking that our option is, oh, I either have to read lots of scruffy drafts, or I have to wait for polished drafts, and that will just be how it is. [00:13:00] We get to ask ourselves, what do I actually want to give feedback on at this stage, and what is the best way for them to present that to me such that I'm able to do it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. Really, really important question. So, if you think about it at the beginning of a writing process, what things do you wanna get feedback on? Then you wanna make sure that the broad argument is clear, that the research question is well established and justified that the scope of the data collection or whatever version you do in your discipline. Is about right. Does it matter whether everything's spelled correctly? Of course it doesn't. Absolutely doesn't, and it's not what we're gonna give feedback on, but we are gonna give feedback about are those broad things. This is the academic equivalent of a sketch. Are the main things in the right places. Does it look like this will build towards a compelling argument? Are they making it compellingly yet? [00:14:00] No. But does it look like the right pieces are there to build towards a compelling argument? And so then you ask, right, if that's what I need to do at the early stages of a draft, what's the best format for me to get that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is that a annotated bibliography? Is that a detailed outline so I can see what order they're planning to do it in? Is it, and this is something people very rarely use, but I'm a big fan of, is it a polished summary? So if you only want to read polished text, I would massively encourage you to get your students to write a polished summary. So like 500 words or 800 words or something like that, that tells the whole story in beautiful, elegant writing so that you don't have a meltdown when you see a typo, um, but polished. And then you can see does this actually make sense in this order? Are there sections we don't need? Are there sections that are missing?[00:15:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are there sections that are repetitive and that will take so much less time than doing a polished draft of 4,000 words or whatever. So ask yourself, what's the piece that they need in order to move forward? What specific thing do I need to get feedback on? </div> <div> And what's the best format for us to do that? Sometimes it could be a presentation. Right. It could be. Talk me through the argument here. Talk me through how you are presenting this. It could be if you are in a sort of quantitative, numerically kind of a field, it could be, give me the research question, give me the principle graph and give me 10 lines of explanation of that graph, for example. What do I need in order to be able to actually give meaningful feedback for the stage that it's at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're at a stage where actually their ability to write in an academic way, whatever that means in your [00:16:00] discipline and your opinion is your biggest concern. It doesn't have to be the full thing. Ask 'em to give you a paragraph. You can give decent feedback on academic writing and style from a paragraph. Why have they got to polish the whole thing? Ask them to submit a piece of writing, a short piece, paragraph, two paragraphs, something like that. Give them feedback on that specific feedback. Not completely rewording, but like specific feedback. And then ask them, I want you to write two more paragraphs and I want you to apply the feedback I gave you on these paragraphs to everything else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or even better get them to submit a couple of paragraphs of writing. Then you go through with them, actually sat next to them or on a screen together, go through and go, oh, I would move this to here. See how if we rephrase that, that would be clearer. See how you've got repetition here and here. Actually take them through, editing real life with them, and then say, I want you to take the [00:17:00] principles of what we've done to that paragraph and apply it to the rest of the work before you give it to me. </div> <div> Because that's the other thing, right, is if you get them to polish an entire thing, if there's one problem with the way they write or one misunderstanding, it's gonna be infused through that whole thing, and you are either gonna have to correct it a hundred times, or you are not gonna give feedback on the whole thing, in which case it was pointless to them giving you the whole thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is much better to pick up these issues or short pieces of text and then to give them the opportunity to go away and apply the feedback that you've taught them and to see whether it now comes back better next time. And the joy of this is if you are more specific in your feedback, if you are much clearer exactly which element we're giving feedback on right now, you can do it so much faster. 'cause some people are going, Vikki, I don't have time for many, many iterations of feedback. My view, you [00:18:00] don't have time not to have many iterations of feedback. Because if your student works for three months to send you something polished and then you realize there's fundamental flaws with it, you got another three months before, yes, you might have spent an hour, two hours reading it or whatever, but you've now got another three months to wait until they send you the next polished draft. We want to build to a stage where we can get to quick and dirty feedback. Where actually to give them the bit of information, the bit of opinion, the bit of insight that they need to move forward doesn't take you very long 'cause you're keeping it really specific. </div> <div> So it's a, here's something quick. Okay, think about this, think about that. Okay, go away. Here's the next bit. Okay, let's go. So it keeps the ball moving. It makes it much less likely that you are getting off track makes it much more likely that overall the efficiency of it will work so much better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And finally, what do you do if you're a student whose supervisor [00:19:00] insists on this and is unlikely to listen to my little podcast rants? Well, I think the first thing is to get really clear yourself on your purpose for asking feedback because if you can get clear on your purpose for asking for feedback at this stage, you can then get creative about what you could offer to share with them, to enable them to give feedback on that, that doesn't involve them reading a full scruffy draft. So we've talked about a bunch of options here. You could suggest those not saying, I don't want you to wait for a polished draft anymore, so please could you do it differently, but instead saying it will be useful if at this time, juncture, I could get feedback on this specific thing. Would it be okay if I talk it through with you or give you a polished summary or do a quick presentation or something, one of the ideas that I just gave you? You can actually suggest those as an alternative approach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing that you can do, and this doesn't always work, but I still think it's quite a useful practice, [00:20:00] is you can indicate where you know it's not as polished as it could be. Part of the thing that supervisors worry about is if they read something and it's not very good, is whether or not you think it's good. Because if it's not very good and you don't think it's good, then we're not too bad. We're just earlier in the stages. But if they don't think it's good and you do think it's good, then we've got more of a kind of taste gap going on. We've got a more of a lack of understanding happening. And so what you can do if you are encouraging them to look at something that is an earlier draft than they would normally want to, is indicate places that have not yet been proofread, or places where you know that it needs shortening, for example, okay? So that they can spend less time feeding back on the things that you already know. </div> <div> The final thing is I would really encourage you to figure out a fast way to get it to polished enough, because what we're doing here is not getting it [00:21:00] to the stage where we think it is good enough and as good as we can possibly get it, we're getting it to a stage where it's polished enough that they won't be crossed about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what might that look like? That might look like not spending ages and ages, really, sort of battling with yourself as to whether to say the sentence like this or like that. But instead simply going through it and making sure there's no errors in it, making sure that you've checked for spelling mistakes, you've checked for typos, things like that. </div> <div> So it may not be your best piece of work ever, but you've done a quick sweep through to give it a sort of a veneer of polish, okay? So that it's not overtly messy. that way you can still ask for more specific types of feedback on particular issues that you're concerned about at the moment, but you've kind of scrubbed off the top those obvious mistakes that are gonna flag it as being not a polished version. </div> <div> And the irony is [00:22:00] for many of you that might be just what your supervisor means. That your supervisor doesn't mean this has to be the absolute best that you could possibly achieve in three months, but they mean please just check there's not overt mistakes in it. And if that's the case clarifying that might straighten this whole thing out. Anyway, it may just be that you've got mixed messages as to what a polished draft even means to your supervisor, so hopefully there's some little workarounds for you if your supervisors aren't open to looking at rougher versions or different formats.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's my little rant. And you might be going, but Vikki, no one would be asked for polished drafts. I always look at early drafts if, if that's you. I love you. You are great. Make sure you stay focused in what you're asking for so that you're not exhausting yourself, giving full feedback on every element at every stage. Because that's the other flip side is if you are one of these lovely [00:23:00] supervisors who says, show me it whenever you are ready but doesn't say what to show you and doesn't say specifically what you're looking at, then you are simultaneously feeding back on clarity and compellingness. And, detail and accuracy and spelling, style, punctuation, grammar. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are feeding back on all of those, every time you are doing too much work, you are at the other end of my problems here. Okay? I love you dearly and you don't have time to do that. You are not serving your students by trying to do that. So if you are at the other end, you're like, oh, but I always read it, then we need to think much more clearly about how can you ask them to give you something that allows you to assess the one thing that you're assessing in this round of feedback and get it back to them rapido so they can get on and do the next thing. And you can get on and do the rest of everything else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are also thinking, but I don't know anyone who'd asked for polished drafts. You'd be [00:24:00] surprised. Unfortunately, you would be surprised. Every group of students I've ever worked with, at least some of them have supervisors who say they will only read polished drafts, and that's why it winds me up quite this much. And that's why this felt like a fun topic to talk about in a week where I was feeling a little bit grumpy anyway, and I actually felt better for talking about it. I hope it is useful. </div> <div> I am actually, and I just decided this spontaneously, so I'll like make it work. I am going to create a little landing page where you can come and get a feedback request form proforma that I have designed and recommend using. It enables students to be much more specific about what they're asking for from you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Students, even if your supervisors don't ask for it, you could use it as a kind of template for an email or something like that just to really clarify your thoughts about what you're asking for. Supervisors, I'd really encourage you to use it with your students. I'll create a little landing page. I'll put it [00:25:00] in the show notes. So whenever you go to my website, PhD life coach.com, if you click on podcast, you'll be able to see all of the show notes from all the different episodes, and I will make sure that there's a link in there where you can download, this particular PDF and I hope you find it useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much. I hope I wasn't too ranty, but I kind of enjoyed it. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-29-why-you-shouldnt-wait-for-a-polished-draft thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-28-how-to-manage-when-your-work-is-interrupted-all-the-time <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lots of people struggle to get work done because they feel like they’re always interrupted, whether that’s by colleagues, friends or family. In this episode I discuss how we can explore this with curiosity, and give some tangible tips about how to reduce the likelihood of interruptions as well as reducing the impact on your work. There’s some hard truths in here too, so be ready to get called out (in a loving and compassionate way as usual!)   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12845904-31-how-to-spot-and-stop-all-or-nothing-thinking" target="_blank"> how to spot, and stop, all or nothing thinking </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week we are thinking about interruptions. So this is something members talk about all the time, the fact that they're kind of getting into their work, they finally feel focused. And then they get interrupted. And for some of you it's gonna be things like you're working from home and you are interrupted by your housemates, your family, your kids, others of you, you'll be working in the actual like work environment and you'll be interrupted by students perhaps, or you'll be interrupted by colleagues, sometimes colleagues just wanting to chat, sometimes asking your advice, something urgent needs doing all these different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I have to confess with you that when I was still working in the office in my old academic job, I was probably the source of least as many interruptions as I was the victim. I used to get bored of what I was doing and wander the corridors looking for somebody who might be [00:01:00] distractible knocking on people's doors. And so part of this might be about me advising you on how to manage people who do what I used to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So partly because of that history, but also just 'cause we're all about compassion around here, we are gonna try and come at this from the point of view that the interrupter isn't necessarily doing anything wrong and is almost certainly not trying to disturb you and interrupt you and jeopardize your work in some way. And we're gonna come at it from the perspective that you are not just problematically distractible. Now, some of you might feel problematically distractible. There are definitely days where I'm problematically distractible, but we're gonna come at it from the point of view that this is just a kind of logistic challenge. </div> <div> There are people who want to do the thing that interrupt us and we want to do the thing that we had intended to do. We'll say sometimes [00:02:00] secretly like being interrupted, but we'll come back to that in a second. Um, and we'll try and look at it rather than in a kind of goodies and baddies kind of way, look at it as a little challenge not to solve, but a little challenge to minimize the impact of, and I have six suggestions for you today of things you can do to either minimize the interruptions themselves or to minimize the impact that those interruptions have on what you were trying to do. So let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first one is that rather than just moan about interactions, we are going to analyze them. I want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen if you can, or do this in your brain if not, have a think about the last few times that you were interrupted, and I want you to describe that context yourself as much as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where were you? Who interrupted you? [00:03:00] Why did they interrupt you on face value? Why? And then also, why did they really interrupt you? Is there other reasons that they interrupted you? You know, what did they interrupt you about? Were they like me just coming for a chat? Were they seeking help? Did they not know how to do something? What was their reason for interrupting you? And I want you to analyze what happened when you were interrupted. So how did you initially respond? How did you respond as the kind of interruption went on? And then how did that transition back to work go if indeed you did transition back to work? Sometimes we don't. Okay. So I want you to really think through and I want you to come up with three to five examples of recent times when you were interrupted and be able to describe all of what went on. The reason this is so important is when we conceptualize this as a [00:04:00] general, I keep getting interrupted problem. It's really hard to fix because that's very generic. It doesn't really have any insights as to what's going on. And that makes it very hard to figure out our next steps forward. Whereas if we can really dig into it, ask ourselves curious questions about exactly what happens when we get interrupted, then we're much better able to start spotting patterns. And once we start spotting patterns, we can action plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So as an example. Why are you getting interrupted? So if you are finding, as one of my members did, so I originally did a version of this as a voice note for one of my members. She noticed that people were asking her for help in the lab. So she's part-time lab work, part-time PhD, and often she would be interrupted for technical support. And so it wasn't just a generic interruptions, it wasn't a mixture of different reasons. It was mostly help [00:05:00] in the laboratory, and that means by narrowing it down like that, we were much better able to then decide ways forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm gonna talk, the other five things are gonna be potential ways forward that you could consider using. So I'm not gonna go through those now, but it's gonna be much easier to choose which ones are right for you, if you are more aware of who you get interrupted by, when you get interrupted, and for what reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the second thing, and this is the first of the, what you can actually do about it things is really thinking about intentional time blocks. Now in the , at the moment, I'm teaching my role-based time blocking system, and this is really about choosing intentionally when you're in what mode in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now this can help us in a couple of different ways with interruptions. The first and the one that people always think about is trying to identify what times of day you are really, really not interruptable and why. So just [00:06:00] as if you were in a meeting with somebody, really important, people wouldn't just come bursting in unless it was an emergency. We wanna think about how much of your day, or what is a short block of your day that you could set aside as being uninterruptible. And we'll talk in a second about how you manage the people around you and whether they respect that or not. But the first step is you identifying it because if you always intend to be uninterruptible and you always are interruptible, then that's where things are starting to go wrong because we are planning as though we won't be interrupted and then we're always allowing ourselves to be interrupted. And so it's very, very hard to follow our intentional plans. And then we get to the end of the day, end of the week, wondering why we didn't do all the things that we said we would. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want there to be some differentiation in your time blocks where some of the time blocks are absolute do not disturb me [00:07:00] unless someone's bleeding type time blocks. Or others are, I've got stuff to do, but I'm interruptible. And we'll think more about how we can request stuff from other people. We can think more about other ways to make these easier to adhere to. But it starts from having that actual intention. We can't adhere to things, We can't make other people adhere to things if we're not actually clear about what it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the things I see, particularly with people who have responsibility for others. So say you are somebody who can give advice in the laboratory, or somebody who has students or any of these things. Often the reason we get interrupted is because there isn't any intentional time in which you can be contacted. In fact, one of the things my members end up doing is knocking on their supervisor's doors or grabbing them when they see them in the department because they can't get email answers from their supervisors because there isn't a [00:08:00] specific time where it's okay to interrupt that person and so the only way to get their time and attention is to interrupt them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to check in with yourself. Is there actually designated time where the people that need you can see? You can ask these things. Similarly, those of you who work at home, if you have other family members or other flatmates at home, do you differentiate between times that you don't want to be interrupted and times where you could be interrupted and times where actually you are there for them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if people feel like it's all kind of, you are off limits, but they need something, they're gonna come whenever they need it. Whereas if they know that they need something and that their time with you is at 12 or whatever, then it's much easier to go. Yeah, yeah, I'll ask her about that then 'cause then she'll have brain space. So we wanna be as intentional as possible. Not expecting this gold standard of never being [00:09:00] interrupted because that's never gonna happen. But having that gradation of how okay it is to interrupt you at any one time so that at least you know what the plan is, even if others don't necessarily stick to it. </div> <div> What we can then do, if we know that, is we can then decide which things we do in which time blocks. So you can then allocate types of jobs to your uninterruptible slots and different types of jobs to your interruptible slots. So maybe stuff where you have to really immerse yourself in it, where having to come up to answer a question would really throw you off. We do those in our uninterruptible blocks. But then we do other stuff where we're, you know, we could dip in and out a little bit. We do that during our more interruptable blocks and then during the blocks where we're actually like intended to be interrupted. We are not allocating other things to that time. Because many [00:10:00] of you will sort of go into your place of work a couple of times a week, let's say. And if you plan your days when you are in work to be productive on your own stuff for eight hours and then go home again, we are setting ourselves up for fail because people are gonna see you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People are gonna wanna say hi, people are gonna wanna ask you a question. They go, oh, while you're here, could I just, all those things. We need to plan our days where it actually allows time for that to happen.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next thing you can do with third tip to help you sort of reinforce that is think about how you can modify your environment in order to make that clearer. So this can be down to if my door's shut, please don't knock. If my door's open, you can come on in. Those sorts of things. It can be going somewhere else so that it's physically harder to interrupt you, during those periods where you are interrupt It could be physically going somewhere different during those periods where you want to be interruptable so that you are [00:11:00] away from the laboratory. You are away so the students don't know where you are, where your colleagues don't know where you are. I used to have various places I hid on my old university campus. So that sort of geographic, boundaries can just make it a little bit easier. We then do also have to reinforce our own tendencies to distract ourselves and interrupt ourselves by also going, you know what, and I'm gonna turn the wifi off, or, and I'm gonna block my emails for a while, or whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now some of you might be saying, oh, I wish I had an office with a door. I'm in a shared office. But even in those things, you can think about what are environmental signals that you can use. Now, we've all seen probably on like Instagram or whatever these videos of people who've got a sign on their back of the chair saying, please don't interrupt me. I mean, that's a pretty extreme version, but you can even do that. But even things like, if you've got your headphones on, please don't talk to me. That's a signal that I'm focusing, for example. Okay, so thinking about how can you make it [00:12:00] clearer to other people? How can you make it more differentiated for yourself so that it's less likely that you'll get the interruptions and that it's easier to stick to what you intentionally said you would do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Now building on that, the fourth thing is that this involves other people, right? And other people always make things more complicated. And you hear people throw around the word boundaries. You need to have boundaries. Have boundaries, and people throw them around without really defining what they mean by boundaries. </div> <div> And I'm not gonna pretend to give you some like universal definition of boundaries, but I'm gonna tell you what I mean when I talk about boundaries and how I differentiate it from what I call requests. And this is because I'm afraid to tell you, and it annoys me too, but other people won't necessarily do what we ask them to do, and that is the human right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh, fabulous. But seriously, it is the truth, right? We can ask people not to do things, and that's what I call a request. We can say to somebody, please could you not [00:13:00] interrupt me between eight and 10:00 AM. Or please, could you not interrupt me when my office door shut unless X, Y, and Z has happened? Please, could you not interrupt me when I got my headphones on? These sorts of things, these are requests. These are not boundaries. These are requests, and we get to look inwards and say to ourselves, do I think this is a reasonable request? Now, if we are saying to our 4-year-old, please do not interrupt Mommy, who's the only adult in the house for eight hours. Probably not reasonable. We're not gonna do that. If we're asking our PhD students not to come and ask us a question before 10:00 AM because we're working on our own work, probably reasonable in our minds, okay? Whether they agree or not another matter. But we get to look inwards and we get to say, do I think that this is a reasonable request? Does making this request help me show up as the person that I want to be? Is this in line with my values and things? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we also ask ourselves, is this something [00:14:00] that the person is capable of adhering to? So same as with a 4-year-old, right? They're not capable of understanding, it's not something they're gonna stick to. But thinking is the person we're requesting this of actually capable of doing the thing we're asking. So if you've got somebody new working in your laboratory, or you've got a student who's just started, who doesn't know what they're doing or whatever. Is it reasonable? Are they capable of waiting till Tuesdays to ask you questions? Maybe not. They might need more than that, right? So we get to ask, is this in line with my values? Is this something that they are likely to be capable of? And if the answer to both of those things are yes, then we get to make our request. Requests always go best, where we make it clear that it's just a request, it's not an order or any of those things, but where we also explain how it would help us and we explain how we are mitigating the impact on them. So we are not only asking them not to do it, we're also making it clear when they [00:15:00] can ask for things and why this will help them as well as us and all that. We then, and this is the bit I struggle with, this is the bit everybody struggles with unfortunately, we then have to allow them and their grown up human brains to decide whether they're going to adhere to this or not. Now, if you are parenting, it's slightly different because we get a level of leeway of telling people how they can behave when we're parenting. But in any other situation with your students and your colleagues and all those things, if they're grown ass adults, they can do what they like regardless of what we've requested but we get to make our request in a way we feel is appropriate and hope that they adhere to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What boundaries are? Boundaries are about what you do. So what do you do if somebody doesn't adhere to your request? If somebody behaves in a way that's not how you've asked 'em to behave, so they, let's say they come to you and interrupt you during a time period where you've asked them not to. The boundaries are around how you respond. And again, you get to [00:16:00] decide, right? You get to decide what boundaries you have and how strictly you adhere to them. But the important thing is not about they shouldn't ask. The thing with a boundary is what are you gonna do if they do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as an example, you might set a boundary that if somebody interrupts me between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM I'm gonna ask them to come back at 10. And if then you think, well, what if they say No? No, it'll only take a minute. It'll only take a minute. You then decide what is your boundary Then is just a minute okay. Or do you want to reinforce? No. Unless somebody needs an ambulance, please come back at 10 o'clock. I know it will be easier for you to interrupt me right now. I know it might hold you up. You're gonna need to do other things, but this is my boundary. Come back at 10 o'clock. Okay. You get to decide where that boundary is. </div> <div> Now for some of you, you might say, oh, well they've interrupted me now. I might as well help them 'cause my brain's already out of my work. But we have to think about this. Not in a patronizing way, but we have to [00:17:00] think about this a little bit like parenting. 'cause if you ask them not to interrupt you, but when they interrupt you, you help them. Why would they not? Why would they not interrupt you? If you go for the, oh, well, you've interrupted me now, I might as well help that in no way encourages them to solve their own problems. It in no way encourages them not to interrupt you in future. In fact, it reinforces why you are interruptable, so you get to decide where those boundaries sit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now just to be clear, that doesn't have to be an absolute, I will not boundary. It could be, for example, that if somebody knocks on your door during a time when you've asked not to be interrupted, you will not say, come in, you will walk to your door. Open your door if you want to have a conversation to quickly answer a question on the doorstep, as it were, you can, and then you shut the door and you go back to your desk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We used to have a thing when I was an academic and I tended to be one of the people that students like came to if they had issues and things like [00:18:00] that. We used to have a thing that if, if you were in the middle of something, unless they were crying, don't let them sit down. Because once somebody sat down in your office, way harder to get rid of them, way harder to get back to work. So it was always stand at the door, don't let them sit down. They can't settle in. If they've sat down, they've settled in. So it doesn't have to be an absolute, I will just ignore you or not answer your question, but it can be other boundaries around how kind of settled you will allow them to get. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the difference between requests and boundaries. I want you to be really, really clear at any time which you're working with. Have a think now about what requests you might want to make of the people around you. See if you can identify one thing that you would like to request of one person. Think about how it fits your values. Think about why it might be achievable for them, how it might even be useful for them, and think about how you feel about having that conversation. Also have a think what's one boundary you might wanna put in place, perhaps related to that [00:19:00] request as a kind of, if that request isn't followed, then I will do this. Have an idea of what that might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth thing I want you to think about is being really cautious of all or nothing thinking. Now we talk about all or nothing thinking quite a bit. In fact, I'm gonna refer to you in the show notes 'cause I did a whole episode about all or nothing thinking and I don't think I've referred to it recently and it's one you might not have found. So I'm gonna make sure I link that in for you in the show notes. By the way, the show notes were always on my website, but if you're like, I'll never go and look at that, babe. Uh, make sure you're on my newsletter. If you're not on my newsletter already, why not? Uh, go to the PhD life coach.com. You'll see a sign up for the newsletter button right on the front page there. You'll get an email from me once a week where I tell you what's going on in the podcast. Um, I'll give you a summary of the podcast and some reflective questions and an action to take and things like that. And the link to related episodes. So it's a really good way to make sure that you're not just listening to the podcast and then forgetting it ever exists, but instead you're kind of taking the stuff that we talk about and applying it [00:20:00] into your life. If you are struggling, if you've been here a little minute and you've been on the newsletter, and you're trying to apply stuff in your life, but you still find yourself not able to do it, that usually means you need a bit more support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The PhD Life Coach membership does exactly that for PhD students, and we do allow early postdocs to sneak in so be aware. But that's exactly what I do. I in that is a more structured support if you struggle to apply things for yourself or if you just prefer to learn and develop in community. We open again at the end of April, so in about eight weeks. So if you're on the newsletter, you'll be the first to hear about it all. Make sure you keep an ear out. We do have free workshops in between. We just did the February one, March one is 25th, I'm gonna say of March dates on my website, you can double check and that's about smashing your to-do list. </div> <div> So do make sure that you check that out and sign up if you are interested. Anyway, all or nothing thinking. That's what I [00:21:00] was talking about. So I think there's two different ways that all or nothing thinking show up here. I haven't explained what all or nothing thinking is. Should we do that first? We'll do that first. All or nothing thinking is where we have kind of extremes of expectations. You know, I must exercise four times a week or it's not worth it. That's all or nothing thinking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everyone is doing better than me in my PhD. No one else has been overlooked for promotion as many times as me. These sorts of superlative things that see either extreme of a situation without sort of recognizing the nuance, recognizing the options in between. That's the sort of all or nothing thinking that we're thinking about here. And I see this show up with interruptions in two different ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first way is the notion that I can't get on with my work unless I know I won't be interrupted. Often people have very [00:22:00] rigid beliefs about what the ideal working conditions are and a belief that they're the only working conditions. So any of you, and this is usually part-time students or people that are doing their academic work alongside an academic job, for example, say your PhD or other research, this notion that you need, I, I couldn't, unless I've got three or four hours, I can't get started, that's all or nothing thinking, okay, it might have some grounding, you might find it easier with big blocks of time, but that's an example if I, I just couldn't, it is all or nothing thinking. So here, if you find yourself thinking, I can't get started because I might get interrupted and I can't work if I know I might be interrupted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you just to really poke that thought a little bit. When we see these extreme thoughts, it's really useful just to test it a little bit. Is that [00:23:00] actually true? Is there nothing useful I could do? If there's a risk, I'm gonna be interrupted. Is there bits maybe that I could do sometimes before I get interrupted? At least not assuming that I will be interrupted. Really poking at that and working out what? You know, is that really extremely true? And for most of you it won't be. And if it is true, I want you to ask yourself why is that true? Because usually if that actually is true, that if you think there's any possibility of getting interrupted, you can't start. I'm going to very lovingly and gently suggest that that's a you problem rather than a them problem. Usually that's something about us getting our emotions up, getting frustration and things like that up at the thought [00:24:00] that they are stopping us working, they shouldn't interrupt us. It's because of them, I can't do this. If you've heard me talk about the drama triangle, it's getting into that kind of villain blamey mode. This is, I'm the victim. You are the villain. You keep interrupting me. It's because of you that I can't work. The problem there is not the interruptions, the problem's, this belief that it's other people that are impacting your ability to do things and that you have no control over that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of it is low self-efficacy around your ability to manage interruptions. So it's not so much that you are angry at other people interrupting, it's that you don't trust that you are able to get yourself on track. You don't trust that you're able to say no and move them away from you, prevent them from interrupting you or minimize that interruption. If that's the case, it's okay. Right? All of these things, it's okay. It's just useful to know because then [00:25:00] again, the problem is not them interrupting you. The problem is that you don't have a strategy to deal with it, and today I am teaching you some strategies. So you do. So we have all or nothing thinking about whether we can even work when we might get interrupted. </div> <div> The other place that I see a lot of all or nothing thinking is around this idea that if I get interrupted, that's my work block over. Ugh, you've interrupted me now. That sort of vibe, and so off you go. And again, let's poke that. Is that really true? Is it true that because somebody has come in, you now can't use the rest of the session? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it true that because that person has asked for five minutes, that you have to give them five minutes? Is it true that if you give them five minutes, you might as well sack off the rest of your workout? This is like saying, I don't have time to go to the gym for an hour, so I won't go. Rather than seeing, actually, I could get something useful done in 30 minutes, for example. </div> <div> So double check. If you're telling yourself, Ugh, I've been [00:26:00] interrupted. Now, I might as well just go and help double check that and double check that assumption, because actually with some of these boundaries, with some of these requests, with some of these techniques that I'm teaching you. It may well be possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It should be possible for you to be interrupted, manage it, manage our own thoughts and emotions about it, and nudge ourselves back to our task again. So that when we get interrupted, it doesn't have to necessarily mean that we can't continue to work. </div> <div> And that leads me to my sixth one and this one. I have to be careful how I explain it. 'Cause sometimes people interpret it wrong. I am gonna tell you what it is and then I'll tell you how people misinterpret it. The sixth one is that sometimes I think people like getting interrupted. I know. I know. Especially the people that moan about getting interrupted. I'm really sorry if I'm calling you out, [00:27:00] but the thing with interruptions is often interruptions are a really good excuse to stop doing something that felt difficult or boring, or that you felt guilty 'cause you hadn't done before, or that you just didn't feel very motivated by. You felt bored by, or whatever. They were really good reason to go away. </div> <div> I want you to imagine that you are at an event that you've paid lots of money for. You've been looking forward to ages, you know, whatever your equivalent of the Taylor Swift Eras tour was, you are there and somebody says, oh, can I just pick your brain about this piece of lab equipment or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are either gonna not answer your phone or you are gonna give them the shortest. Yep, yep, yep. Okay. Yep. No worries. Thanks. Bye. And get back to the concert. ASAP. It's gonna be very unusual circumstances in [00:28:00] which you will actually go, oh, well I've been interrupted now. No point going back. Yeah, and translate Taylor Swift might not be your vibe. I don't know. Choose your vibe. So sometimes the problem is not so much that we're getting interrupted, the problem is that you kind of like it. Because we can blame somebody else for why we're not doing the thing. </div> <div> It's not our fault. We were interrupted and we can go and do a thing. And I talk about this in my eight ways, you're secretly procrastinating episode that I often mention. Helping somebody else is way easier 'cause you get credit for it, you get some social interaction. They're very grateful. You feel like a good person. It's usually pretty clearly defined. It's usually easier. You haven't got a big emotional baggage about it. Way easier to go and do that than do the thing that you intended to be doing. If you're trying to do complex analysis or write something or whatever, way easier to go and do the interruption. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So just be really careful and I'm calling you out as usual, with [00:29:00] love and compassion. I do this too. Okay? If you realize, oh gosh, that is me. Yeah, I do do that. This is not a sign that you are like. Fundamentally flawed or anything like that. It's just really useful to notice. </div> <div> Sometimes we tell ourselves that, you know, good people are helpful, good people are willing to go and do help other people. And so, and it's true, right? We like people, we wanna be collaborative, we wanna make time to help other people. But it can't be the time that you've put aside to do your specific stuff because at some point you won't be helpful anymore 'cause you won't have enough of your own expertise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you don't put aside time to develop and hone and further extend your expertise, you will become less and less helpful over time. Helping other people all the time is not the route to being the best person to being the most helpful person. Part of helping other people is [00:30:00] having your own expertise so that you're actually useful and we have to allow time for that. </div> <div> So if you are somebody who really values being collaborative, helping other people being, you know, engaged in other people's work and stuff, great time block it. Time block time for that. Allow it to happen when you are doing less cognitively demanding work for sure, but you need to have time for your own expertise development in order to be helpful, and that's even aside from you. You just deserve to have that time for yourself, I believe. But some people don't believe that necessarily, but even if you think your top, top priority is helping other people, developing your own expertise is part of that. Protecting your time to progress your work is the best way of doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You wanna help more people, get big grants in, employ other people, support other students. Develop a reputation, so they want to come and work with you, build collaborations by [00:31:00] producing high quality work. All of the collaborative things, all of the helpful things need you to actually do your own work too. There is nothing selfish about making the time to do your own work. </div> <div>  So if you've been listening to this part going, oh yeah, I think I do that. Yeah. I think I allow myself to be interrupted because it's easier. That's okay. Let's just notice. We notice, we do the things that I've said so far, so we notice what we're interrupted by and why we think if there are ways that we can prevent it. So if there's things that you are routinely asked about, how can you make it clearer how to do them. If somebody always asks you about a particular lab technique, make [00:32:00] a standard operating procedure. Put labels on the thing, showing where things go, if you're always asked where something goes, see how you can make it easier for other people to not have to interrupt you. Intentionally time block so that you know when are your kind of non-negotiable, non interruptable times. When are your, you could interrupt me, but I am doing things time and when is your No, no come find me 'cause I'm literally here for you times, differentiate those out. Try really intentionally to stick to them. Use environmental reinforcements. Consider going somewhere else, changing your environment in some sort of visible way so that people understand what context you are in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Think about who you need to make those requests of what requests you might make. Check in that they feel good to you regardless of how they respond. Think about what boundaries you want to put in place. Notice where you are using all or nothing thinking and just poke it a little bit. See if there's ways that it's not quite true. See if there's ways that you could work, even though [00:33:00] you might get interrupted. See if there's ways that you believe that if you are interrupted, you could get back to work and then double check whether this is kind of a bit of procrastination. </div> <div> Are you being interrupted because it's easier than doing the thing that you're intended to do. And I'm actually gonna throw in a bonus seventh one, which is practice restarting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Practice restarting after an interruption. So in when I teach about procrastination, I use the analogy of a tightrope walker that beginner tight ropers wobble a lot and they don't notice their wobbling until they've really wobbled, and then they tend to either overcorrect or correct too late. And so they wobble and fall off and most beginner tight ropers. Think that tight ropers don't wobble. Tight ropers do wobble. They're just really good at noticing a tiny wobble and proportionately responding [00:34:00] to it to correct themselves back. So they absolutely do wobble. Just in a much more sort of nuanced and subtle way 'cause they're better at spotting when it happens and they're better at nudging themselves back to balance. And when I talk about procrastination, that's the example that I use, that people who are big procrastinators don't notice their procrastinating for ages, and then they either massively overcorrect or don't correct at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They just go, oh, I've wasted time now that sucks. Try again tomorrow. Whereas people who can stay focused, it's not that they're just focused all the time, it's that they quickly notice they've lost focus. They quickly and un dramatically bring themselves back to focus. And so like a tight roper to all extents and purposes, it doesn't look like they lost focus, but they did. They did. They're human beings. We all lose focus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the same is true with interruptions. If you can practice not being massively wppd [00:35:00] when you have an interruption that we keep it to a minimum, we deal with it. We get either ask them to come back another time, deal with it quickly, deal with a little bit of it, and ask 'em to come back another time to deal with the rest or whatever it might be, and that we then nudge ourselves back to balance, nudge ourselves back to working again as quickly as possible so that rather than sitting there going, oh, I've been interrupted now, I might as well go and help or I've been interrupted. Now they've ruined it. There's no point trying to get back into it. I never could. I'm just gonna do my emails. We get to go. Okay, I got interrupted. Back to this, where was I? Except it's gonna take a little minute to pull yourself back in and work out where you were and carry on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But practice that coming back because just as tightrope walkers develop over time to wobble less, you can develop over time, then an interruption doesn't not knock you as far or for as long and get better at pulling yourself back to exactly where you were. All of these things are about developing the skills to [00:36:00] navigate these situations, to developing the self-efficacy to believe that we can at least learn how to do that, even if you don't believe you can manage it at the moment, believing that we can learn how to do these things and then practicing doing it just as we're tight rope walking. We have to practice. We have to expect we won't be perfect at first. We have to accept that we will fall, we will get interrupted, we'll wander off. It's all good. We bring ourselves back. We practice, and over time we develop our skills to manage interruptions. I really hope that is useful for you all today. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 04:00:05 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-28-how-to-manage-when-your-work-is-interrupted-all-the-time thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-27-how-to-stop-thinking-about-your-academic-work <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It’s easy to feel like our academic work has taken up permanent residence in our brains! Recently a member told me they woke up thinking about their PhD, went to bed thinking about it, and were fed up of not thinking about anything else. In the episode, I help you work out whether it’s a problem that you’re thinking about your work and, if you think it is, you’ll get some concrete advice about how to nudge your brain away from the topic.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12933820-33-how-to-do-role-based-time-blocking" target="_blank"> how to use role-based time-blocking </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and the episode this week is inspired by another one of the questions that my members asked in their own private podcast. As I think I've mentioned before in the PhD life Coach membership, the students are able to submit questions, that they have that are specific to their challenges at the moment, and I record them a little mini podcast voice note answer for them. And there's been so many really good questions come up that I'm gonna try and feature them in the podcast from time to time and give a more extended answer. So this question was around how do I stop thinking about my PhD? And they recognized that this might sound like a strange question, but they felt like they were waking up in the morning thinking about their work. They were thinking about it. No matter what they were doing, they were thinking about it when they were trying to get to sleep. If they woke up in the night, they were thinking about their PhD. They were generally finding this exhausting and [00:01:00] really wanted to identify how they could think about it. less. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the downside with these voice notes is that I don't get to ask lots of questions. So when I'm coaching, so the students also have access to live coaching, when I'm coaching, I will very much start from seeking to understand, really trying to better figure out why is this a problem? How is it impacting you? And all of those things in these voice notes, When I just get a simple question like this, I'm not able to probe into it in so much detail, and so what I try and do is give some reflective questions for people to think about, and that's what we're going to do today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm gonna give you some reflective questions to think about, and then depending on what your answers to those are, I'll give you some different hints and suggestions about how you could manage this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That way, it's really tailored to your challenges and your difficulties rather than just being generic advice. So my first reflective question for you [00:02:00] is, why is it a problem that you are thinking about it a lot. Because the answer to that will be different depending on how you are thinking about it. So what sorts of thoughts you are thinking and also what impact that's having on you or the rest of your life. So take a few moments to think, why is it problematic for me that I'm thinking about my PhD a lot? Is it because I feel like I shouldn't be, that this is wrong in some way and that it shouldn't be like this. Is that the main issue? Is the issue that because you are thinking about your PhD all the time, you are struggling to be present in other situations. Is it because you're thinking about your PhD all the time, you are getting bored and tired of your PhD? Is it because the thoughts that you are having are not [00:03:00] really about the content of your PhD, but are more anxious thoughts about what if I can't do it? What if I'm not good enough? What if my supervisor thinks I'm not good enough, and things like that. So the problem is not so much thinking about the academic questions in your PhD, but more your thoughts and feelings about doing the PhD. Take a few moments to think, which, if any, it may be other ones, it may be more than one. Which of those resonates most with you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, let's start out with a relatively easy one. If the only issue is that you feel like you shouldn't be thinking about it as much as you are, but you enjoy thinking about it, you're not having any adverse consequences at the moment from thinking about it this much, and you don't anticipate having adverse consequences from thinking about it this much. It's just a sense that you feel like you shouldn't, then I'd encourage you to ponder a little bit about where that I shouldn't [00:04:00] be comes from in case it is sort of flagging some other issue but if it genuinely is just, uh, I feel like I shouldn't be, then, you can just decide it's okay. I know that sounds really basic advice, but often when we are telling ourselves that we should or shouldn't do something, we forget that we can decide that we are gonna do that thing or we're not gonna do that thing regardless of the shoulds. So if you are having no adverse consequences from thinking about it this much, you just have a vague feeling you shouldn't be. We could go towards a kind of acceptance where it's like, you know what? I'm really into my PhD. I think about it a lot. I enjoy it. It's not adversely affecting me at the moment. And actually focus instead on not judging ourselves for thinking about it as much as we do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A tip here, and this is true for any of these things where you have a feeling you shouldn't do it, [00:05:00] is also put in place some sort of warning system whereby you'll notice if it's starting to become a problem, okay? Because sometimes an underlying sense that you shouldn't be could be because you're kind of getting this little gut feeling that this might not be good for you in the long run. And in that case, it's really useful to put in place just a little bit of a kind of protective mechanism where it's like at the moment I'm going for acceptance, but if I notice that I am turning down all social engagements in order to think about this, or if I notice that it's starting to affect my sleep or it's starting to affect my family life, or whatever it might be. And this is how I'll know, you know, you decide for you, what's the little kind of trigger that will help you spot that. Then you can feel safer in the acceptance because you also know that you have a little plan for spotting if it starts to go too far. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> [00:06:00] Now if you are finding No, no, it's not that. I don't wanna just accept this. It is actually having some negative effects on me, and it's mostly because I'm thinking about the discipline itself, kind of wrestling with the intellectual challenges that I'm doing, trying to decide how to fix that analysis, trying to figure out what my materials mean. Then we have a few different tools and I'm not gonna have time to go into all of them today. I will send you out to some various podcast episodes where I've talked about some of these before. My members, if you are listening, we are working this through in this quarter anyway. The first is this notion of role-based time blocking, which is where we allocate blocks of time for particular types of activities, not for a single task. Traditional time time blocking is usually saying, I'll do this in this time block and this in that time block, and there are lots of challenges with that, but role base is thinking about, I'll do this type of work in this time block and this type of thing in that time block. And one of the things that we've been talking [00:07:00] about a lot in the membership recently is if you're doing role-based time blocking well, in fact any sort of time blocking to be fair, if you are doing it well, then that should include putting lots of fun stuff in there too. We should be time blocking that this block of time is for time on my own to spend on my hobbies. This block of time is time to spend with my friends. This block of time is time to spend with my family. The reason that's so important is 'cause we tend to only time block the productive stuff, and then when we don't get it done, we've got these kind of empty spaces that we flop into with our work without really recognizing what we are therefore choosing not to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's also important, because I know lots of you struggle with feelings of guilt that you should be doing more than you are, and that can really overtake so-called fun activities because if you are trying to do a a CrossFit class. I just started CrossFit. My legs still hurt. If you are trying to do a CrossFit class, but your brain's going, oh, I [00:08:00] really should be finishing that chapter, then you're not finishing the chapter, but you're also probably not enjoying the CrossFit class either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when we're able to time block the fun stuff and the stuff that's good for us as well as the work stuff, then it can be a little bit easier to be intentional in that moment. Now, you might say, yeah, Vic, but the thoughts still come up, right? And I'm like, yes, of course. The thoughts absolutely still come up. But when we've got intention about what role we are in at the moment, we can decide what we do with those thoughts that come up. Because if you are still at a stage where thoughts come up and you are just sort of held hostage by those thoughts that, oh, they're here now. I'll have to think about them, then we need to talk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because that's exhausting to just go with whatever thoughts come up in your head is absolutely exhausting. So if we can be more intentional about whether we're in a block where thinking about this stuff is appropriate or whether we're in a block where we wanna be spending time with our [00:09:00] kids or whatever, then we can choose what we do when these thoughts come up. So if we're in a block where we are meant to be spending time with family or doing hobbies or whatever, and these thoughts are coming up, I'm gonna give you two suggestions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first suggestion is having some sort of dumping ground with you at all times. Now, for most of us, the thing that we have with us at all times is our phone. If you are a bit more of an analog person, having a notebook with you also works too. But having somewhere that instead of just going, no, no, you shouldn't be thinking about that, vic shouldn't be thinking about that. Focus in you're meant to be thinking about your family. Don't think about that. Don't think about that. But then our brain's going, yeah, but you're gonna forget it. All these, we need somewhere to put it. Okay. So create something, a dumping ground of some description where if these thoughts come up, you can dump them down quickly. And then when your thought brain is trying to still work on them, that's where we get to do gentle nudging. So this is not judgmental. Oh, you are always thinking about work. Stop thinking about work brain. What are you doing? This is [00:10:00] going Uhuh. I know we wrote that down. Yep. Nope. Got it. Nice. Yes, great idea. Thank you, brain. Appreciate you offering it. But we've noted it down, but we're doing this right now and we nudge ourselves back to focus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can't remember whether I said this in a podcast recently or whether I said it in a class, so if I'm repeating myself, just go with me. But it's a bit, a little bit like I used to, individually exams as part of my job and. Just giving people a little bit of a look and then sort of use your fingers like two eyes to point down at the page. Just sort of going, uhuh, focus back on your page, back on your, when you see their eyes wandering around the room. Right. Just like. Point your little fingers, point down at your page. Just remind them, no, no, back to their paper. Back to the paper. That's the kind of gentle, non-judgmental nudging we want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not making it a big deal. We're not telling ourselves off for having got distracted, but we are gently nudging ourselves back to, no, no, this was time you put aside for your hobby or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we're gonna be intentional with how we plan our time. Um. [00:11:00] Okay. That's a big thing to say in a sentence, isn't it? We're gonna be intentional. We're going to try to be more intentional than we are at the moment about how we're deciding what we're doing in any one block, and then when we notice our brain wander, we are jotting it down in some sort of dumping ground, and then we are nudging ourselves back to the thing that we said we were gonna do. Now some of you, are not necessarily very good at resting or not very good at fitting in things that are not the shoulds in your life. I have an awful lot of members who have stopped doing things that they enjoy because they feel like they've got so much to do on their PhD, so much to do in their academic life that they don't have time for those other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The problem with that, I kind of, you know. Okay. I, I understand the, the intention here. You're trying to simplify your life. You're trying to make space for the things you need to do. I kind of, [00:12:00] I understand all of that stuff and I, to some extent agree with it, but when we take out all the stuff that's interesting or engaging or just for us, then our brains don't have much to think about other than what we need to do for other people and what we need to do for our PhD or our work. And so sometimes by clearing more time to be able to do all this huge to-do list that you've got, what we actually do is starve our brain of interesting things. So if you are finding that it's not so much that thinking of your PhD is interrupting other stuff, but more that it's just getting really boring or tiring thinking about your academic work all the time, we need to think of other things to think about. Sometimes time spent doing hobbies, doing interesting things is actually time that feeds [00:13:00] your academic work because it gives your brain something else interesting to think about, which gives it that proper respite from work. So I feel for you, right? If you are somebody who has felt so overloaded that you feel like you have put all of your own interests to one side, I, I absolutely send you my love 'cause that is a really, really challenging position to be in, and I know it's particularly true for those of you who are doing full-time academic jobs and trying to do research on the side or trying to do your PhDs on the side, or you've got some other work, or you're holding down a family. I've got a lot of single parents in the membership, things like that. I feel for you that is a lot to be carrying, but even in those situations that I'm gonna even go so far as to, particularly in those situations, it is absolutely crucial to have things that feed you as a person, not stuff you should be doing, not four more steps in your skincare routine, if you [00:14:00] don't enjoy doing skincare, not three morning pages if you don't enjoy journaling, not this stuff we're told we should be doing something that's just fun for you. One of my members just took me off. I'm a hobby girl. Okay. I have too many hobbies. I am the other extreme. To any of you who feel like you don't have any hobbies at the moment. I have too many, but I love it. One of the ones that I've talked about that I do when I'm feeling particularly brain dead is, um, well posh people call collage, but that I call cutting and sticking. And one of my members started doing this and was like, I absolutely loved it. I got so engaged. I, you know, I really enjoyed what I was doing. I wasn't thinking about other things. Finding things like that, they don't have to be worthy, they don't have to be exercise, they don't have to be a side hustle. They don't have to have any other purpose other than it's quite fun to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whilst it might feel like one more thing you're trying to fit in, giving your brain something else to be thinking about can be a really [00:15:00] useful way to not only be thinking about academia all the time. On that if you do, and I know this can be a harder ask, depending on your responsibilities, if there are things you can do with other people who have nothing to do with academia, that can help massively as well. One of the things I think that kept me most sane through my academic career, that whilst I have glorious best friends who work in academia, I also have glorious best friends who have nothing to do with academia at all and with whom I just don't really have those conversations, either besties or even just kind of my, my good friends that I met through my various hobbies and things like that. Having people who don't really understand what you're doing and you can talk about other things too, super, super useful. Back in the day, there was nothing more useful than finishing a day of academia, going to my aerial silks class and discussing a routine or a move and not talking about students or research at all.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the one thing I would add to this [00:16:00] though is if you want to be not thinking about your work while you are doing other things, you need to give yourself time to think about your work. And again, it's one of these things that doesn't feel quite productive necessarily. It doesn't feel like something that we can put on our to do list. Oh, think about this. That's tricky to put in. But when we fill our brains, we've gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta to do this. And we plan our time like that. And then we say, and then I mustn't think about it when I'm with my family or when I'm doing my hobbies or whatever, our brains are a little bit like, yeah, but when do we think about it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So also think to yourself, how can I give myself time- if I want to not be thinking about it at times when I'm doing other things? How do I give myself some time where I can think about it? I find it useful to structure that in some way. I can't really imagine what just sitting thinking about something would be. Some of you might, I don't know, not the way I [00:17:00] work. Um, for me, I love going for a walk or doing something like that where it's sort of physical enough to be engaging, but where I haven't got a podcast, I haven't got headphones or any of those things, and I like to actually set myself something specific to think about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. So I sort of set myself some kind of reflective question or plan that I want to think about, and then I send myself somewhere where I can't distract myself. I actually did my whole strategic plan for the year in a spa doing this exact thing. I had a notebook in the changing rooms, and so I would set myself some questions. I'd go and sit in the different spa bits, because I have no attention span. I went to one of these spas that's got like 50 different rooms. It was amazing. Anyway, then when I ran, I had so many ideas in my head. I'd go to the change room, get or go to the little chill out zone scribble in my notebook, and then I would set myself another question and go back to the hot tub this time, or whatever it was wonderful. Highly recommend. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so setting yourself time where you can actually think, where you are, [00:18:00] not gonna fill your brain with other things, where you're not gonna require productivity of yourself. Sometimes that can be being alone in a room with big bits of paper and color pencils or whatever. Okay. Lots and lots of different things that you can, do to give yourself space for that thinking. </div> <div> So that's some tips for if these thoughts are mostly about the kinda intellectual wrestling with your academic content. So they're not inherently negative, there's just too many of them, or they're coming up when you don't want them to. Some strategies around that. </div> <div> Now in a second I'm gonna talk about what if the thoughts are much more anxiety type thoughts. So much more thoughts about what if I'm not good enough? What if this doesn't work? What if it gets rejected? What if my supervisor hates me? What if my boss thinks I'm an idiot? All those sorts of thoughts. Okay. But before I talk about that, I wanna talk about one principle, which I think actually crosses both, and this is the idea of [00:19:00] uncertainty tolerance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the things that I've noticed with people just generally, but I think particularly with clever people like you lot, is that we really don't like being unsure about something. I think one of the ups and downsides of being quite clever is that often we are quite sure of things. We understand stuff. We know stuff. We are not used to not being clear on things, and then all of a sudden we get hit with a bunch of uncertainty. And the reason I'm talking about this kind of in the middle is because I think that uncertainty can be uncertainty on an intellectual side. I'm not sure how to analyze this data. I'm not sure exactly what argument to make based on these documents, that sort of uncertainty. Or it can be the uncertainty of not knowing whether your work is good enough, not knowing what you'll do next, not knowing whether you'll get promoted, all those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But thinking about how can I feel safe while uncertain is a really useful [00:20:00] exercise because often the reason we keep thinking about something is because we believe that if we'll resolve it, if we can just be less uncertain, then we'll feel better and we can stop thinking about it. The problem is, as we all know, that once, one thing that wasn't certain becomes more certain, we think of other things too. This is the downside of a clever brain, right? There's a lot of good things, but this is the downside of a clever brain. So trying to fix the uncomfortableness of feeling uncertain by making yourself certain is a really understandable but really shortsighted strategy. I still do it. I still have to talk myself down from this. I find uncertainty tolerance quite challenging in a bunch of situations. What I want you to therefore think about is how can I feel [00:21:00] safe while being uncertain? What can I say to myself that reassures me within that uncertainty? I like things around. I trust that I'll figure it out. Some of you might go for the kind of what will be, will be type strategy, anything that helps you feel as though it's okay that you don't yet know. And that you will figure it out and that the time will come and you'll make a decision, and then we will know, and then we'll make it work from there. That kind of pragmatic vibe is what we are going for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes it's about reminding ourselves of what things it is not our business to know. So our supervisor's, true perception of us is probably not quite our business to know really or it might be things that we will know at some point, but that we [00:22:00] can't know now. So whether this grant's gonna get accepted, whether we're gonna get promoted, whether we're gonna get our PhD or these sorts of things. And our brain desperately wants to be sure that it's true, but at the moment it can't be because we're not there yet. Whichever it is we get to help ourselves feel safe in this uncertainty and to decide what the next steps that we want to take are. We ask ourselves, how do I want to show up in the face of this uncertainty? Rather than, how can I be more certain? How can I decide what the argument I'm going to make is? What options have I got? How will I choose between them? How will I decide what analysis to use, what options are there? How will I choose between them? So rather than trying to be certain right now and feeling uncomfortable, we're not certain right now. We get to figure out what's the route towards making these decisions. What's the route towards supporting ourselves during this period of time where we don't actually know the [00:23:00] answer  </div> <div> and then finally for some of you, the thoughts will be more these things that you can't stop thinking about your PhD, about your academic life. They will be more to do with, I'm not sure I'm good enough. I dunno whether this is the right thing to do, and so on. So those more anxious thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, as you all know, this podcast is definitely not a replacement for appropriate psychological care if you struggle with anxious thoughts, but at an kind of non-clinical level, have a few suggestions. The first is remembering that feeling anxious thought is not necessarily something that has to be terrifying. That has to be this awful thing that we have to make go away. There are many things in our lives where we are doing things that feel quite high stakes, that we've never done before, that we're not certain how they'll go. It's quite appropriate to feel a bit anxious about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we get to do is we get to double check a couple of things. We get to double check are we looking after our bodies? So this can be in terms of are we feeding ourselves, are we giving ourselves water? Are [00:24:00] we allowing ourselves to sleep? All of those sorts of things. But it can also be in terms of when we're in the midst of feeling a bit anxious, a bit panicky, and things like that. </div> <div> Are we giving ourselves the things that we need right then? The sort of slow breathing, grounding exercises, all those sorts of things. So are we looking after the physical sensations that we are getting because of our anxious thoughts? And then the other side of it is just double checking that we are not feeding ourselves thoughts that are making the anxiety worse. Because there are some bits of it. I'm not sure how this goes, and I'm worried about that. Okay, fine. Fair enough. That seems reasonable. Okay. Those anxious thoughts are kind of encouraging you to take action, to be more ready, to figure out whether there's anything you wanna change in your life. All of these sorts of things. But if those thoughts are also spiraling to, and I don't deserve to be here, and everyone will think I'm an idiot, and these sorts of thoughts, then we get to remind ourselves [00:25:00] that we don't have to repeatedly tell ourselves those thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now we can't stop them coming up. They're probably gonna come up, but we can choose how we respond to them and we can choose how much we reinforce them to ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one really useful way to do this, I find, is instead of telling ourselves I need to stop doing that, is tell ourselves I want to do this more often. So choosing intentional thoughts, choosing things that feel true to you, I can figure out how to do this. Whatever happens, I will be okay and I'll figure out a plan. Thoughts like that. So not just telling yourself it's gonna be fine, but telling yourself that if it is not fine, then we'll figure that bit out too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So choosing those intentional thoughts, choosing intentional activities, so when you feel these sorts of anxious thoughts, having things that you know, always help you in trying to encourage yourself to do those too. So those can be things that you can do during the day, whether music helps you, whether walking helps you, whether splashing your [00:26:00] face with water helps you, any of those sorts of things. But also if you are somebody who has these thoughts a lot at night thinking, what are the actions I can take at night? What are the activities I can do in my head that will centre me and ground me again, what are the breathing activities that I can do if I'm thinking a lot in the night. Do I want to have a notebook where I can always jot things down if they come up during the night? </div> <div> So thinking through what are the intentional thoughts that I want to kind of preload remind myself to think in the moment? What are the intentional activities that always help me? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my tips for today. The question started out as, how do I stop thinking about my PhD? I think by the end, the kind of take home here is not so much how to stop thinking about it, but how to have more control over when you think about it, the ways you think about it and what you tell yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because actually if we can be intentional about that, it gives us the opportunity to kind of [00:27:00] ponder our academic work in that sort of intellectual way that lots of us will have dreamed about being part of being an academic. We get to ponder these topics that we care about, that we are interested in and so on. But we also create space to be thinking about the other things in our lives because we are human beings as well as academics, and that is just as important. We create space to be thinking about all of those things as well, and we learn and develop strategies to manage the thoughts that feel more uncomfortable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope that helps. Do let me know what you think, whether this is something that you struggle with, whether any of these tips particularly resonate with you. If you're not on my newsletter, make sure you sign up. Go to my website, the PhD life ph.com. You can sign up right on the front page there. Let me know what you think. Thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-27-how-to-stop-thinking-about-your-academic-work thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-26-what-to-do-when-you-dont-have-enough-time <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lots of PhD students and academics feel unable to make decisions about their time management because of a series of beliefs that feel very true. They simultaneously tell themselves “I can’t fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments” AND “I can’t write more in the evenings and weekends because I’m tired” AND “I can’t reduce my commitments during the day because they’re fixed” AND “I have to (and should be able to) find more time for my writing”. In today’s episode, I discuss how believing those four statements trap you in a box, and what you can do to find a way out.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12304084-20-what-to-do-when-you-have-too-much-to-do" target="_blank"> what to do when you have too much to do. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, this episode came about because some members were very honest with me and actually pushed back on something I was suggesting. We were running a workshop about the shape of your week. So thinking about roughly a template for what you want your week to look like week to week. Now, for some people it was kind of revolutionary that you could even pick that, but the idea behind that workshop is that essentially if we know or decide that we try to do these sorts of things on those sorts of days or these sorts of times of days, then when we start a week, we are not just starting from a kind of haphazard blank slate. We're kind of starting from a notional how we'd like it all to shape out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I know it doesn't always work out like that, right? I'm assuming as everybody else, it doesn't always work out the way you intend. But if we can start with that sort of approximate aim, then when we [00:01:00] can fit to that, that we are much more likely to end up with a week that feels intentional and feels like it's playing to our strengths and giving us what we need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so that was the workshop, right? And I have my gorgeous members there, and so many people are coming to the workshops. It's very exciting. My membership is bigger than it's ever been at the moment, and getting really, really good turnout. People are really enjoying the process that we are going through, loving it, and we use the chat, right? Any of you have been to my free sessions, and if you haven't, I've got one on Wednesday. By the way, if you're listening to this live, it is Monday, the 23rd of February. There is a free workshop for all of you on Wednesday the 25th of February. Check on my website for how to sign up. Or if you're on my newsletter, you'll have been sent it anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so in my workshops I'm like sharing how to do things, what approaches you can take, and everyone's in the chat giving their suggestions, answering my questions, you know, asking their own questions, all that sort of thing. And I realized, you know, I'm pretty engaged in that chat. I'm sort of responding to what people say and things, [00:02:00] and I realized there were a lot of people that said, I can't do this. It was in the chat saying, Nope. I can't, I can't come up with a shape of my week because I've got all this stuff. This was a lot of my part-time students, not gonna lie. If you're a part-time student, this will really resonate. Also, if you are an academic who is balancing teaching and leadership and research, I think it will really resonate with you too, and anybody who's pinning down any other commitments so if you are doing a PhD or doing academia while parenting or anything like that, okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It might still resonate if you're a full-time student without other commitments. So do keep listening. I'll be interested to hear your perspectives on it too, but I think particularly for those people who are trying to wedge an awful lot into their weeks, it really, really resonated. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they were saying, I can't do this, Vikki. It doesn't fit. And my response to that is [00:03:00] always, well, it's really useful to know it doesn't fit. It's really useful to have that realization. It might feel like you therefore can't do planning, but actually if the first step of your planning process is realizing that all the things that you have to do and I'm using have to do kind of carefully there, if all the things you have to do, don't fit in a way that you can plan your week, then that's a really good realization. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And as we talked... So this started out being just me responding to one person in the chat, more people came up. It doesn't fit for me either, Vikki. It doesn't work. And so I was asking tell, talk, talk me through it. Okay? Tell me what doesn't fit, why it doesn't fit. And the common pattern that came out was is what I call trapping yourself in a box. </div> <div> And this is when we have a [00:04:00] series of beliefs that we absolutely think each of them is true, yet they're contradictory of each other. And often we kind of avoid thinking about the fact they're contradictory of each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let me give you an example of the trapped in a box that I saw with many of these members. It was simultaneously holding the belief I can't fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments. So for some of them it was other part-time or full-time work, for some of them, their academics who are doing a PhD alongside. I can't fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments with a little by the way, side order of, and I need a big block of time in order to be able to get on with my academic tasks. So I can't fit it in because I'm too busy during the day and because I need big blocks of time in order to get on with this sort of work, and therefore I need to fit it into the [00:05:00] evenings and weekends, but I don't want to sacrifice my social life, and I'm always too tired when it comes to evenings and weekends, so it doesn't end up happening then. And I can't change the commitments I've got during the day because I have to do these things for my job. It's compulsory. They have to be done. And I definitely have to find time to write my academic work and I should be able to find that time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you can see how you sort of bang between these different things. These of you watching on YouTube, you'll see me sort of doing a square with my hand in the air showing you sort of banging around that box now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's just slight tangent. One of my one-to-one clients who I've worked with for like two years, literally. Okay. She's been here like one of the longest of any of you said. It wasn't until you talked about what I'd see on YouTube that I realized you have a YouTube channel. I [00:06:00] have a YouTube channel, people. If you are somebody who likes not only listening to me when you are driving somewhere or whatever. But would like to actually be able to take notes and things like that, everything I put on this podcast is also there on YouTube. It's not a fancy like edited Mr. Beast type joby. It's literally this, except you can see my big face while I'm talking. So there's nothing fancy about it, but it's a video version of this if you haven't found them. There are also study with me videos on there too. There's two different ones. There's one for doing a 15 minute email smash if you're feeling completely outta control. And there's one for a 45 minute, um, kind of like study with me focused session. My members use them a lot as a way to kind of kickstart themselves onto doing things. So go check out my YouTube channel, tell your friends and students and whatnot. Anyway, that's what we were saying. Trapped in this box. I'm now moving my hand again in the square on YouTube. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and we sort of banging between, I [00:07:00] can't do it then. 'cause I don't have time. I can't change the things that are taking up my time. I can't do it at other times 'cause either I'm too tired or there's not sufficient time, but I must find time. And if that feels resonant with you, if that feels like I'm looking into your brain, this is what my members were like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're like, Vikki, can you see inside my head say, yeah, because I know you guys, I've been you guys, I know what this is like. If that feels like you, I want you just to pause and breathe with me for a second, okay? Because that is an exhausting place to keep yourself. To be telling yourself that you should be able to do it. You must do it in order to achieve your goals, and that those goals are possible, right? Because all this is predicated on the fact that you believe you have time on some level to do your PhD or do your academic writing or whatever. Yet, nothing can shift. There isn't time. And so months go by [00:08:00] and months don't go by in a kind of, oh, well, you know, didn't do it, drift through. Months go by where you're beating yourself up for the fact that you are somehow not finding a version of this that works. That's exhausting. If you are feeling exhausted, if you are listening to that, this going, oh my goodness, that's me and I am exhausted. Let's just take a second. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's just take a second. You are not on your own. This is not something that shows that you are broken. This is not something that shows you're doing something wrong. It's that all of these separate beliefs you have generated over time. People have told you the kind of society and sector and all that stuff tell you that all these things are true, that that work is non-negotiable, that you should be able to do it all, that it doesn't fit, that you need quality time, that you should be looking after your self-care as well, so you shouldn't work when you're tired. It tells you all these [00:09:00] things, but it never brings them into the same place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, another tangent for you. I'm in tangent mode. Um, another tangent for you. This is the same in my opinion as universities that tell themselves they need to be world-leading research institutions, that they need to be world leading student recruitment and student delivery organizations, and they need to be impacting like the real stuff out there in the world. And they need to have good staff wellbeing and they need to come in under budget and they need to do all these things. And all the people, the vice chancellor of this and the vice chancellor of that and the vice chancellor of something else, never actually get in one place and go, okay, well how much of us is there to go around? And how much of our staff is there to go around and how do we actually do all of these things? 'Cause these things all sound great and you know, we believe them, right? They're true. They feel true. But they can't all be true. We can't have good staff wellbeing and have healthy budgets and do all of the [00:10:00] things. We can't. And we get angry with our universities for not realizing this. We get mad at them for not seeing, there's only so much of you to go around, yet we do it to ourself. </div> <div> We don't sit and recognize there's only so much of us to go around and that something here has to give. Now you might be slightly surprised by the options I give you in a minute. So stay with me 'cause this is not gonna be your standard. You just need to learn to say, no. This is not, it's not. I mean that there, there is some of that, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We do need to learn to say no, but this is not just about that. This is way broader than that. So what we need to, we pause, we breathe. We recognize that holding these contradictory beliefs is completely exhausting. And then we just try to open ourselves up to the possibility that some of these beliefs might not be true [00:11:00] or not completely true or not as true as we are telling ourselves that they are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that indeed they, they can't be 'cause they contradict each other. Because if it absolutely is true that you can't do academic writing during the day and you can't do academic writing on evenings and weekends, then you don't have time to do academic writing and we need to stop telling you that you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It means you don't have time. Now, I don't believe that necessarily 'cause I think there's other things that give, but if all those things are true, then you don't have time. Therefore we need to stop telling ourselves that we should be able to. Alternatively, we have to stop telling ourselves that every part of our other commitments are equally important and equally non-negotiable. </div> <div> We need to stop telling ourselves that we can't work in short blocks, and this one's a difficult one, and I know some [00:12:00] of you'll come at me for it. We also need to stop telling ourselves that we can't write when we're tired. Okay? Now, those of you who know me, I am a big believer in work life balance. Not necessarily work rest balance, but certainly work fun balance. I'm a big proponent of that. But if you are somebody who has a very busy academic job or who has chosen to do a PhD part-time on the side of a full-time job. We might have to accept that you need to write when you're tired, and that might sound like a recipe for burnout, but it's actually, I don't think it is, because I think there is a huge difference when you accept that you have to write when you're tired, then we stop telling ourselves that we shouldn't be tired. We stop telling ourselves that we need to work out how to have more energy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We stop telling ourselves, oh, well, I'll just leave it [00:13:00] for tonight. I'm feeling too tired to do it. And instead we start asking ourselves much more important questions, which is, how can I be kind to myself while doing this tired? How can I make this feel achievable by doing this tired? How do I set myself up to be able to do this in a way that's realistic? So one of my members is doing a PhD alongside a full-time job, and she talked about getting up early to do hers as probably her only plausible option, and we explored a bunch of other options and I asked her a bunch of questions to sort of challenge her assumptions, but we kind of got to a place where it was like, yeah, I think this might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, in the long term there might be other adjustments to make to your work commitments and things like that, but as things stand right now, it sounds like this might be your best option. So then we started talking about how do we then make that feel gorgeous? How do we make that feel like it's your little pocket of time where you are doing this thing [00:14:00] that you love in a way that feels lovely and gorgeous for you? Rather than waking up early and sort of going, oh, I shouldn't be having to do this right now. I'm so tired. I'm just gonna be absolutely exhausted all day now. I really shouldn't have to do this, and it has to be a better way than this. No one else has to do this, da, da, da. If we layer in all that, it's suddenly so much worse than if we say, you know what? With what I've taken on and the commitments I have, this is kind of how it's gonna work, and I can make that gorgeous. </div> <div> And then we also spent some time thinking about what happens at the other end of the day in order to make that possible. Were there changes she could make in how her evenings went that would make those early mornings feel more positive for her and more achievable and more sustainable in the long term? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you find yourself in this box, we pause and we start to sort of pull apart some of the assumptions. Is it really [00:15:00] true that everything you spend time on during the day absolutely has to be done? Another member said that, absolutely, it all has to be done. And I asked, is there a research component in your job? This is an academic who's doing a PhD. Is there a research component in your job? And she said, yes. And I said, but we're not doing that. Then she says, no, I don't have time. And I said, but why is it that bit that goes, why do we have to say yes to every single administrative ask to every single student query, to every teaching piece, to every preparation piece? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Why do we have to say yes to all of those? Because we couldn't possibly say no because it's part of our job, but we are saying no to this other bit of our job that's doing research. Now some of you'll be going, yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, if I've got a class of students in front of me, I've gotta be able to teach them. I can't just not be prepared for it. And you are absolutely right and that's why we are not thinking in kind of black and white. [00:16:00] I'm just not gonna do any of that stuff. But I also know for a fact because I've been where you are, I've been my colleagues, I've worked with hundreds of people in this situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I almost guarantee there are things that you are spending more time on than you need to in the rest of your commitments, that there are times where you are like, oh, well I don't have time to start writing anyway. I might as well just perfect these PowerPoint slides a little bit more. I might as well just do a bit more of this. </div> <div> I have an episode. If you haven't listened to it already, it's called eight Ways you're Secretly Procrastinating and Doing stuff you have to do for your job or for other people is a way of procrastinating sometimes, because it's actually a lot easier than the academic writing that you need to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know I sound like I'm being really mean to you here, but it's true. Okay. And I say it with love. Um. It is a form of procrastination. Other people see it. Other people are grateful for it. We feel capable of it. We feel [00:17:00] resourced to do it. Of course, we're gonna do that before this big amorphous get started on introduction that you've got written on your to-do list. </div> <div> Okay? And if you still have things like that written on your to-do list, you have to keep an eye out for, I think it's next month's free coaching because I'm gonna do a session about to-do lists and how we all have to get much, much better. But often what we're telling ourselves about what we have to do for work isn't entirely true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It could have some little cracks that we can just get our fingers into and pull apart and go, you know what? There is this bit that I could probably do a bit less, or I could do a bit slower or a bit less often. I could give my apologies to this meeting every third time or whatever. Okay.  </div> <div> Also if one of the beliefs you're telling yourself is that you can't work in short chunks of time, we have to figure out a way [00:18:00] to make that not true. Because if you are somebody who is working full time trying to manage household, potentially a family, a social life, hobbies, et cetera, then we're probably gonna be waiting quite a long time for these big chunks of time. And when they come, we're then gonna be overwhelmed and we're gonna feel like it's gonna take us four hours to get back into the head space and then the days disappeared and we beat ourselves up for not having used it enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we need to dig into that little belief. Is it really true that you can't do things in small chunks of time or could boss you, the version of you that plans the version of you that makes decisions and strategizes could boss you plan things that could be done in a small chunk of time. </div> <div> That planning piece maybe needs a little bit more headspace. The really difficult conceptual work that needs to happen maybe needs a little bit more headspace, but sometimes one of the best ways to get Headspace is be in it little and often in [00:19:00] amongst other things, so that it's percolating in your brain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of these beliefs, I can't fit in 'cause my other commitments, can they change? Probably I can't work in small bunk chunks of time. You probably can learn to and to be fair, and again, I mean this with love, you're probably gonna have to. Same as people. And like I say, I didn't do the whole baby thing myself. I've inherited stepchildren when they are very capable. But those of you who have done the baby making thing yourself, know that you find pockets of time that you never realized were there. If you are trying to fit things in between, keeping a tiny human alive, okay, you are gonna have to figure out how to do some of these things in small amounts of time.  </div> <div> And some of this might be accepting that there might be chunks of your time when the thought I have to, and should be able to find time for my writing might actually not be true. If you've listened to this whole episode and you've gone, yeah, Vic, but you don't know [00:20:00] my situation. In my situation, i've got this and I've got that and I've got this and I've got that, and this is non-negotiable and my health's non-negotiable, and that's non-negotiable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And nothing you've said changes. No, there are no small gaps. There is no way. Then the thought that you need to challenge is the thought that you have to be doing this. That you should be doing it. Because if it's genuinely true that none of the other things can give, then maybe we need to think about delaying, deferring, reducing the expectations in terms of the writing or the PhD, and that can be really hard to accept. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is why we often say stuck in that box is because it's hard to accept that we are going to have to face some discomfort here. The discomfort might be working when you're tired. The discomfort might be saying no to a colleague and risking upsetting them. The discomfort might be turning up for a teaching session [00:21:00] broadly prepared, but not entirely. </div> <div> I was quite good at that back in the day. But the discomfort might be also saying, you know, I don't have time for this right now. I need to take a leave of absence. I need to accept that that article can't happen until later or whatever. And that can be difficult, and it's because accepting that discomfort is difficult, that we stay stuck in the box. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So my kind of take home for you all is recognize. Recognize if this resonates with you. Recognize if you feel trapped in that box. Take a second. To just challenge some of your beliefs just a little bit and see if there are cracks in there. See which of these things you might have to accept are not quite as true as you said they were as you believed they were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I got one more bit I want to add here. And I have no idea whether this is gonna edit seamlessly in or not. 'cause frankly I'm recording it after I've edited the original one because as I was listening I could hear [00:22:00] your voices in my head. Apparently I can do that. Who knew? Anyway, what I want to add here is be very, very careful what you are prioritizing here. 'Cause I can imagine people too who are saying, I can't do this. I can't change my commitments to others. I can't dah, dah, dah and therefore it is gonna have to be my PhD that gives, it is gonna have to be my academic writing that's gonna have to wait. And I wanna remind you there's two sides to that story. On one side that might be true and you could be perfectly okay the other side of that decision. But I also wanna remind you, don't just jump to that decision. If you are somebody who always prioritizes other people, if you are somebody who always puts their needs before yours, struggles to say, no, I can't do that for you 'cause I'm doing this for me. I want you to be really, really careful [00:23:00] before you take the oh well writing or just have to wait till the summer approach. It's a difficult approach 'cause the summer brings a whole load of other challenges that we've talked about before. But also because if that's your go-to, if never doing the things that progress your interests and your ambitions and goals, if that's your go-to, we need to look at that discomfort too. </div> <div> Maybe we need to be considering what things you definitely can disconnect from, you can do less well. You can accept that you're no longer the go-to person for, so that this stuff that's for you does fit and that can sometimes be the most uncomfortable of all to face, that you do want to do this work and that you are good at this work and that the world wants to read this damn thing that you are trying to write. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That means that [00:24:00] there are things that you are gonna have to move away from. Okay? So if when I said, maybe finally you may have to accept, you don't have time, your brain went, oh, okay. Relief. Okay. That's an option that I'm willing to take 'cause it's sacrificing myself and not sacrificing other people. Again, pause, breathe. Do not make that the default option here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because there's discomfort in saying no to other people. That feels awful at the moment and feels like it goes against your whole sense of self of being this good person. But I want you to think of the discomfort in the future. The potential discomfort there is if you only make that decision because you are not willing to let down anybody else, because of this self-perceived, self-created notion that you have to put other people before yourself. You don't. If people wanna read your research, you wanna do your research, and that can be reason enough to say no. No. That bit's the non-negotiable bit, [00:25:00] however uncomfortable it is, I'm gonna find the other cracks. I'm gonna find other things to give because this bit that I want to do, that's my non-negotiable bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> From there, we make a little bit of a plan, not a grand plan. Do not go and buy a planner. Do not decide to color code it. People were in one of my workshops where we were talking about shape of the Day and they actually popped up in the chat and said, sorry, Vikki haven't been listening for the last 10 minutes. 'Cause I was color coding my calendar. We are not doing that, people. They got the looks. It's exactly what I would've done. I get it entirely. But we're not doing that. We don't need a grand plan. We need a little plan. A little plan. So my challenge for you is to look at this week, look at the assumptions you're making about this week, and see whether there's one little place where you could do something slightly different than you usually tell yourself is possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where you can say to your family, you know what, I'm not hanging out with you on a Thursday night. Sorry, dude. It's got things to do. I'll [00:26:00] be, I'll be out, I'll be a cafe. You could feed yourself whatever, whatever it might be, right? Think if there's one place this week that you can go, you know what? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm just not gonna believe the things about that that I usually believe. And then let me know how it goes. If you're not already on my newsletter, why not? Please go to my website, the PhD life coach.com. Make sure you're signed up. That's how you all know about all the free workshops that I do, it's how you get to ask me questions. It's how you get to suggest topics for future podcasts. So make sure you're on the newsletter and if you are, reply to the email. Let me know whether this has resonated with you and what you are gonna challenge this week to look at slightly differently than you have done in the past. I really hope today has been useful. I know it was for my members. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 23 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-26-what-to-do-when-you-dont-have-enough-time thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-25-how-to-do-difficult-tasks <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are stuck on a difficult task, then this is the episode for you! So often we get caught up on a task that we’re finding difficult, and then we struggle to see a way forward. Unfortunately we often then start making it mean something about ourselves - that we’re not good enough to be able to do the task, or that other people would find it easy, or that it “should” be achievable and it’s a problem that it’s not. In this episode we’ll think of different reasons why a task might be difficult, and go through some simple steps forward that both reframe how we think about these tasks and help us navigate a way forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15053160-2-35-what-to-do-if-you-feel-stuck" target="_blank"> what to do if you feel stuck </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I don't know whether you can hear it or not, but I am currently not at my healthiest. I have managed to pick up a bit of a bug. I'm not feeling too bad, but I am aware I sound a little bit coldy, and for that reason, we are gonna keep this week relatively short and sweet. But the topic that I want to talk about today is something that came up in one of our coaching sessions last week, and that I think could be really, really useful to many of you. In fact, after the session where we discussed it, one of my members came back to me and thanked me for what she called the nugget of wisdom that I shared and talked about how it really then went on to change how she was thinking about the work that she's been doing, how it enabled her to have a bit of a eureka moment, and how she's now feeling really proud of herself and what she's got done over the last few weeks. </div> <div> So, I really hope it has a similar effect on you too. So what were we [00:01:00] talking about? We were talking about doing a difficult task, and that might sound like, well, yeah, obviously we're doing PhDs, we're doing academia of course we do difficult tasks, but one of the things that I've really noticed is that we really conflate what that means in our heads. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So many people tell me that they are finding a task too difficult and that this means they can't work on it, or it means that they may be not cut out to do their PhD or to stay in academia, that they shouldn't be finding it difficult, that if they were good enough, they wouldn't be finding it difficult and I always notice when people say those things because I think it's such a understandable thing to tell yourself. I think all the way through our academic studies and then careers, we kind of have [00:02:00] that sense that if you're good at something, you don't find it too difficult, and I think society reinforces that and praises people who find things easy or that things come naturally to them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the other reason I always really pay attention is because I've seen the damage that these sorts of beliefs can cause. When we tell ourselves that something being difficult is a signifier of our abilities and a signifier of whether we are going to be able to do it or not, and in fact, it is signifying that there's a problem here, then it's really hard to keep persisting with that task. It's really hard to feel like you belong. It's really hard to feel like this is the right environment for you, when in reality I don't believe that finding a task difficult means any of those things at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what we're gonna think about in the [00:03:00] episode today is how we can distinguish different types of difficult and what you can do when you find yourself facing a difficult task that will enable you to engage with it and dare I even say, enjoy it, rather than finding it a massive threat. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I actually hadn't intended to talk about this bit of research today, but my use of the word threat made me think of it. So we're going to wing it and tell you about it now. So there is actually a portion of psychology and psychophysiology, which used to be my area. I'll tell you more about that in a second, which distinguishes between things that are challenges and things that threats. And I think this can be a really useful way of framing difficult tasks. And in that psychology literature, a challenge is framed as something that is difficult, but that you have the resources to address. And a [00:04:00] threat is framed as something that is difficult, that you don't have the resources to address and that therefore in some way could be harmful. And that can be physically harmful, but it can also be sort of socially harmful, psychologically harmful and so on. And there's a whole lot of literature around how when we perceive things more as challenges, we sort of rise to that challenge and approach those goals, try hard to do them, whereas when they're threats, we tend to try and avoid them and so on. There is also a literature on, so psychophysiology is how the body responds to the psychological stimuli, there is also a whole body of literature that claims that we have different physiological responses to challenge and threat. I have thoughts about that literature, which I'm not gonna go into on the podcast, but suffice to say, I don't think there is much evidence of that side of things. But I do think on the psychological aspect of whether you perceive something as a challenge or a threat [00:05:00] can have a really big difference in how you feel about it and how you therefore behave. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how do we figure out what we wanna do? We're facing this difficult task. We don't know. We could just say, oh, see it as a challenge, but we don't necessarily know whether our resources can meet it or not. So it's hard to just force yourself to see it as a challenge. So what do we do instead? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For me, the first step is to figure out why it feels difficult. Because there are some things that feel difficult because of all the self-talk we're piling on top of it. And I don't mean that to say it's your fault, but when we are telling ourselves all the way through something, you haven't got time to do this, you should have done this before. Other people wouldn't find this, this difficult, other people will be able to do this straight away, all this kind of self-talk stuff, then things become difficult that aren't necessarily hugely difficult tasks in themselves. We make them difficult. We make them feel difficult because we tell ourselves we should know the [00:06:00] answer and it should be clear to us, and the fact that it isn't is a problem. There are then things that are inherently difficult tasks, and I would argue that an awful lot of the teaching and research that we do in academia is dealing with inherently difficult tasks. Where we are trying to generate and analyze and get meaning from complex data, where we are trying to make arguments based on evidence that people haven't argued before. When we are trying to communicate effectively a position, whether that's to teach it or to write about it in an article, and we are trying to work out the best way or the most effective way of communicating that argument in a convincing manner. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are inherently cognitively difficult tasks. The fact that you find them hard is [00:07:00] not a sign that you're not good enough for what you're doing. The fact that you find them hard is that you are engaging with difficult academic concepts. People who are good at research, the people who are the best at research, the people that have got all the Nobel Prizes and all that stuff, they have found it difficult. They have grappled with difficult problems. Grappling with a difficult academic problem is not the same thing as a task being too hard for you. It is not the same thing as just telling yourself you are not good enough to be here or should find it easy. </div> <div> I like thinking of like scientists of old in the, with their like heads in their hands being like, but I don't understand, why the planets move the way they move and grappling with these fundamental questions and not being able to explain it to other people, but having a gut feeling of something going on, but not being able to explain why it's going on. Those people weren't too stupid to do [00:08:00] science. They were grappling with difficult, difficult things that people hadn't done before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so are you. So sometimes things are difficult because we make them difficult. We turn them into unpleasant experiences by the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes they're difficult because they're inherently difficult and cognitively challenging. And then a third way that I see things that are difficult are where you are under-resourced in some way to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that might be resourced in terms of having sufficient time, having sufficient training, having sufficient support, sufficient background. So as an example, if you gave me some music theory challenge to do, okay. That would be difficult for me not to, just because it is cognitively demanding, but because I am woefully underprepared to do it. I am not naturally musical on any level, and I have [00:09:00] had, apart from a brief term of playing the clarinet at secondary school badly, um, which incidentally tangent alert, uh, which incidentally I gave up because I had got a top grade in every class except for clarinet, which I got an A two in instead of an A one. So I gave up clarinet because I wasn't as perfect at it as I was at everybody else. Good old 13-year-old Vikki. Anyway, beside the point. I don't have much music training for me. I would be massively under resourced to answer a music theory question. It wouldn't be my self talks problem. It wouldn't necessarily be inherently challenging. I would just be under resourced to answer it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think, think of something that you have been feeling is very difficult at the moment. Particularly if you've been telling yourself that it shouldn't feel this difficult. But it's been frustrating you. It takes this long and try to think, am I making it [00:10:00] more unpleasant than I need to? Is that why it's so difficult? Is it inherently difficult or am I actually under resourced undertrained to do this at the moment? </div> <div> Notice the kind of growth mindset vibes over there. It's not that we're not able to do it. I am sure that, I mean, I'm not sure I could sing in tune, but I'm sure I could answer music theory questions if I got sufficient training and support. It's not that we're inherently unable to do it, but we're currently unprepared to do it. Have a think for yourself, which does it fall into? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because once we can better understand that, it fundamentally changes how we engage with it. Because if the main problem is that we are making it unpleasant for ourselves by what we say to ourselves, as easy as it doesn't sound, we don't have to do that. We can notice, right? We're gonna keep, you know, habitually, we are gonna still think of these thoughts, but we can choose that we don't do that to ourselves. We can choose more intentional thoughts, that don't focus on us not being good [00:11:00] enough to be here, that don't focus on everybody else finding it easier, but focus instead on us grappling with a difficult problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are noticing that the reason it's unpleasant is because of all this stuff you are layering on top of it, let's notice that compassionately, we're not gonna beat ourselves up 'cause we all do it, but let's notice it and work on that mindset stuff. </div> <div> If we're noticing, you know what, I am just underprepared to do this. I know a lot of my clients work interdisciplinarily, for example, I, I did, um, I did a lot at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and immunology. And there were times where it wasn't just that I felt like an imposter, I just was undertrained to do some of the things I needed to do. And then if we realize that that's the issue, then we take different approaches. Yes, there might be a mindset piece that we stop beating ourselves up about it and recognize that actually we're under prepared. But then we start thinking, okay, how do I get prepared? Who can support me with this? What specific training do I need? What specific help or opportunities do I need in order to be able to [00:12:00] engage with this meaningfully? </div> <div> So we get to think in terms of help and those sorts of things if we recognize that it's, it's an under preparedness issue. But what do we do when it's an inherently difficult task? A task that we are prepared to do. We are trained for this, but is really feeling very difficult. </div> <div> The first thing, same always self-talk first. We stop telling ourselves that we should find it easy. It's inherently difficult, and that's okay. Any of you who do puzzles and things, right? If you got a children's book of word searches or crosswords or whatever. You have a go at that it's not gonna engage you for very long 'cause it's like, duh, dah, dah, duh. Easy, easy, easy. Yeah, fine. Bored now. But the best puzzles, if you are a puzzle person, the best puzzles are the ones where it's like, ugh, I dunno what's going wrong here. I can't work out how to do this, but I think I can get there. I think I can figure it out. [00:13:00] This word is definitely in this word search somewhere or one of those, you know, like the logic puzzles with the little grids and stuff. There's definitely more clues here. How can I figure them out. When we have that sense that it's difficult, but we are engaging with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when we're in this situation, in that self-talk piece, we are thinking not just about, what can I stop saying to myself, but what can I say to myself? In our quarterly planning session last week for my membership, I used the analogy of swimmers that, actually if you are going, you're doing a big, let's say you are swimming the English channel or something like that, some big open water extravaganza. You are doing something really hard, but your coach on the boat isn't gonna be like yelling to you. You are rubbish. You should have swum faster. You should have trained more. Your coach is gonna be reminding you to use your technique, telling you how well you are doing, reminding you when the next break's coming up, giving you snacks, reminding you why you [00:14:00] decided to do this, keeping you on track, all of those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's the vibe that we wanna generate in our self-talk. When we're engaging with something difficult, we wanna be reminding ourselves why we do this, why this is interesting, how we're definitely gonna figure this out at some point. We definitely believe we're capable of this. Here are the resources you need to do it. We are cheering ourselves on to get it done instead of beating ourselves up. </div> <div> From a more pragmatic perspective, we can also think about how we engage with the task, because when we recognize it as being inherently difficult, then we can start getting a bit experimental about how we might go about answering the problem, how we might go about overcoming the difficulty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  here we might ask ourselves, what techniques might I use to be able to look at this in a different way? Are there different ways of visualizing the data? Are there different ways of like visualizing what argument I'm going to make here? Can I [00:15:00] experiment with different options? If I'm not sure how to argue this, let's try arguing it that way and see what evidence I would be able to talk about if I argue it that way but then let's see if I can work it that way. Or if your difficult challenge is your piece of lab equipment's not working, or your cells keep dying, or whatever it is, what options have we got? What, how can we think through all the different steps of the procedure you're trying to do to figure out where it's going wrong? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead of thinking, I'm just not good enough to do this, when we recognize it's difficult, we start to shining lights in lots of different directions and bring our creativity to play, to decide and try and under give ourselves the best opportunity of figuring out a way into this difficulty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A really useful, apparently my members love my analogies and I feel like I'm mixing all my metaphors today, but I've got a cold. We're going with it. Another analogy that I find [00:16:00] really useful is have you ever seen like a bundle of tangled necklaces? So if you think of like fine gold chains, that kind of necklace, right? So not like big beady things, just like little gold chains. And somehow you put them down in a jewelry box and somehow they tie themselves into a massive knot. When we want to untangle those, it can be really frustrating 'cause it's like, ah, it is really knotted, it's really difficult. But when we just get cross about the fact they're knotted, we pull too hard and often that's when we end up breaking a necklace. But when we say to ourselves, I can, I can slowly ease this apart. This is something I can do. It's gonna take a bit of time, but I can go at it gently. I can go at it from different directions. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'm doing like little pulling apart motions. Um. We can like ease this bit out so I can see a little bit more. We can ease that bit out. What happens if I pull it from this side? What happens if I loosen it over [00:17:00] here? That's the approach we want to take to difficult questions like how can I ease it apart? How can I find bits of clarity in here? How can I find bits of space? And we allow ourselves to do those things when we acknowledge that it's difficult and we recognize that we can go through the process, and we don't even have to believe we will find a solution, but we believe that we have the capacity to go through some steps to see what we can figure out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is also where I want you to be very careful of your notions of efficiency, because often people think, I don't wanna write anything until I know what I'm writing. 'cause it will be inefficient to write it one way and not another. And so then people end up grappling with this difficult thing, trying to decide how they're gonna write it, how gonna do it, but they don't make any progress on it. It doesn't feel like they get anywhere. Whereas actually exploring options going, oh, what if I did it like this? What if I did it like that? Let's [00:18:00] spend two hours writing a few paragraphs as though I was arguing it this way. How easy does it come, does the evidence seem to fit? Do I believe myself? What if I argue it that way? Okay, so we get to experiment with these different options and accept that we are not necessarily gonna to see immediate benefits of these things, we are not, that knot is not going to automatically, immediately come untied, but we are gonna leave it a little looser and the next time we come back we'll ease it again. And sometimes we'll do something and it'll make it less clear. But that's progress. Moving to towards solving the problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When tasks are inherently difficult, we can also still ask for support even if we feel like we're readily resourced to do it. So we talked about asking for support if you feel under prepared to do a difficult task, but if it's a task that kind of should be within, should, You know, that's always a big word, but should be within your capacity that you have been trained to solve, but you're finding it difficult. </div> <div> That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for support. [00:19:00] What it does mean though, is you can think carefully about what sort of support might be useful, because often if it's inherently difficult and you are prepared to do it, sometimes people might be able to give you advice about it, but often they won't know either. Because you guys are working at the edges of human knowledge. That's literally what academia does. And so if you are expecting somebody just to be able to give you advice and tell you how to do it, you're probably underestimating the complexity of the problem and you're probably underestimating yourself too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But that doesn't mean that asking for support isn't helpful. What we wanna think about instead is how can we be creative about that support? So what I ask for sometimes when I'm trying to figure something out is just the opportunity to talk it through some of us like that kind of verbal processing and sometimes in explaining it to somebody else and them asking questions, it clarifies our thinking. Other times just telling somebody, it will help you recognize blind spots, things that you thought were obvious but weren't obvious, that you [00:20:00] hadn't noticed before. So it's not necessarily about getting expertise from somebody who is better than you, but it can be getting sort of fresh eyes on a problem that you've looked at for too long. So don't underestimate how much support can help, even if it's something that you feel like you should be able to do on your own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my tips for grappling with difficult tasks is make sure we are not making it more difficult than it could be by the way we speak to ourselves. Make sure that if there's any way that you are under-prepared or under-resourced to doing it, how can we go about getting the resource that you need there, and then recognizing and celebrating the fact that you are grappling with a difficult problem and that this is literally what you came here to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the bit that's meant to be fun, that having hard intellectual conversations with yourself, grappling with difficult data. This is meant to be the bit that we love and enjoy. And often it's the time pressure, often it's the um, kind of [00:21:00] judgment we pile on ourselves that stop us enjoying the bit that's the bit we came here for. We can reclaim that by saying, no, this is just a hard task. I'm doing academia, man. I'm doing science, I'm doing research. Whatever it is for you. The more we can reclaim the fact that doing difficult things can be joyous and beautifully frustrating and interesting and engaging and all of these things, the more we can re-embrace that, the easier and safer it is to get on with those difficult tasks, to perceive them as a challenge rather than as a threat, and to look creatively at ways to navigate our way through, figure things out, and make decisions about how we're gonna solve these difficult tasks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that's helpful. It definitely resonated with my members and they asked for more details on it, so I said I would do this episode for them. I hope you all enjoyed it too. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 16 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-25-how-to-do-difficult-tasks thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-24-how-to-identify-options-when-making-a-decision-a-coaching-episode-with-claire <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this coaching episode, podcast listener Claire is exploring career options, but worries she lacks the lateral thinking skills to come up with possible ideas. I am not a career coach, but we use this example as an opportunity to explore how limiting beliefs can prevent you finding solutions and how there are many routes to creative ideas. Listen in as we discuss her situation and identify a path forward. If you want to be on the podcast in the future, make sure you’re on my newsletter to hear about future chances to volunteer!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/17084241-3-35-how-phd-students-can-network-smarter-avoid-career-panic-with-dr-david-mendes-from-beyond-the-thesis" target="_blank"> How to make decisions you love </a> and this episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/17084241-3-35-how-phd-students-can-network-smarter-avoid-career-panic-with-dr-david-mendes-from-beyond-the-thesis" target="_blank"> how PhD Students Can Network Smarter &amp; Avoid Career Panic with Dr David Mendes from Beyond the Thesis </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and today I have another listener on for a coaching session. So you all know periodically I do a little shout out to my newsletter asking for people who have got something that they think it would be useful to be coached on, but we haven't really talked about much on the podcast before or where they think they've got a kind of different angle on things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So before we get into it, first thing, if you're not on my newsletter and you think this will be an interesting opportunity in the future, do make sure you sign up. I try and do a shout out every month or two for new people. And this time it was Claire who answered. So welcome Claire. Thank you so much for coming on. </div> <div> Claire: Thank you  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and Claire got in touch. I was really keen to talk to some academics as well as people who are doing their PhD full-time, for example because PhD life coach really does go across every stage of the academic journey. And I wanted to make sure that I was representing all of my people who were working full-time in academia as well.[00:01:00]  </div> <div> Vikki: And Claire got in touch, you'll hear much more detail from her in a second, but Claire got in touch because she has a bit of a career dilemma coming up now. Just to make really, really clear before you guys get over excited. I don't really do career coaching. Okay. It's not my specialty. There's lots of people out there who have real expertise in that stuff, in careers post PhD, for example. But I am very interested in decision making and I'm very interested in how we go about making decisions, particularly decisions that we can be as confident as possible that we won't regret later. And I'm interested in what makes those decisions difficult for people. So today we are gonna be thinking about career options, but we are gonna be thinking about them from that kind of decision making perspective. So Claire, why don't you tell people a little bit more about where you are at at the moment and what this decision you've got to make is  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Okay. Thank you. So,, I'm an academic at a [00:02:00] university and I've been there for best part of 10 years now. I'm a physio by background, but I've moved away from clinical working, so I'm purely in academia now. But I teach a variety of physio skills to undergraduate and postgraduate students and I am also doing a professional doctorate part-time, which I've been doing for some years. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: And thankfully I'm coming towards the end, so I'm in the write-up stage. So that's my goal for this year is to finish and submit and come out the other side of doctoral life. I guess my reason for getting in touch was, because I want to think about what my doctorate can do for me. That wasn't initially why I started it. But I've come to realize that it can actually do quite a lot for your career or, even if it in terms of, you know, interesting new roles, and doing different things. However, I don't [00:03:00] feel particularly skilled in finding some of these different things because they're potentially moving away from, sort of a traditional type of job progression or career progression. And so it is kind of a bit more lateral thinking and that's the bit that I struggle with. </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And what I love about this is I've done episodes about decision making before, right? And i've taken people through the sort of different steps of my decision making process. If people wanna hear more about that, I'll link to a show where I explain the decision making process in the show notes. But one of the very first steps of that is outline all the options. And I almost skim past that sometimes when I talk about it, right, because especially the way my brain works coming up with all the options is the easy bit, right? Deciding which ones I want to do is the hard bit. And so I've sort of, without really thinking about it, skimmed [00:04:00] past the, well, how do you figure out what options there are to then decide from anyway? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I think it'll be really useful for everyone today for us to think more about that very first step. So I suspect today we are not gonna get in anywhere close to figuring out how you are gonna decide which one of these you want to pursue. But I think if we could get to a place where you've got a lot of ideas as to how you can find what different options there are, then I think that'll put you in a really good place to then enter into the rest of the decision making process. How does that sound?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: That sounds ideal. 'cause I think sometimes when I know what my options are, I, I can eventually at least make a decision, but it's knowing what all the options are from which to then pick or, I get some of them, but not all of them. I get the obvious ones.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. No, definitely, definitely. And there's never gonna be an all of them, right? But enough of a [00:05:00] variety that we're confident that we've kind of covered it off. As it were. And before we came on, you were saying a little bit about how with physio there's quite a sort of specific career path. You know, you're choosing perhaps specialties I guess. But beyond that, the actual structures similar. And I think academia is saying in traditional academia can feel a bit like that too, that you do your PhD and then postdoc if appropriate. And then you sort of work your way up the academic level, and there's a bunch of decisions about what you specialize in and things, but what the job is that you're aspiring to is kind of ahead of you. But for people who want to move outside of that, I think it can be a lot more kind of fuzzy, I guess, to, to see the different options. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So tell me why you think you are not very good at coming up with the different options.  </div> <div> Claire: Because when I kind of sit [00:06:00] down to think about what options I have, and I'm, I'm a bit old school, I'm very pencil on paper. So in the initial sort of brainstorming kind of stages and I'm scribbling things down, I don't seem to have very much that is beyond what would be considered the kind of traditional, obvious ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: And then I hear other people saying, oh, I'm doing this, or, oh, I've moved on from that and I'm doing this really exciting job now. And I'm thinking, good grief. How did you find that? How did you know what was out there to look for? I would never have considered that. So for example, a former colleague of mine went off to work with a charitable organization. </div> <div> Claire: It just never occurred to me that there might be anything related to what we do in that kind of environment. And so once I've heard about something, I might then look at it, but it doesn't occur to me to look at it [00:07:00] initially or I, I just don't think about, think of these things. So once I've read about them, oh yeah, that seems great, but then how do I find it elsewhere? </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. So how would somebody who was good at lateral thinking, who was good at identifying options, talk me through how they sit down with their paper and pen as well. How does what they do differ from what you do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Do you know? I'm not actually sure, but I guess they maybe have a wider range of thinking. </div> <div> Vikki: What does that mean? </div> <div> Claire: Oh gosh. I guess it's kind of being able to be a bit more flexible with thinking, so getting beyond the sort of the traditional, you start off at a junior or whatever and then go to a senior or whatever, and then you're a bit more senior. And [00:08:00] perhaps they're able to blend ideas a little bit. I don't wanna say a bit better, but perhaps a little bit more readily.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Than, than I I can, because I know there are some combinations. So in academia you might do some teaching and you might do some research.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: But if it's a more unusual or a different type of blend. Or a different type of split, unless I've heard of it, it doesn't, I, I can't think, I don't think of it. Maybe they're a bit more flexible with their thinking about what kinds of things go together.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So in your mind, people that are good at that kind of lateral thinking and things like that, sort of semi spontaneously come up with these different options without having heard about them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Now you've phrased it like that, that sounds a bit unrealistic. I guess maybe they have heard about them, but perhaps just [00:09:00] better at retaining it or better at then seeing those, combinations or those different ideas or places where people can work. Whereas I either don't remember, 'cause my memory is quite notoriously bad at times or I remembered it, but I don't then make the next step, the next connection in my head to put it together with something else or to see it as something that I could look for somewhere else.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. Now, people might be saying, why are you banging on about this, Vikki? Why don't we just think about what options there are out there? And the reason is that when you tell yourself something like, I'm not good at lateral thinking, and you don't see that as something that can change, and you see that as something that is absolutely necessary for the thing you want to be able to [00:10:00] achieve. So in this case, coming up with lots of ideas for this, it makes it really hard to move forward with it because you get to a stage where you're like, well, I'm just not good at thinking these things. So if I'm not good at coming up with them, how am I ever gonna know what they are? Okay. And I think what can be really useful is instead to start thinking, okay, how do people that are good at this do it. What sorts of questions are they are intentionally or implicitly asking themselves? Because I'm not gonna deny there are some brain, I, I am someone where my brain tends to fiz and make connections often to my detriment, just generally. So I'm not gonna sit here and say, I have a really systematic way of how I go, oh, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Have you thought about that? 'cause I don't. But if I sat back and was like, okay, how am I making those connections? What would that look like? [00:11:00] Then we would absolutely come up with some sort of more intentional methods, I guess, by which you could come up with ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And for those of you listening, you might not be in the same position as Claire trying to think about your next career moves and stuff, but everything we're talking about today can be applied to thinking of research ideas, for example. Often it can feel like other people have just got research ideas coming outta their ears and you dunno where they come from and da and how do you even, you know, think of it. Everything we're talking about can apply to anything where you are trying to sort of brainstorm options. How does it feel to think that you could modify or at least give yourself some strategies to support your lateral thinking rather than saying I'm just not good at that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: That would be really great. You know, because I'm aware sometimes maybe can do, but it just feels a little [00:12:00] bit, by chance or by luck, rather than an active choice so yeah, any strategies that can support that process, that would be really helpful.  </div> <div> Vikki: Things coming up by luck or by chance are often a sign that you're just good at it so you're discounting that.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I have this with people who say, oh, and I do write much faster than other people, but honestly it's not 'cause I'm good at it, I'm just lucky. It's like, why are you just good at it? And that's okay. So I'm not saying that like it's a super strength of yours, but if you have some situations where you do make these connections, where you do spot things and you are currently telling yourself, that's just by luck and chances. That's an example of discounting your skills. </div> <div> Claire: Okay. My only thought for that is it, it is reasonably infrequent and it does feel a bit random. [00:13:00] Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: Well, that's okay. Not we get to spot those.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: We get to spot those and appreciate those and think about how we can create those environments, create those opportunities more often. Okay. So let's take one. Have a think. You mentioned that you met somebody who had gone into the charity sector.  </div> <div> Claire: Oh yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: So tell me about that. When you realized that that was an option. What happened in your brain, how you made that connection?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Well, when I heard that they were leaving and they were moving on. And so you get the usual questions, oh, what are you going to do? You know, when are you gonna be going? And when she said where the organization that she was going to my initial thought was, wow, that's amazing. How on earth did you think of that? You know, how did you even think to look at that as an organization for which that there might be a job that might be appropriate? It was just a real wow, mind blowing moment that I was thinking, gosh, it would never have occurred to me to, [00:14:00] you know, because you think healthcare or you think education and you certain think of certain companies or organizations, and that's certainly not, not on the normal run of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: And you know, I'm still friends on social media with her and I know she's getting on really well and she's loving it and there's, you know, all these projects and things that she's been doing and it's been amazing. And the same is actually true for a couple of other people who might not necessarily be in those kinds of organizations. They may be, are in a traditional university role or a physio related organization. And, um, again, I'm like, wow, that sounds really interesting. But it's having that initial, being able to look and find it, it's just like mind blowing.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Um, did you ask?  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So how did she come up with it?  </div> <div> Claire: So, it was not what I was [00:15:00] expecting her at all to say, oh, I found it on a one of the main, like job search engines and I was like, oh, which was kind of good in the sense that it's easily accessible, but kind of bad in the sense of I was expecting it to be something more super fantastic than that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: But I immediately went, oh no, because when I have looked at similar or, or the same search engine, putting in the right words to get the right job search can then be another challenge. That in itself is, that's something different, but that in itself has been a bit of a problem. So yeah, the answer was just like a, a normal job search engine that probably most of the population would look at. </div> <div> Vikki: So what do you make it mean then about you that you saw her do that and you're like, wow, that's amazing. I never would've thought of that. And then you asked her, and it was fairly [00:16:00] mundane how she found it. How does that then translate into thoughts about you? What thoughts do you then end up having? </div> <div> Claire: So my initial thought was, oh great, I could do that.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Although in all fairness, it is then backed up with, like I said, about actually searching on those search engines. 'cause I haven't had much success in the past with picking the right words to put in to get the right stuff back. So what tends to happen for me is I put in what I think are the right words and then I get completely different job adverts back that are not what I was looking for and not related to me but my initial thought was, oh, I could do that.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: So, which was kind of good in the sense it was positive. Although my enthusiasm was slightly curtailed when I thought about the logistics of actually doing that.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Well, what words did she put in for that to come up?  </div> <div> Claire: Now That, I don't know. That unfortunately I didn't think to, [00:17:00] to ask. Um, and I, it was a lot fair while ago now, so I'm not sure she'll remember, but, um,  </div> <div> Vikki: but she might have thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Because, so what happens here right, is there's all, especially if we are convinced we can't do something, that then as soon as a bit of evidence that it's something that you couldn't do, comes up, we stop asking, okay? So you had this example of somebody, and I want you to notice that means that you had people in your network who you knew, who had similar skills to you and were doing interesting things, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Which is a brilliant source of options, okay? If you have a net network where people are doing things fabulous, that's, that's a tick in the, I can come up with options box already. The fact that you even knew her. Okay. And then your first thought was, oh, I would [00:18:00] have no idea how I would find that. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Now a lot of people would've just stopped that, oh, I have no idea how she found that. Stop. You actually did ask, which again, shows that you are willing to then reach out. You're willing to have those conversations. You're willing to ask people how did it, which is another big tick in the I can do lateral thinking box. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And then she said, I did this. And you thought, oh, I can do that. Which again, brilliant, it means that you can hear what other people have done and immediately think, oh yes, I could do that too. So that's another tick in the, you're gonna be able to generate options box. So you did lots of things very right. </div> <div> Vikki: The only thing I think that happened was then you had one go at it and you then decided, oh, I haven't found things. I must not be good at searching for stuff, where I would really encourage you to ask questions about what exactly did you search for? [00:19:00] How many different searches did you do? How much crap did you filter through before you found this? What was it about that advert that made you think that you might be a contender for it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So I think you did a ton of things right in this, you just paused when it felt a bit difficult on your sort of first attempt, and often that's because we've got this story. If you believed you were gonna find your job on one of those and that that was just inevitable that you would find it, you wouldn't stop if you looked once and didn't find it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Okay.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. But when we, yeah. A chunk of us. It's like, so I've started doing, okay, this is an example of my problem with hobbies. I decided that it would be nice to do jigsaws so that I spend less time on my phone, more relaxed [00:20:00] analog vibes, except me being me. I've, I've turned this into, um, I want to do speed jigsaw competitions because obviously I can't just do it in a calm and restful a little bit at a time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: My mum's got her head in her hands just like, what are you doing? Anyway, I want you to think about how hard you would search for a piece if you knew it was in the box versus how hard you would see search for the piece if I told you, oh, I did actually drop some of the pieces up the farm, carrying it from the car, which is also a true story. If I knew it was definitely there. I would search for way longer.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I, I think if I knew for sure that it was some out there somewhere then yeah. Much like you, you just explained with your jigsaw piece, yeah, I would definitely search harder and if I felt more [00:21:00] confident in my abilities to find said, piece, then yeah, I would perhaps persevere a bit more. Whereas if I'm not sure it's there at all, you kind of think, oh, well what's the point? I'm wasting my time.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Or if you think, well, I dunno how to do this, or I'm always, you know, rubbish at doing this, I'm never gonna find it anyway. Then again, you think, well, what's the point? It's a waste of time. You stop.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So what we're trying to do here is recognize that people who find these things have essentially used a bunch of tactics. I think we can look at it from the point of view of how can we figure out what's out there. We start from that kind of, where would we look to see what's out there? Mm-hmm. And we can do it from starting much closer to us of identifying what skills you've got. </div> <div> Vikki: And I suggest we talk a little bit [00:22:00] about both of those because we can think about how, and you've already identified two ways that we can find out what's out there. We can find people who are doing interesting things, either through our immediate network or in some other way. And we can search on search engines essentially. Yeah. So there's a couple of ways already and we'll think more about how we can do that in creative ways. Mm-hmm. So how can we find what options are there out there? And then afterwards let's talk about how can we start from, I am a person with these skills, these skills, these skills, these skills. And I don't mean physiotherapy skills, I mean the broader, more transferable skills than that, assuming you're not looking to go back into clinical, um,  </div> <div> Claire: no.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I thought that was perhaps  </div> <div> Claire: not.  </div> <div> Vikki: Then we can think what more generically, what skills you have and how you could identify those, because that can be a starting point as well. Right. Because then you can ask yourself, in what environments [00:23:00] would those skills be useful? And I think having that er approach of looking at what's out there and looking at what I've got and then we're trying to find matches can be really useful.  </div> <div> Claire: Sure.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So how can you find out more about what's out there?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Um, well the first one that springs to mind is, I guess , the obvious perhaps. Do a Google search on how can I find what jobs there are or something like that, which I sometimes, I've used quite well with other things, but perhaps not for this. I don't know why, but anyway, you could, you know, ask the question of Google or something like that. Yeah. Doing a brainstorm of all the places that I could actually think of like straight off the top of my head and I've write, written them down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Claire: So that, although that does make long.  </div> <div> Vikki: So you could come up with some things off the top of your head.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, they're perhaps not necessarily always [00:24:00] very helpful 'cause it's a bit like the difference between, you know, doing your car insurance on one of the comparison sites and you know, finding the best deal straight away or going around every single insurance provider that you can think of. So I have been known to write down all the specific organizations I can think of and then go to their job search and see what there is kind of thing. </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Um. There is obviously the job searching websites that you, or searching places that you can, that I could think of.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Claire: So whether that be more profession specific ones or whether that be general ones that are out there in the market. And yeah, you said about asking people, which I, I would admit I'm not very good at.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Why not? </div> <div> Claire: I'm not sure. I think, [00:25:00] I dunno whether I kind of expect myself to already know.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm  </div> <div> Claire: And therefore I'm not very good at asking. Like some things I'm really good at asking, like a work related thing. I'll put my hand up and say, I often dunno the answer, so I'll go ask the question. But with something like this, I don't know. I dunno why I don't ask more.  </div> <div> Vikki: Have a think. What feels uncomfortable about asking?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Um, I just wonder if I don't like people knowing that I'm maybe thinking about not thinking about my career, 'cause everybody thinks about the career, but in the sense, more, in a more specific way. Because then if you don't get what you want or you go for something and you, you're not successful for whatever reason. And it might just be that there was somebody that had got more skills or whatever. I think I have been made in the past to feel Oh, well you didn't get it. You know, it's a bit like failure, isn't it? [00:26:00] So I don't like to ask,  </div> <div> Vikki: what do you dislike about failure? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Certainly that the one time where I was in that position where people were making me feel like I'd failed to get the job. It felt embarrassing. It was uncomfortable. It felt like pouring salt in the wound. You know, I was kind of okay with the fact that I hadn't gotten the job because I got some feedback and I, yeah, if I'm, you know, I, yeah, I kind of agreed that it wasn't, you know, I hadn't answered the questions the best and therefore, yeah, they, I, I totally okay with the decision, but then other people making me feel a bit uncomfortable, you know, oh, well you should have got it and things like that. So maybe I perhaps wrongly assume that people are gonna do that every time. So if you go for something and you're not successful, or [00:27:00] you look for a job and you don't find anything, they're gonna come back to you. Oh, well, oh, was there nothing? Oh, did you not find it? Oh, you know. You didn't do it or you didn't succeed. </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. And that is possible, right?  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. It's possible.  </div> <div> Vikki: They might say that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Not necessarily guaranteed, but  </div> <div> Vikki: what might they say about you not looking? </div> <div> Claire: I guess there's the flip side to that, where they might say, oh, well, didn't you look, you know, or, oh, well I would've looked, or, oh, well why don't you look here? Or, yeah,  </div> <div> Vikki: usually when there's something we're avoiding, we're predicting some discomfort associated with that thing. And in a second, I'm, there's something else I wanna say about, what we're actually trying to do, which I think will hopefully relieve some of this, but even, let's say we are actually talking about applying for jobs [00:28:00] and this fear that people are gonna be like, oh, you didn't get it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You tried and you didn't. It's really useful to just remind, this is not trying to make you feel uncomfortable all the time, but this is to really useful to remind yourself what is the downside of the opposite here. So we are doing this a lot in my membership at the moment where there's discomfort around putting your research out there into the world, right? </div> <div> Vikki: Because people might read it, they might criticize it and so on, but there's also a massive amount of discomfort around doing research that no one is ever going to see and that no one is ever going to respond to. There's a bunch of self-criticism that comes on that side as well.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the more you can remind yourself, it sounds terribly negative, but genuinely, I think it's positive. </div> <div> Vikki: The more you can remind yourself, there's the potential for self-criticism on both sides of this.  </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You could criticize yourself for looking for things and not finding stuff you could criticize yourself for [00:29:00] applying for things and not getting it. But you could just as readily beat yourself up for never applying for anything and for being bad at lateral thinking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And when we recognize that there's self-criticism in any version of this. Yeah. Anybody listening who's got a family and a career at the same time will very much resonate with the idea that, you know, over here I can criticize myself for being a bad parent over here. I can criticize myself for being a bad lecturer and everything in between, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. Every choice we take, there's, there's criticism on either side of it. If we look, and then what you get to do is say, okay, what would I prefer to be criticized for? If I am gonna be criticized? Do I wanna be criticized? And we're talking criticism of by yourself most of the time, but also potentially from others. Do I wanna be criticized for looking, do I wanna be criticized for trying and failing, or do I wanna be criticized for never having [00:30:00] looked? Which do I want to criticize myself?  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah. I guess it would be worse having not looked or found something and not applied because of whatever not very, not very strong reason. You know, I don't wanna say an excuse 'cause it might be valid, but it might not be particularly a strong argument for not applying, because then I guess the argument is, well you know, you might have been successful or you might have found something, or, yeah, you didn't even try. That sounds quite hard. But yeah, I guess that's what it boils down to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you, there's arguments in both directions, right? I, for one, I would always rather be criticized for something I have done than something I haven't done. For [00:31:00] sure. Other people will have different sort of thresholds for that, which is absolutely fine. And obviously with coaching and stuff we can work on reducing the amount we criticize ourselves for the decision we make anyway, right? </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: But you don't get to avoid the potential for self-criticism. 'cause whatever you do, there's potential for self-criticism. And so we then get to make the decision on other reasons instead.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Now I said there was something else I wanted to come back to, which is, and I think this is such a common mistake that people make when they're thinking about career hunting, is conflating working out what options there are out there with applying for jobs. </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: These are two entirely separate things. Okay. When I asked you about what was sort of worrying about reaching out and asking questions and things, it was all to do with what if I don't get it? But if we're in research phase, we are not applying at this [00:32:00] stage, we are just trying to work out what exists in the world. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And this fundamentally changes how you interact with people. Okay. And I've got a couple of episodes that I'm gonna send people onto and you can have a listen to if you haven't already. There's one episode with Jennifer Polk about networking, which touches on this, but probably more relevant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There's an episode with David Mendez talking about inter informational interviewing and kind of using your network to find out more about what's possible. So I would definitely, definitely check those out. Okay. But if we can separate researching what's out there from applying.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: It makes it so much easier to have the conversations and it makes it so much less of a scary prospect. How would it change things for you if you thought that research phase where you're just trying to find out what's out there, it's not about applying for anything, you're just trying to find what's out there. How might [00:33:00] that change the experience for you?  </div> <div> Claire: I guess it would make it potentially a bit more positive in the sense that if you're not really thinking too much about the logistics or you know, the realities of it. You're just thinking blue sky thinking at the moment. It's sort of going in within everything, anything's possible kind of  </div> <div> Vikki: mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Approach and then worrying about the real, the reality of it at a bit of a later date.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> Claire: Um, so I guess it would change the mind frame a little bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how or would it change the way you interacted with people? So if you were gonna contact people to find out about it, how would it change that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Um, again, I guess it would just be much more in, well, for me anyway, much more informal, perhaps just throwing caution to the wind and see what comes back kind [00:34:00] of approach.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Because there's such a difference between contacting somebody on LinkedIn and saying I'm looking for a job in your industry. Can we talk? Versus, I'm really interested to find out how you got where you are. I think you've got a really interesting career path and I'd love to know more about it. Completely different nature of conversation. Completely different how people are likely to respond to it. 'cause the first one, it sounds like you're trying to get something from them. </div> <div> Vikki: And the second one that you, it sounds like they're interested in you. And therefore you're like, oh, okay, that's quite nice. Now some people will get people contacting them all the time. People who've got like, you know, Steven Bartlett or whoever will have people contacting them all the time saying, how did you get to be the diary of A CEO, man? Or whatever. But for the vast majority of people, you don't. You know, I got a message recently where it was, you know, I'm looking to do something similar to you. And I'm, I don't go, oh, you want something [00:35:00] for me? I'm like, oh, you are interested in how I did what I did. That's cool. You know, it feels nice. Right. And it completely changes the nature of it. And you don't even necessarily have to contact them because if you can get to the stage, where it's like okay, let's go on LinkedIn and look up people who have physio degrees and experience working in higher education.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And see where they are. It's just look at a bunch of them, but then it suddenly it isn't, I need to identify what I'm going to do. It is where do academic physios end up?  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: If you wanna translate it out, then you start saying, okay, where do academic nurses end up? Where do you know? And start thinking, okay, if I don't want something that's specific to my physio skills, who else is kind of like me? And where do they end up? People with broad clinical backgrounds who've kind of done some leadership bits of academic stuff. </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:36:00] What do they end up doing? Okay. How does that feel, that kind of searching out for what people might have ended up doing?  </div> <div> Claire: It sounds kind of good and scary and equal measures. It is good in the sense that, yeah, like you say, you're not directly saying, oh, hi, I, you know, I want a job like you, or I wanna come and work with, work with you, which might feel a bit like you say you want something from them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Um, so it's good in the sense that bit sounds better. Um, the sort of networking bit that sounds quite scary. I'm not naturally not very confident at doing it. I think I'm, I can do it and I'm, I don't think, it's, not that I'm no good at doing it but I think it's confidence, you know, I feel, um, a little bit [00:37:00] like, you know, what am I doing here? Kind of thing. Yeah. Which I watched your imposter syndrome webinar, so, um, uh, a little bit aware of, of that. I think because I'm a bit of a technophobe, things like LinkedIn and all of that feel really alien. Really uncomfortable. Yeah. And I am trying to avoid like the plague, um, but I feel like I'm probably gonna have to grasp the metal at some point. </div> <div> Vikki: I feel like of all the metals to grasp in this sort of question, LinkedIn is probably the one.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: I have to say.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm kind of coming to that conclusion, um, myself. It has cropped up a few times and given that I don't seem to have had massive amount of success without it, I think probably I'm gonna need to to do that.  </div> <div> Vikki: And I don't mean from the perspective that you put [00:38:00] yourself on LinkedIn and then all these jobs are gonna come flying towards you. I don't mean that. It is just, it's a great way to snoop on people. Yeah. In the nicest possible way. Your university will almost certainly have how to use LinkedIn courses. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, probably.  </div> <div> Vikki: Which would be completely free. If not, if you get on YouTube and search how to use LinkedIn to find career opportunities mm-hmm. Or something, you are gonna find a thousand. As I say, David Mendez, who I interviewed for one of mine, he does a lot of this stuff that he's, um, he is worth looking at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: In fact, he has a whole podcast, um, Papa PhD. His podcast is, he has a whole podcast, which is people post PhD who do things other than the traditional straight through academia thing. So that's the other thing is listening to things like that. Right. And just seeing where people end up and what kind of tickles your fancy as you go through. </div> <div> Vikki: The other thing that I would always recommend, and this is something that I actually learned back in the day when I was doing human research, [00:39:00] which you probably empathize with, is snowball recruitment. Okay. Yeah. So for people who don't do, um, you are nodding. So, um, in fact, tell us what your understanding looks like. You know what I'm talking about. So tell us what I mean by snowball recruiting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: So, um, well I did a little bit this in my own participant recruitment because I'm doing qualitative research, which brought up a whole bunch of problems in its own right. But so recruiting participants proved to be difficult. My participants were students. The hilarious thing about it is they've all long since graduated. So I had year ones, year twos and year threes, and particularly recruiting year ones was a bit of a nightmare, if truth be told, because of course most of them are fresh out of college and they're trying to find their feet in university, let alone do anything. Else. And it's all very alien and scary to them, which I completely understand. [00:40:00] So once I'd got a couple of participants, sort of at the end of the interviews, I'm sort of asking them if you know of anybody that's interested or this who might be thinking about it please do suggested to them if you think they're appropriate, point 'em in that direction of the information sheet. So it kind of, as the name suggests, goes on like a snowball. And I did get an extra. Participant outta snowball recruitment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you can do the exact same thing with this. You find one person who has a physio background who's gone into something cool and you have a bit of a chat with them, and at the end you ask them, is there anybody else you think it would be interesting for me to talk to? Is there anybody else you can think of that has done physio? In fact, you can ask people who are within your existing network. You don't even, you know, this can start from, especially people that you sort of trust and you're willing to have that conversation [00:41:00] with, um, perhaps people that you used to train with rather than your kind of current colleagues. Um, where have people ended up? All those people that did physio with me 10, 15 years ago, whatever, where, where have people ended up and asking them, do you know anyone who was a physio who's now doing something different?  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And then having a little snoop, what they're doing too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Before we finish up, let's also just think about that other side of it that I mentioned of identifying what skills you are bringing. Because sometimes the barrier here is sort of feeling like the only skills you've got are teaching physio to physio students.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And sort of being like, well, if I'm not in a place that teaches physio students, then I'm no use. So how do you feel, first of all, about identifying your more general skills?  </div> <div> Claire: I feel like I could do it in a very superficial way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Claire: So like, you know, sort of one or two word. [00:42:00] Answers kind of thing. But then if I have to talk about it in a deeper sense, I'm not as good at doing that because I tend to either play down my role or put it onto somebody else, you know, as in, oh, this went really well, but that was because so and so did this. </div> <div> Claire: So yeah, in a superficial sense. So like for example, I'd say, oh yes, I've got leadership skills and I've got, you know, skills with working with research. But then if we get into, well, which research skills? No. Well, I don't know. I'm not very good at qualitative research, but Yeah. But you did your doctorate on it. Yeah, I know, but I'm still a bit of a novice, so I kind of played it down all the way to  </div> <div> Vikki: bit of a novice compared to who.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: This sounds a real, this to me at least sounds like a really silly answer, but compared to people who've done lots of it </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. </div> <div> Claire: In the sense of, yeah, it, that sounds like a really silly answer because as a student, obviously you go along to [00:43:00] tutorials and sessions and webinars with people who are really experienced in it, and you ask 'em a question and say, oh, you could do this, or you could do that. Or they answer in a particular way and you think, wow, they've got so much knowledge and it's, and you know, for, well, it's because they've done loads of it, or that's what they do as their bread and butter. But, um, it still feels like this, you know, you put 'em on this pedestal because they're amazing. </div> <div> Vikki: So who do you know more about qualitative research then? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: My students.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So you know more than your students. Who else?  </div> <div> Claire: Um, I guess people that have never done qualitative research on anything about it. Or who have done it a little bit in theory, but not in practice.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So what proportion of the world do you think you are better at qualitative research then? </div> <div> Claire: Okay. When you put it like that and you think [00:44:00] about everybody in the world, then yes. Okay. There's maybe more, </div> <div> Vikki: you probably top 1%.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Rather than the other way around. Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But, but genuinely, you know, you think, you know, I think around, um, I live in a housing estate with like 200 houses. I mean, I live just south of Cambridge, so frankly there's a shocking number of PhDs on this estate. So it's probably a bad example.  </div> <div> Claire: That's a bad example.  </div> <div> Vikki: But generally, if you think generally in the world, you genuinely probably are top 1% for qualitative research. </div> <div> Claire: Oh, I could feel, I can feel my face heating up when you say that,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: but what percent of people have PhDs and at least half of them don't do qualitative research, if not more.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Probably loads more 'cause actually the sort of qualitative research you are talking about, you wouldn't do in the arts and humanities and stuff. </div> <div> Claire: Mm hmm. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I mean, it means you're probably [00:45:00] also bottom 20% for literary criticism or whatever, rightly. There's, you know, whatever it is. There's all the other things we are not, but one of the things that I think academia is terrible for is convincing incredibly knowledgeable people that they don't know enough because they don't know enough as the people at the very top of their field. </div> <div> Vikki: Where if, and I'm not saying this is the sort of job you want necessarily, but if a charity or a corporation wanted to collect qualitative data about their users or about their customers and analyze it in a meaningful way in order to make decisions about the strategy of the charity or the organization, you would probably be better placed to do that than most people. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. I guess when you phrase it like that, it does kind of make a bit more sense. But you're right. I think , you tend to focus on the bit [00:46:00] that tells you you're not as good as the people that are really experienced rather than focusing on the bit that says, well, you've got more experience in it, you know, all these other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. We have to remember that we have to compare ourselves to the people. It's the same. Everyone focuses on the people that have done their PhD faster than them. And we never compare ourselves to the people that didn't finish their PhD or never started their PhD or are taking longer over their PhD. </div> <div> Vikki: Any of those people. We compare ourselves to the people that are publishing more, but we never compare ourselves to the people that are cut publishing less. 'cause we just see it less often. You know, we're always fixed on the bit where they're better than us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So when it comes to identifying your skills, the two tips I would give you, the first one is exactly that, is put yourself in a general population rather than an academic population and then ask yourself what skills you've got. Okay? Because it will come out completely differently. The hierarchy that we understand within academia when we are in it. Just doesn't seem to [00:47:00] exist. You are kind of an academic, the notion that a professor would be much, much, much more senior and experienced than knowledgeable and stuff, than somebody just straight out their PhD in the general public is all just clever people over there. And that's really, so firstly, remember, remember what you are comparing to if you're thinking about moving sector, you know, what skills have you got compared to those people?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And that's with all respect. Every, every sector's got their things right?  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: So it's all respect to other sectors too. The other thing, and this is useful for applying for jobs just generally for everybody, is get way more specific about what you're saying, because I've got good leadership skills. I've got good communication skills. What does that mean? It means virtually nothing. Okay. So I would get much, much more specific about what do these skills enable you to do. I can move a [00:48:00] long-term project, for example. Yeah, PhD. Absolutely. I can move a long-term project dealing with large amounts of data, draw out key messages and communicate 'em in a way that's appropriate to the audience or whatever, right? </div> <div> Vikki: I can pull together a team of five people to deliver a complex module against, academic standards as well as clinical requirements. Do you see what I mean? You're getting much, much more specific about what that actually means, because then what you can start doing is going, okay, so what other places other than universities do you need to take a team of three or four people and put on some sort of educational program. What other situations do you do that loads of situations virtually all organizations will have training arms. So suddenly you're like, oh, okay. I've made it much more specific. And in making it specific is much clearer where you can apply it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: [00:49:00] Okay. How does that feel?  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, that, that sounds really reasonable. Actually. Thinking about, like you say, you know, if you say, oh, I've got communication skills, what does that mean? But if you actually drill down into what it allows you to do and therefore what, how could you apply that elsewhere, then yeah. Yeah. I think that's really useful.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. I would always start with these things, trying to come up with 'em yourself.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it's not very often that I recommend ai, but I think this is one where it might be useful. I would also recommend that you go into just the basic I free AI thing, so into chat GPT or something like that. Yeah. And put in, this has been my career path. I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: Give me 15 transferable skills that you think I'm likely to have based on this background and why they might be useful, or what sectors might they be useful in, or something like that. Because [00:50:00] sometimes the reason I'm saying it, 'cause normally I prefer people just to be creative on their own without using ai. But I think sometimes we get such a block on about what we are good at that actually, sometimes you read it and you're like, that probably actually is technically true, would never have come up with it. But yeah, I probably could argue that I could do that. Yeah, I guess actually, yeah, I haven't really thought about that as a strength, but yeah, I do do that and it kind of gives you something to reflect against, so that can be a really useful thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've also never tried just typing in where do I, where else employees, academic physios or something like that. I'm putting that into something like chat GPT and just seeing what they come up with. </div> <div> Claire: I'm quite new to ai. Again, I'm a bit of a techno fo, but I have done it. I have used it. It's probably not my go-to. It certainly wouldn't be the first thing that I come to. But yeah, I think that, again, that's based on what I've used it for already and that it was [00:51:00] reasonably successful then actually, that sounds like a reasonable suggestion.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because especially with something that's free and just straightforward like Chat GPT, you can just treat it like Google, but ask a longer question. </div> <div> Vikki: Right. Just ask a more detailed question. Um, so I don't think, you know, yes there's probably skills to writing good prompts and stuff, but you can definitely just muddle through it too.  </div> <div> Claire: I mean, I guess ultimately if it comes back with us rubbish, then you can just bin it off.  </div> <div> Vikki: Exactly. It's not like you're putting it in to try and get an output that you're going to use for something. I 100% wouldn't use it to write your CV or anything like that.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So where it's text that you want to sound like you, or where it's important that you've intellectually engaged with it, I would not recommend it at all. But where it's just coming up with a bunch of stuff that you can then evaluate, then it can be really helpful. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. [00:52:00] Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. How are you feeling about starting this process of identifying things that might be out there? </div> <div> Claire: A little apprehensive, but kind of definitely more positive as in the sense that even if I don't find anything, well at least I've got some ideas to try. And if I don't find anything, well I'm no worse off than where I am now. Kind of a, so it, it's kind of good in to, to have some ideas about places to, or, or at least, uh, actions to take rather than places to look, but actions to take. </div> <div> Claire: Um, so yeah, it's kind of encouraging.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I would even, can you genuinely see a world in which you plunk some stuff into chat, GPT. [00:53:00] You had a snoop around on LinkedIn.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: You talked to some people that you used to train with  </div> <div> Claire: mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And you didn't identify anything you haven't thought of before?  </div> <div> Claire: I think there's always that possibility, but in the sense that, you know, never say never kind of thing. </div> <div> Claire: But I guess if you think about then the likelihood of, of that, um, and I guess this is the sciencey part of me coming out. The, the, the chances are you're gonna find something that makes you go, oh wow, that's, that's really interesting. Or, Hmm, I like the sound of that. And, and that's really good. 'cause at the moment I'm looking at people who are in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Completely different fields. And I mean, they're not even in healthcare. They're in like, I don't know, paleontology or something and going, wow, that sounds so exciting. But it's not realistic for me to just, you know, [00:54:00] jump fields completely and start from scratch again. So I, you know, I think the, the chances of finding something that I could feasibly work towards or at least aim vaguely in that direction and then see where it goes that that's more realistic. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Perfect. And remember, we want to keep the criteria here to be interesting stuff because if you start changing the boundaries and making this, what's the chances of me finding something that I actually end up doing? Then you are smushing about five steps of the process in together. Mm-hmm. So finding something that you end up doing. </div> <div> Vikki: Is not the purpose of this first part.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: The purpose of this first part is solely coming up with a load of stuff.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: This is putting the sand in the sandbox. We're gonna build sandcastles out of it later. Yeah. So when we then think about it like that, what's the chances of you not finding some roles that you didn't know existed that might be possibilities? </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. I think it's virtually [00:55:00] impossible. I literally don't see how you could do the steps we've done.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> Vikki: And not come up with some. Now does it mean you will definitely find the role that's gonna be the perfect one for you? Who knows? That's 10 steps down the way, but you'll definitely find some stuff and the more you can kind of congrat rather than being like, oh yeah, but it's probably not gonna work. </div> <div> Vikki: Oh yeah, it's not gonna be fees. Oh yeah. It doesn't pay enough if the more you can avoid doing that and just being like, I'm just finding stuff. I'm just doing the lateral thinking bit. I'm just finding different options at this stage. The more you can stay in that mindset and be like, the other stuff's for next month, that's for another day. </div> <div> Vikki: Then narrowing it down to another day. This is just the finding bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: The more likely it feels. 'cause suddenly it's like, well, cool, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find some stuff. Who knows what I find. But you, you have to find, you know, there's so many things. You have to find some stuff there.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, I think that, I think that's, um, [00:56:00] reasonable and as you say, you can worry about the feasibility or the practicalities and all of that sort of stuff Yeah. At a, at a later date.  </div> <div> Vikki: Exactly. Um,  </div> <div> Claire: but  </div> <div> Vikki: yeah. And hopefully that takes a little bit of the apprehension away because the consequences here are really very, very small. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: You're gonna spend a little bit of time messing 'em about online. You might speak to a couple of people and they might not reply to you, which is quite normal.  </div> <div> Claire: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, that happens. Um, so the kind of, it's not this sort of big pressure. If I don't find this, then that it's gonna be awful. It's gonna be, it is. </div> <div> Vikki: Like find some stuff. And they'll figure out the rest later.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah. That, that does make it much more doable when you phrase it like  </div> <div> Vikki: that. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Claire: I guess it's the, you know, the coming back to the old I did of, you know, journey of a thousand Miles Begins with a [00:57:00] step and all of that sort of stuff. So Yeah. </div> <div> Claire: Rather than thinking about it, I've got to find this amazing job role. You forget thinking about like that and just think about the first step.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And we, that's where we get have to, because your brain will offer that. Your brain will say, yeah, yeah, but that's probably not gonna work. Yeah, yeah. But I'm probably not qualified. </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. I probably wouldn't get that. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably not gonna, it's gonna offer all those things for sure. And that's fine. We are never gonna switch that off. But what we get to do instead, just like children that are being irritating, we get to go. I know, but we're doing this now.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's for another day. Right now we're just finding stuff.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, yeah,  </div> <div> Vikki: yeah. So don't try and stop those thoughts 'cause they will come a hundred percent. Mm-hmm. But we get to be okay. That's next month's me's problem. My problem right now is just finding a bunch of stuff.  </div> <div> Claire: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> Claire: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Cool. Fabulous. </div> <div> Claire: I think that's been really, really helpful. I've scribbled down a few [00:58:00] things and it's definitely given me some ideas of where I can start with, which I think sometimes that's the, the worst bit, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. It's like going to the gym. The hardest bit is going out the front door. Yeah. Once you're actually there, you're kind of like, oh, well I'm here now so I'll do it. So once you're on the job website or whatever, you go, well, I'm here now, so I'll just look. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think sometimes we feel like we have to have the whole journey plotted out in our heads. You don't. You need some places to start looking and then it'll be like, oh, there seems to be a couple of different things in the military where that came from, but go with it. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That, you know. Oh, I wonder if there's anything in other branches of the military. Oh, actually that's made me think of guides and scouts. I wonder if there's something, you know what I mean? Yeah. Right. That it kind of once you get little bits of ideas, that snowball thing then kicks in either by asking people or just because your brain will give you ideas as you go through. </div> <div> Claire: Yeah, that's definitely true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thank you so much for coming on. I know that will be useful for people who are in your sort of situation, but I'm also hoping people really can [00:59:00] translate it out to any place where they need to come up with ideas and that sort of thing. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you everybody for listening. If you wanna get coached in the future, do just join my newsletter and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-24-how-to-identify-options-when-making-a-decision-a-coaching-episode-with-claire thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-23-how-to-manage-tasks-that-are-not-on-your-to-do-list <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you end the week somehow having been busy but not having done the things you intended, then this episode is for you. I’m going to help you make more intentional decisions about how to deal with tasks that land in your lap during the week, so that you can feel more in control and accomplished. I’ll also share why adding tasks to your to do list retrospectively can be a great strategy for your motivation, organisation, and future development. Let’s get control of our tasks and our weeks so that WE decide what gets done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12175318-17-why-you-should-never-cross-things-off-your-to-do-list-and-what-you-should-do-instead" target="_blank"> Why you should never cross things off your to do list and what you should do instead </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now as I record this, I am in the middle of launch week for the new intake of the PhD life coach membership. By the time this comes out, it is gonna be day one. I am super excited. If you didn't join, then thank you for your patience with my launch emails and things. Hopefully you found that opt out button and so on. But I'm super excited to get that started. And we're gonna be thinking a lot about structures, about our time and task management structures. And so some of the podcasts this quarter will actually be kind of supplementing that, giving you little insights into some of the bits that we're talking about in the membership itself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this week is one that actually came up in a session yesterday, so I suddenly realized yesterday in a absolute illustration of how I'm not perfect. I realized yesterday, which is Wednesday, that I neither had recorded a podcast for Monday, nor knew what my podcast was going to be about. Now [00:01:00] I have got a lot, lot better at planning ahead, and in fact, I'm super excited about the fact that my quarter one is more organized than my quarter has ever been before. It's pretty much all there. I've got some fine tuning and updating that I want to do, but other than that. It's already, I'm gonna be like superhuman organized women. It is amazing. </div> <div> But that did mean that somewhere along the line, my cunning organization for podcasting that I'd got into last year slightly slipped. But that's okay. I'm not gonna beat myself up. I'm gonna model that non-judgmental reflection. And thankfully I have my glorious members who are always a source of interesting questions and interesting comments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So yesterday we were doing a workshop about how you can use your values to prioritize and make decisions, and that's not what we're talking about today. But what came up was people talking about things they were putting on their to-do list and how they were deciding what's on their to-do list. [00:02:00] And somebody made a semi jokey comment. , If I get distracted and do other things, I just then add them to my to-do list and tick them off anyway. And I think she mostly meant it as a joke. I think she did see that there was some value in that, but she mostly meant it as a bit of a joke, sort of saying, oh, I'm, I'm a bit chaotic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In reality, she touched on something that I think is super, super important and something that I think when we don't have plans for this can really derail some of our organizational efforts. And so I was really excited that she'd brought it up and it was like, right, that's my podcast for Monday. You have just solved my problem. This is what we're gonna talk about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are gonna talk about what do you do when tasks come up that aren't on your to-do list. We are gonna think about the decision making process, how we even choose whether we're doing them or not, 'cause remember, that is an option. That was something else that came up in my workshop yesterday. [00:03:00] Somebody going, passed how I decide, It's a bit of a revelation that I'm allowed to decide whether I do something or not. I just say yes to things. So we're gonna think about that and then we're gonna think about how we then handle the knock on effects of these new tasks landing in our lap. Okay, so let's go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are gonna start with imagining this task has just landed. Now, it could be a task that you've just come up with. We are very good at inventing new tasks, especially those of us who've got these slightly rushing around brains. Inventing new tasks and deciding they're very important to do right now. </div> <div> Other times, it's somebody asking you to do it, so one way or another, these have come towards you and we want to remember that they've not landed fully in your lap. They have not landed on your to-do list. They've been put in front of you as something that you are being asked to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the first rule. That rule is a bit strict, isn't it? But let's go with [00:04:00] it. The first rule I'm gonna say rule is we never say yes immediately. Don't say yes to your own ideas. Don't say yes to somebody else's ideas. Say, and you can steal this sentence. I need to check against my commitments, and then we'll figure out how to make it work. </div> <div> Okay. Because even if you are going to say yes to it, even if you believe you've got no choice but to say yes to it, you've still got to check the implications for your other tasks. And we'll talk about how to do that in a minute. Now those words might not sound like you. You might be like, I could literally never say those words. Think about what words actually feel human for you so that you could actually see yourself saying them. Often the reason we don't want to is because we want to present ourselves as somebody who can do everything, who's all coping, where there's no point saying anything because we don't think we've got any choice anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But even in those situations, it's really important to take that [00:05:00] moment to say, I need to check my other commitments and work out when this can happen. Whether it can happen. Let me get back to you. Because even if you are trying to impress someone, and we all know we don't wanna be too motivated by just trying to impress other people, but even if you're trying to impress somebody, that actually, to me, when I think about it as a supervisor, that to me is way more impressive than somebody who just says, yes, yes, yes and then panics. Okay. I want students who remember that their time and capacity is a limited resource and who are choosing intentionally what they're doing with it. That is a student I don't have to worry about anywhere near as much as a student who just says, yeah. Because sometimes, frankly, if I ask you to do something as a supervisor, I haven't necessarily thought it through. </div> <div> I love supervisors dearly. I've been a supervisor for a really long time. Most of my best friends are supervisors and even when we mean the best in the world, we're often overworked, overloaded, stressed ourselves and don't necessarily think through [00:06:00] all the implications or remember the things we asked you to do last week when we asked you to do something new. So you taking a bit of responsibility for that and being intentional is actually really, really impressive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we never say yes straight away. We take a moment. Then what we're gonna do is we are gonna assess that task against everything else we have to do. Now, I'm gonna add one caveat here. If it's an actual emergency, so, any of you who work in a wet lab, for example, and have minus 80 freezers, if the minus 80 freezer is breaking down and something needs to be done about it, we do that right now. Okay? If you are doing human research like I used to and a participant has fainted, you go and deal with that right now. So. If there's imminent risk, we go do it. We reassess afterwards. But unless there is imminent risk, then we take a moment to compare it against the things that we know we've got coming up and to make some decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what are we then doing? Why do we have to make decisions? We have to make decisions because whether it feels [00:07:00] like it or not, every single second of your life is currently accounted for. You are doing something in every second of your life. Whether you are doing work, whether you are doing eating, whether you're doing childcare, whether you're doing sleeping, whether you're doing scrolling, whatever it might be. And some of those things are more intentional, what you want to be doing. And some of them are less intentional and you don't wanna be doing them. But every minute is occupied. And what that means is that if we are gonna put something else in, we have to decide what are we not doing now? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, it might be you decide, okay, I'm gonna do it instead of scrolling, I'm gonna do it instead of something else that you consider currently to be a waste of time. But we have to then remember that we are swapping a low cognitive effort task, scrolling or whatever, for a higher cognitive effort task, and we have to check in as to whether that's reasonable or not. [00:08:00] If we are gonna do it instead of some other work, then we need to decide how we are prioritizing and whether we like the ways that we're prioritizing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please do not swap in tasks for other people at the expense of tasks for yourself as a kind of continual thing. Obviously, every now and again, we might have to. Do not make it the norm that you swap in doing tasks for other people over your own tasks. In fact, this came up yesterday in the workshop as well, so we were, uh, in a previous workshop we'd been identifying values and, one of the students in the workshop had identified accountability as a really important value to her. And one of the things she said in the workshop yesterday, which I thought was really, really insightful, was, I've realized I've got to stop always directing my accountability at other people, my accountability to do things for other people. And I've gotta start directing some of that towards work that I've committed to myself. To [00:09:00] my completing my own work. And not in a selfish way, but in a ultimately, other people care about that stuff too. Yeah, it's a very short term view to short term, please other people by doing their tasks for them. Where in the long run, it's in your supervisor's interest that you finish. It's in your department's interest, it's in your friends and family's interest that you finish your academic work on time, whether that's your PhD, whether you're further through your career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to intentionally weigh up this new thing against the things that we are doing at the moment, and that might mean there are some things that we stop doing. It might mean that we say, okay, this thing that I was gonna do is now gonna get intentionally delayed and I'm gonna do this instead. We might say, yes, I can do this thing you want me to do, but not until two weeks time because I've got these other things I need to finish first. So is looking at all the options here, are there things that we [00:10:00] cannot do? There are things we can defer. Can we do some of it, but not all of it? So as another example for you, I got asked to do a workshop for an organization, but they didn't have a budget. And it's an organization that I really, really like and that I wanted to support, but at the same time I can't do free workshops for everybody because it all just eats into my time. And I do this full time. This isn't the side gig. This isn't, you know, this isn't me trying to make money on the edges of academia. This is my full-time job. Anyway, so I was able to say, look, I can't offer a full workshop, but I can do an hourlong q and a because I really like your organization and what you're trying to do. So there's ways you can be like, I can't do all of that, but I could do this. That fits into my commitments. So we weigh it all up. </div> <div> Now, there are a few warnings I wanna give you, and we're weighing this all up and this is where the kind of self understanding comes in really, really important. Knowing yourself compassionately. So [00:11:00] loving this stuff about ourselves, but being aware of it, for example. I know I tend, unless I cultivate it and I have been cultivating it, unless I cultivate it specifically, I tend to be more enthusiastic about new things than about things that I've been doing for a while. Now, I've got enormously better my, this year I have been really practicing throwing my enthusiasm at my long-term goals, the things I want to keep doing over and over. And that's been brilliant. It's been an absolute revelation. It's very exciting. But I know that new things always feel more exciting, more enthusiastic, so I have to have that in my mind. Is this just a new thing effect? Is this actually gonna be boring in a month's time? Is this actually gonna be no more interesting than the thing I thought I was gonna be doing? But it feels exciting 'cause it's novel, so I have to weigh against that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also notice that lots of people procrastinate with new things [00:12:00] because new things feel easier. You haven't got into the, you know, they might be a little bit intimidating, but you haven't got into all the details of how they're gonna be difficult. Whereas the thing you're in the middle of has got a lot of aversive stuff potentially, right? You're in the middle of the difficult bit, you're not sure what you're doing. You're a bit bored of it. It's not going how you want it to, you're a bit embarrassed. It's not further along. All of a sudden, this shiny new thing is super tempting as procrastination. So we have to, when we're checking up, when we're going, am I gonna do this new thing that I've been asked? Or am I gonna do my existing to-do list thing? We have to ask ourselves, am I procrastinating the thing on my list? Is this new thing a really good excuse to avoid this thing that is becoming a bit uncomfortable in a number of ways? And if it is, that is a very, very good signal to say no to the thing that you're being asked to do, and then get in and address why you're procrastinating the other task, how you can make it feel easier to [00:13:00] do the task that is already on your to-do list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now once we've decided, and this is part of my kind of general decision making plan, we have to decide that we've definitely decided, and this sounds strange. But what I mean is you now have to go into whatever to-do list system you use and change the due dates. We can't just decide we're gonna do this thing and we are gonna hold ourselves to the original tasks as well. We have to go in and change the expectations there. And it means that when we are organizing our weeks, when we are reviewing our weeks. And if you don't do that, that's stuff we're building up in the membership at the moment. That when we come to look back on the week or the term or whatever, we can't hold ourselves to goals that we set at the beginning that we decided partway through are no longer our goals. Let me explain what I mean. So if at the beginning of the quarter you said, I am going to finish this article and then partway through the quarter, you get [00:14:00] approached by your supervisor who's got a new collaborative project and you've got the opportunity to participate in it, and it's gonna take a decent amount of time and dah, dah. And you decide, you know what, yes, I can delay my paper. I'm gonna do this new collaborative project. This is exciting. Fine. Okay, so you decide to do it if then at the end of term, you look back at your goals and go, oh, I was gonna do that paper and I still haven't done it. Oh, I'm so useless. That's not fair. You literally told yourself you weren't gonna do it. We need a record of these decisions so that when you reflect back, you say No. I decided, I consciously changed my decision as to what I was gonna get done this quarter, and therefore I'm not on that track anymore. I decided to delay that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you might look back and go, Hmm, not convinced that was my greatest decision ever. That's a different issue. Then we start looking into why did you [00:15:00] make that decision? But we can't beat ourselves up for not finishing it. It's like deciding, you know, going on a day trip and deciding partway, oh, we are not going there anymore. We're going here, and then getting here and being like, oh, I'm really sad we're not there. Well, of course we're not there. We decided not to go that way. Okay. We have to stop deciding we've changed and then also beating ourselves up about that decision. So we're gonna decide intentionally and we are now gonna action plan for this new decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the final thing, 'cause often these are kind of big-ish things, right? When you're asked, do you wanna participate in this? Do you wanna submit to that conference? There's this special issue, whatever it is. Often the issue is more little small things that come up during the day, and you can still do a mini version of this process. So if somebody's like, oh, actually could you just come and talk to this student for half an hour for me. Then that very mini thing of, give me a second. I need to check my diary. Checking your diary, deciding what you [00:16:00] are gonna do, what you're not gonna do. Deciding, okay, I haven't got half an hour, but I can give them 10 minutes or deciding I have got half an hour, but not till after four o'clock, so they're gonna have to come back. Any of those things, or I am going to, but that thing I'll do later or I won't get it done today. So we can still do like a mini version of it, but then we are going do what my student talked about in the class, which is we're gonna add it to our to-do list, and tick is done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it might feel like a kind of self-serving thing. Oh, I just like stickers. I just like ticking it off. But actually I've got four reasons for you why we should add things to our to-do list after we've done them if they weren't originally on our to-do list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the first one is that it feels good, right? That if you're gonna do it, you might as well give yourself that little tick of yes, got that done. Yes, got that done. 'Cause otherwise you sort of forget that you ever did these things. Okay? So part of it is that kind of gold sticker effect, but the [00:17:00] second reason. Is that it allows us to analyze our weeks because we wanna get in this habit where we are looking back over our weeks and deciding did we do the things we intended to do? Where are we at? What do we need to sort for next week? And if when you're analyzing your week, you're like, I didn't do the things I intended to do. I have no idea why this week has just gone past. It's been a bit of a blur. I have no idea what I've done, but somehow I didn't do any of the things I intended to do. Then it's really hard to analyze that week. It's really hard to kind of go, oh, is that 'cause I slacked off. I don't think I slacked off. I feel like I've been really busy. Do I like the decisions I made? I don't know. I don't remember what they were. I'm just rushing around and all of a sudden I haven't done any of the things that I said I was gonna do. Whereas if you are adding in the additional things you do that week, then at the end of the week you can look at your completed [00:18:00] tasks and say, were these the things I intended to do? If not, do I stand by my decision to do them or do I want to learn something, which will be another point in a second. So it allows us to analyze, looking back at our week, how do we actually spend our time? What sorts of things did we need to do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing it does, and this is gonna be particularly true for people who need to do things in a repeated way. So any academics who are delivering teaching programs, for example, anyone who is delivering one research project where you are gonna do another one similar to it, for example. So if you're doing your ethics application or anything like that, okay? Anything that you have to do more than once. So I'm doing this a lot with my launches. So I launch the membership once a quarter, for example. If you put in all the things you do, even if they weren't originally on your to-do list, it makes it much easier to replicate that thing in the future. So if you [00:19:00] are going to, in the future, gonna need to do another ethics application, for example, it's super useful to be able to look back and see what tasks did I do last time? I filled in that ethics application, for example. Or if you are organizing a know a one day conference like lots of people do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. You tag it all as conference organization or whatever so you can find it. And then next time you're gonna organize a conference, you've got a whole list of the tasks that you did last time. Because often there's a whole load of stuff that we forget and that can make it easier to do it. It can also make it easier for you to decide, whether to do it or not. 'cause often we take on those things and we're like, oh, that won't be too much work. But we forget that we have to sort the catering and sort the purchase orders and sort the travel for the visiting speakers and sort the AV equipment and whatever else, right? We forget all the bits involved. The more we got an accurate record of what it actually took to deliver that thing, the easier it will be in [00:20:00] the future to plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the biggest things that holds people back from planning is a belief that they can't judge how long things take. If you can start recording what things you do, okay, and I'm not talking detailed time tracking here, although if that's your jam, it's gonna really, really help. But at least if you know what tasks are involved, it makes it so much easier to actually judge how much longer it will take. </div> <div> And then the fourth thing is learning, because actually part of that review process is to understand what happened this week, but also it's to look forward and to decide exactly what do we want to do in the future. Because if you notice that every single week unexpected things come up and they're unexpected, you know, they're not the same thing every time, but every week, unexpected things come up that take 4, 5, 6, 7 hours of your week. Let's just allow 4, 5, 6, 7 hours in your planning for unexpected things. Put them in your diary as [00:21:00] kind of unexpected tasks. Because you can always use them for something else, right? If nothing unexpected comes up, woo hoo, let's go straight to our writing project or whatever. But if it's repeatedly happening, why would we occupy every hour of the day when we are planning and then suddenly act surprised that unexpected things happen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Exactly what they are might be a surprise, but the fact that unexpected things come up is not unexpected at all. We get to learn from it. By looking back and deciding whether it was a good decision or not. Whether we're happy that we made that decision also helps us to look forward. I notice that there are things that I get caught up with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You lot will laugh at me, but in launch week, I get very excited when I get an email saying, somebody's joined your membership. And then I go into my little Excel file and put their name in so that I can keep track of my numbers and everything. And there's much more automated ways of doing it, but I really like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know that I spend [00:22:00] more time doing that than is efficient. I quite like it, so I'm probably not going to change it too much. But I do need to account for that when I'm planning my launch week. 'cause often launch week looks like I've got loads of time on my hands, right? Um, when in reality I spend quite a bit of it doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you get to learn and decide, okay, actually I often get caught out by that. Or actually I often get caught up in student drama that doesn't need as much time as I often end up giving it as a way of avoiding writing, for example. Ah, that's useful, right? How could I deal with that next week? How could I be even more mindful of that? How could I structure things so that I'm less likely to. Oooh I often get interrupted, so when I'm writing, I'm gonna go and write somewhere else on campus so they can't find me, for example. </div> <div> So those four reasons for writing things on your to-do list after you've done them, if they weren't there before. Recognition, rewarding yourself, praise, all that good stuff. Analysis, allowing you to understand what happened this [00:23:00] week. Replication, if you need to do this task again, you've got a much better broken down list of what those things are and learning so that you can decide how you wanna make those decisions in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I hope that really helps. If you have unexpected tasks that come in this week and run them through that process, let me know how you get on. If you're not already on my newsletter, do go on my website, PhD life coach.com, jump onto the newsletter. You can always reply to me, tell me what's going on. You'll also get emails about the podcast and you'll get invited to my free webinars. And this is coming out February 2nd, and my next free webinar is Wednesday the 25th of February. So if you sign up, you'll get the opportunity to come to that. It's all about designing a morning kickstart routine. So if you struggle to get going in the morning, then that is gonna be the webinar for you. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-23-how-to-manage-tasks-that-are-not-on-your-to-do-list thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-22-what-to-do-when-your-task-is-taking-longer-than-you-thought <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you have a piece of work that is taking way longer than intended? This episode will help you figure out why AND what to do about it. When things take longer than we thought they would, it throws off our schedule and other tasks, and can lead to us spiralling into a panic. Often we feel like we can’t stop long enough to decide what to do - we “just” need to get it done. In this episode I’ll explain why it’s not that easy, and I’ll give you a series of quick questions to ask yourself to understand what has happened, why and what options will help you address it. Crucial listening for anyone who finds their timelines get out of control and/or for anyone who supervises someone with these issues.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15321155-2-43-what-to-do-when-you-can-t-judge-how-long-things-take" target="_blank"> What to do when you can't judge how long things take. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. And if you are listening to this live, it's launch week of the PhD Life Coach membership for PhD students. So give me 30 seconds of your time and then we'll get on with the topic, which is an absolute cracker for everybody, but I wanna make sure nobody misses out on the opportunity to get the support they need. If you are a PhD student who finds this podcast useful and listens to it going, yeah, I feel better. That's great. You really see me. You understand what's going on in my head. And you're like, right, I know what I need to do this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But then during the week you find yourself kind of getting caught back up in your old habits or in not exactly doing what you intended to, or thinking, Ooh, I should set up that system. I should do something more like that. And then not quite doing it. You are exactly who I'm looking for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are some people, not many of you, but kudos to you. If it's you. [00:01:00] There are some people who can listen to the podcast, take the bits they need, and just apply them out in their life. Most of us, and I definitely. Would be in the most of us section. Most of us need a little bit more structure, a little bit more guidance, a little bit more kind of taking through these changes in order to actually implement them in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am particularly gonna talk to people now who listen to my podcast and other podcasts about how to be a better person and who read self-help books and watch people on YouTube telling you how to set up all your systems and those sorts of things. If you spend as much time consuming content about how to organize yourself as you do, actually doing the things, then this is for you. </div> <div> I'm actually on a mission this year to not [00:02:00] listen to any self-help content except for one membership program, which I pay for as a participant for more kind of health end of things. So I pay for that membership. My resolution for this year is that I'm gonna engage in their material, do their curriculum, and I'm not gonna spend my time reading lots of other things because listening to content, even this podcast, and I love that you love my podcast. Listening to content can be a form of procrastination, if you don't then implement it in your life. Okay. I don't want you to stop listening, but if you are struggling to implement, I do want you to take a minute and go and look at what's involved in the membership program. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's open for any PhD student, even if you are kind of masters, as long as you've got a big research component. And to be honest, if you are a postdoc or very early career researcher, I can probably sneak you in there too, because several of my regulars have passed their PhDs and appear to have hung around, which is gorgeous. So, if you are unsure [00:03:00] whether you're eligible, just drop me a message and let me know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This quarter in the membership, the quarter runs February, March, April, we are gonna be focusing on time management, on task management and all the drama that usually underpins all of that. So if you're somebody who starts with good intentions, plan something that looks a bit ambitious but doable and then ends the week going well, I dunno what happened there, but it wasn't what I planned. That is exactly what we're going to be working on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's gonna be a week by week, step by step, getting the systems in place, implementing them, practicing them, iterating them so that they work for you. Alongside all that you get opportunities to ask me questions, which I'll answer in a private podcast, to take part in the co-working sessions with all the other members, um, to get coaching on anything that's challenging in your academic lives at the moment. And of course to see other people getting coached. Hopefully lots of you came to my free coaching that I did last [00:04:00] week, so you could sort of see it in action, but if not, why not dive in anyway? Have a double check on the website. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can sign up for three months at a time, which costs 149 pounds. They're not gonna hide the prices. It costs 149 pounds, or if you sign up for six months or 12 months upfront, then it costs a little bit less per quarter. We would love to see you in there. It is a gorgeous, wonderful community. They are super supportive. Lots and lots of people say that it has fundamentally changed their experience of their PhDs. So please do go and take a look. We are open now, but we're only open till Friday, and this is the last time we're taking new members until the end of April, and I'm quite strict on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Every quarter I get asked, oh, it's halfway through the quarter, can I sneak in? And I'm afraid you can't. 'cause it's designed to take you from beginning to end in a kind of coherent cohort so that you feel part of something and so that it feels consistent and that's why people can't come in in between. So this is your last chance till spring. If you'd like to [00:05:00] join, go to my website, the PhD life coach.com, and you'll find all the information there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you might say, Vikki, you might say that. You might say It's all amazing. We should definitely do it. But how do the members actually experience it? And I don't usually read out testimonials on the podcast. But I literally received this one yesterday. The student in question has given me permission to share it anonymously, and frankly, it made me cry. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I thought I would tell you guys about it. This student said, "Vikki, being part of this membership, completely transformed my experience of doing a PhD over my final year. I felt so scared, isolated and disillusioned with the whole thing, and I wasn't really sure if I could finish this thesis. The little world you've made kept me afloat, gave me structure and support, and renewed my faith in myself and this whole process. Your wisdom and encouragement made it possible not only to complete this project, but also to enjoy it while growing, both as a researcher and a person. The [00:06:00] warmth and camaraderie of every member celebrating the shared journeys and all our ups and downs that made my final year the best year and made it all feel welcome. I really looking forward to staying in the membership for as long as I can and seeing you all soon." This was a message that, that she put in our community. And hopefully you can hear the emotion in my voice as well. It is such a beautiful, beautiful community and I hope that many, many of you will come and have the same experience, upgrade how you are experiencing your academic life at the moment, and achieve all the things that you want to achieve.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, on with the podcast. I sound like I listen to No Such Thing As A Fish. Do you guys listen to the podcast? No Such Thing As A Fish. If you don't, you -should. It's really good. It's like, uh, random facts by the people that do the QI television program. Anyway, whenever they promote their live shows afterwards, they go and anyway, on with a podcast, so I felt like I was channeling them for a second there. </div> <div> Anyway, actually on with a [00:07:00] podcast, what we are going to be thinking about today is something that comes up all the time in coaching, which is this task is taking way longer than I thought it would. What do I do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is gonna be useful for anyone at any stage of their academic career, but supervisors, academics, I wanna particularly talk to you because this will be useful for yourself, but I think it will also be some really helpful supervisory guidance for you. </div> <div> If your students come to you and say, this is taking way longer than I thought. It will give you a process by which you can ask them questions and help them come to some sort of resolution as well. So for some of you, you will be doing this on yourself, others will be doing it on yourself and potentially on the people that you supervise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what specifically do I mean? You know, we all set ourselves like the tasks that we're intending to do. You might have different systems for that in the membership. We do it quarterly and then break that down into half quarters [00:08:00] and then weeks. So you notionally know what things you're intending to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe for some of you it's you get up in the morning and pick the next thing off a list. Great. That's fine. And then we do it, and then we realize that this thing we said we were gonna do in a week is taking way longer than that, or this thing that we said we were gonna do in two hours, taking way longer. So this could be like little mini things or it could be bigger tasks that, you know, you thought you would take a week, two, three weeks over, that you are towards the end of that and the time has run away with you, and the task is absolutely not done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's a horrible feeling, right? It feels like everything's overflowing. It feels like you're outta control. It feels like you are never gonna get it done, or that everything else is gonna be inevitably delayed because this thing is taking longer and in a way that you don't have any power over. So what we're [00:09:00] gonna do in this episode today is take you through a process, take you through some questions you can ask yourself as soon as you notice this is happening. So as soon as you hear yourself say, oh man, this is taking way longer than I thought it would, that's your trigger to ask yourself these questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first step, the first thing we are gonna do is talk ourselves down from the spirals, because usually what happens when we notice this is taking way longer than I thought it would, is that very rapidly leads into a whole bunch of panicked thoughts, whether that's about what your supervisor's gonna say, what your boss is gonna say, what it means about you, and how you always take too long and you are always so slow and you never hit deadlines and all those big, generalized dramatic things that we sometimes say to ourselves, I want you just to take a big breath, pause. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whew. Breathe out. Take a second. Put both feet on the floor if you [00:10:00] can, and just take a moment. Remind yourself, this thing is taking longer than I expected. That is a neutral situation, and we don't have to add all the other drama. Okay. It is easy. We get in this habit of this means this and that means that, and off our brain goes, no, breathe with me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are in this situation right now, just take a second and breathe with me. This taking longer than you thought it was going to, means nothing other than this is taking longer than you thought it was going to. And the way we reassure ourselves is not, it's gonna be fine, I just have to get on with it. </div> <div> The way we reassure ourselves is I'm gonna figure this out. I'm capable of figuring out what my next steps are, my consequence, my situation. Sorry, my circumstance, my situation is that this is taking longer than I [00:11:00] anticipated, and I'm gonna intentionally think the thought I can figure out what my next steps are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because we've got a whole bunch of options, right? If something is taking longer than we thought it was going to, then we have a whole bunch of different options ahead of us. But usually when we're wrapped up in panic and stress about it, we don't even think about what those options are. So, deep breath, we're gonna figure this out. </div> <div> Once we've done that, the figuring out is gonna be a quick analysis of exactly what's going on here. And just as a reminder, we always want to be good bosses to ourselves, right? Often what we're doing in academia, in these very sort of unstructured environments is that we are having to be both the boss and the worker. Were having to decide what to do and when to do it, and what to prioritize. And we're having to be the person that actually does it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things we do in the membership is kind of separate that out and learn to be a better boss to ourselves. [00:12:00] So when a boss is doing an analysis of why something is taking longer than anticipated, imagine that was your team. It's not you. Okay? It's taking longer than anticipated, a calm and thoughtful and reflective boss is gonna analyze why. Okay. Those of you who are supervisors who are learning how to do this for your students as well, if you are not feeling calm and reflective, you probably won't do these things automatically. Okay? Often the supervisor, the boss person, is a bit more stressed anyway, and a bit more like, oh goodness. This will lead to some delays and this will hold that up and then we won't get that done. And they're gonna get behind and I'm gonna get behind and da. And that's when supervisors end up putting more pressure on their students. I've done that myself when I was a supervisor, but whether you are talking about being a boss to yourself or to somebody else, we want to come at this from that sort of calm, [00:13:00] compassionate, pragmatic, curious even perspective. What is going on here? </div> <div> So I have a series of questions for you that I want you to ask. The first question is, what makes you think this is too long? Now, for some of you it might be because the deadline is this time and this is how much time I have. Great. That is a good answer to that question as to why we think that's how long it should take. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often the answer though is that we vaguely decided that that sounded about right based on very limited information usually, especially if it's not something you've done before. You know, your supervisor said, when can you get that to me? And you're like, oh, two weeks. without looking at your diary, without looking at the rest of your to-do list, without a good understanding of how long it's going to take and how much resource IE time you have to give it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So often we're judging ourselves for not having got it done in an amount of time that we didn't put much [00:14:00] thought into in the first place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is like offering to cater a party, not asking how many people there are, not asking whether it's a main meal or not, not asking anything else, and then beating yourself up because you didn't make enough food. Okay? If we don't know, the information is really hard to judge. So are we beating ourselves up for not meeting some random deadline that we came up with based on very little information. </div> <div> If so, I want us to take just a little bit of that kind of self-judgment off ourselves. The problem is not that you weren't doing it fast enough, or at least we'll try and uncover that in a minute, but the problem is probably not that you're just not doing this fast enough. The problem is probably that you didn't know enough or understand enough when you were planning it to accurately decide how long it would take. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now some of you'll be saying, my supervisor gave me two weeks to do [00:15:00] this. And my question then, and I mean it with absolute love, is how do they know how long it will take? Often. Well always, supervisors are very, very busy people and often they don't necessarily put lots of thought into the amount of time that they suggest you take over something. Some will. If you're a supervisor out there who puts lots of care and thought into thinking about those things. </div> <div> I love you and respect you and wish people like you were supervisors for everybody. But most supervisors don't. Most supervisors are two weeks. That sounds about right, and your supervisor definitely doesn't know what other commitments you have on what things are happening, but they often also don't know how long it will take you to do things, because they're often gonna be judging against how long it takes them to do things and things like writing your supervisor will likely do more quickly than you. </div> <div> Things like reviewing the literature, they will likely do more quickly than you [00:16:00] because they're more experienced because they have that kind of initial grounding. So I could review the literature in my old research topic much faster than I could review the literature in some other topic because I know where I'm starting and I know the background. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm a few years out of date for sure, but I know the background and so it's much faster. Okay, so your supervisor doesn't know how long it would take you. This isn't dissing supervisors, right? This is nothing they're doing wrong, but when we kind of blindly take their amount of time that they suggested as the correct amount of time, then we can sometimes sort of dig ourselves into an unnecessary hole. </div> <div> The other time that supervisors often get it wrong is when they're asking you to do something that they've either never done or they haven't done for a really long time. This is often the practical side of work. So I remember having co supervision arrangements with some PhD students where the other supervisor was very, [00:17:00] very optimistic. I love him so much. But he was super ambitious about what you could get done. Now part of it was that he was fast and he was really hardworking and so he would put in lots and lots of hours, but part of it was that he had been, it had been so long since he was doing that hands-on stuff himself. He'd forgotten the delays you got because equipment broke down or the delays you got because your cells are dying and you're not sure what to do with them. Or if you are in the more artsy things, whether it's something to do with access or how long translation takes or any of those sorts of practical things. Sometimes your supervisors will not recall or not judge it accurately how long something will take. </div> <div> The other reason it goes wrong is because you are doing it to a different standard than your supervisor thought you were. So if your supervisor says, this should take about two weeks, and in their head they want to see a first draft, but you are determined to make it as good as you [00:18:00] possibly can, then it might take longer than they think it should 'cause you are trying to get it to a higher quality piece of work than they're actually expecting. So that's the other thing, right? Is when we are deciding how long something should take, we also need to be deciding to what quality are we attempting to do it? 'cause that is gonna influence how long it's gonna take. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if we're sort of mismatched in that either that they're expecting us to do something rough and we are trying to do something much better. Or that we initially said we were gonna do something rough and now we're getting all perfectionist about it, then it is gonna take longer. And that's a really good awareness raising for us. So we're thinking why, what makes us think that it's too long? How has that actually happened? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second question is, why is it taking the amount of time that it is? Okay. And I think there's three main ways that something takes longer [00:19:00] than you think it will that are outside of what we've discussed so far. </div> <div> The first is that it is more difficult or more complicated than you thought it would, or something comes up that adds to it. So you thought it would take you three days to do your analysis, but when you started your analysis, you realized that all your variables are shambles. They haven't been labeled properly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can't work out which is which. So you have to go back and do a massive data cleaning exercise before you have to do it. For example, okay. Or it might be that it's just cognitively more difficult than you're anticipating. You are putting in the hours, you're spending time wrestling with it, but it's just harder than you thought it was gonna be. So that's sort of one option. It's more difficult, more complicated than you had anticipated it being. If you are picking that one, I want you to double check. It's only that one if you are engaging with it. [00:20:00] So if it's more difficult than you thought it was gonna be, so you are avoiding it. That's a separate reason and we're gonna talk about that in a second. But if it's more difficult than you thought it was gonna be, you are engaging with that difficulty, but it's just taking more time than you expected. That's one reason it's taking more time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A second reason it might be taking more time is that it's difficult and therefore you're avoiding it. So in this situation, it's not that you are putting in all the hours you said you would and just not progressing quickly. It's that it's difficult and therefore you're not putting in the hours. Okay, this is the difference. Let's switch this to a running analogy. Okay. I got told in my membership, they like my sports analogy, so we're gonna stick with it. Uh, so imagine it's running in the first situation. The course is much hillier than you thought it was gonna be. You are still running, but the course is much hillier than you thought it was gonna be. Your pace is way down. You're not gonna [00:21:00] hit your race goal. In the second situation. The course is much hillier. It's much muddier. It's just unpleasant, and so you've got big chunks of time where you're just not running. You are stopping and going I don't want to, I'm just gonna have a little look at the view and scroll on my phone and hope it goes away. So in that one, for whatever reason it might be because it's difficult. It might be because it's boring. It might be for lots of different reasons. You are actually avoiding doing it. Full stop. You're doing something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing is that for whatever reason. You are engaging with it, but you're not engaging with the difficult bits. This is where instead of writing the next section, you are twiddling with sentences, correcting your grammar, improving the flow, adding in some details, polishing the bits that you have done, [00:22:00] or you are reading a lot in a kind of unstructured, unintentional way, in a sort of, if I know more, the next bit will be easier. So you are doing stuff, but not stuff that's actually moving you forward. So in a race, this would be, I don't know, doing jumping jacks or deciding to reorganize the marshals rather than actually running. Okay, so have a quick analysis. What's making it long? Is it difficult? You're engaging with it, but it's just taking ages. Is it difficult? So you're avoiding it and not doing it at all, or is it difficult or unpleasant in some way? So you are twiddling around the edges instead of moving it forward. </div> <div> Remember we are doing this from a supportive boss perspective. We are not beating you up for this. When you see that, you are probably gonna go, Ugh, I'm so stupid. Yes, it's taking so long 'cause I'm just not doing it, and all I need to do is just sit down and get on with it. No, it's not that straightforward. If you are avoiding it because it feels difficult and you don't feel [00:23:00] capable of doing it, it's not just a case of telling yourself to just sit down and do it. We've gotta work out a way to better support you. We've gotta figure out a way to make you feel competent to sit down, or at least willing to feel uncomfortable while you have a go at doing it. But we can do that best if we understand why. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before we move on to the what to dos though, I have a third question for you, and this will help you better understand your behaviors. What thoughts and feelings do you have about this task at the moment? What are you telling yourself is true? Maybe you're telling yourself that you are not good enough. Maybe you're telling yourself you shouldn't have to do this piece of work anyway. Maybe you're telling yourself that you think it's good enough and it's only your supervisor who thinks it still needs work. Maybe you're telling yourself there's just no way you ever gonna do it. Lots of things I want you to really try. You can brain dump on a piece of paper if it helps. Really think about what thoughts am I [00:24:00] having? What emotions are they generating? Are you feeling anxious? Are you bored? Are you frustrated? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if you are feeling negative emotions towards this piece of work, you probably are going to procrastinate either by avoiding the work entirely or by doing the easier bits. Procrastination, as I've said many, many times, procrastination is emotion avoidance. We procrastinate when there's something about the task we don't like the feelings associated with it, and we want to do something that makes us feel better than that. So we've now hopefully got a much better understanding of the situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Supervisors, if you are doing this with your students, I want you to ask them all those questions. I want you to ask them what quality are they expecting this to get to? I'd actually even, and this is probably an addition, I'm gonna throw this in as an additional question for all of you. What are you actually spending your time doing? Because there were times when my students would tell me that something was taking too long, and I was a bit like, I really don't understand how it is. This [00:25:00] isn't a big piece of work. I don't understand how this is taking so long. And then they'd say, right. So I started by doing this, and then I was doing that, and then I did this, and then I did that. And I was like, no, you didn't need to do any of those things. No, no, no, no, no. Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack. Please don't do that. No, the reason this is taking you too long is 'cause you're doing a whole load of stuff that's not necessary. So I'm throwing that in. That wasn't on my original notes, but talking to you guys always makes me come up with new ideas. I'm throwing that one in. Whether you're thinking about yourself or you as a supervisor, find out what they're actually spending time doing. What are you actually spending time doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So now we know why we thought it would take this long. We know what we're actually spending the time doing. We know whether we are engaging with the difficulty, whether we're avoiding the difficulty, whether we are doing the easy bits, and we know what thoughts and feelings we're having about the task. </div> <div> And from here we get to strategize. From here, we get to plan how can I [00:26:00] support myself and how can I make decisions in order to move this forward in the best way possible. Now, for some of you, this might be adjusting how you are thinking about the piece of work. It might be that if we can remind ourselves that we are capable of doing the next step, that we don't have to do all the bits at once, that it's okay to be bored. It's okay for something to feel difficult, that we might be able to reduce the amount we're procrastinating, and in doing so, it might still be possible to get the piece of work done by the original deadline because we're actually gonna work the hours we intended to, rather than procrastinating either by doing other things or by doing the basic things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have a think. What things would you need to say to yourself in order to be able to do the work that you intended to do, rather than avoiding it? [00:27:00] Some of it might be, especially if you're somebody who gets caught up in the kind of busy fiddling stuff, some of it might be about reassuring yourself that it's okay if it's not perfect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of my members just very proudly told us that she handed in her lit review knowing that it had some bits in it that could have been written more elegantly or that needed reference adding to them, and she just added a note for her supervisor saying exactly what she'd done. And that she'd then got comments and it was super useful 'cause even though she hadn't got it absolutely perfect, it was the right moment for her to get more input so that she could move forward more quickly. And now she's doing the bits that she knew she needed to do anyway, and she's doing the bits that the supervisor suggested and it's moving forward much more quickly than if she had sort of polished everything to perfection. So we get to adjust how we are thinking about the piece of work. </div> <div> The other thing we get to think about is do we actually need to [00:28:00] adjust the parameters here? Because if you are thinking, you know what, I can talk to myself a bit better and I can probably reduce the amount I'm procrastinating, but I literally don't have enough time left to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's okay too. We get to adjust our plans, adjust our parameters, and what I mean by parameters is we're able to potentially ask for extensions. That can be an option, okay? But that's not the only option. You can also adjust the scope. So if you were meant to hand in your entire chapter. You could consider, do I want, by Friday, let's say, do I want to ask for an extension and still hand in the entire chapter at the quality I said I would. Or do I wanna discuss the possibility that I hand in a section on Friday of what I have done at the current quality -that's reducing the scope? Or do I want to hand in the whole thing, but at a [00:29:00] rougher level than I would've done previously? So letting my supervisor know, I'm still aiming for the Friday, but it's going to be rougher than I said it was gonna be. And this can be useful dialogue to have with supervisors. Some supervisors a bit like, don't send it to me till it's perfect. If you're a supervisor that says to your students, don't send it to me till they're perfect, then you are slowing their progress down. </div> <div> If you are telling your students that until it's polished, you don't wanna read it. You are slowing down everybody's progress. I'm usually quite diplomatic on these and certainly with the students in the membership, I often try and explain the perspective of supervisors. That usually isn't big baddies, but the one hill I will die on is that if you want perfect drafts, every time you see something from your students, you are slowing down everybody's progress. I feel strongly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so you get to decide what options are there, and one way to identify which option works for you is so think about what's the ultimate goal here? Okay, why [00:30:00] are we handing this in now? What are we trying to get and what's the easiest and shortest way to get it to good enough for that purpose? </div> <div> Because often we need it to be good enough that the person can give feedback on the kind of the nature of the argument or whatever, or how well, whether we've included all the content we need to, but it doesn't need to be polished in order to achieve that bit. Okay. It might be that if it's, I don't know, a proposal for a new study and you are originally gonna write a full formal proposal, but actually what the purpose of it is for your supervisors to judge feasibility and novelty and things like that, then maybe you can do something that's more like a precis. That's more of a bullet pointed summary rather than a full justified something. Will it still do the job. So asking yourself, what's the ultimate goal here and how can I get as quickly as possible to achieving that [00:31:00] ultimate goal? Rather than solely focusing on how can I do exactly what I originally said I was going to do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next question is, who do I need to either notify or discuss this with? One of the biggest holdups is when students say to supervisors or avoid supervisors, they just kind of miss the deadline and hope their supervisor doesn't notice. And that by the time their supervisor does notice, they hope that they'll have finished, and so they sort of avoid that conversation. Or they say to their supervisor, yeah, yeah, it's nearly there. It is gonna be a few days longer, but it's nearly there. And just sort of keep pushing it off. We avoid these conversations because we think it means something about us that we haven't done it. </div> <div> We are embarrassed that we don't work faster. We're ashamed that we procrastinate as much as we do, or whatever it is, right. Because of those feelings and what we think they're thinking about them. Yeah. Students, how much time do you spend in your supervisor's brain? [00:32:00] Probably too much, guessing what they think about you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because of all these stories we make up about what they think about us and what it means about us and our futures, we often delay having useful conversations. This is taking way longer than I thought because X, Y, and Z. Are there ways we can clarify this? Are there ways I can do a bit at a time? </div> <div> Are there ways someone can teach me this element? You know, you're coding or something and you're trying to work it out and it's taking forever. Is there someone who just knows how to do this that can smooth this? So we are thinking through what options we've got and who we need to notify and discuss. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing once you implement that part is to then jot down somewhere, what are your lessons learned here? Because what we want to develop, and this is what we're gonna be working on in the quarter, that's coming up now in the membership, is we wanna build this relationship between boss you and implementer you. The version of you that makes plans and the version of you that has to implement it. And what we are doing [00:33:00] here is the implementer is going, I can't do all this. So they're going back to discuss it. Instead of just staying over here panicking, they're going back to their boss self, having a strategize, wondering why we are where we are, working out what options we've got, making a decision going forward. </div> <div> And that's brilliant. Love that. But the other thing that a reflective boss does is they learn from this for next time they are planning work. Okay. If we find that the reason the deadline is where it is, is 'cause we underestimated how long it would take, or we forgot to put in time for breaks or we forgot to allow for the basic admin stuff we have to do every day, or we forgot to allow for that we always get interrupted at some point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of those things we need to make a note to bring that forward for our next time. We are planning for ourselves. So that we, any of you who have ever said to yourself, I always put too much on my list and I never finish it. You need to be in the [00:34:00] membership. You do, because that means your boss self is not taking on any feedback, they're just doing the same thing. Here you go, have too much. Here you go. Have too much. And then implementer you is going, I'm trying, I'm trying, but I can't. And it's just reinforcing that they feel useless and boss you next week's like, well, there's even more now. Here you go. We have to break this cycle. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the implementer, you has strategies they can use to get through things as efficiently and effectively as they can, but where boss you actually listens and learns and actually looks at it and is willing to make decisions. One of the reasons we put too much on our plates is because we are avoiding making a decision about what doesn't fit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are going, I don't think it all fits, but with a strong wind and a lot of optimism, we maybe can. So let's go. And then you make it implementer's problem that it doesn't work. We need to be willing to make the difficult decisions. We need to be willing to turn around and go, you know what? I can't do the conference [00:35:00] presentation and the special issue. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to go, okay, if I am doing, this is something we talked about in a coaching session recently, if I am doing both the conference presentation and the special issue. They need to be on the same topic, so I'm not doing two sets of work. So it's essentially the same piece of work with two different outputs. So that we actually make those difficult decisions when we're in boss mode to give, implementer us the best possibility of being able to get their work done in the amount of time they said they were going to. </div> <div> I really, really hope that's useful. I feel like I feel good about this. I love all my episodes, right? But I feel good about this episode. I feel like it's one that absolutely everybody needs. I hope you got lots from it. If you're not already on my newsletter, make sure you sign up and you'll get summaries of these. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'll get access to my podcast archive, and you can ask me any questions that you have when the episodes come out and you get invited to my free webinars, um, so I spent time at the beginning of this telling you about the paid options. If you are [00:36:00] like Vic, that's fine, but I can't afford it. Or Vic, that's fine, but I'm not eligible for your membership. No worries. You've got the podcast, sign up for the newsletter. You'll get access to one workshop a month of free content. So there's one coming up in February in a couple of weeks time. So make sure you're on the newsletter and you'll get all the information about that. Whether you can pay or not, I want to try and help you improve your academic life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 26 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-22-what-to-do-when-your-task-is-taking-longer-than-you-thought thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-21-how-much-should-i-work-per-week-in-academia <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div>   <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> Everyone I know in academia somehow simultaneously believes that they’re working far too much AND that they’re not working enough to get it all done. That leads to a horrible situation where we feel unsatisfied and exhausted, and we often don’t get to enjoy our downtime because we feel guilty too. In this episode, I answer a very common question - how much should I be working - with a more nuanced answer than you will get from most people! If you worry you do too much or not enough, then this is the episode for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want to find the Randy Pausch lecture that I mentioned, it’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0" target="_blank"> here </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Links for the transcript </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16773943-3-29-how-to-stop-wasting-time-by-trying-to-be-too-efficient" target="_blank"> how to stop wasting time by trying to be too efficient. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Today we're gonna be thinking about one of the most common questions that we get asked, especially when I was a supervisor and that just, I think, runs through our heads a lot of the time, and that is how much should I be working? There seems to be obsessions in all different directions at the moment in academia, and it slightly does my head in because we have the people that are like, if you don't work 60 hours a week, then it's just not even worth being in academia. You're meant to be committed, that kind of, you are not working hard enough vibe. But then we also seem to have this other obsession with you've got to have work-life balance at all times. And you should never be stressed and you should never be busy and you should never work too long hours. You know, I can get everything done in 25 hours a week and blah, blah, blah. It just seems to be a whole lot of people telling you a whole lot of things about how much you should be working, and so many people seem [00:01:00] to want a definitive answer to it, that you should be working this much. And I mean, I have a confession, right? You're not gonna get a definitive answer to that in this episode. I know you want one. And so what we're gonna do today is we are gonna think about why it feels important to have a definitive answer to that question, and then I'm gonna give you some other tips and guidance for what are actually better questions to be asking and how you can answer them. Okay, so let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> First thing, why do we want to know? We want to know how much we should be working because we are worried we're doing it wrong. The reason that question feels so important is because we are convinced that either everybody else is working more than us and we are not doing enough, and that we are gonna get behind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or we're doing something wrong by not working enough. You know, I've [00:02:00] had PhD students in the past who are like, I'm not doing as many hours as everybody else and I seem to be on, on top of all the things I'm doing. And that freaks me out a little bit 'cause I think I'm doing something wrong. Or we wanna know, could I be working less than I am? 'cause what I'm doing at the moment doesn't feel sustainable. Is there a right amount of how much I should be doing that could be less than what I'm doing at the moment, or it's because you've got particular circumstances, whether they're health circumstances, life circumstances, or whatever, that put a limit on the number of hours you can work or are willing to work, and you are wondering whether it's even possible for you to be in academia. Can you do a PhD in those hours? Can you be an academic within those hours? And so we desperately often want somebody to say, this is the amount of hours. This is how much you should be working, and if you do that, you'll be okay so that [00:03:00] we can answer some of these bigger and more pressing questions of whether we're enough, whether we are doing it right, and whether we are capable of this anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The problem is that when the real things that we care about and worry about are kind of squished down, and we're instead asking the practical kind of so-called easier questions like, how much should I be working? We just don't get to the bit that really matters. 'cause I could turn around and say to you, you should be working 35 hours a week. You should be working 50 hours a week. You should be working whatever, however many hours a week. And you might go, oh gosh, I'm already working way more than that, and I don't feel on top of things. Or you might be going, oh, there's no way I could do that many hours in a week with my commitments, with my energy levels, with my disability, with my, whatever it is. Whatever number I gave you of [00:04:00] how much you should be working, you are gonna have a reaction that's nothing to do with those actual hours, or probably the worst case you'll go, oh, okay, right cool. I can work that much. And then you'll work that much and then often not get the stuff done that you want to get done, and then say, well, hang on. She told me that working that many hours is the right amount, and I worked that many hours and I haven't achieved what I wanted to achieve. And this is because we're asking the wrong question. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason I hate the question, how much should I be working is because I have known people at every extreme of that in every direction. I've known people who work an obscene number of hours don't seem to do a lot else in their life and who are exceedingly, exceptionally successful. I also have known [00:05:00] people who every time you went into the department on a weekend, they would be there doing their stuff and they were no more successful than anybody else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also know people who would happily tell you exactly how many hours they work a week, and it was very high numbers, but who also seemed to spend all of that time chattering with people in nearby offices. So it doesn't predict success in any meaningful way. I've also known people who didn't put the hours in and didn't really get on with academia and didn't get stuff done, and I've known people who really didn't seem to work that much, but somehow did the right things and flourished anyway,. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Success in academia is not measured in number of hours worked. It's also not measured in number of words written. That's the other metric we often go to, right? How much is the right amount of what words to be writing every week? Well, it depends [00:06:00] what phase you're in. Depends what stage of the research process you're at. I've known people that have wrote loads and been really successful, wrote loads have not seemingly been that successful. People who haven't written very much, who've had amazing careers 'cause they've just written the right things and people who have not written very much and sort of drifted out of academia. Again, how much writing should I be doing is also the wrong question to be asking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we want to be asking instead, and if you take nothing else from this podcast, this is the question I want you to take, is what do we want to be doing with the hours and energy that we are willing to give this job or this PhD? What would I best be doing in the hours that I'm willing or able to spend on this career of mine? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> ' Cause how much time you should spend on something is entirely dependent on what the thing is and on who you [00:07:00] are and what constraints you have around you. So some people who work really long hours spend all their time doing things that don't move the needle. Don't bring fulfillment. Don't move them closer towards either their goals or their kind of community collaborations or whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There is an amazing guy called Randy Pausch, and I'll put a link to his work in the show notes. And he talked about don't polish the underside of the banister. Often I see academics polishing the underside of the banister iE doing work that nobody sees and is not very important or impactful. Now, does this mean you should only be doing things that get you promoted? No, obviously not. We want academia, whatever stage we're at, we want academia to be a fulfilling place, an intellectually stimulating place, a place where we work for the social good, if that's your vibe or work for the pure joy of knowledge, if that's your vibe whichever, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this isn't just about being like super [00:08:00] strategic and doing the exact right things to get yourself promoted, but it is deciding what's important to you and choosing to spend more time on that stuff. If you are working 60 hours a week, but you're spending 20 of them sorting out your reference manager system, then you're probably not enjoying it, and you're probably not moving your career in the directions you want to go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How much we should be working also depends on what we are doing from a personal human perspective. So there was a really good episode a while back with some researchers from Bath where they talked about how to look after yourself when you're doing emotionally taxing research. And so if you are somebody who is doing research that is distressing to read about, where you're having interviews with people who are having very big emotions about the situations that they're in. You may find that the amount of hours you can dedicate, at least to that part of your research is gonna be much less than somebody who is doing much less emotionally taxing research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For those of [00:09:00] you doing research that is extremely cognitively taxing, you may be able to do less per day than you are at other times. And this is something that will also change throughout your PhD throughout your career. So for me, when I was in data collection phase, for me and the stuff that I was doing, data collection wasn't at all emotionally taxing and it wasn't particularly cognitively taxing. I was getting people into the laboratory. I was administering stress tests and things like that. Not like nasty ones, just like difficult maths tasks and things like that. I was sticking electrodes on them. I was taking saliva samples, all these sorts of things, right? It wasn't that difficult. As a bit of an extrovert. If anything, it was kind of fun chatting with these people running the sessions. I could do hours and hours and hours of that sort of work without it wearing me out socially, emotionally, cognitively. Whereas if data collection for you is close analysis of a poem, for example, [00:10:00] maybe it's not emotionally taxing, depending on what the poem's about, but it's maybe cognitively taxing that you can only do it for a couple of hours before your brain feels like it's drained. And then other people, we have so many people in my membership and in my wider community who are doing research about inherently distressing tasks often, which intersect with their own personal situations as well. So people with disabilities looking at disability prejudice, for example. Anything where like intersects with their own experiences. And for you guys, you may find that you can only spend a much more limited period of time. So taking into account what you are doing at any one time and how much time it is reasonable for you to expect to spend on it is super, super important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You also get to think about yourself as an individual. So some of it, you know, when I was doing my PhD, I was young, I was fit and healthy. I probably had ADHD, but that [00:11:00] mostly came out in over excitement rather than anything else and I didn't have any children. I didn't have any responsibilities. I didn't get much money, but I got a little bit of money from the department, which was enough that I wasn't doing other jobs and things like that. I could basically largely throw myself into stuff. Now, obviously, being me, I was trying to balance 47 other hobbies as well, so that slightly dragged away from my academic time. But other than that, not a lot did. You might have. Illnesses, you might have disabilities, you may have responsibilities, you may have family. You may be caring for people. You may have a whole bunch of reasons why you only have so much to give. There's also, I know many, many listeners and members who are part-time students who are balancing this alongside part-time or full-time work. And then the question is not so much, how much should you be doing? It's how much can you do given your constraints? And once you have that time, once you've decided what that amount [00:12:00] is, what do you want to spend that time doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it may well be that if you are somebody who has quite a lot of constraints on you, that means you need to be much more selective about what you choose to spend your time doing. It is not that you should be trying to find more time to work, more than your body or mind will allow you, but instead thinking about how can you support yourself to be much more selective than your average PhD student, than your average academic, so that you can really pick and choose what you spend your time on and how much time you give it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now one of the things I'm gonna be teaching in the membership next quarter, so if you're listening to this live, this is coming out a week before quarter one of 2026 launches, and the entire quarter, so running February, March, April, is gonna be focused on time management, task management, and how we can kind of create a PhD life that we love and one of the things that we address right at the very beginning is this notion of really thinking about what proportion of [00:13:00] our time we want to be spending on different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to balance the current needs of what we're doing right now. So for those of you who are academics, that might be your administrative responsibilities, your teaching responsibilities, your supervision responsibilities, or those sorts of things, how we balance the kind of urgent day-to-day needs of those sorts of things with the longer term needs of your career and your progression and so on, and thinking about what proportion of your week rather than the absolute number of hours, what proportion of your week you want to spend serving those different parts of you. For PhD students, it's slightly different, but obviously lots of you are balancing lots of things anyway, but also towards the end of your PhD you start having to balance what do I need to do to serve my current work, IE the thesis versus my future self. So turning things into papers, presenting at conferences to raise your profile, applying for jobs and all [00:14:00] those sorts of things too. So at pretty much any stage, your academic career, you're sort of balancing up the needs of the day to day now with the needs of future you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things I'm gonna be supporting my members to do is decide, therefore, what proportions of their week do they want to spend on these different elements. For example, one of the things I will teach is my role-based time blocking system. I do have an episode that kind of broadly introduces that, if you wanna go check it out. But I will take people through step by step so that they can really think about what amount of their week do they want to spend in each of the different roles that they have in what they're doing at the moment, and how adjusting that can make you feel so much more in control of your academic life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also wanna think about how you are working, not just what you are working on in these, not just what topics you're choosing to spend your time on, but also how you are working within them. Often when the pressure builds and the to-do list grows and the panic sets in, we [00:15:00] somehow forget that we did actually choose to do most of this stuff, especially those of you doing PhDs. I accept that once you become an academic, there's a whole bunch of stuff that you did not necessarily sign up for, but as a PhD student, the doing of your research is pretty much what you dreamed of, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yet somehow all that pressure helps it turn into something that feels like someone else has forced it on you. Feels like you don't want to be doing it when actually most of us came into this through a love for our subjects. So another really useful question to ask yourself instead of how much I should be working is, how do I want to work within these hours? How do I want to make those hours feel lighter and more joyful and more engaging, rather than feeling like a sort of pressured drag that I have to pull myself through? </div> <div> This can be about changing the way we [00:16:00] work on things. Those you who've been around for a while know that I'm a big fan of like pieces of paper and felt tip pens and all that kind of stuff as ways to work in a more engaging way. But it can also be as simple as what, how we talk to ourselves while we're working. Because if we're working on something that we allegedly like, but the constant narrative in our head is, this isn't good enough. You are not good enough. Everyone's gonna think you're an idiot. That's not very clear. What if they disagree? What if they dislike it? What if they fail? Then you are not gonna enjoy doing that thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas you could be doing the exact same jobs for the exact amount of time, and instead thinking thoughts about how interesting this is, how fun it is, how difficult it is in a really kind of puzzling and interesting sort of a way so that you can actually spend more time enjoying the things you're doing. So that kind of quality of how you work is also super important, much more so than how many hours you spend doing it. </div> <div> I have two points left to make. So one is [00:17:00] the amount of time you are working and what you are working on also can and should fluctuate. Fluctuate day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. If you find that you are always working, like slogging away the same number of hours every month, every week, I want you to really reconsider. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  When you think about people who are at the top of their game, you think about people, you know, athletes and things like that, Taylor Swift even, anyone who's like at the top of their game, they will have periods where they're doing more of this, and then there'll be periods where they're doing more of. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That there'll be periods where they're really pushing or where they're really preparing to push, and there'll be other times where they're sort of ticking over to some extent. And I want you to think about how you have those fluctuations in your life and how you can try and create those fluctuations in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things I think has gone wrong with academia at the moment is how all the kind of traditionally down [00:18:00] times have got eaten at both ends. So, you know, there used to be this semi unstructured summer that you could kind of look forward to and get stuff done. It sort of, you know, exam boards and things like that, start eating into it at one end, conferences and things like that. Then suddenly there's loads more getting ready for next year than you ever anticipated. Those of you in the US and other places might be teaching summer schools and so on. It is getting eaten away at, you know, all these grant agencies. If any of you work for grant agencies, I'm looking at you. Not impressed all these grant agencies that have a deadline of January 15th. Excellent. Thanks for that. So suddenly your Christmas holiday is spent writing a grant or finishing off a grant and so on. It does feel as though the academic year has got eaten away at in lots of different ways so that it doesn't have quite the ebb and flow that it used to. But I want you to think how you can create a sense of ebb and flow, how you can create a sense that there's periods where you are pushing, where you are really working hard, but in a fun and [00:19:00] engaging kind of a way. And then there are periods where you are doing what's necessary to get through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This always reminds me of the metaphor of athletes. They have their competition season, they have more preparation season. They have more recovery season, and then even within those periods of time, they have their kind of, you know, hard training hour and their recovery hour and all these sorts of things. They don't expect themselves to be running all day every day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They also don't expect themselves to never be uncomfortable. And I think this is something that academia gets wrong is that we think if you've got a period of time where actually you are working long hours, you are pushing hard. It is quite pressured that that is necessarily a bad thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is not necessarily a bad thing. If you can put around yourself the support structures you need, so that you can feel looked after during that time. So you can look at where, are there things [00:20:00] I can take away that I don't have to think about during this time while I'm pushing hard at it? And where there's an end to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I often say to my members who are in that last sort of throes towards submission, they don't have to come up with a kind of work schedule that is sustainable forever. This is not talking forever. It's about the next two months or the next three months or whatever it might be. And they get to decide what's sustainable for that period of time and what pressures are they gonna relieve of themselves so that they don't have to do them during that period of time to support themselves to be working really, really hard. And then what are they gonna do after it so that they have that period of recovery and have less pressure before the other elements come along. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way you can do it is even on a week to week basis. I remember a mentor of mine back in the day, she told me she had a very high, she was like pro vice chancellor level and she told me that not working on weekends was really, really important to her, but she had very [00:21:00] heavy workload that she often struggled to get done within the normal working week and so what she had arranged with her family was that on a Friday night, she would always work late. She was just not available on Friday nights, so they could do their own thing, whatever. She would work as late as she needed to work on a Friday night, but she then wouldn't work until Monday morning. So it was this sort of balance where in order to get her completely free days on the Saturday and Sunday, she kind of compensated with one later night. I also knew people who wanted to be able to be engaged in their family life to be able to put their children to bed and all those sorts of things. And they would sometimes work split shifts, so they'd allow themselves to finish at 2.30 so they could pick up the kids from school so they could do homework and tea and all that fun stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But they would then do a couple of hours after the kids had gone to bed to finish off the things that they hadn't finished earlier. And that was how they balanced it so that [00:22:00] they were meeting their needs, and also being able to engage with the things that were important to them. </div> <div> The final thing I wanted to say is that I actually think constraint helps, and this is the only place where I think thinking about how much I should be working or I want to work is important, is I highly recommend that in any kind of chunk or phase of time, you know, whether that's this week or this month or this quarter, that you decide how many hours you are willing to give and try as far as possible to intentionally stay within that time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I've built this into my week planning process that I teach in the membership. At the beginning of any week, I will decide, okay, how many hours have I got that I'm willing to give this week? And then given that constraint, what stuff am I gonna get done this week? </div> <div> And the absolute number of hours will vary depending on where I'm at in the quarter, how many [00:23:00] workshops I've got going on, whether it's launch free study of those sorts of things. It will vary a bit depending on those sorts of constraints. It'll also vary at different times of year. But once I know how much I'm willing to give that week, then I decide , what are the most important things to fix into it? And the reason constraint helps so much with that is because of that age old law that probably has a name that I don't remember, which is that work expands to fill the time you give it. If you know that you can flop over into the evening or you can flop over into the weekend, you often end up not wasting time as such, but allocating more time to something that's less important than you would if your time was constrained. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the sort of premises of the role-based time blocking method that I teach is that we try really hard as far as possible to stay within those blocks that we set doing tasks that are associated with that [00:24:00] role and if we have less time to do it, then we make decisions about the scope of the task, about the quality of the task, or about the way we are working on the task to enable us to still get it done within that time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. Usually people think the only thing you can manipulate is to give a task more time, and that's simply not true. , I did an online life drawing class this weekend, obviously, 'cause you know, hobby Girl and, one of the things they got us to do, we had like a woman in like her little shorts t-shirt thing. And I dunno why I felt the need to tell you she wasn't naked, but she wasn't naked. Um, and. At first, the first few drawings they gave us a minute. So she did a pose, we had a minute to draw it. She did another pose. We had a minute to draw it, and then they gave us some different instructions. And then we had a three minute pose, and then we had a five minute pose and things. And the point is, any of those times were enough time, [00:25:00] as long as you were kind of mindful of what you could get done in that time. Yeah. Could I have drawn better in my one minute ones if I'd had three minutes? Obviously, yes, but I had one minute, and so I did what I could do within that one minute. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When I had three minutes, I did what I could do within that three minutes. None of them were right, none of them were wrong. None of them were very good frankly. But that's 'cause I'm a beginner. But I adjusted my expectations of how accurate it would be, how detailed it would be, how rough it would be, all of those things based on how much time I had to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we can do that in academia way more than we think. It's actually true of wordcounts as well. Okay, you can explain your entire thesis in 15 words if you had to. You can explain your entire thesis in 250 words. You can explain your entire thesis. In 2000 words. You can spend a hundred thousand words. You just give less detail. You just give a broader brush [00:26:00] picture, the fewer words you have. And the same is true with time. You get to decide not only how long you're going to give something, but also what that means for what you are going to produce within that time. If you are marking and you've got x number of hours to mark, X number of papers, then the way you mark it needs to be adjusted to allow for the amount of time that you have. Expecting ourselves to do a one hour review in 20 minutes is the pathway to absolute burnout. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I hope you have found today useful. I've taken a question I often get asked, how much should I be working? Hopefully explained why it's not a particularly useful question to ask or to try and get answered at least, and hopefully giving you some guidance about other things that you could be thinking about instead that I hope will address the real issues here of feeling like there's too much to do in the time that you have available. [00:27:00] I really hope that's useful. If you want more specific guidance, you wanna know how I recommend people set up their weeks, how I recommend people review their weeks, what to do if you don't stick to your plans, what to do if you make unrealistic plans. If you want help with all of that stuff, please have a look at the PhD Life Coach membership for PhD students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're an academic, please recommend it to your students as well. The launch starts next Monday on the 26th. You can get in anytime that week between the 26th of January and the 30th of January. But the sooner you get in, the sooner you get access to everything, including the live sessions. So if you have any questions, do let me know. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 19 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-21-how-much-should-i-work-per-week-in-academia thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-20-how-to-manage-the-critical-voice-when-youve-got-too-much-to-do <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> A critical inner voice is one of the most common and difficult experience as a PhD student or academic. In this episode, you get to hear me coaching TWO of my current students in the PhD Life Coach membership, who are both part time PhD students while holding down demanding careers in our National Health Service. It runs like one of our group coaching sessions, where they each get coached AND hear each other get coached on self-talk, prioritisation, and compassion. If you have a critical inner voice, or if you’ve ever wondered about the benefits of group coaching, then you’re in the right place! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12509131-24-how-winnie-the-pooh-can-help-you-manage-your-mind" target="_blank"> How Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week's episode is actually something that we've never done before. Those of you who've been listening for a while will know that occasionally I have either listeners or members come on to have one-to-one coaching with me on a variety of different topics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But this week I've actually got two of my current PhD life coach members on the episode to both be coached today. And the reason we thought this would be a really fun thing for you to all listen to is because as you'll hear in a second, both Kate and Janice have a sort of similar situation. At the moment, they're both part-time students with full-time jobs which I know will resonate with lots of you, but we thought it also reflected a bit more what we actually do in the PhD life Coach membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We have online group coaching where you get to hear other people getting coached in a webinar format as well as getting coached yourself. So how today is gonna go is that I am gonna coach [00:01:00] Kate and I'll get 'em to introduce themselves in a sec. I'm gonna coach Kate while Janice listens, and then Janice will come back on and we'll have a bit of a chat about what she took from listening to the coaching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then Janice will come on for coaching while Kate listens. And then Kate will pop back to talk about what she took from Janice being coached. You guys get to listen to all of it, so you get to hear two different people getting coached on this. Even if you're not a part-time student with a full-time job, there will be lots about time management and prioritization and self-care and all that good stuff that we all need to think about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you'll be able to see how beneficial it can be to hear other people getting coached and apply it to your own life. So thank you both so much for agreeing to come on. I'm super excited to have you here. Let's go ahead and do some intros. So Kate, do you wanna tell us a bit about who you are and what you're researching? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Hi. So my name's Kate. I work in the NHS as a nurse and I am working, managing, working clinically and doing a [00:02:00] PhD via prior published works at the moment. So I'm writing up other work that I've done. I'm year two of a four year kind of contract with my organization. So I'm halfway through and my research is based on the impact of fresh air exposure for patients and intensive care. </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So your PhD is kind of connected to your work? You've still got the clinical duties associated with your actual job. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. And Janice?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Hi everyone. I'm Janice and I also work as a nurse in the NHSI am an infection prevention control nurse consultant. I do my PhD. I'm in my second year as well for a four year program. And, uh, yes, juggling, doing both.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And your PhD's connected topic-wise as well, isn't it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: It's, I'm going to be looking at antimicrobial resistant bacteria and how we can better fight against it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So as I said, Janice, we're gonna get you to [00:03:00] turn your camera off. Yeah. But you will be there in the background listening in. Usually in the group sessions, people are then contributing in the chat and things as well and we will have a chat, Kate, and then Janice will come back in a bit. So give us a little bit more kind of context for what's going on for you at the moment. What's feeling challenging?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So this year I have, um, I've been off work for a bit 'cause I've been unwell. So at the moment I am trying to manage the transition back into both roles. So my PhD and my academic work, and then also my clinical work. And both of them have competing pressures and competing challenges. And I find it very hard to be able to manage and rationalize the time I'm spending on each area. </div> <div> Kate: So I find that my operational hat, my operational job can sometimes feel that I have to be, um, as present as I possibly can and I have to be managing all the operational pressures that we have and I have [00:04:00] to be supporting the team. And it feels like when I'm trying to manage the competing pressures of clinical stuff and non-clinical stuff, I will always find it very difficult to find that balance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And I feel guilty and harassed, um, when I'm trying to do one and I'm thinking about the other. So I find it very hard to switch between the two roles. And I think that also fits with the fact that I've also got family and I've also got, you know, friendships, relationships, stuff out of other work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: 'cause I'm somebody who takes on lots of other things. I'm not good at saying no? So I think probably my question is about managing transitions between two roles and two, two challenges, but also how to, I've just come back into clinical work and I'm about five, six weeks in and I found that transition back in much harder than I expected to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And then I'm finding the transition back into my academic work as hard, but in a completely different way. So it feels like my, I've got my confidence back up [00:05:00] in one half of my life, but I'm now trying to pull the confidence up in the other half of my academic life. And that was reflected when I've been struggling to write something that I can absolutely know, I can write. My tone of writing in my piece is lacking in confidence, I would say. So I sent it to a friend to read it for me and she said, well, this is, this is great, but this isn't how you write this is, this is a different style of how you normally do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Like she's like, you need to say be more confident, be more bold, be more, you know, own the page a bit more. So it's just how I can build my confidence up academically after some time away and how I can sort out that balance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So help me understand it a little bit more. In terms of your confidence. What sorts of things are you finding yourself saying to yourself when it comes to getting back into doing the PhD work?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I think I am more, I feel more anxious to submit. 'cause I'm looking at [00:06:00] submitting this paper and I've been writing, so this is a paper that I was meant to finish in the summer and then I'm six months after I wanted it to be submitted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So I kind of, in my head I'm saying, well, you are late. You are late already. You've, you've already let yourself down 'cause you are already six months later than you wanted to be. Um, and that it is because I'm a bit later and I've had a break from it. It then takes you a while to get back into it. And so I'm finding that kind of getting back into it a bit harder than I thought I would do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So I'm having to reread lots of the papers that. I have read previously and I know, but I've forgotten bits of it I think. Because I've forgotten bits of it, all that anxiety about having to know the topic so well. So you've read everything, um, and you feel completely prepared to be able to write down your argument coherently 'cause you understand the evidence base as well as you can. </div> <div> Kate: So I think it's that confidence about the evidence base, probably that is, I've lost it a little bit and I think it's [00:07:00] um, because I'm, 'cause I'm late in getting to this stage 'cause I thought I would be , further on, I kind of feel a bit cross with myself and a bit kind of frustrated. And then because I'm crossing frustrated, I think I'm under more of a time pressure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So I found myself looking at the two weeks before Christmas and I'm not working Christmas this year and this is the first Christmas I've had off in my whole career since having maternity leave. So I've never had Christmases off, like full two. I've never had a full two weeks off at Christmas ever. Uh, so I'm kind of, I really want to take a break, but I also really know I have to get this stuff done and then I kind of feel like I'm, I've lost my confidence and I'm behind the curve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. So you mentioned there that you are having to revisit things because of the time away. Tell me more about why that's a problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: It feels irritating.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And it feels like I've, it feels like I'm behind. It feels, it's just a reminder every time that I have to look at something. Again, you should know [00:08:00] this, you are behind the curve. You should have done this earlier. This, this, you shouldn't be doing this now. And I know in my, I know why I didn't do it. Now I know I couldn't have done it previously, but I'm finding it very hard to switch off that kind of critical bit of my brain, which is you are not where you thought you were going to be and being still quite angry about not where I thought I was going to be, which I know is nonsensical but is hard to come around to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why is it understandable not nonsensical to feel like that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Well it's, it's understandable because being unwell was unexpected. It was, you know, it's normal for me to be angry. Like, you know, I like my brain tells me that all the things that I'm feeling and all where I am is exactly where I should be and I have no control over it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: But I think because of the operational pressure that is in the NHS all of the time, it feels like there is a mandate all of [00:09:00] the time that you should be working at 120% all of the time. And if you are not working at 120%, that you are kind of somehow doing yourself or somebody else a disservice. So I'm just trying to negotiate to myself, not, and trying to notice why I'm, I think I feel ang, I think I feel quite angry that I'm not where I wanted to be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And I've kind of got there for my clinical bit. So like, I feel like I've, I've got, I've come to terms with it for my clinical bit 'cause I couldn't have physically done it, but I kind of keep thinking, well, I should have maybe when I was in bed, why didn't I, why didn't I keep reading these papers when I was in bed? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And I, I realized that, I realized how naughty that sentence is and I realized that isn't, that's a stupid sentence. Like, I should have done more while I was sick in bed. I realize. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So one of the things, so for everybody listening, I know Kate and Janice reasonably well, they've been members for a little bit and we've coached before. [00:10:00] And one of the things I want to kind of just reflect back is the, the words you're using to yourself. Okay. You are telling yourself your thinking's nonsensical. You are telling yourself it's a stupid thought. All of these sorts of things. Okay. So there's the level that you are criticizing yourself for not being where you thought you would be, but there's also a level to which you are criticizing yourself for not handling this better, for not being able to think the thoughts that you know are sensible and cognitive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Yeah, and I want us to be really careful of that bit of judgment too. It happens quite a lot with people who have been coaching for a little while and kind of think I should be able to regulate all my thoughts by now. Yeah, we can get a bit perfectionist with coaching too. I see this quite regularly and I've had it myself. Okay, so [00:11:00] tell me why it's completely understandable that you are feeling like these thoughts are stupid? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I think it's because I feel that I have come such, I feel like I've made real strides this year. Like I'm quite proud of myself of the work that I've done and the publications that I've managed to get out and I've managed to kind of feels like I've, for the first time in this whole process, I've started enjoying it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Like I think for a lot of the first bit I was terrified and thought and had huge imposter complex. And then I kind of found this community and found a level of peace and a level of calm. And I found I'm really frustrated that I found that peace and level of calm. And then I became unwell. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And now I'm just trying to kind of, and I feel like I should, I feel like I, all the stuff that we do, all the coaching, that I've listened to, all of, all of the models, all everything I feel like I should be. I like, I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't be feeling this way. [00:12:00] 'cause I know, I know it. We've talked about it, we've done all of this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And so I think I'm a bit like, oh, I, I thought I would be better. I thought I would be better at dealing with this than I am, which is, you know, think I just thought I was more in the middle. And then this has kind of knocked all of my confidence about how I manage myself so it's, I think it's, I think it's been a confidence knock just in lots of different ways that I didn't expect, I think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. No, definitely. And this is so common, right? Because people come with one problem. You didn't know you were gonna get ill, when you joined the membership. You were mostly focused. I think it's fair to say on the kind of time management element of it, that you've got this very, very busy, very important, very pressured job. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, and you wanted, and the PhD was very important to you, and you wanted to kind of be able to balance all of those things and work out how not to stretch yourself too thin. And [00:13:00] you then made huge strides in how you were managing your division of time and your time blocking, and the thoughts about your, what level of perfection you were expecting from yourself and all of these sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You made huge strides. And what I think is really important to recognize is that when a different challenge comes along, we have to re address that stuff. We don't, you know, coaches have coaches. There's a reason that just cognitively knowing this stuff isn't sufficient to just be able to, oh, I can just apply it to every area of my life now, sort of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we got now this new situation. I know it's not new for you, but as in it, it wasn't what you anticipated joining the membership for and we get to think about, right, how do I want to now adapt and apply some of these things that I've learned? Yeah. Okay. And one things I'd really encourage you to do is be [00:14:00] kind of gentle with yourself on that. It's not easy to apply them to a new situation. You are in a kind of new, more challenging situation than you were before, which means we get to kind of re practice in this situation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How does that feel? Kind of just reminding yourself that it's completely normal not to be able to just self-regulate into the new challenge.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I think I hadn't thought about it in that kind of a concrete way. I hadn't thought about it that the reason I'm frustrated is because I thought, well, I've learned all the, like, you know, I've got your tick sheet. I know what to do, you know, I like a plan, I like a process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I was like, well, I've gone through the process, but it still isn't where it was before. So I think it's really important to say, well, you actually have to relearn this. You actually have to do this again. And I think you think sometimes in skills acquisition, well, I've learned all the skills, therefore I should just be able to apply it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And actually it's not really reflective of real life. And I think that's the thing with [00:15:00] maybe lots of people who are doing PhDs and academics and who are balancing lots of things. We're used to having a recipe, doing it, being able to do it, and then just being okay. Yeah. And I think probably I underestimated this as a new chunk of the challenge. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you know, from the membership. I love an analogy, right? And particularly an analogy that's sort of specific to the person I'm working with. What advice would you give a newly qualified nurse who's like, I've learned all my skills, I've done my clinical training, I've qualified, I'm a nurse now who then finds themself in ICU or whatever going, oh, this is a whole other ball game than when I was on placement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I think, um, I would say every day and every challenge is new and different, and you have to come at it with the toolbox of skills that you've got, but recognizing [00:16:00] that actually it's about skills acquisition over a whole career. And each time you do something for the first time, you're an amateur. So you have to work out how to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And it's okay for it not to be perfect 'cause nothing in life is perfect and nothing in life is a straight line and it's all, you know, tricky and challenging. And actually just being in the race is, is hard enough. So well done for just joining the race.  </div> <div> Vikki: And how does it feel if you reflect that back at yourself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Uh, compassionate and kind and relaxing and takes a lot of the pressure of, I should be better than this. I should be further along than this. I should be able to cope with this. Or I should be, I've learned the rules, I should just be able to apply them. I think that's, I think that reflection that coaches have coaches I think is really important as well. 'Cause I think you kind of think, you know, you. You've learned all the skills, therefore you should just be able to apply them all the time. And that just isn't true, is it? It's just, it's [00:17:00] not even, it's not, it's just not true. No. You just can't. Sometimes  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and people listening might be interested, and Janice might be interesting, listen to this, that we are not actually talking about your confidence in your academic skills at the moment, because I actually don't think that's the first layer of this. I think the first layer of this is the extent to which you're beating yourself up for not managing this better. That you're not being patient with yourself and you're not understanding that this is exactly where you are and not kind, you know, not doing all this emotional stuff. And I think if we can start there, I think the actual building of the academic confidence will come with time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think, yeah, obviously it's something we can talk about in other coaching sessions in the membership, but, um. This self-judgment that you should be able to be managing all of this makes it so much harder to be kind of creative and patient and all those things to build the [00:18:00] academic skills. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Yeah. Yeah. It's like there's a voice in the room all of the time. You know, the, the critical friend that all of us have, a critical friend in our head, my critical friend is on def com, you know, is, is really chatty at the moment in a really unhelpful way, which isn't, you know, and I think I can and because I'm trying to manage the helpful friend and being like, I know that you are completely unhelpful, be quiet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: That actually makes it even more frustrating. So you're right. It's that bit. That's the hard bit to manage. 'cause I know I can do it 'cause I've proved I can do it. My, you know, I've proved that I can write, I've proved that I can publish. I know I can do it. At the moment, I just can't make my critical friend be quiet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Now there's two things that I wanna say about that. The first you mentioned that it was useful to know that coaches have coaches. I think the other thing to bring to that is remember, and I'm sorry to have to break this to everybody, there's nothing about coaching skills or [00:19:00] self-regulation skills or anything like that that means you don't feel the crap emotions. We are never, there is no one on this planet where I don't think it's even possible to have the sort of self-regulation skills that mean, and I don't think it's even desirable to have the sort of self-regulation skills where you don't experience any of the emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And if that's the goal that we think we should have, that if I was good enough, if I paid attention in enough of Vikki's sessions, if I'd been the good enough PhD life coach member, then I would be able to not feel angry and not feel frustrated by this and not get, you know, sad about it and all of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's not the end goal. The goal is to be able to feel these legitimate emotions, to know how to not make them worse by spinning stories in our heads about all the things they mean, and to have a safe place to return [00:20:00] to. Okay? There's nobody who is completely regulated at all times. It's like trying to build a fence that doesn't wobble in the wind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's not actually desirable. It's perfectly fine for you to wobble when you have difficult things happening in your life, the point is, you know, where that point of balance is, where you've got skills that can help take you when you are down and you know, things that you can say to yourself, ways you can treat yourself to bring you back to a safe place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Yeah. And it makes sense. Like the wobbling makes sense. Like I remember you said about tight ropers, tightrope walkers. Yeah. You know, tightrope walkers wobble. And if you expect to be a tight roper and not wobble, that's not realistic. Yeah. Life is about being a practice tightrope Walker is knowing how to get yourself back in balance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And the same thing is true on this. Yeah, I think, I think I thought naively and I, I know this is massively [00:21:00] naive that because I had been in coaching for a bit and because I'd done work and because I'd planned it and 'cause I'd read loads of books. I was like, I'm ahead of, I, I get this, I can fix this. And I think I've realized that actually it's a bit harder than I thought and I wasn't as, um, kind to myself that I couldn't fix it as quickly. I think the, the challenge is exactly as you say, I didn't realize, um, how, how angry I was and the narrative I was telling myself about not being able to fix it. So actually it was becoming a double, a double beating. Yeah. If that makes sense.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. And I'd even be careful around the words, fix it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because I don't think there is a fix it here. Yeah. I think it's a supporting yourself through it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. The other thing I wanted to pick up from what you said was around this critical voice. Okay. And you are right. We all have a critical voice, but you very much [00:22:00] talked about it as something that's unhelpful and that you need to shut up. Yeah. Tell me more about how you feel about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I think that I, so I, from your coaching and from trying to be more compassionate and trying to be a compassionate leader, I try and be really careful with and with my patients as well. I talk a lot about the internal voice and about how if your internal voice is saying things to you that you wouldn't say to your best friend, then that's not a helpful internal voice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So I think I'm annoyed with myself that I can't apply the same principles that you've taught me and that I teach my patients about the internal, compassionate, turning the internal critical voice into an internal compassionate voice all the time. Like, I can do it some of the time, but I find it very difficult when the internal voice gets loud or when stuff goes wrong, because stuff does go wrong sometimes, doesn't it? You know, you make a mistake or you know, if you have a bad day or you haven't slept properly, then I can't always [00:23:00] turn the critical internal voice into a compassionate internal voice, even though I know I tell my patients to do it and you've told me to do it, and I can normally do it. It makes me more frustrated that I can't turn the volume down. And in trying to turn the volume down, actually the volume goes up. 'cause then you beat yourself up about, that's another thing you can't, like you can't do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. No, definitely, and this is why I wanted to pick up on this, because I think this is something that is super, super common, and it's even common in the kind of pop psychology, online advice space. This notion that we need to either shut up or turn down that voice. I really believe, and this, I think you are gonna be able to apply stuff from your life for this, because I know you manage people and I know you have teenagers. So both of those things are gonna bring skills into this. Okay. I think we should stop labeling our critical voices unhelpful. I think your critical voice is trying to help. They're doing it in a misguided, unhelpful way. Just like a parent who's just nagging at their [00:24:00] child, it isn't working, no one likes it, but they're trying to help. Yeah. Your internal, this voice is trying to help. They're just, they're super anxious for you. They're worried you're not gonna get your PhD done. All of this stuff, and the only tactic they have to go with is telling you you're rubbish and you have to sort yourself out. Okay. And I think the more we can see it as a kind of slightly misguided critical voice, rather than an actually intentionally unhelpful one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, you hear people talking about banish the inner critic and all of this. I'm like, no. Give you in a critic a little hug. They're trying to help, they dunno what they're doing. It's not helpful. Okay. And I don't think we have to dial it down necessarily. I just think we have to know how to engage with it. . So when I, and my, I have, uh, you know, you talk to my family, I have a healthy internal critic. Right. Um, and I no longer try and dial it down, but I'll engage with it in a kinda [00:25:00] like, yeah. Yeah. I know you're worried that I'm not gonna get this stuff done. It's okay though 'cause I'm gonna do X and Y and then the rest of it we can worry about another day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So don't worry. I got, it's all right. I know you're just stressed out. It's fine. We are all good. And where you get to actually engage with that voice, not in a kind of, oh, okay. Okay. I'll, I'll do what you say. I'll do what you say, but in a, it's okay, dude. Don't worry. You just, you are flapping. It's okay. It's 'cause you're stressed out that we had some, we had six weeks off for however long it was. You know, you're worried about all of that. It's all good though, because we're on a new timeline. We've got a new plan. We know what we're doing next. We are not, we don't, we're not behind anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's okay. I've, I've got you. And it's more of that kind of pragmatic reassurance rather than the trying to shut it up. 'cause just like with children, the more you just try and shut 'em up, the louder they get the same as unhappy employees. Right. The people you [00:26:00] manage. If you are just going, yeah. Yeah. You just need to be less critical. All right. Just shut up. I assume that's how you don't manage your teams at work, you know, be like, yeah, I get it. Yeah. It's pretty tough at the moment, isn't it? Yeah. And it, oh, and by the way, for my internationals National Health Service, when we're talking n hs, um, you know, it's like, yeah, it's pretty tough here at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I get it. That feels awful. Yeah. Well we're gonna do this bit and we're gonna do that bit and we're gonna not worry about the rest of it. 'cause that's outside our pay grade. We can talk like that to our critical voices as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Well, that's fascinating. I have never even ever thought about treating my critical voice like that. And that makes so much sense. 'cause you're right, the management style you would use with your colleagues is not a, you know, having a go at them 'cause they're raising concerns or they're getting histrionic. You wouldn't be like, no, no, absolutely. And that clearly won't work. Clearly won't work. So it's that whole application, isn't it? So I think that's, that's really helpful. Thinking about my critical voice as a [00:27:00] you know, like an employee in my life or like a, you know, like a, like a, I've gotta listen and I've gotta be calm because if I'm calm they'll calm down. Because if the more histrionic they get, the more histrionic I get trying to make them quiet. And actually then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of then everyone's cross and stressed and it doesn't help. That's really interesting. Hadn thought of that. No, that's good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The other thing it's useful for is occasionally your critical friend's useful. They're just not saying it in a great way. Occasionally, so often my critical friend says, you don't have time for this, Vikki. There's just no way. There's too many things. And if I go shut up, you're just being negative. Leave me alone. Not helpful. But if I go, okay you've been reminding me lots of times, there's too many things. Is there, is it possible there's an element of truth in this anywhere? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is there any bit of that I need to listen to? If so, what can I actually do? Is there something I could [00:28:00] delay? Is there something I could decide not to do? Da da da is like, we've all had them, right? People we work with who just moan about everything and you get in the habit of just not listening to them. And then every now and again they raise a thing and you're like, okay, yeah, that that one's a fair point. We should probably listen to that one 'cause they are quite sensible. Um, we can do that. The more we can actually kind of almost listen to understand our critical voice where it's like, I'm not gonna listen to all your drama, but what are you actually worried about? Okay, yeah, you're worried about that, right? Cool. Is there any truth in that? Is there anything I actually need to act on here? But in that kind of calm, as you say, pragmatic way and suddenly it becomes a very different conversation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Is, there's something about, I'm just trying to operationalize it in my head of how I can listen to the critical voice, but also notice when they're being a bit histrionic and so, you know, calm down when you need to calm down. But actually how to take the nuggets. Is that something that, so I reflect, 'cause every day I've got a reflection like [00:29:00] workbook or I work what I'm gonna do in the day, what my objectives are. And I write a reflection of how I'm feeling in the morning. And then I reflect at the end of the day, which is how it's gone and what's happened. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And that kind of, so is that where you would put the kind of critical friend? And I find that's a good way of calming the critical friend, 'cause it's acknowledging where they are. But it's also then about rationalizing it within, actually you've done some really good stuff today and then it layers into that. So is that where you would put that or would you, how would you, how would you, how's the best way to manage your critical friend?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think there's different ways that you can, um experiment with. I don't think there's a one size fits all with it. Yeah. I'm a talk out louder to my per self person. Um, I find I do that more consistently than actually writing about my thoughts. I have, I have probably a very unhelpful thought that I think too fast to write. Now that's just like people who say they're too busy to meditate, probably need to meditate. Someone who thinks too fast to write probably needs to write. [00:30:00] But I tend to talk out loud to myself. Interestingly, I don't think you were in our coaching session earlier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Interesting. Um, Lee, one of our members, read out a conversation she had with herself. So she'd actually decided, right, I'm just gonna write down the things I'm telling myself. 'cause she sort of had a side of her that was being compassionate, her version of compassionate, we talked about whether it was actually compassionate or not, and a version of her that was being very critical and she actually wrote it down and read it out almost like a play. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So there was that sort of approach where you could actually say, right. Come on then. Critical friend, tell me what is it you're thinking? Gimme it, all of it. And then you go, okay, as boss Kate, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about the notion of you being a boss for yourself as boss Kate. How am I gonna respond to this person? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, I wanna be the best version of boss Kate. I want to be calm, I wanna be sensible, I wanna be empathetic to their challenges. How would I respond to this concern? Yeah. So I'm listening, I'm taking from it [00:31:00] the things that, um, you know, where actually they might have a little modicum of truth in there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I'm also filtering out the drama, helping them feel, listened to, deciding what we need to fit, move forward with. So I think there'd be a variety of different ways you could do that. And certainly if you've already got a bit of a journaling practice, then I'm a big fan of like building on things you are already doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Okay. No, that's cool I like the, um, 'cause I'm quite a practical person. I like the whole kind of, right. This is, this is, and I can try and see if I can that No, I think that would work. I like the idea. I like, I, I wish I'd come to coaching earlier then that about the play. That would've been fascinating to see and like hear. Yeah. That's why group coaching is really good. 'cause you learn so many tricks from each other.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Literally everyone with the chat was like, oh my God, this sounds like my brain. So I think even just that validation of knowing that other people have these ridiculous, ridiculous, in inverted commas, ridiculous [00:32:00] conversations with themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Even just people seeing that like, oh, it's not just me. And I think especially at this time, you know, we're recording this just before Christmas, although it will come out after the new year, at this time of year that you need to rest. No, you need to get it done. No, you need to rest. Argument is happening in everybody's heads. And that was the sort of short version of what we talked about. And being able to actually visualize that and go, okay, hang on. I'm coming in, pragmatic, sensible, calm boss who's got high expectations, but cares is gonna come up with a plan here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: Okay. Uh, that's, I really, really like, I really like that. That's gonna be something that is, you know, really helpful.  </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you. Janice, that feels like a good opportunity to bring you back in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Hello. Excellent. </div> <div> Vikki: How were you feeling? What were you sort of thinking as you were listening to Kate talk?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: There was so much there and very much, I could understand how you were feeling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: [00:33:00] Um, it was interesting how you started off with frustration and anger and, you know. Being critical of yourself, moving to more of a relaxed state when actually you understand. And it is interesting how you use the analogy about obviously us being nurses, I think we are probably the worst at taking our own advice and looking after ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: We are the last to do that. Um, so it was just interesting to hear you say that, you know what we would advise, but you weren't taking that on board. It was just so nice to see you relax in the end and actually realize that. And it's, the other good thing was about. Um, who was it? The people who walked the tight right ropes in the circus and actually if they were rigid, they'd fall off, wouldn't they? You've got to be a bit bendy. So it is, we've got to be a bit flexible in life and so therefore we've just got to be able to flex with it and understand it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: But it is completely natural that you feel that way, especially after having that period of time away. I think [00:34:00] with us as nurses and been in the job for so long, we can just go straight back into clinical practice and, and build our, we don't have time to think, do we? Whereas this is all new to us academic world, even though we're in our second year, it is still different. It's different. Yeah. So you're doing amazing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thanks. And how about for yourself, Janice? What did you take from it that you can kind of apply into your own situation?  </div> <div> Janice: Interesting. It's so weird when you see another nurse speaking, I'm thinking, oh God, we're so hard on ourselves, aren't we? We are so hard on ourselves. And definitely that critical voice, um, self-sabotage for me anyway, self-sabotage. And I thought that negativity, we need to be more positive. We do work in very stressful jobs within the National Health Service NHS. And it is so true as well about how operationally we function in the NHS, you've just, it is 120, [00:35:00] 150% all the time anyhow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: You drop down to a hundred percent and you're not performing very well. And we know that that's not the case, but it is like we are just constantly on the go, aren't we? So I think we just need to be a bit kinder to ourselves. And so it made me reflect about how I feel about everything that's happening at the moment with myself as well, and thinking actually I need to be kinder to myself. We've done well to get to where we are and we can't forget that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. Perfect. Let's move on to Janice then. So I'm gonna ask Kate to turn her video off. Thank you. And maybe we can start from there. Why do you feel like you need to be kinder to yourself? What's going on at the moment?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: I think, um, very much what Kate was saying, you know, clinically we are very strong in senior roles. We do manage staff and we manage to help with the organization and everything. But this whole studying thing, it feels like, I suppose, [00:36:00] how can I put it? I just keep harping on about when I was younger, I used to be able to study and I used to be able to do an assignment in 24 hours. You know, you stay up all night, do your assignment, hand it in and be fine, and you just kept going. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: It's different now. I'm older and for me, I have very much felt the early menopause and my dyslexia. I have really felt it this time. Um, even though you manage at work and it is your day to day buzz and bread and butter, you just keep going and you know your strength, you know your weaknesses, you've got a team around you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: It's different when you are doing your PhD. It is, you are on your own, not on your own, but you are on your own , and you've got to come up with the work. Not to being too critical in yourself, but you are. And I think last year I spent the whole year on self-sabotage and am I really [00:37:00] meant to be here? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Um, I do feel that I'm in a position now. I can say yes, I'm, I'm meant to be here, but it's just really difficult trying to manage the time, but understanding my dyslexia even more. I used to feel it's my superpower. I very much feel now it's a hindrance. And is it because I'm just not fast enough anymore? I can't read as much as I used to be able to read. I think it's just a di completely different way of learning.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: And it's completely different time management skills that I used to have and that I currently have in my day-to-day job. So, um, it's been interesting. So I've spent the last year and a half I feel trying to find my way. My new way in studying, and at times, yes, I've got angry with myself and annoyed, but I think I've just allowed myself to be critical, but therefore understand that I'm in the best place I can be and it's just gonna take time , but it's [00:38:00] still, that voice is still there, isn't it? Thinking you're not good enough. </div> <div> Vikki: No, definitely. And I think what's really interesting is how, if I was thinking of this as like an experiment that I was doing, there's a bunch of confounders here, okay? Mm-hmm. So we are talking about how it might be harder because you're older. Yes. That it feels harder because you're menopausal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: And we have lots of members who are doing their PhDs later in life. Both people who are menopausal, people who aren't. But you also picked up, and I think it's really important to recognize that this is a very different ball game than academic stuff you've done before. And I think it sometimes gets underestimated because I think sometimes we sort of confound young and highly structured academic courses with older and very unstructured academic courses. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: And we make it something about us. Now I am the first to say I'm not [00:39:00] gonna like gaslight year about menopausal symptoms. All right. Yeah. There's definitely bits that this becomes more challenging, don't get me wrong, but reflect a little bit more for me about the ways that the actual PhD process feels different than your previous academic stuff in ways that are maybe not just to do with you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Yeah, it's the structure, it's the format of it. It's online. That's what I was trying to compare the other day. When I went and did my nursing degree, it was face to face on site, doing it full time, not having to juggle working and that you had classes, you had assessments, but it was all very practical. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Whereas this is all online. It is not as often because you were in like four days a week. This is much different. Um, and you, you are given, you know, your reference this in your modules that you have to work through, but you're not [00:40:00] given any particular time scales. Uh, so it's so easy to, to drift and then go, oh, I've got to give my assignment in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Whereas when you're in university and you're there every day, everybody else, I suppose it's that peer structure around you that encourages you to carry on. Whereas it's different because obviously I've got my colleagues that I work with my team who may ask me now and again, how's it going? Um, but you know, my cohort's really small only eight of us, not necessarily that we all keep in contact during the month. And that's why I've surrounded myself within your membership as well as others, just to give myself that peer to peer support and coworking time and just motivation. Definitely. That's what's different this time round. Yeah.  </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that's so important to recognize. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: It is. </div> <div> Vikki: 'Cause otherwise it becomes this, I used to be able to handle it and now I can't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: Um, [00:41:00] and yes, we need to be sympathetic to life stages and all that stuff and to health challenges and whatnot. But if we can recognize that actually this, it is a completely different ballgame. You know, even if you have an active cohort, they're not going through in the same people watching on video can see me doing ladder hand gestures where, you know, when you were an undergrad, when you were, you know, doing masters or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Yes.  </div> <div> Vikki: Your cohort were doing modules at the same time as you. </div> <div> Janice: Correct. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: You had assessments to do at the same time, so you were kind of going through it step by step together. </div> <div> Janice: Yes. </div> <div> Vikki: Certainly people that have trained in the UK anyway, you've sort of gone through these things together and it may well be that some of the things like the dyslexia and stuff were better structured where it was more practical. There was less choice about what you do when </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Right. There was. </div> <div> Vikki: It's like this module, go do it. Yeah. It wasn't, you weren't making decisions about when to work and what you were [00:42:00] focusing on and all those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: No, definitely agree. And um, I think maybe that helped me mask my dyslexia as well and masks those key, um, symptoms of being dyslexic in terms of time management, reading and things like that. It was just a lot easier, whereas now it's very evident. Now I've got to manage myself. Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. Because I do think, and I am, I'm not a clinician in this area at all, and I don't have specific training in this area at all. So this is opinions. Nothing else.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Yes. Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: But I do think that there's a cluster of people that are high achieving people who have things like dyslexia, A DHD, for whom actually they can function within a structure. They don't necessarily do it healthfully, they don't necessarily do it calmly and like in a steady pace. Yeah. But the external [00:43:00] structure of modules and deadlines and things like that along with a healthy dose of kind of good girl syndrome and trying, you know, I'm top of the class kind of vibes mean that one way or another they muddle through and actually get stuff done and it might not feel great on the way and we might pull some late nights and we might beat ourselves up about being disorganized and whatnot, but it kind of comes together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: It does  </div> <div> Vikki: in that more structured environment. And then suddenly you're in this environment and none of those things are there. </div> <div> Janice: Right. All those skills that I've learned before, they're not the same anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Some of which, which were useful skills and some of which were probably highly unhealthy, right? </div> <div> Janice: Correct. Exactly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But they got you to an end goal one way or another, and suddenly they don't necessarily apply anymore.  </div> <div> Janice: Correct. And anyone who knows me knows I'm a very much a high performer. I've always got to be busy. I've always got to be performing. I've always got to be doing, they [00:44:00] used to say to me, another course, Janice. Another course, another course. It's just the way I was then. But I, I'm slowly falling back into it, but it's taken me longer just to get into it. But yeah, it's, it is definitely a different structure. And you're right, maybe I need to be kinder to myself because it's different.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I want, I think what would be really useful to pick up, just 'cause you've said it a few times and I feel like people have misunderstandings of it. What do you mean when you say kinder to yourself? What does that actually, to use Kate's words, what does that operationalize as?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Good question. It's the same what Kate was experiencing, I suppose. I, I have that critical voice and I'm like, well, you're not good enough. You dunno what you're doing. How could you not know what you're doing? You've got onto the PhD, you are here now. You're gonna have to perform. They're gonna find out that you actually, you don't know what you're talking about. Which is, I know, it's silly that even say it, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: not silly, everyone says it. </div> <div> Janice: Um, my daughter's [00:45:00] always saying to me, mom, you've got your place. You're there. You know, of course you should be doing it. But it is a difficult thing to understand and like you're saying that suggestion to write it down and see that conversation that you have for yourself. I'm very aware of my critical friends, but Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But what would kind look like? </div> <div> Janice: What would kind look like and like, it's interesting you said that earlier, that it is not nor not normal, no one on this planet could ever not have any negative thoughts or any critical friend. So we are gonna have them, aren't we? I suppose using it to make sure that it drives me forward. It doesn't hinder me and I use it as a positive and I use it in a good way rather than I can't do it and stop. That would be a good way of doing it. A positive way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Love. So just 'cause you picked it up this point about no [00:46:00] one can not have these doubts. I want you to imagine, and I'm gonna say, I'm gonna put myself out on a limb here and I think this will make Kate laugh in the background. Uh, you guys have worked in the NHS I'm gonna guess, you know, some of these people, they probably are a different profession than the one you are in. Imagine a person who never entertains the thought that they have faults. They're probably in your organization. I'm gonna guess there might be a few. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Oh yes, I think so. Yeah. </div> <div> Vikki: This is not where we aspire to be, right? Yeah. We, we don't, there is something deeply unhelpful about never, ever questioning yourself, never, ever critiquing yourself. But we wanna make it so that it's like helpful critique and not just mindless criticism. The reason I ask you about kindness is 'cause I think it's a concept that times people up in knots a bit. Because often, and certainly the conversation we had in coaching today was this battle between the critical voice that was [00:47:00] saying you are behind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You need to crack on and get this done by Christmas. You need to cancel stuff so that you can work more. And then the kind in inverted commas voice that was saying, oh no, you've done your best. It's important to rest. And that sort of thing. And I like that voice to an extent. But I think it can become sort of almost two extremes, that on one hand we are yelling at ourselves and on the other hand we're sort of, um, almost being a little bit indulgent, a little bit like, oh, you little poppet. Have a sit down. Yeah. In fact, I dunno if you ever listened to it, but for people listening, and I'll tag it in the show notes, I did a podcast episode ages ago. It was one of like the first 20 or 30 I did, about talking to yourself as each of the different Winnie the Pooh characters. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Oh, brilliant. </div> <div> Vikki: How you can use it to like model different sorts of self-talk. </div> <div> Janice: Brilliant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love it. It's one of my favorite episodes. </div> <div> Janice: Yeah.[00:48:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I want us to just spend the last part of this session thinking about what would be a kind of kind but firm kind, but ambitious voice. So I want you to imagine, you know, if you had a mentor. You don't want them, I presume, just to be like, oh Janice, don't worry. You'll be fine. Do it tomorrow. You're a bit tired. But equally, you don't want them to be like, Janice, you're so lazy. Why haven't you done this yet? Dah, dah, dah. Yeah. You want 'em to kind of have high expectations, but to then support you and make you believe that those are possible. So what could, when you are thinking about, 'cause we discussed previously about prioritization and that sort of thing. When you are thinking about your time management challenges and your prioritization, what would that sort of kindly, high expectations, supportive, ambitious sort of voice sound like.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: What is my goal? Reminding myself what my goal is and where I want [00:49:00] to go.  </div> <div> Vikki: Yep.  </div> <div> Janice: Have little miles milestones. </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: I've only just introduced this because actually I never used to have that, but now I'm having to prepare things for over a longer period of time. I need little milestones. So I have a list and I take it off, or I have a star chart and I star it. You've got through that week. Um, yeah. My main thing is my goal step by step. So by Christmas I wanna be at this place, I would've handed this piece of work in. And then, so I like to have my bigger picture now to say where I eventually will go, but then my smaller goals. And that's something I've just started to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And obviously that's something we structure out in the membership, right? In terms of our quarterly planning and the midquarter reviews and all those sorts of things. </div> <div> Janice: Yeah. That's helped. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But what would your, so you've given yourself clarity, you've reminded yourself why you're doing it, all that good stuff. Absolutely love all of that. If you were then off track of [00:50:00] one of those. So you haven't, you know, I get this draft finished by Friday. It's Thursday night, it's not ready. What would that kind but ambitious firm voice say then. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Just do it. Okay. Just get over,  </div> <div> Vikki: you know better than this, janice, we ban the word just in the membership. 'cause just implies it's easy. So how can we, what would they say that doesn't involve the word? Just </div> <div> Janice: get on with it. In reality, I, what would probably happen? Why have you left it this late? And why, why are you doing this to yourself? But what I should be saying to myself is actually don't, you know, stop listening to this. Just, not just, but get on and do it. And then we were, look, we will review our again after you've handed it in tomorrow, lunchtime. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. [00:51:00] And it's amazing how hard it is not to say just do it. So for those of you who don't know, the reason we ban that in the membership because just implies that it should be easy, that you shouldn't need to support yourself, you shouldn't need to start. Why on earth don't you just get on with it? Um, but it's so habitual and often people don't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm gonna suggest some sort of phrases for you in a sec. 'cause often people don't have a voice here. They have kind and indulgent sort of like, oh dear, it's okay. Don't worry. You've tried kind of vibe. Or they have critical or they get to slightly exasperated like you sounded there. Just get on with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Come on. Just do it. Yeah. And sometimes that's helpful, but I prefer a kind of calm, encouraging. So rather than a just do it being more of a, okay, this is tough. You are exhausted. To be fair, I've had to do this to myself a lot this week. Yeah, this is tough. You are exhausted. We have got goals [00:52:00] and they're important goals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, we can do this one next bit. I believe in you. We're only gonna do it for 45 minutes. I ain't gonna beat you up if it's not perfect. I ain't gonna beat you up if we don't move as fast as we usually do. But we are capable of doing this next bit. We are not the sort of tired that needs to go and pass out for the afternoon. We're gonna rest tonight. We are the sort of tired that I can crack on with this bit and do it well enough. Let's just get this bit done. Just! Let's get this bit done and then we'll reassess. That sort of positive encouragement I think can be a really useful vibe because otherwise you hear the exasperation in your voice. Otherwise, yeah, if you get into, oh, just get on with it, then we either get a bit defensive and start criticizing or we collapse into the kind of indulgent thing again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: Agree. I like that. I'm gonna start throwing that now.[00:53:00]  </div> <div> Vikki: Thank you. Okay, perfect. I'm gonna bring Kate back on. Kate, if you wanna bring your camera back up. So how did you find listening to that, Kate? What were your sort of reflections and learnings?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So in the same way that you reflected that there were some themes in both of us because of our profession and because of where we work, I was equally reflecting on the same thing. And I think that, your critical voice and my critical voice could probably be besties </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: true. </div> <div> Kate: Um, so that's, that's helpful. And I think that's probably it. Feels, I wonder whether it's something to do with our profession or I wonder it's whether it's something to do with our nature. 'cause we've become nurses and we are part of a caring, relatively patriarchal system with challenges. So I was really interesting to reflect on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: I really liked the whole concept of the critical friend management system that we've come up with now during this, um, thingy. [00:54:00] And I really liked, um, the confounding variables. So you said at the beginning, Vikki, you were like, right, well actually what are the confounding variables? If we were looking at this from a research perspective, what's the, what are your confounding variables? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: And actually you, the phrase that I like the most that you use, Janice, was you said it's a different ballgame. And it's that bit, isn't it? That I think probably we think we've done courses before, we're driven people, we've got to where we've got to in the NHS, so therefore we should know all the rules of all the games. </div> <div> Kate: And then you start this new game and you're like, oh, I don't know anything about anything and I'm not really sure I should be here. Oh dear. What have I got myself into?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Janice: It's so true. </div> <div> Kate: Think it takes, yeah, I think it takes a while to feel comfy in that, in that bit, to kind of realize that, you know, you're in the game. You wanted to be in the game. You've worked really hard to get in the game. You're now in the game and you're like, oh, no different game. Oh, what am I gonna do? And I thought, I, I liked Vikki's point about your calm, encouraging voice. And one of the things that we've talked previously about in other coaching with other students is [00:55:00] about your CEO, your boss and about what would your boss say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: So I was thinking about your internal voice and my internal voice, and I was thinking, we probably need to take them for a CEO meeting actually, and sit down and go, right. I'm listening to you critical voice. I'm listening to you beside me, which is like, come on, just relax. You've worked really hard. And then I'm also listening to the voice that is the mother, that is the wife, that is the volunteer, that is the manager, that is the, can we do X by tomorrow, et cetera. So it's about having kind of all of those , voices and opinions around you, but being able to be calm and encouraging. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kate: 'cause that's what CEOs need to be, which is focused, goal driven, realistic, but calm and pragmatic. And I think as nurses, we're very good at being calm and pragmatic. We're actually very good at it. And I think probably one of the issues that we both have is 'cause we're quite good at being calm and pragmatic and sensible and get anything done [00:56:00] 'cause that's what nurses are good at. Give them anything. Can they like, yeah, we can find our way around them. We'll do it. I think it's about using that calm nursing, CEO energy of right. What are we going to do next? Let's just look at next. What's the next 15 minutes gonna look like? What's the next half an hour gonna look like? What's the next day? And not allow ourselves to get too far down that spiral of, well, I haven't done it by today, therefore I'm gonna be completely, I need to work Christmas day. You know? Exactly. Yeah. Pulling that back. So, no, you aren't working on Christmas day and you're not thinking, well, I can peel the sprouts while I'm reading that scoping review. 'Cause that's not appropriate. It's not what your CEO would say, is it? No,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: that's perfect. And both of you as members have access to my Christmas planning worksheet and workshop. They're both online now. So if you weren't there live, then you can plan your intentional holidays. The last thing I would add in, I love this notion of bringing like the different roles of yourself together and [00:57:00] thinking, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How are we gonna actually work this out between us? And actually that intentional holiday planning workshop is really thinking about that. How can you look after all the different bits of you? Um, and this is relevant to everyone, but it's particularly relevant to women of our age, I would say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. Is don't forget there is also the Kate and Janice, the human being. Okay? So there's CEO, you and researcher, you and partner, you, mum, you, whatever else you there is also you. Okay? And I want you to make sure in any of these conversations, the, you, you that wants to do just something, just 'cause it's fun or just because it's restful or just 'cause it's joyous or whatever, that that role needs to be in there too. </div> <div> Janice: I agree.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's really easy, especially when, you know, when we're the sandwich generation with parents and kids and all that fun and games. Mm-hmm. It's really easy to forget that bit too. [00:58:00] It's, it's making sure there's space for that bit as well. </div> <div> Janice: I agree. Thank you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So on that note, thank you both so much for your honesty and vulnerability. And whilst we've done this very much in the context of you both being nurses who are doing PhDs, I think it is super relevant to anybody who's, any come from any other profession. You know, we have people in the membership who've come from law and technology and all sorts of other places who have, you know, their own version of this challenge. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And even people that have come straight in from undergrad and masters and who are now suddenly going, hang on, I used to be good at this. And what's happened now? I think everything you've said is super, super useful for them too. So thank you both so much for listening. When this goes out, it's gonna be the 12th of January, which means that the new quarter of the membership will be starting in two weeks time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So make sure you're on my newsletter, everybody, so that, you know, when that's happening and you get all the invites so that if you would like to join too, [00:59:00] come and join Kate and Janice and all the rest of my community, then you'll have that opportunity as well. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 12 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-20-how-to-manage-the-critical-voice-when-youve-got-too-much-to-do thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-19-how-to-pursue-goals-that-youre-not-sure-are-possible <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> It’s a time of year where lots of people are setting goals, worrying about which goals to set, and then beating themselves up if they don’t meet them. In this episode, I answer a question I was asked about how to set goals when you’re not sure they’re possible. I share five ways to evaluate big audacious goals to see if they could be a good fit for you and then share two skills that you’ll need to develop in order to pursue a goal that has the potential to be unrealistic! It’s the perfect episode if you have a tempting big goal on your mind!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/14166296-2-16-how-to-achieve-your-goals-using-the-self-coaching-model" target="_blank"> how to achieve your goals using the self-coaching model </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2026 for the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I am genuinely feeling really excited about this year. I've got some really cool stuff coming up in the business for the PhD Life Coach membership and some more free stuff that's gonna be happening soon. So keep an eye out for that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are new to the podcast and you are wondering what the PhD life coach membership is, it is my quarterly program for PhD students where you get all the support that you feel like you're currently lacking. You get an active community. You get a place where you can talk about all those questions that seem a bit stupid, but actually really hold you back, where you can help yourself to reduce your procrastination, reduce how overwhelmed you feel, and actually change your PhD journey so that you can enjoy it and have the PhD experience that you wanted. If you wanna find out more, you can it's all on my website. The PhD life coach.com. And there's [00:01:00] gonna be a launch at the end of January, so I'll be taking new members in the last week in January. So keep an eye on that. </div> <div> If you're not already on my newsletter, make sure that you sign up so you hear all about it. If you already have your PhD, you are also so, so welcome here. This podcast is here for people all the way from the very, very beginnings of their academic careers through to the very end and beyond. Much of the time, the stuff we're struggling with is exactly the same stuff. It's sort of two sides of the same coin, and I certainly intend this podcast to be a support for everybody across the board in academia. There may also even be a few listeners who are not academics at all. That's okay too. You are very, very welcome. The stuff I talk about is pretty universal. You'll have to forgive some of the framing that makes it very specific to the weird world of academia, but most of the rest of it is pretty relevant to everyone. So you are welcome here too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway. With that out the way, it is time to think about goals, and it's a time of year where we're [00:02:00] all pondering this stuff, right? Maybe you've already set New Year's resolutions. Maybe you've already stopped following some of your New Year's resolutions. It happens. Here's your reminder to reengage. All good to reengage,. But today we're gonna think about one specific question that I was actually asked at one of my very rare live events. So I was doing a talk about decision making and careers in London and I was approached afterwards by a very nice PhD student who said, you know, I really, really enjoyed your talk and everything, but how do I decide whether to pursue a goal or not when I'm not sure whether I can meet that goal? And I thought this was such an interesting question. We had a really interesting discussion about it that I thought I would elaborate on it in the podcast here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in that workshop, I talk a lot about making decisions based on reasons you love. So if you choose to pursue a goal, for example, you're doing it for reasons that you really, really like. But her point was, [00:03:00] don't you need to know, or at least be reasonably confident you can achieve a goal before you set it as a goal and the example she gave was being Prime Minister. She was like, yeah, imagine, imagine I want to be Prime Minister. How can I set that for myself as a goal when I've got no idea how that could be possible? I've got, you know, there's no reason to believe that would be possible. It's so big, it's so ambitious. It's all these things. How, how could I ever set that as a goal? Now, I think she underestimated my sport science background. So having come through a 22, 3, whatever years it was, career in sport and exercise sciences, I am very used to people setting ludicrous long-term goals. So the number of my personal tutees, who intended at some point to be Olympic gold medal winners or to internationally represent their team, win the World Cup, whatever it might be, was huge, loads of them. Okay. It's one [00:04:00] things you find with when you're teaching sport scientists. Loads of them are elite athletes themselves as well. And so the notion of having a goal that is outlandish, is audacious, is not that unusual in that sort of a setting. But what this discussion did for me was it allowed me to sort of step back and go, okay, well, in whatever context it is, how would you decide that you want to make that your goal and how would you go about achieving it? And for some of you in academic context, that goal might be being a full tenured professor, for example, which for many is like the pinnacle of an academic career. So what I wanna talk with you today is like an expanded version of that conversation that we had, where I give you five ways to assess the goal, and then two skills that I think you need to develop, in order to make [00:05:00] these big outlandish goals a reality. So the first way to assess the journey is we have to really think about what would be the route to that outlandish goal. And this is the process we went through with her example of being Prime Minister. Right? So we went through, it's like, okay, so you wanna be a Prime Minister. If you wanna be a Prime Minister in the uk, you have to be an mp, right? I think that's true. You might need, I can you be in the House of Lords? I dunno, internationals. It's a weird system over here. But anyway, the map, you're not gonna just randomly be in the House of Lords, the best way to be Prime Minister is to be a member of Parliament. How do you become a member of Parliament? You get elected. How do you get elected? You have to participate in an election. How do you participate in an election where you have to be nominated by your party? So you have to be involved in the local party and be chosen as a representative. How do you get involved in your local party? Well, you tell them you want to be involved and you start doing things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so then as you go through this conversation, it's like, okay, so what's the goal here that does [00:06:00] feel achievable? Now if you know what political party you support, then a goal could be get involved with your local political party, and I'd want you to, you know, in the interest of making these things more specific, I want you to then define for yourself what that would actually mean. What does involved look like for you? But that would be the first step and those would be the things that you would need to go through.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this does two things, right? First of all, it gives you a route by which it feels a little bit more achievable because we don't even have to decide at this point that we definitely want to be Prime Minister. We just have to decide that we've got a vague goal of being Prime Minister, and our specific goal for this year is to do X and Y with my local political party. Now, of course if you're sitting there going, I don't even know what, like what political party represents me at the moment. I get you. Okay. Seriously there too. But the first steps for you then would be to work out how you're gonna determine [00:07:00] which political party you want to get involved with. You know, do you wanna do some sort of like visiting system where you try different things? Do you want to talk to more people? Do you wanna read more? What would it be? Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the first thing this does is it makes it a little bit more achievable and gives you goals that are on the way to that big notional goal. And note, remember, at this point, we don't have to decide for 100%. That is definitely the thing we're working towards. But if it were, these would be interim goals, so we can focus on those. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing it does is it enables you to decide whether you actually like the look of that journey, because if you are somebody that, for example, uh, has a lot of opinions about how the country should be run and likes telling people what to do, I mean, I dunno why you're looking at me here. Um, you might think, oh, being Prime Minister would be fun. But when I think through that step by step process of like, okay, I'm gonna have join a local political party, and then I'm gonna have to win people around there, and I'm gonna have to build a reputation and I'm gonna have [00:08:00] to talk to lots of people who I don't necessarily agree with, and I'm gonna have to doorstep and I'm gonna have to do this, and I'm gonna have to do that. I'm like, no. No, no. This is also why, um, I, I no longer set myself running goals. Okay? I absolutely love running events. And I have a very bad habit that when I finish a running event, I decide that I definitely want to book another running event and next time I'm gonna train properly. But the problem is when I look at the actual process of being a good runner, I don't want that bit the, I have to still run when I don't feel like running and I have to go out in the rain and I have to spend X number of hours a week running. I don't want that bit. I just like turning up and doing the shiny bit and prancing around. So I now pick running events where you can run as little or as far as you want. So kind of checkpoint based adventure racing, 'cause then if you don't feel like it that day, you don't run as much, but you still take part. It's great. Love it. Anyway. So you get to look at that journey and go, is that actually a journey that feels like it would be fun? Okay, so you get to assess that [00:09:00] journey. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I said there were five things. So the first is identifying that journey and deciding whether you even like the look of it. The second is to check in with yourself that the journey is inherently valuable even if you don't make the ultimate goal. So we want to try and pick big inspiring goals that the journey is worthwhile, even if we don't make it all the way so, sticking with my being Prime Minister 'cause it's more fun than talking about having to be full professor. Um, sticking with my idea of being Prime Minister, does it feel like I would get a lot out of, not just enjoy, I would benefit from the process of becoming Prime Minister? Would it enable me to develop in ways that I want to develop? Would it be inherently valuable for me as a [00:10:00] person? What we wanna avoid are goals that are only amazing if we hit them and are a disaster if we don't. Yeah. Sometimes you see this, I do think sport has become a lot more psychologically informed over the last 10 years than it ever was when I grew up. And so you see a lot more of this kind of journey based, participation based narrative, not where we are not trying to win, right? We're not going back to times where it's like, oh, it's all taking part that matters, but it's the recognition of what you get outta striving to be better than you were, what you get out of that dedication and commitment. But back in the day you would see people that would say things like, you know, second is the first loser and anything other than first is a fail and blah, blah, blah. And that puts an enormous amount of pressure and actually sets the goal up as something that if you don't achieve it, then all the efforts have not been worthwhile. I want you to choose big audacious [00:11:00] goals that the journey is inherently valuable. So as an example, let's say you do pick a big audacious academic goal, like becoming full professor, I want you to be sure that that journey that you are getting what you want out of your PhD experience. You're getting what you want out of your postdoc experience, out of your early academic career, et cetera, et cetera, so that if at any stage it's either not possible to achieve your goal or you choose not to achieve your goal, that you have still got a lot out of that experience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing I want you to consider is, does this big goal use your strengths? Okay. All of us have strengths and weaknesses. One of the things I've noticed in academia is we are typically very bad at recognizing our strengths. We're typically really good at telling people what our weaknesses are. We are really good at setting resolutions to fix and improve our weaknesses. So little note, if all your [00:12:00] resolutions are about fixing things you're not good at, at the moment, you might wanna have a little tiny reconsider as we're still at the beginning of the year. And instead, we wanna think about things where they really maximize and use strengths that we have. Really maximize the things that we find easier than other people, where we have the potential to be seriously amazing where we are looking at honing talents, rather than fixing our weak points. So have a look at any of these big goals that you might have and think, does this play to the best parts of me? Now, some of you will have listened to my previous episode from just last week, week before. Can't remember. Recently, let's say, um, where I talked about why I left academia. For a long time, academia played to my strengths for a long time as I was pursuing my sort of career as I was trying to working way up the academic ladder, I was really valued for the things that I was good at. I was able to use [00:13:00] those strengths to succeed, and I was recognized and it was amazing. Loved it. But I realized that towards the end of my career that actually the next steps, the things that were the logical follow on for me, didn't play to my strengths and would be me trying to kind of fix weaknesses. I was perfectly capable of doing them. And if I'd wanted to pursue that goal, then I could have done, but it no longer felt like I was maximizing my strengths and instead felt like I was having to become somebody that I wasn't actually that fussed about becoming. So check in that these goals will really use your strengths. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth element is I want you to think about your reasons. We always want goals to be intrinsically driven. We want to be trying to achieve goals because either we value. The benefits of them or preferably that they are fun and engaging and part of who we are [00:14:00] really intrinsically motivated rather than goals that are to do with the rewards you'll get from it, earning lots of money or whatever, or because of societal or closer expectations that other people telling you, or indeed you telling you that you should do this. There is a huge body of literature talking about the importance of intrinsic motivation for goal success, for goal adherence, for enjoying that journey, for psychological wellbeing whilst trying to achieve the goals. So when you've got these big goals. Just double check. Where do they come from? Are they shoulds or are they things that you intrinsically value and want to pursue?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth one then is more of a like little check-in, which is to what extent have you got capacity to engage with this goal at the moment? So there's nothing wrong with having huge goals that will take you 10, 20, 30 years to achieve. In fact, I think that can be quite [00:15:00] fun and exciting, but you also need to check in with what capacity you have to engage with it at the moment. And I think in my view, there's always time to engage at at least some level. So maybe you wanna be Prime Minister, but at the moment you are doing your PhD, you've got two young children and whatever else, maybe, I'm not saying for sure, but maybe you are not in the greatest of positions to start being like a active member of your local political party. But maybe this is where you listen to political podcasts. Maybe this is where you make friends with people who are interested in politics, so you can actually have discussions about these things so that you build elements of this journey that fit with your current capacity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we start looking ahead to when might my capacity change or when could I change my capacity? But bearing in mind that sort of little element of realism so that we're not telling ourselves we should be doing something that we don't have capacity for. [00:16:00] Okay. So those are my five ways I want you to think about the journey. I want you to identify what the steps are so that you can actually build it back to being a more proximal goal, and check in that you actually wanna do those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Two, I want you to make sure that the journey is inherently valuable, even if you don't get to the destination. What will you get out of the journey by pursuing it? What will you learn about yourself? What will you develop in yourself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Third, I want you to make sure as using your strengths so that you're not trying to fix things about yourself. That your goal is helping you become the best version of the bits of you that are already brilliant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Four. I want you to think about the quality of the motivation. Make sure that it's intrinsically driven from your values, your beliefs, the things that you love to do rather than things that people tell you you should do or in order just to get rewards. I always worry when people tell me they're doing a PhD, primarily either for the authority and recognition that the title will [00:17:00] give them, or because their mom or dad always dreamed of them having a PhD. I always worry about it. If that's you, it's not the end of the world, but I would really encourage you to develop other reasons, for doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the fifth one is, what capacity do you have to engage? And so when you're thinking about those sort of more proximal steps, making that appropriate to the life you are living at the moment is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so if you've still got a big goal in mind and you've run it through those things, what are the two other skills that I want you to develop? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first is tolerance of uncertainty. So one of the things that I see a lot is that people would find it easier to work on something if they know it's going to happen. So if you knew your article was gonna get published, it can be a lot easier to work on it than if you are trying to work on it, not knowing whether it's ever gonna get published or not. The problem is that almost all [00:18:00] interesting goals are at least somewhat uncertain. Okay? Because otherwise we'd just be doing them. And so one of the things that I would want you to develop is the ability to be unsure and to work towards it anyway, and this is useful in a whole variety of settings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Any of you who find that you get a bit needy in relationships, I used to get very needy in relationships, friendships as well as romantic ones, and you'd be uncertain whether that person likes you, uncertain whether they, you know, feel the same way you do or whatever. There's nothing about trying to get more certain that makes you more attractive or makes you a more interesting friend. You have to be able to engage in a relationship whilst being uncertain as to how it's gonna go, being uncertain how they feel about you, and showing up the way you want to show up. And then it will become clear one way or another. It will either become clear they don't treat you the way you want to be treated, in which case we get to move on. [00:19:00] Or that actually it is reciprocated and it's a beautiful thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when we try and get that certainty, does my supervisor think I'm good? Does my supervisor think I'm doing enough? Does my supervisor think I'm good enough? Then we start turning up like a bit of a weirdo. We wanna be certain that I'm capable of doing my PhD, certain that I'm capable of getting promotion. Whereas what I want us to be is to be like, okay, I have no idea. But if I was gonna get it, these are the things I need to do and I can be okay on the way I can look after myself through the uncertainty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things we talk about in the membership quite a lot is about not trying to fix your emotions with actions. Now, there's a few exceptions to that. I'm a big fan of dancing, walking, fresh air, those sorts of things to improve and enhance your emotions in those sorts of ways, but the majority of the time we're best off being able to go, you know what? I'm a bit anxious 'cause I'm uncertain. I can look after anxiety, but these are the steps I need to [00:20:00] take. These are the things I need to do as if I was more certain. </div> <div> And then the second skill that I want you to develop is the ability to disengage from a goal when you want to. So I mentioned that I have this sports science background. One of the most unhealthy things, I think, is when people start getting into, um, you know, the only way I'm not achieving this goal is if I'm dead. You'll have to carry me out of here before I don't follow this goal, and it's just, it all sounds very dramatic and it all sounds very like, oh my God, you're so committed. And it's like, no, that's stupid. I'm sorry. I love you if that's the way you thought yourself, but it's so stupid. Yes, we wanna pursue goals even when they feel difficult. Yes, we wanna pursue goals even when we're like, oh, what have I done? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we have to have a point at which we say, you know what? The journey's not making me [00:21:00] happy anymore. You know what? This isn't even the direction that I want to be traveling in anymore. We have to have a point at which we can disengage with goals, not interpret it as a massive failure, and choose to go in a different direction. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you are somebody you know who's already given up on your news resolutions, for example, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about hitting one bump and deciding this goal doesn't count anymore. Or not recording what you eat because you're eating things you don't want to eat or giving up on your goal of reading however many articles 'cause you haven't stuck to it. Whatever. That's not what I'm talking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there is also a point at which this thing you've always dreamed of, whether that is a qualification, whether it's a job, whether it's a relationship, whatever it might be, the pursuit of it isn't serving you anymore. And it's useful to know that you can leave at any point. You can choose [00:22:00] not to follow that goal. And you might think, well, if I acknowledge that, then I'd just leave. And if that's your thought, i'd have some sensible considerations about whether maybe you should be leaving, but actually it can also give a bunch of freedom. A lot of the PhD students in my membership will say to me, knowing that I am choosing to continue that actually I could leave my PhD if I wanted to. Knowing that I'm choosing to continue actually empowers me. I don't feel trapped anymore because I know I could leave if I want to. It's why I believe that everybody in a relationship should always be financially independent so that they could leave if they needed to. Okay. It's my little feminist agenda drilled into me by my mother from a young age. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Knowing that you could disengage is also the ultimate freedom to pick a massive outlandish goal because it doesn't have to be a massive deal if you get partway down the journey and decide that actually [00:23:00] something else serves you more. So those are my five ways that you can assess your big goals, your two skills that you'll need to develop to kind of pursue that journey. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love, if you're not already on my newsletter, sign off for my newsletter and tell me what big outlandish goals you have either for this year or for like the next five, 10 years, things that you really want to have in your life. I really hope that you found this useful and inspiring. I have some big outlandish goals for the business. I also have.... is it a big outlandish girl? I think it's, yeah, it's a medium sized goal. I have a goal setting up a circus club in my home village. It's gonna be like for ground skills, juggling, poi Diablo, all that sort of fun stuff. It's not gonna be for children. Adults need more play in their life too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's gonna be for adults. It's not gonna be for people who are necessarily good at it. Um, I'm really excited. It's my big personal project for 2026. I'm putting it out there so that I definitely stick to it. Thank you all so much for listening. If you are listening on [00:24:00] YouTube, I'd like to point out that yes, it is Christmas and there is a box that looks like it's got mulled wine in it behind me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's actually hiding Christmas presents. I was halfway through recording when I noticed it was there, so I was trying to stay in front of it all the way through. You know what? If you haven't checked out my YouTube, then you might wanna see the efforts I was taking to stay in front of and therefore blocking the cardboard box. If you listen on podcasts, this makes no sense whatsoever, but go with it. It's all good. Maybe you should check out my YouTube. In fact, there's gonna be more YouTubes, special ones coming in the new year too, so make sure that you do go follow me over there. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 05 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-19-how-to-pursue-goals-that-youre-not-sure-are-possible thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-18-how-if-you-should-use-a-brick-to-reduce-phone-usage <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> I really wanted to cut down how much I use my phone and I bought a Brick! This episode is my honest review of the experience so far, and includes some evidence-based advice about what you can and can’t expect from a product like this. I take you through my ups and downs and the behaviour change approaches that I have applied to my Brick strategy. A must for all habitual phone users! {PS this is NOT sponsored by Brick and I bought my own device!}  <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/18131022" target="_blank"> why phone addiction confession might help you too </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, for those of you who know that I always preach the whole work life balance, intentional holiday things, rest assured this may be coming out on, I think it's the 29th of December, something like that. It might be coming out then, but I am recording it three weeks early. Check me out. I am using the last gasps of motivation that I have for 2025 to get ahead of myself for these things so that I can have the intentional holiday that I planned. I hope that it has gone that way for you too and that you have used all the skills you've learned listening to the podcast, and for those of you who are members, to have the holiday that you need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If not, before I get going on the other stuff, I just wanna remind you it's not yet the end of the year. Okay, you may be back at work to some extent. I want you to think we have got a couple of days left of 2025. We have got that little funny beginning of the year where it hasn't quite started properly. I want you to be as intentional as you possibly [00:01:00] can be. Don't say, oh, I ruined it. I didn't get any rest. Oh, I ruined it. I didn't get any work done. Any of those things. Think what have I done, what do I still need, and how can I be as intentional as possible for the remaining days? Okay, let's do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, today's session, though, is about a topic that I started about a month ago. So you may recall, I did an episode a while ago where I was talking about wanting to reduce my phone usage and I talked about a product called Brick. Now, this is not a product placement episode. I have not been paid. I purchased it just like anybody else , based on various reviews that I had seen from people that I respected. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I wanted to check back in with you about how it's going because I. Used to have a tendency, and I still to some extent have a tendency to find a new thing, think it's the answer, and then to stop using said thing and it [00:02:00] get relegated to a cupboard somewhere. So I thought I would let you know how I've been going with the Brick and exactly how I've been using it, what that process has been like, what I've learned from it, and what I'm gonna be doing going into 2026.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, in case you didn't listen to that episode, this is a Brick. If you're on YouTube, you can see it. If not, it's a little square plastic um Brick, um, for want of a better phrase, it's about what, five centimeters square, about a centimeter deep, something like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Says Brick on it, and essentially it's a fancy casing for a fancy one of those, is it RFD tags or have I said the wrong letters? I'm not sure. What are those tag things that does clever things to your phone, but it's like a physical one. It's got a magnet on the back, so I leave it on the side of my fridge in my utility room. And essentially the idea is that you can pre-program it to turn off certain apps and certain websites. So depending on what your go-to distractions are, you can set it up [00:03:00] in different ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things I love about it is that you can set up different versions of that, and this is where it's better than just buying the little tags off of Amazon or whatever and setting it up yourself. You can have pre-programmed combinations of what it switches on and switches off. So as an example, and I'll go into this in more detail as we go on through the episode, I have a different version for weekends and weekdays. So during the weekdays, I will absolutely be turning off like the Instagrams and all of that sort of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But on weekends, I also turn off Slack and email, for example. And within that there's quite a bit of nuance. So you don't just turn off safari or don't turn off safari. You can turn off certain websites. So I've got Facebook in there. I've got a bit of a news habit. So I've got my go-to news sites turned off. Right move. Those of you who are in the UK will know what I'm talking about. It's, uh, property looking at website, I'm not moving. I [00:04:00] have no intention of buying a house in the next five years, but, it's fun to look at houses I can't afford. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so that's what Brick is, and I was really using it because I was noticing that I was scrolling more than I wanted to, that I didn't feel better for scrolling and the kind of self-driven resolutions of just, I won't use it in these time slots weren't really working for me. I was also finding it difficult to use the leave your phone in another room strategy. Um, because there are things that I do like having access to, I do like having access to my Spotify. I do like having access to audio books, for example. I do also wanna be able to answer the phone easily if family contact me and things like that. So there were certain things that I did want to be able to have access to that made the Just leave your phone somewhere else more difficult to implement. So I [00:05:00] thought Brick could be a really good solution for me. So how did it go?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, inevitably because I'm me for the first few days, absolutely bloody brilliant. So for the first few days I was Bricked for usually up to 23 hours a day. That doesn't mean I was using it for a whole other time, but that I was completely out of it for 23 hours a day. This was a massive reduction on my previous screen time, particularly in apps like Instagram and I was just like, this is amazing. I am the new biggest fan of Brick. I need Brick T-shirts. This is just brilliant. This is gonna change my life. All those thoughts that we have. However, because I am now Coach Vikki, and not just optimistic Vikki, I was also aware that I was in that honeymoon period and I knew that that honeymoon period wouldn't just last indefinitely. But I enjoyed it and I was riding it while I could. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I had decided at that stage there's two different ways you can turn on [00:06:00] your Brick. One is that you actually take your phone. So I'm showing people my phone on the video. You take your phone, you go into the Brick app. So, mine is currently Bricked as people will be able to see if they're watching on video. But imagine it wasn't, you would press the, um, Brick there and tap it against here and that Brick it. So I was using that sort of intentional action, that active choice, because I quite liked, and I'd heard. My coach, Karin Nordin, talk about this. I quite liked the sort of ritual associated with, and now I'm tapping and therefore going into work mode so that was how I decided to try it at first. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other option is that you can schedule it to go into particular modes at particular times. So at first I did the tapping and I put the Brick in my utility room, my utility, I live in a townhouse. My utility room rooms on the ground floor, and then my lounge and kitchen are upstairs, and then the bedrooms are above that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the utility room is kind of as far as you can get [00:07:00] from where I normally am, other than putting it in the garage, which I didn't want to do. And it's also not a particularly inviting place, right? It's a utility room. So, it's not like I'm gonna sit in there and scroll. So I thought that was a good thing. And like I say, for the first few days it went really, really well. First week in fact, it went really, really well, really fundamentally changed how I was spending my time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that really helped during that time and that I would recommend for any of you who are wanting to change your phone time, is that I had really clear ideas of what else I wanted to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am a hobby monster. I have so many different hobbies, and there were so many things that I wanted to be spending time doing that weren't just scrolling on my phone, that that was a really attractive draw for me. Okay. So I wasn't just trying to stop. Using my phone. I was trying to create space to do all these other things that I wanted to do, and that went really well as well for about the first week. </div> <div> Now you can all hear the but coming, right? There's a little but [00:08:00] coming here. It started to drift after about a week. I wasn't quite as routine about tapping in. I was sometimes going to bed without Bricking the device. There is a saving grace in it though, I have to say, which is that if you've gone to bed or you've gone somewhere without booking it, you can Brick remotely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can Brick without being near the Brick machine. You just can't un- Brick without being near. Or really like you get five emergency un Bricks, but that's all you get. So you have to be careful not to use those. So you can go, ah, I didn't Brick it and just Brick it there and there. But even so, I was finding myself kind of going, oh, well I'm quite tired tonight. Maybe I'll just let myself look at it. After all I. So I'd, I was starting to blur my own intentions. I thought I had been quite clear with myself, quite intentional with myself about when I wanted to Brick the phone and when I didn't, but I found myself [00:09:00] negotiating with myself. I found myself saying, oh yeah, but you aren't quite tired. Oh, yeah, but it's not for long. Oh, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, all that stuff. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I sounded quite judgy when I said that about myself. That's 'cause I'm a flippant sort of a person, but I genuinely wasn't. I genuinely, one of the things I'm really proud of myself about is that I didn't get crossed with myself at that stage, and I didn't, as I often would've done in the past, declare that the Brick is useless and didn't work and chucking in a box somewhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I instead thought, Hmm, that's interesting. Gonna need a plan for that as well. Gonna need a plan for when I am feeling too tired, or I'm motivated to do the fun things that I thought I wanted to not be doing. Okay, and that required me to make another decision. Did I want, if I was too tired to do in my head, too tired in speech marks, to do the fun hobby things that I had been wanting to do, did I then think it was [00:10:00] okay to be on my phone? And for some of you, the answer will be yes. And that's absolutely fine. For me, the answer was not. Yes for two reasons. One, because I know that if I've got the option of going on my phone, then suddenly the, oh, I feel too tired is a really low barrier to get over. It's like, oh, I'm too tired. And so I go on my phone, um, and b, I don't feel better. So if I am too tired to do something else and I go on my phone, I don't end up feeling less tired. I just end up passing some more time. And that was not how I wanted it to be. And so what I realized was that I needed a plan for what tasks I wanted to do, what activities I should say, not tasks, what activities I wanted to do when I wasn't energetic or motivated enough to be doing my hobby things, but I still didn't want to pick up my phone as an option, and I found that quite difficult because anything that [00:11:00] wasn't pointed at any of my kind of hobby interests slash goals felt like a waste of time. It was really, really interesting to observe. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So like I was like, I could do coloring and puzzles and things. It's like, well, that don't get me anywhere. That's no point. You know, that total like eldest daughter, high achieving bullshit that I'm sure lots of, you're susceptible to that. It must be useful what you're doing, even if it's hobby useful, it's building your skills and da, da, whatever. Right. Building a side quest, the notion of coming up with stuff that was just a bit mindless, but not my phone, I found really hard, but when I noticed how hard I was feeling it, it was like, oh, okay. Cool. It just needs to be things that I quite like doing, that I find relaxing, and that is where I did then start slotting in things like coloring things like puzzles, that kind of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've asked for a jigsaw board for Christmas. I'm very excited. I have to do jigsaws that have got [00:12:00] words on 'cause I'm so bad at matching colors. But you know, the jigsaws that are like covered in signs or books or whatever, I like those ones. Mom's under very strict instructions, what to get me anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, so I had to come up with things that I could do when I was feeling tired or motivated. I think this is a really important step for all of you to think about 'cause often we think about what are we gonna do when our besto set you? It's the same if you want to exercise more, right? That often we think, oh, well, if I've got the energy, then I'll do my full routine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But having an idea as to what will you do if you feel like you haven't got the energy to do your full routine, but you want to do more than nothing, what does that look like? Okay, so I realized this fitted into something I talk about in the membership all the time, which is not just planning for your best self, planning for the self that you know will also show up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I kind of got back on it again and I started being a little bit more intentional. I started Bricking the phone a little bit more. I still wasn't back up to quite the [00:13:00] same hours of being Bricked as I was previously, but it was a bit better. And then I have my big life issue. So those of you who've been listening, you'll know that we had family stuff that happened, um, that I will not be going into on the podcast, but that was very disruptive, meant that I was away from home for a week. It's still somewhat ongoing now, but I'm back home again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I was away from home and I didn't take the Brick with me. Now part of that was just the leaving in a little bit of a hurry and not really thinking about it. But part of it was also the kind of, um, you know maybe I need to just be able to hang out on my phone and not worry about it. Maybe this is not the time to be sort of trying to stick to resolutions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when I look through my Brick data, I had 13 days in the end where I didn't Brick it once. Now I wasn't away for all of that time, so I can't use the, I physically couldn't thing but I [00:14:00] had 13 days where I didn't break it at all, and I'm not a hundred percent sure whether that was the right decision for me or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it probably wasn't, but I'm going with it because it's what I did. Now, the reason I say that is because I'm not convinced that that kind of black and white, oh, well I shouldn't even think about it thing, is a useful way to think about anything. I think it probably would've been helpful for me to take the Brick with me and at least Brick for some of the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think that probably would've encouraged me to do other things, to spend time, not just on my phone, to spend time on things that were a bit more rejuvenating, so I'm not gonna beat myself up for it. It was a really tough time, but I think in future, I want to plan for those kind of emergency crisis moments as well, and I think that plan will involve less [00:15:00] usage of the Brick, but not no usage of the Brick. Now, so where am I now? Like I say, the issues are still somewhat ongoing, but I am back home. I'm back in much more of a normal routine, and the thing I'm more proud of than anything, I always encourage my members. I encourage all of you to identify things that you are proud of. What I'm proud of more than anything is that I have got back on the metaphorical Brick horse. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I could easily have said that I'd screwed it up by being away, being off for that long and that it hasn't worked, Chuck it in the old tech box that we never look at again. I could equally, and I want you to be really aware if you are likely to do this at the moment, I could equally have said, I'm gonna try again in the new year. That would be a really, really easy thing to say at the moment, but I didn't. I said you are back into sort of mostly normal routine. How do you want to do this now? But importantly, I didn't just say, you gotta [00:16:00] get back on it. Gotta get back on it. You know, it's really important. I said, how can I make it easier for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I am a bit distracted at the moment, I think it's fair to say. And so I thought to myself, how can I make it more likely that this will be effective? More likely that it will be helpful and something that I can be proud of rather than something that I'm feeling guilty for not doing for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I thought, you know what? As much as I love the kind of ritual of going down and tapping it on my Brick to signify when I'm starting. I think that is a cognitive step too far. So we often talk in the membership about initiation energy, the sort of energy it takes to start doing something and that can be really, really difficult. And that sort of like, okay, I'm going to be Bricked now. Tap. Felt like something that was easy to put off. Or I'll go and Brick in half an hour, I'll go and Brick in an hour. And I thought, you know what, what will support me at the moment? And this isn't saying this is [00:17:00] how I'm gonna use it forever. What will support me at the moment is setting up some schedules. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I set up schedules where my phone automatically goes onto different modes at different times. So it has, I think I've got four settings, something like that. One which comes on first thing in the morning. One that comes on at the time that I am gonna start work. Where roughly when I'm gonna finish work and roughly when I go to bed, and there's slightly different settings for each of those different time slots, and having that has helped me massively , because there's four changes because I don't necessarily need those four changes, it means it gets ReBricked. So as an example, if in the mornings I wake up and I decide I'm gonna go and un Brick my phone, which is not the plan, I don't intend to scroll in the mornings, but occasionally the Brick is near where I feed the dog, so occasionally I um, Brick it re Bricks again at [00:18:00] seven 30 'cause it's time to start work. Okay, those of you who, if you're worrying about me starting work at seven 30, it's because I'm on a new plan where I then exercise at nine. So it's not that I'm just working crazy hours, I promise. It re Bricks at seven 30 so even if I've got up in the morning and gone and un Bricked it, I can only scroll till seven 30 worst case. 'cause it will then Brick itself again. And it won't unb Brick again unless I go and un Brick it. So having that schedule has taken loads of the cognitive load away from me and has made it much more easy to notice what I'm doing and to stick to what I intended.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I've done is I have collated easy other analog options. So I have one of those like foot stool things by my sofa, which is hollow. Used to have dog toys in it. I kicked the dog out. The dog now has his own basket under a different chair, and it now has my toys in it. So I now have right where I'm likely to be sitting and scrolling I have [00:19:00] analog things that I can do. I have a Kindle by my bed so that if I wake in the night and reach for my phone, I've got a Kindle to reach for instead. I've kind know that's not strictly analog, but it's reading, so we're going with it. I've made it easy for me to have alternatives nearby when I would normally pick up my phone. And again, that has really helped. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things that I think Brick is absolutely genius for is the stopping you the times that you don't even realize you're picking up your phone. It has been, frankly, terrifying. My husband has been laughing at me the number of times I pick up my phone, either without realizing I've even picked it up or picking it up to look at the time, and then clicking on the Instagram app, clicking on Facebook, clicking on whatever, and being faced with that black screen saying, uh, you've chosen not to access this app. Go and do something more interesting. Or whatever it says right. It's been really, really useful to [00:20:00] notice how intuitively and how automatically I'm doing that, and it just squishes all of that because you can't access it, so it gives you that moment. Yes, of course I could walk downstairs if I really cared and un Brick it, but I don't because my intention wasn't looking. It was just that I kind of automatically ended up there and it has stopped all of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I'm proud of is we had to go away again because of the family issues for a day at the weekend, and I decided what I would do this time was I would take the Brick with me. I would Brick my phone, but I would leave the Brick in the car. So I could choose to UnBrick if I decided intentionally that I wanted to, but it wasn't just a free for all access to my entire phone. And that actually worked really well. I went out once to UnBrick it for a short period of time just to check some messages and things like that, have a quick scroll, but I was only out for like 20 minutes or something like that. And then I ReBricked it Happy days, and I was off the phone for the rest of the day. [00:21:00] So that worked really well, and I think that is how I will continue to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I'm just going. Into town or whatever. I'll just take it Bricked. I still have access to the phone. I still have access to maps. I still have access to all my banking cards, all of that sort of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just don't have access to the social media things. In fact, it's quite interesting because there have been quite a few times where I've been with friends going, oh, there was a reel I was gonna show you. And them being like, no, I can't. Then it's like, you know what, Vic, you're gonna have to think of more interesting things to talk about than what you just saw, on instagram and that has actually been really good. You know what? We had conversation before Instagram. You can have conversation about something different. So that has been really, really good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the one thing that I have not yet figured out that I'm gonna need to think about is that I have not Bricked the entirety of the internet, as in like in my browser. I have Bricked certain websites that I know suck up my time. So the ones I mentioned before, [00:22:00] plus Reddit and Medium and things like that. Now I have a bit of a plan for next year, which I'll tell you about in a future podcast, but if you've heard people on Instagram talk about personal curriculum, I got very excited yesterday and have a bit of a plan. What that means is there are a bunch of places where I could actually get quite distracted, scrolling and looking things up on the internet, and I don't think I really wanna do that either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm still pondering on this, but I think I'm going to need, they have a setting where instead of having, what websites are blocked, you can have a generic, all websites are blocked except this one, this one, this one, this one. So I'm gonna have a little bit of a ponder about whether, for at least so times a day, I want to have it so that most of the internet is blocked apart from a few things. Haven't quite decided yet, we shall see. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But that's okay because I'm seeing this as a process. I'm seeing this as [00:23:00] something that I'm kind of working through and working with myself, asking myself how can I make this easy rather than, does this machine work? Because the short answer to all of this is there is not a single device that will fix your phone habits. There is not a single piece of exercise equipment that will make you fit and healthy. There is not a single planner that will make your life perfectly organized. All of these are tools that come along with behavior change and emotional regulation and, general self-management. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we can see them like that, when we can see them as tools that then need intention and strategy to use, then suddenly they become super, super useful. If we expect them to be a kind of panacea for everything, then they will inevitably disappoint and we will either blame them or we will blame ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you have considered buying something like a Brick before, I think my [00:24:00] conclusion would be, I highly recommend it, as long as you are willing to go through an iterative process of deciding intentionally how you are gonna use it and that you have a very clear plan as to what other things you want to spend time doing if you are not on your phone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's my review of the Brick. I wish I could say in my affiliate links are down there. I don't have affiliate links. I just bought a Brick. So I don't have any of that stuff. I'm not biased in any way. That is just my experience of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love to hear Brick strategies. So if any of you already have a Brick and are using it in a way that's different to what I've said, or if there's anything you found particularly helpful or not helpful, please do make sure you're on my newsletter. Drop me an email, let me know how you're using it. I would love to kind of further refine it in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you don't have issues with your phone use, but there are other elements of behavior change that [00:25:00] you are trying to change, I want you to run the same sorts of things through and even to re-listen to this episode, thinking about it in the context of the planner that you think's gonna fix everything. The exercise machine that you think's going to fix everything, whatever it might be. Okay. Being intentional, being able to spot when your behavior is changing, being able to track, being able to choose intentionally, having approach goals, so things you're trying to do rather than avoidant goals. All of this stuff is just really good practice for any sort of behavior change. And I have just illustrated this time using the Brick as an example. I hope that is useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is our last episode for 2025. Thank you so much all for coming. We are heading rapidly towards 150,000 downloads at the point of recording this, which is utterly bonkers. Don't think we'll quite make it by the end of the year, but I'm super, super excited. So thank you for all your support and I can't wait to keep chattering [00:26:00] with you through 2026. So thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.  </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 29 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-18-how-if-you-should-use-a-brick-to-reduce-phone-usage thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-17-why-i-left-academia-it-may-not-be-what-you-think <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> We hear so much about people leaving academia at the moment and it’s easy to make assumptions about people’s reasoning. I realised when talking with a one-to-one client that my story is not necessarily a typical one, but it could be one that it is interesting for people to hear. So, in today’s episode, I share my reasoning for leaving academia. I don’t do so in an attempt to encourage others to do the same, and while telling my story, I recognise many privileges that led me to have the career that I have had. Instead I simply wanted to share my experience with you all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out “ <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/13018097-35-how-i-finished-my-phd-in-just-over-two-years-why-i-wouldn-t-recommend-it" target="_blank"> how I finished my PhD in just over two years (and why I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it) </a> ”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. So today's episode is a little bit of a change in direction from the last few episodes because this is going to be more about me rather than kind of hints and tips necessarily. And I hope in doing that partly you'll just get to know me a little bit more, but much more importantly, you'll get a bit of an insight and a viewpoint on academia and my journey in academia and how it might relate to yours, and this kind of came about based on a conversation that I was having with a one-to-one client, somebody I've worked with for a really, really long time. And I can't remember what we were talking about, but it came up about me leaving academia and she had made an assumption, understandably, that I had got fed up of academia. I had stopped enjoying academia and that that was why I'd left. 'cause that's why most people leave, right? We hear about the great resignation and all that stuff, and when I [00:01:00] explained to her why I actually did leave academia, she was firstly surprised and secondly found it quite motivating and inspiring. So I thought I would share it with you guys too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now that makes it sound like it's going to be a exclusively positive story. It's not an exclusively positive story, but it's possibly not the one that you are expecting based on most people who leave academia at the stage I did. So let's backtrack slightly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just for those of you who haven't been around for quite so long. Give you a bit of context. I was an academic for 20 something years. I was a very unusual case who went to university to do my undergraduate degree and stayed in the same place until I was full professor. So I did my PhD, my postdocs, and all of my academic career in the same institution here in the uk, which is really, really unusual. It's not necessarily something that I super recommend, [00:02:00] but it's also not something that I would recommend against particularly. It was sort of a combination of opportunities and circumstances that led to that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you wanna hear more about the beginnings of my academic career and how and why I did my PhD quite fast, um, I have an episode about that. Again, might not be quite what you expect because that is definitely not something that I would necessarily recommend but you can check that out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I was in the same place for the whole of this time, and about five years before I actually left, I had decided that I was going to leave at some point. Essentially I decided that I didn't want to retire as an academic. You know, at this stage, what would it be, I would've been about 40, I guess something like that, early forties. And I decided, you know what? I don't want to do this for another 25 years for reasons I'm gonna share. And that was when a [00:03:00] sort of vague exit plan started mulling in my mind, most of which was limited by the fact that I was living on my own at that stage and we need to be able to support myself. And whilst professorial salaries aren't amazing, they are okay and certainly do very well if you are living on your own. So I'd got this sort of vague plan that I wanted to leave, and then a combination of events meant that it actually happened. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the reason I didn't want to stay was not the so-called toxic environment in academia. It was not the pressure. It was not even particularly the workload, although the workload did annoy me more than anything. I did get overwhelmed at times, but not in a sort of burnout way, just in a, I'm knackered and this is annoying me kind of a way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So did those things contribute a bit? Yes. Were they the reason I left? No. [00:04:00] Absolutely not. I found myself in a portion of academia that I actually still love in terms of the people and the culture and the climate. I don't think you can do much better than sport and exercise sciences. They are the most remarkably normal people. They are, yeah. There's some people who are like very ambitious or whatever, but generally they were lovely. And then you threw in that I was working closely with physios who were just the most gorgeous people and a bunch of educationalists also lovely. Um, did have some medics. Some of the medics were more of a challenge, but many of the ones I worked with were absolutely glorious. And then you also add to the mix the fact that for the last 15 years of my career, I was teaching focused and so I was mixing in the teaching focused world as well. And I have to say teaching focused academics are some of my favorite people love them. Uh, genuine people who are really [00:05:00] interested in student development and in doing the right thing by their students and are just generally lovely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was surrounded all the time by people I genuinely really liked. Now, were there some people that I wanted to boot over the garden fence because they would never fill in the forms properly that I needed them to do that I didn't care about either, but they needed to happen. Yes, absolutely. There were people, but there really were very few people that if I got stuck sitting next to 'em at the Christmas dinner, I would be sad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really loved the people I worked with. I adored my students. The students were wonderful even when they were being a pain in the bum. They were just enthusiastic, nice kids, and I really enjoyed all the time I spent with them. Um, I even... by the time I had sort of carved my niche in teaching focused work, and maybe I'll do a podcast another day about my transition from research oriented career to a teaching focused career and why I did it [00:06:00] and how I navigated it. I'll do that another day. But certainly by that stage I had found a kind of area that I cared a lot about, that I was pretty good at doing and that I was actually quite well recognized for, you know, people were asking my advice, I was getting like awards and recognitions and all that kind of stuff, and things were good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. The one time where I would say things were not good was during the 2020, the pandemic. That was pretty horrendous, but I think that was very unique to this particular situation. Did it flag some of the things I like less about academia? Yes, potentially. But mostly I see that as a kind of a blip on and otherwise very lovely career now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does that mean I don't think academia's a toxic environment? No, absolutely not. I think there's a huge amount of pressure. I think there is a huge amount of unnecessary [00:07:00] workload. I think there is a huge amount of trying to ring every last drop outta somebody. But I genuinely didn't come across very many people that I actively disliked and I actively thought were badly intending in their interactions. Does that mean I agreed with everyone in management? No, absolutely not. I think management, senior management made a whole bunch of good decisions and a whole bunch of really stupid decisions, unreasonable decisions, and so on. And when I was quite junior, I would get quite cross about that. As I got more senior, I understood more of the nuances and I understood more of the pressures, and I could see more how it came about and why they were doing the things they were doing. Even when I didn't necessarily agree with them, I could see how it happened. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also, as I got more senior and more insightful, I [00:08:00] would say more reflective. I also saw the extent to which most of the time when people weren't behaving the way I thought they should be behaving or other people thought they should be behaving, it was because of the stress and pressure they were under rather than them being intrinsically nasty people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now there are some things I want to clarify here. I was very privileged in a number of ways. I kind of fitted in, I think it's fair to say. There were times when I didn't, when I was more teaching oriented and some of the research intensive people, um, would judge me for that, for example. But I did my PhD in a very, very supportive research group. I was very well protected through the early stages of my career. And so sort of got through that vulnerable bit with really, really good people around me. Now, there were some bits that got a bit complicated. Well, that's a story for not on a podcast, but on the whole, I was very well protected in ways that certainly I [00:09:00] don't see all of the PhD students in my membership, for example, and for many of you don't necessarily see being protected. But for me it was a good career and it was a career that I got an awful lot of opportunities out of, that I got an awful lot of happiness out of, and an awful lot of friends out of. And to be honest, I look back with pride and celebration, so you might be asking, okay, then why did you leave? And it's a valid question. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The main reason I left was because I didn't want what was next. So by this stage I achieved full professor during the pandemic in 2020. And then after that I was head of education for my school, so I was overseeing all of the academic programs and I was on a track to sort of senior teaching leadership roles. You know, it probably would've been director of education for the college, next [00:10:00] maybe deputy provost, chancellor, education for the university, things like that. Okay. And you know, I knew the people that did those roles. I think, you know, I'm not saying I was a shoe-in, but there was certainly an expectation that I would apply for those things if they were to come up. And I increasingly realized I didn't want them. I might have been good at them in some ways, but I didn't want them, and that might sound strange, right? That's how you have wide influence, right? By affecting policy and instigating widespread change across an institution is how you have really big impact. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I was really interested in impact across the whole university. I've never been somebody who sits neat and tight in one discipline. I've always been interested in working across disciplines and across different areas of the university, and it certainly would've been a huge [00:11:00] promotion. It certainly would have been big increases in salary and all that sort of stuff. Right? And I knew a lot of the senior leadership team, so I'm sure it would've been a transition, but they were broadly good people and I was, you know, I was largely excited about, about working with them. So why did I decide that I didn't want to go that way? I didn't want to wait for those roles to come up and to apply for them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, it was two things really. One was about what I wanted to be doing, and two was about what I was good at. Because one of the things that I don't think I realized early enough, and I want all of you guys to realize much earlier than I did, is that you really have to understand yourself. You really have to understand not only what influence you want to have in the world, but also what you enjoy doing the most, what you want to spend time doing, and where your strengths are best spent. Okay. I spent a lot of time trying to [00:12:00] fix my faults instead of deciding where my strengths were best spent. And what I realized as I got further up through the tree was, whilst I had lots of good ideas about how things should be done, I was not a good people manager. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. Now some of you might be surprised by that, I get on with people, right? My saving grace was that people liked me. People generally knew that I was well intended and liked me personally. However, that doesn't make you a good people manager. I was not good at letting people kind of have their heads, so like, you know, give them an idea or give them a project to do and let them do it the way they want to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have my ideas about how I want things to be done, and I'm not necessarily good at letting other people crack on and do it their own way. Is that a failing? Yeah, probably. Does it mean that, it made those things difficult? Yeah, probably. But it is a useful thing to recognize and don't get me wrong, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I did all the leadership training and all those things, but when I got stressed, when I [00:13:00] felt under pressure, my general tendencies came back, and so I wasn't necessarily very good at letting other people do things their way. I also wasn't necessarily very good at doing all the kind of behind the scenes, collaborative discussions, stuff that enabled people to come along with me when I did have a new idea, I could sort of see it. I could see how obvious it was, and I could see that it was clearly the right thing to do, and so I couldn't understand why people needed a bit longer to sort of come round to it or to get past some of their objections and all that sort of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was also somebody who was quite comfortable with big change, who was quite excited by big change, and I didn't necessarily under stand, people who would prefer things to stay as they are, even if it's not quite as good or whatever, just because it feels comfortable. My brain doesn't work that way and I wasn't always very good at, recognizing that other people were [00:14:00] feeling like that. </div> <div> I'm also somebody who can do a lot of work at the last minute, so I was also not very good at seeing out into the future to give people lots of notice for when we were gonna get things done. And I realized that the further I would go through my career, the more I would be managing others, the more I would be allowing other people to implement their views on things and just kind of guiding strategically or whatever, the more I would be having to sort of win hearts and minds, et cetera, et cetera and the more I realized that it wasn't really what I was great at and then I realized that actually the more I did that stuff, the less I was doing the things that I feel that I'm good at. The one-to-one conversations with people, the running small group sessions, the doing interesting keynotes, coming up with innovative new ways of explaining new ideas and that sort of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm good at that stuff and the [00:15:00] more I was doing teaching leadership, the less I was actually doing the stuff that I loved and that was genuinely 90% of the reason I left, I didn't want the things that were ahead of me. And I'm not someone who can tread water in circles. 'cause you could say, you know what? It's fine. Do some school level admin roles. You don't have to go for that ones. Maybe they'll try and talk you into it. Perhaps you do a few years of it, tolerate it, whatever. If I don't have something to work towards, I get really bored and grumpy. It's no surprise that these thoughts all accelerated a bit after I got my professorship 'cause I'd been wanting that for a long time. I'd been working hard for it and things and then we went into pandemic and that was a whole thing. So we survived that and then it was after that. It was a bit like there's nothing I'm striving for now. I could, I, you know, there's plenty of teaching related research I can still do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's plenty of stuff I want to implement and things to [00:16:00] improve our programs, look after the students and all that stuff, but it's all going round again stuff. It's, here's another academic, yeah, here's Freshers, here's this, here's that. And I loved so much of it, but I can't tread water and stay in the same place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, I didn't leave because I hated the environment. I didn't leave because it became intolerable or because I was bored of being burnt out or any of those things. I never did burn out. I was pretty overwhelmed at times, but it was that the positives were no longer sufficient for me. The striving, the thing I wanted to get to next was no longer there for me, and then the workload didn't feel worth it, and I think this is a really, really important thing to recognize is workload is not an absolute measure of this is enough, this is too much, this is not enough. Workload has to be proportionate to [00:17:00] how much you care about the other end of it. Now, does that mean we should have unlimited workloads? Obviously not, but I got annoyed by the workload. I got tired and stressed out when I had to stay too late and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when I was working towards something I believed in and that something I mostly enjoyed and was surrounded by nice people, I could cope with the workload just fine. If I had really wanted those jobs, really believed that I was gonna be great and would be able to do them in a really, really good way, and that I would enjoy that process, then absolutely I would've carried on with the workload. </div> <div> It was fine. It. It was fine. I was healthy. I was able to do it. Perhaps if my health had changed, that would be different. I realize, again, I'm speaking from a position of privilege, but genuinely my experience was it was a load of work, but it was really cool. So I left academia 90% because I felt like I'd finished it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> [00:18:00] I'd done all the things I wanted to do. I don't wanna say ticked all the boxes, 'cause that sounds a bit kind of arbitrary, but, I'd achieved all my goals. I'd treat, you know, I wasn't somebody who grew up dreaming of a career in academia. I didn't even know that really existed until I was offered a PhD. But once I knew what academia was, I've done all the things that I wanted to do. And so then it was time to do something different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The 10% is that I had personal reasons to move back home to where I grew up , and. You can't really, there's nowhere where I live where you can teach what I used to teach. I was a sport scientist. I'm near one of the greatest universities in the world at home, Cambridge, but they don't have sport science. So it wasn't something that I could definitely carry on if I came back here and I certainly wasn't gonna commute for it. So that was the kind of 10%, but the vast majority was a sense that I had completed it. I'd done all the things I wanted to do, and then I was so [00:19:00] excited. Where it all became reality was two things. One where I got a gorgeous husband who would ensure that I could still eat while I was making my business start running and two, I came up with the business plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I knew I wasn't gonna leave just to do anything. But I came up with the idea of the PhD Life coach membership specifically, and from there it was just, this is what I wanna do. This is all the bits of academia I adore. This is everything I like doing. I think there's a huge need for it. I can see the benefit that it would have, and I can do it. I will be good at it, and I don't need to lead a big team to do it. </div> <div> So some of you might be wondering, you know, will I ever get to a stage where the PhD life coach membership will have, um, you know, other coaches And I'll take a step back in a more leadership position. We might have guest coaches, keep a little eye out next year just 'cause [00:20:00] I think it's good to have more voices in there rather than it all being the Vicki Wright Show, but. I do not wanna take a step back. I want to be hands-on in the membership, talking to my students, knowing my students, coaching them, supporting them, and being there with them the whole way through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I wanna be producing these podcasts. I wanna be speaking to you guys. I wanna be writing your emails. I wanna be coaching you. I want to be with you guys all the time, whether you're a PhD student all the way through to full professor, because I think we all struggle with the same things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, once I've got enough people, if I can employ people who will do the behind the scenes stuff that I don't have to do anymore, happy days, I would love that. Somebody to do my invoices and all those things. Beautiful, perfect. But I wanna be hands on with all of this stuff. And so that's why I wanted to tell you this story because I think actually some people who are, especially in the early stages of their career, you hear so many horror stories about academia. And I do [00:21:00] not doubt for a second that those are true and that those are people's experiences. And I certainly saw elements of that throughout my career. But I think it's also important to hear the other bits. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it's important to hear that it can be amazing. You have to remember I came into it at a different time, but even my last few years were still amazing. And I want you to know that you can choose to leave something that's really good. You do not have to stay doing something until you absolutely hate it. You can do something, love it, and then leave. That's all fine too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can do whatever you want to do, and I think we need to be told that a little bit more often. Now, does that mean academics? Listen as I speak, does that mean I'm recommending you leave academia and become a coach? No, I'm really not. I would actually say that for 95% of people that would not be the decision you think it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I [00:22:00] really mean that. I think it's often seen as an easy get out. It is far from an easy get out. If anyone wants to talk about it, you can let me know, but that's not what I'm saying. What I want to say is that you can make any decision you want to make for whatever reasons you want. I thought people were gonna think I was stupid. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I thought people were gonna be like, whatcha doing? You're a professor. You've got such a secure job, you've got an amazing pension. You are gonna do these great things. We thought you were gonna be pro vice chancellor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought people were gonna say that stuff. Some of them said that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Most of them said, congratulations, you got out. Which probably says more about them than it does about me. But you can choose these things for any reason you want to. If you want a positive experience in academia, you can choose to have one, and you can choose to think about it in the ways you want to think about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Put yourself in the places that you want to put yourself in and achieve all the things that you want to achieve. And when you feel like you've had enough, [00:23:00] you can use your skills elsewhere. There are so many options and so many ways that you can do this. I really hope that was a useful insight and helps you understand a little bit more about me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please feel free to ask questions if you're on my newsletter, you can always just reply to that and I will try and get back to you as quickly as I can. I hope that was a interesting different sort of story for this week. So thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 22 Dec 2025 05:00:01 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-17-why-i-left-academia-it-may-not-be-what-you-think thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-16-why-you-should-notice-the-paradox-of-imposter-syndrome <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Imposter syndrome often affects the most high achieving people yet it can still feel so true that you’re “not good enough” and “conning” other people into believing you’re better than you are. In this episode, I discuss a paradox that I see a lot in academics experiencing imposter syndrome - the tendency to simultaneously believe that you are an imposter AND hold yourself to higher standards than you hold other people. I’ll discuss the five past experiences that may influence why you have these paradoxical beliefs and why recognising this can be the first step to overcoming some of these imposterish thoughts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Links for the transcript </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12798848-30-how-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome" target="_blank"> how to overcome imposter syndrome </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week I'm gonna be thinking about imposter syndrome again. Now this is something we've been talking about quite a bit in the PhD life coach membership 'cause it's part of the theme for Q4 of 2025, and I think this topic is relevant to everyone, right? I coach people all the way from the beginning of their PhDs through to very senior academics, and imposter syndrome shows up at all stages. But the more I've talked to people, the more I've coached people on this sort of topic, the more I've noticed a paradox that doesn't often get talked about. And so that's what I'm gonna talk about today, this paradox of imposter syndrome. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, before we go any further, before I explain the paradox, I do have to just say one thing, which is, I hate the phrase imposter syndrome. Okay. Everyone uses it. I've mentioned this on the podcast before. It makes it sound like it's a medical condition. It makes it sound like there's something psychiatrically wrong with you. None of those things are true. It makes it sound like it's fixed, that you can't do [00:01:00] anything about it, that you need to cure yourself in some way. None of those things are true either. Other people use the phrase imposter phenomenon. I kind of prefer that, I think, although I think people don't generally understand what it means, but whenever I'm talking about imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon, I'm thinking about this tendency that some people have to consider that they are not as good as other people think they are. To believe that they are in some ways, conning other people around them into believing they're better than they are and that is at least in part, a consequence of the environment that you are in. Often we see imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon as some kind of like individual failing, that we should just think better thoughts and be more confident and build our resilience and all those helpful things, uh, helpful things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When in reality many people are treated like imposters simply because they don't fit the kind of stereotype of what somebody in academia should be like, look like, sound like, behave like. [00:02:00] Okay, so everything I say today is within that context that I'm somewhat skeptical of these imposter behaviors and thoughts as being part of a syndrome, and I'm skeptical of the extent to which they are an individual thought mistake rather than a consequence of the way that people are treated. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, the mindset piece is the one piece that we have most control over, that we are actually able to work on as individuals. And I think there are many ways that we are maybe not creating our own imposter syndrome, but we are exacerbating it and making it more uncomfortable than it needs to be. So. All those kind of caveats in place. What do I mean by the paradox of imposter syndrome?  </div> <div> Now, some of you may have heard of something called the Dunning Kruger effect before. This is where people who have the highest abilities are most likely to feel likely they're imposters. And I did a little bit of reading around this, there's some [00:03:00] controversy around the original mathematics, the original analysis that demonstrated this, as to whether it was a real effect or whether it was an artifact or not. But essentially what they demonstrated was that if you were a high achieving person, you were much more likely to feel like an imposter than somebody who was not. Everyone I work with are already in the kind of top end of educational experience, educational performance by virtue of the fact that they're either doing or have done a PhD. I certainly see a very high rate of imposter syndrome amongst these people. I don't have other people to compare them to, so I can't say it's necessarily more than the general population, but it's certainly a very high level for people who are objectively excellent at what they do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The paradox that I've noticed though, takes that one little step further. It doesn't seem to me that it's just that people who are more capable are more likely to perceive themselves as imposters. [00:04:00] It's that these high achieving people who are having all these imposter ish thoughts are also holding themselves to a standard that is not realistic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in my experience, most people are not criticizing themselves for being a bit too average. They are simultaneously telling themselves that they are worse than everybody else. That everyone else can do this more easily. Everyone else is more successful than me and at the same time, they are telling themselves that they shouldn't find this difficult, that they should be able to write a good first draft, first attempt, that they shouldn't need multiple redrafts, that they shouldn't get this much feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And even when you kind of try and normalize those processes that everyone writes a [00:05:00] somewhat shoddy first draft, unless it's something they've written in many formats before, they somehow still believe that that's true, but that they shouldn't, that they should be able to perform at this exceptionally high standard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That they should be able to do things easily without too much effort and in a way that is pretty good quality first time. Okay. I want you to reflect. Does that feel like your thinking? Are you holding these two really contradictory thoughts in your head? That you're not good enough, that you've convinced everybody that you are, but you've conned them in some way. Yet at the same time, there's an expectation that you should be exceptional. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If that feels true to you, it's okay. I see an awful lot in academia and I have some ideas as to where it [00:06:00] comes from. Now, this is not based in research, what I'm about to say. This is based in my experience of talking with hundreds of PhD students and academics about issues like this and working with them over a period of 20 something years. So this is very much anecdotal, but I really think it is worth reflecting on. Where I think this paradox is coming from is rooted in the background of people who end up working in academia. The vast majority of people who work in academia have been highly successful in either their previous educational experiences or in previous professional experiences. Many, many of you who are going into PhDs who are in academic careers now will have excelled at school. Not all of you. Some of you are going, oh, I didn't, that's okay. I'm gonna come to you in a minute. Okay? But many, many of you will have excelled at school. And the problem is that sounds great, right? We all wanna excel at school. That's brilliant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The [00:07:00] problem is when you excel at school and when you excel, then into maybe your early university careers as well, is that actually that becomes something that you are really rewarded for, that you really value in yourself, and that kind of becomes part of who you think you are. I am somebody who excels in these ways and often we then wrap up in that a bunch of stories about the ways in which it's okay to excel. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I sort of identified five things that I see really regularly with my members, with other PhD students and academics that I work with, that show the way their pasts shape the expectations they now have of themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first is around being the best. So many people who have excelled in [00:08:00] their previous lives, they've excelled in their previous educational experiences take a lot of value from coming top of the class. They expect to be one of, if not the better performance. You know, maybe your class used to rank you, maybe you went to top universities, you got top grades, you beat other people in these various different, relatively arbitrary often performance measures, and that becomes part of your sense of who you are, that I should be somebody who is the best? I'm not used to being somewhere in the middle of the pack. I should be somewhere near the best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the trouble is when you start putting in a room into a university, a whole load of people who've all been top of their class in the past, suddenly you are much more normal than you are used to being. And suddenly this notion that you should be the best doesn't feel so plausible anymore. And the problem is that if [00:09:00] you've spent your whole childhood believing that success is being the best, then you suddenly feel like an imposter. Or you can tell yourself you're an imposter if you are not the best. That somehow some part of your brain believes that you don't deserve to be there if you are not the best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are not used to making up the numbers. You're not used to being an average contributor to a particular degree, program, career, whatever it might be. And by the way, that's not saying that you are not the best now, but not all of you can be the best. I'm sorry, I hate to break that to you, but if we have been brought up believing that being the best is what you have to do in order to belong, then suddenly we're in a position where we're telling ourselves we're an imposter, but we're holding it up against the really unfair criteria that the only way to belong is to be the best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My second thing I've observed, and this [00:10:00] might be different people, okay, might be the same, might be different people. These are people who've been brought up believing that the way to be valued, the way you get rewarded is not just to be very good at what you do, but to be good with seemingly no effort. There's people that take pride in having winged it, that actually if they can do well in a school test, they can do well in exams, whatever it might be, you know, they've written their undergraduate dissertation at the last minute, that that is somehow better, that that is proof of how good you are, that you haven't had to put effort in. And even if you don't believe that, even if you don't actually believe that you shouldn't have to put in effort, if you are somebody that academic work has often come easily to, you won't necessarily have experienced having to put in lots of effort. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, that's not the same thing as not having to work hard. Okay? Everyone who has got to where you guys have got to has worked hard at some point in their lives. [00:11:00] But that is not the same thing as spending lots of time sort of tussling with something that you don't understand. Usually the people that have done really well in school have never really experienced or rarely experienced that sensation of, I just don't get this, but I'm gonna need to figure it out 'cause I've got to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Usually you've got it reasonably quickly. And so again, when we then find ourselves in this kind of hierarchical performance oriented environment where we are all pushing the boundaries of our knowledge, suddenly having to put a bunch of effort in, finding it difficult, having to sort of wallow in that confusion and keep moving forwards and doing it anyway and trying to figure it out a bit at a time that feels like you're doing something wrong, where for the vast majority of the population that's doing it. That's literally how things get done. [00:12:00] They were doing that at school. They were doing that in their undergraduate degrees, if they did them, they were doing that in their early careers. That's just doing it. But when you've grown up as somebody who hasn't had to put that much effort in, who hasn't had to sort of force themselves to kind of really stay engaged with something they really don't understand, then suddenly it feels like failing. It suddenly feels like you're an imposter. When in actual fact you're not an imposter at all, that is literally doing it. The third thing, 'cause some of you might be listening to this going well, neither of those things are me. I was never the best at school. I've always worked really hard, I've never got found things easy. The third one I've observed is people who believe that they could and should be able to do it all to the best of their ability. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is where those of you who are kind of consider yourselves hard workers and stuff often come in that you were able to do all of your homework and you were able to do it all to a good standard [00:13:00] because you worked really hard, you were committed. Maybe it didn't come easy. Maybe you persisted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But through that persistence, through that hard work, you were able to tick all the boxes. You were able to do all the things. You did all your readings, you finished all your homeworks, you made your notes beautiful, I'm sure. And suddenly you find yourself now in a place where it's not possible to read it all. It's not possible to write it all. It's not possible to research all the ideas that you come up with, okay? And it's perfectly unreasonable to consider yourself to be able to, but if you have spent your whole life, being somebody who has been able to do it all, who has completed all the extra readings, who does do things for extra credit, has always managed all of these things, then that again, can feel like a fail. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where again, to the average person, to the normal person, [00:14:00] they accepted it ages ago that they weren't gonna do all the readings, that they weren't gonna be able to complete everything to their best of their ability, that they were just gonna have to get some bits of it done and it will just have to do, and they'd have to suck up getting a C on it or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Many of you won't have had to experience that before because even through undergraduate and possibly even master's, depending on the nature of your program, it was still possible to do it all. It was even clear what all is. 'cause some of this with PhD, it's not even, and even academics as well, it's not even that you can't do it all. It's that there's no defined boundary of what all is. Anyway, we get to choose the scope of our research. We get to choose what we should or shouldn't have read. We get to choose what we know about and don't know about. Whereas even if you are going, well, you know my master. I definitely didn't do all my reading or whatever you still knew what doing it all would look like. It would be doing all that reading, for example. [00:15:00] Okay, so now you're in a place where there's no clear definition of what all means. There's no way of doing it all anyway. And again, we have a tendency, people like us have a tendency to interpret that as being an imposter, that in some way other people managing to do it all, or it's okay that they're not doing it all, but I should be doing it all. 'cause my conception of being good enough is doing it all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we've done being the best, not putting effort in and doing it all as three of my five things so far. The fourth one is around not needing help. So a lot of people who've been high achieving through their lives, whether that was initially at school or whether you went off and did another career first and excelled there. A lot of people really take pride in not having needed help along the way. They were able to just do their homework. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They were able to just prepare for [00:16:00] exams. They didn't need lots of help. And remember, by the way, you're not expected to resonate with all five of these. You might resonate with all, but others you'll resonate with some of them. Not others. Okay. I really resonate with the doing it all and probably sounds awful the being the best as well. I resonate with those ones a lot. I resonate less with the not asking for help side of things. I always quite liked asking for help. It was fine. So you'll resonate with some more than others. And again, if you are somebody who has traditionally been able to do everything without getting any extra help, without actually having to ask about things that you didn't understand, suddenly when you're in a position where you do need to do that again, it can feel like you're failing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can feel like you're an imposter. Where in reality, for most people, that's just normality. That just is what you do. You dunno how to do it. You are someone, they help you. You do it. It doesn't mean anything about you as a person, but if you've pinned your self worth on the fact that you don't ask for help, then suddenly you're [00:17:00] holding yourself to a standard that you are never gonna meet. </div> <div> We can't do academia. Whatever stage you're at, we can't do academia without the help of others. Ironically, as you get more senior, for academics listening, as you get more senior, you start relying on the help of those senior to you as before, but also to those junior to you as well. Most academics can't maintain a research profile without the support and assistance of their PhD students and postdocs, particularly in the sort of science, engineering, maths, medicine end of things. But we all need help in order to succeed in academia and believing that we don't, again, positions this imposters in a way that's really unfair. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth thing that I've recognized, and I resonate with this one hugely, although I have overcome it, is that it's okay to do well as long as you don't brag. Now, I don't know what your school was like, but at my school it was not cool to be clever. [00:18:00] It was not on any level cool. To be clever, I was usually top of my classes, certainly until I went to sixth form, and to some extent there as well, to be fair and trust me, the boys did not like the girls who did well at school. Now that sounds like it shouldn't matter, but when you are 14, that really, really matters. And so the last thing I would do at school is tell people what marks I got on a test. The last thing I would want anybody to know is whether I've done all my homework or not. I mean, I usually hadn't, 'cause I'd usually forgotten it existed, but that's a different story. Um, the last thing I would do is brag about my achievements because no one thought they were cool. And when you are 14, being cool is very important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this doesn't stop when we get past being 14, right? There can be a real tendency in a wide range of societies to penalize [00:19:00] people who brag about their achievements and to be honest, to particularly penalize people who were socialized as being female, people who come from minority backgrounds, et cetera, et cetera. So then we've had this whole life where we've reinforced that we've got to do well. We've preferably got to do better than other people. We preferably got to do it with minimal effort. We've preferably got to do all the things and we preferably got to do it with very little help, but we also must be careful not to acknowledge those achievements too much because other people will judge us as being bigheaded. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we wonder why we have these screwed up conceptions of who we are and what we're actually good at. Because the problem is if we tell ourselves we're bragging to tell other people about our achievements, what we also do is spend less time telling ourselves about our achievements too. 'cause it somehow feels like bragging, even if it's happening inside your head. </div> <div> And so we end up in this place where we've rewarded ourselves, where other people have [00:20:00] rewarded us for all this kind of complicated performance that we've put on, and where we can't compliment ourselves on it too much, and where we can't even be seen to be enjoying other people complimenting on it too much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> 'cause that might make us look like we are bigheaded too. So we have to like poo poo any compliments or praise that we get from other people. And that's where we end up with this paradox of imposter syndrome, where we are simultaneously telling ourselves that we're simply not good enough and that we've conned other people into believing that we are, and that the standard we are holding ourselves against is completely unfair and unrealistic. So what do we need to do? Okay, that's a whole, like when things are determined by our background experiences, our kind of formative thoughts and all that stuff, it can be really hard to then go, okay, what do we do about that? The first thing is I want you to recognize it. I want [00:21:00] you to recognize where the reason you think you're an imposter is because you are expecting yourself to do something that is unrealistic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is not about the times where we think we're an imposter because we literally don't know what we're doing. It's the times where we're criticizing ourselves for being an imposter, for taking multiple drafts to get a decent draft together, for example. Things that in reality are absolutely normal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you just to notice and go, oh, I'm doing that thing where I'm holding myself to an unrealistic standard again, aren't I? We don't have to change it. We have to notice it as a pattern notice as that, oh yeah, I do that thing. And we're gonna notice compassionately, right? We're not gonna be like, oh, I'm being that awful person again. We're gonna notice compassionately, but we're gonna notice it.  </div> <div> The second thing I want us to do is I want us to really normalize effort and confusion. Now, people have talked about normalizing failure a lot in the past. So they've talked about, you know, people sharing their CV of failures, all [00:22:00] the grants. They didn't get, and all the papers that were rejected and everything, and I think that's great, right? Big fan. I do think it comes from a place of privilege where there's certain types of people that are able to share that information without it adversely affecting them. So I don't think it's perfect, but I do think it's useful, right? It's useful to know that other people have had these experiences, but what I wanted to focus on more is normalizing kind of the storm before the calm. I know that's the wrong way around, but the storm that's before the calm, I want us to normalize the confusion, the difficulties that happen before you get to the version you make public. Because again, people really believe that their research questions should come outta their head fully formed, that they should be able just to sit down, decide what it is, and this is what it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That drafts should come out mostly coherent the first time, and [00:23:00] anybody who's been in this game for a while knows that that's not true. Hey, even if you've been in this game for a while and you still think it should for you, you also know that it's not true for other people. You also know that these things are iterative processes that we'll spend ages in a bit of confusion about being unsure as to whether to take it this way or take it that way. What argument will make sense, da, da, da, and that on some random Tuesday in three months time, we'll figure it out. But in the meantime, it's all a bit of a mess. We need to normalize that. I used to show my students the number of drafts it took me to get from like starting writing a paper to the final finished article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People don't even think about the extent to which articles are changed during the review process. There's this sort of general belief that if you were good, you'd be able to produce a first draft that was something in the order of what you read in a journal article, and no [00:24:00] one does that. So we need to normalize the kind of confusion, the changing of mind, the figuring it out, the not being certain, but muddling through anyway kind of stages, as being part of the academic process, not a sign that you're not good enough to be here. That is literally doing the research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things that I often talk about with my members is that anybody doing a PhD or working in academia is working right at the edges of human knowledge. You are truly doing things that no one has ever done before. That's the whole purpose of producing original research, and that means we are gonna go in the wrong direction sometimes. That means we're gonna be muddling around in the dark. Sometimes that means that sometimes it's not gonna work, or you are gonna change your mind, or you're gonna find evidence to the contrary, or your model is broken and you need to rerun it, whatever it might be, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is literally what happens when you are [00:25:00] at the edges of human knowledge. It is not a sign that you aren't good enough. It is a sign that you are doing really difficult work with your incredible human brain at the edges of human knowledge, and you will figure it out. And the figuring it out bit is the important part.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you are next telling yourself that you are an imposter, that you have conned them into believing that you are competent enough. I want you to remember. That having a process where you are confused and unsure and figuring it out behind the scenes, and then able to ask for help when you need it, able to kind of present it in its half-formed state and then able to get it to something that looks vaguely competent, IE convincing them, you are competent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's doing it. That's not you doing anything wrong. That's not you pulling the wool over anybody's eyes. That is [00:26:00] literally doing it. It's meant to be a mess inside your head. It is meant to be a mess your first draft, it is meant to take a process of figuring it all out. You are meant to make mistakes. You are meant to get help. You are meant to pull it together one way and then change your mind. Do it a different way. All of those things are doing it, and if you can do all that stuff and then get it to a stage where you can calm somebody into believing that you are competent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That means you are competent. That literally means you are competent. If you can be confused and then get it to a stage where somebody else is believing that you know what you're talking about, and suddenly it is actually clear, that's competence.  </div> <div> Competence doesn't start at the beginning of doing something. Competence is where you get to. No one cares if it took like 30 drafts to get it to this stage. Is it adequate for what you want it for now? Yes. And that means [00:27:00] you're competent. That means you're not an imposter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does it mean you don't have things to learn? Obviously not. I think half the time imposter syndrome is not imposter syndrome, it's just being a beginner. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that can be at any stage of the career, beginner in the thing you are doing at the moment. Sometimes imposter syndrome is simply a gap in your skills between where you are at and where you want to be, and we get to focus on actually just practicing and training and getting support and developing those skills rather than telling ourselves, we don't deserve to be here, but the vast majority of the time we are telling ourselves we're an imposter because we're holding ourselves to unrealistic standards, and we're expecting and believing that having a bit of a shambles before you get there means you've done it wrong, rather than it literally just being how you do it. I really hope that's helped you. I know that I can't magically come in and just take out those impossible syndrome thoughts from your head. I wish I could, but please [00:28:00] notice where there is a paradox. Notice where you are holding yourself to unrealistic standards. Notice compassionately, and remind yourself that this is literally you doing academic research. I'm so proud of you all. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-16-why-you-should-notice-the-paradox-of-imposter-syndrome thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-15-what-to-do-when-you-dont-know-what-to-do <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> One of the most paralysing thoughts in academia is “I don’t know what to do”. Whether it’s about your next career move or how to analyse your data or what argument you want to emphasise, we can get stuck in the “don’t knows” for weeks or months. In this episode I help you break “I don’t know” down into “I can find out”, “I can’t know”, and “I get to decide”, so that you can plan a route forwards. Perfect for anyone who is bored of feeling stuck in indecision! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to use a “ <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15257099-2-40-how-to-use-a-do-know-don-t-know-list" target="_blank"> do know don’t know </a> ” list.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and this week we are gonna be talking about a phrase that comes up in my coaching program all the time. And that is the phrase I don't know. You probably hear yourself say this a lot as well in the context of all sorts of things. I don't know where to start. I don't know if I can get this all done. I don't know what argument I'm trying to make. I don't know whether to go to the conference. I don't know if I'm ready to apply for promotion. I don't know if I'll pass my Viva. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the problem with that phrase, and we've touched on it in the podcast before, the problem with that phrase is that it is just infinitely paralyzing. When we tell ourselves we simply don't know something, it becomes almost impossible to decide what we're gonna do next. And what we usually do is when we think, I don't know, we think therefore I can't decide what to do, then we end [00:01:00] up feeling some really uncomfortable emotions, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We feel overwhelmed, we feel anxious, we feel worried, whatever it might be. When we feel negative emotions, we all know, or at least any of you who have been here, when I've been talking about procrastination, when we feel uncomfortable emotions, the tendency is to try and avoid them. So what happens is we tell ourselves we don't know something then we feel uncomfortable emotions, and then we avoid those uncomfortable emotions by doing something different, whatever it is for you, I'm a scroller, I have to say. So we avoid our uncomfortable emotions by scrolling and then at the end of the day, we still don't know. We're still no closer to knowing, but now we're also beating ourselves up about the fact that we've wasted the day procrastinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If that sounds like you don't worry. This is totally, totally normal. It happens all the time, whether you are a PhD student or all the way through to full professor or anything in between. There are so many things that it feels like we don't know and that we should be able to know [00:02:00] that it can be really, really overwhelming. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I'm gonna do in this episode is help you break down that sensation of, I don't know, into four different types of, I don't know. And from there, once we've identified which type of, I don't know we are in, it's a lot easier to start planning a way forward. </div> <div> So what are these four categories that I've identified? Well, the first is, I don't know, but I could know. So this is, I don't know if that journal accepts qualitative research or I don't know if it's possible to apply for that job when I have a PhD, but I don't have postdoctoral experience or a publication or whatever, or I don't know what the word limit of my PhD thesis is. So these are issues where there's something that actually is identifiable, [00:03:00] that is objectively true in some sort of meaningful way, and which you are able to find out at the moment. You may not know it right now and you may not fully see what routes there are to you finding it out, but it would be possible to find it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So these are usually to do with rules and regulations or specific ways to do things where there is a set way to do it. How to perform a particular analysis for example. Whether an archive has the thing you want to find there. If we identify this as a, you know what, there actually is a objective truth here somewhere, then we can spin our brain off into, okay, how do I find out? Who might know about this? Where can I go to figure this stuff out? What do I need to do? What are the steps I need to take to identify the answer? To move from, I don't know, [00:04:00] to, I do know. Identifying that there actually is an objective answer out there makes it so much easier to then start brainstorming about how you can figure it out and how you can move forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second category are things where we don't know and we will find out, but we can't know right now. So these are things like, I don't know if my PhD is good enough. I don't know if my article will get published. I don't know if my promotion will be accepted. So there is an answer. It's just not accessible right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the problem with that is where there is an answer and it's not accessible right now, we can often feel quite discombobulated, right? We can feel quite uncomfortable where we're having to work towards something that [00:05:00] we don't know if it's going to work. This can also be true if you are doing analysis and things where there's maybe not a right way. Maybe you are developing a new methodology or something like that, and you are having to kind of figure it out. You will find out whether this way of measuring whatever it is you're measuring is working or not, right? Say we're doing lab work, for example, you will find out at some point whether you get a meaningful result, but you don't know yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in these situations, what we get to do is we get to accept that there are gonna be some uncomfortable emotions associated with the not knowing bit. Often we want to know because we want to take away those uncomfortable emotions, that sort of feeling of certainty and confusion and stuff, we're often not used to tolerating that, and so we sort of convince ourselves somehow that if only I knew this was gonna work, it would be fine. Or if only I [00:06:00] knew whether I was gonna get the job or not, it would be okay. </div> <div> What we often then do in these situations is we look for reassurance, right? If we are not sure that our paper's gonna get accepted, we, you know, go on our co-authors or our bosses or whatever to reassure us that they think it's good enough. We get 20 different people to read it so they can reassure us that it probably will be good enough. And in actual fact, none of those things really help 'cause they can't tell you that it's definitely good enough. They can only give you their advice, and in many ways it just doesn't actually fix the uncomfortable feelings at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The magic here is accepting that we don't have to fix those uncomfortable feelings. That we can tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing whether we are gonna pass or not, whether we're gonna get the job or not, whether we're gonna get promoted or not, that we can tolerate that uncertainty and therefore we can live in a world where we don't know that yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, how do we do that? [00:07:00] Part of it is about being kind to ourselves, so it is not sort of spiraling and making it very dramatic the consequences of it not being okay. Part of it is having faith that whatever happens, future you is gonna figure it out. So one of the things I often say, whether it's work related things or home related things, is we cross that bridge when we come to it. So well known phrase for a good reason because when we try and sort of cross all the bridges before we even get to them, you don't know what problems you're solving. And so many ways what we end up doing is kind of solving every eventuality, which is awful, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we end up in this situation where it's like if that article gets rejected from there, then I'm gonna submit it to this one. But if it gets rejected there as well, then it's gonna be this one, but then I'm gonna need to shorten it or lengthen it or change the framing of it, or whatever it might be. But then if it does get accepted, then this is gonna be a, you know, you can hear from my voice how exhausting it is to try and cover off every eventuality, and that's what [00:08:00] happens when we get ahead of ourselves on these paths. We don't even know what bridge we need to cross, yet we're trying to plan for all of them in the mistaken belief that we think it will help us feel better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It doesn't, we have to be able to stay here and say, at the moment, I can tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing. I can reassure myself that whatever happens, I will figure it out when I get there and that it's okay not to know at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what we then get to do is we get to say to ourselves, okay, if I can't know at the moment, whether this is gonna be okay, if I can't know at the moment what the outcome is going to be, how do I want to behave in that period of not knowing? What sort of person do I want to show up as? What kind of thoughts do I want to be saying to myself? What kind of actions do I want to be taking? And from there, we get to look after ourselves during this period of [00:09:00] unknowing, and then we indirectly make it feel more comfortable because suddenly we are moving in a way that is coherent with the person that we wanna be, that feels authentic, that feels like our future self, even though we don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As an example, if you are coming up to your Viva or a promotion interview or something like that, and you don't know if you're gonna get it or not, what do you want to have done between now and then in the not knowing? What actions do you wanna take? How do you wanna reassure yourselves? What emotions do you wanna be trying to induce in yourself to support yourself through that unknowing and to have as positive as possible an influence on that outcome? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because that's the thing we have to remember. One of the reasons that we don't know what's gonna happen is that there are so many variables, and some of them you are in control of, not all of them, [00:10:00] right? Which is why no one can ever reassure you fully. We are not in control of what the interviewer says, what the viva examiner says but there is a bunch that we are in control of, and that's the bit we get to focus on when we stop trying to fix the uncertainty with certainty, and instead try and support the uncertainty with kind of care and sensible actions forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we've got, so far, we've got the, I don't know where it's possible to know, and I'm gonna go and find out. We've got the, I don't know yet, but I will know in the future. Okay. Where we get to decide what we're gonna do in the meantime. The third type of, I don't know, I want to talk about today is the, I don't know, and I'll probably never know stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This can be some of the hardest to get used to because it can really spin in your brain and there's [00:11:00] no point in your life at which you will know for sure, and the problem is, this is, to be honest, most of the big questions in our lives. Was it the right thing to take this job instead of that job? Will it be the right thing to move countries or to not move countries, to stay at the same institution, to pursue this line of research instead of that line of research? Now, we'll obviously get some subjective information in the future when we see whether we like where we are, whether we're enjoying the research and all of those things, but we'll never know for sure whether it was the best decision or not because we didn't take the other decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can't decide whether staying in this country was a better decision than moving to a different country because you didn't do the other one. You don't know how it would've worked out if you had done the other one. It's the same as big personal decisions, you know, is this the right [00:12:00] person to marry? Is this the best possible person to marry? Well, we don't know 'cause we didn't live all the other lives. So what we get to do here when we identify that this is something where there is no knowing, then we get to make our decisions from that place. And I have a whole episode about how to make decisions that you love, in fact, I have it as a workshop that I run for universities as well. So how to make decisions that you love. So if you are thinking, okay, there's decisions I need to make that I will probably never know whether it was the right decision, best decision, or whatever, then I would really recommend that episode.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now some of these become an I get to decide problem, which is my fourth category of don't knows, which I'll talk about in a second. But not all of them will. Some of them are gonna be things like I don't know if my supervisor rates me or not. I don't know if my head of school likes me. These sorts of things [00:13:00] you are probably never gonna know. Maybe something will happen at some point that will convince you one way or the other, but usually when it comes to other people's opinions of you, things like that, we are never going to know. And so it's really useful to practice being okay not knowing, and again, this is an example of where the trying to find out in order to reassure yourself can make it worse. So this is where we end up being needy with people. Do you like me? Do you like me? Can I come to this? Do you want to come to that? You my friend, are you really? Do you love me? All that stuff. None of that makes you more attractive, right? None of that makes people wanna spend time with you. But that's us trying to shore up our own sort of self-esteem by feeling more certain about these things. When instead where we can identify that this is a, I'll never know for sure problem then we get to [00:14:00] ask ourselves, how do I look after myself? How do I look after myself when I'll never know for sure whether this was the best thing I could have done and whether I'll never know for sure what these people think of me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, we then get to say, okay, how do I look after myself in that environment? What do I wanna say to myself? What emotions do I wanna induce in myself? What actions do I want to take? What sort of person do I want to be when I'm not sure? This is something, especially the, what do people think of me? Think This is something that I struggled with a lot, especially growing up, but even into a long way into my adulthood, to be honest. I think it is part of having a, not really a DHD diagnosis. But lots of tendencies in that direction. People have lots of opinions about whether you talk too much, whether you interrupt too much, whether you do this too much, that too much, whether you don't do this. Yeah, you get lots of opinions. I don't have super strong rejection sensitivity. I do to some extent, but not as bad as some people with A DHD have [00:15:00] it but as I got to understand. This all better and understand myself better. One of the things I decided was I'm just gonna assume people like me it 'cause it just struck me that it doesn't really help to behave in any other way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, does that mean I force myself on people? No, absolutely. I vaguely read a room. You know, if you are not making tons and tons of effort to spend time with me or to talk to me, that's fine. Uh, you know, happy days, whatever. But I'm not gonna assume it means you hate me. I'm gonna, you know, my baseline assumption is that people like me and also that if you don't, that's okay too, because there's a lot of people... I was about to say, there's a lot of people I don't like. I don't think they're actually, I don't think that's actually true. There are a bunch of people I dislike. There are elements of a bunch of people I [00:16:00] dislike. I don't think I'm someone who really dislikes lots and lots of people. But there's people, right? We all got people. And so if I'm allowed to dislike people, then people are allowed to dislike me too. So that's one of the ways that I've kind of managed that uncertainty of not knowing what people think of me, is to kind of act as though I assume people like me and to try not to ruminate too much if evidence to the contrary comes up. Is it easy? Not always, but as a general rule of thumb, that has really, really helped me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now that's the, I don't know, and I'll never know stuff. And then the fourth group is the, I don't know, but I get to decide group. And to be honest, this is the biggest group of all. There are some things that we'll never know. There are some things that we'll know in time we can't know now, and there are some things where there's a truly factual answer, but the vast [00:17:00] majority of things fall into the, I don't know, but I get to decide category. And this is essentially anything to do with choosing a direction moving forward. </div> <div> So this can be what research to focus on, how to make your argument, what to do first. Most of the, I don't knows, that you have in your life are I get to decide things. I don't know if I should do this or I should do that. I don't know if I should apply for promotion this year or next year. I don't know if I should change institution. These are all I get to decide problems. Will we ever know if it was the right decision? No. Is there such a thing as a right decision? Probably not, but we get to decide. And when we really grasp that, suddenly we get to start asking ourselves, how am I gonna decide, on what basis am I gonna decide? What do I want to prioritize? What's important to me right now? What sort of person do I want to [00:18:00] be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the biggest causes of, I dunno what to do, is getting conflicting opinions. So particularly as a PhD student, but even into your academic career, one person's saying, oh, you should focus on this. And someone's saying, focus on that. Or someone saying, include this stuff or exclude that stuff. You're like, I dunno what to do. I'm getting different advice. That is the perfect example of a, you get to decide problem. If people have got different opinions on it, that is like living proof that there's not one right way. That if that one person was in charge, they'd have done that and if that person was in charge, they'd have done something completely different. And you get to decide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my four different types of, don't knows. I don't know but there is an objective answer that I can find out. I don't know, but I will know at some point in the future. I don't know and there's no way to ever find out and I don't know, but I get to decide. If you can pick apart your particular problem, I want you to think [00:19:00] now, what do I keep telling myself I don't know about? Pick which of those it is. And then you get to explore what your route forward from there can be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before we finish, I'm gonna take one example that people often find difficult to put into one of these thing categories, and that is, I don't know if I've got time to do this. So let's work it through. Is it a, there's an objective answer to this? Possibly. So the first step would be to figure that out. Is there an objective amount of time that this thing takes? So is it fixed scope, fixed quality, and therefore a kind of predictable amount of time? Is there a way of knowing that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often there's not, right? Often there's a variety of different scopes and qualities, and sometimes we work faster than others when we're up against the deadline or whatever, but [00:20:00] you can go, you know what, actually it takes me two hours to process each person's data. I've got 200 people, I've got this many hours. Actually, this just isn't possible. So it is useful if you are asking yourself, I don't know if I have time to do this, to say, okay, is there a way that this is actually quantifiable that I could work out whether it is or isn't possible. Now, usually it's hard to say it is possible, but you should be able to work out whether it is objectively not possible. </div> <div> This is always particularly relevant for those of you who are balancing PhD with other full-time part-time work. If there's not an objective answer, we get to say, is there, is this a problem where we will know at some point? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, yes. When we hit the deadline and we either have or haven't done it, we're gonna find out then whether it was possible to do it or not. However, because of the way our silly little brains work, there will still probably be a part of you that are saying, oh, but if I had done this, then it would've been possible. [00:21:00] If I'd just worked hard, if I'd stayed up later, if I'd been more focused, if I'd procrastinated less, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So is it gonna be possible at some point in the future to know whether you did do it or not? Yes. Absolutely. We will find that out in the future. Will you ever know for sure whether you could have done it? No. That falls into the, I don't know whether it would've been possible and I can't know because I can't do all the versions of it, so I don't know whether it was possible or not. The only way I guess we get a definitive answer is if you do get it done and then you know it was possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So then what we get to say is, okay, I either need to accept that i'm gonna find out at some point, and I need to decide how I'm gonna behave in the meantime or we get to decide whether I'm giving it time or not, and I would always recommend you go this way. Most people go for the, okay, I'm either gonna stress about the fact that I don't have time to do this, [00:22:00] or I'm just gonna have a go and see how I get on. So that's the deciding. It's a, I'll find out at some point if I have enough time, and in the meantime I wanna work hard answer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. There's nothing inherently wrong with that way of doing it. The problem is it does often lead to burnout. It often leads to overwork. It often leads to other stuff getting neglected because you're putting everything into this one thing that you don't know whether it's possible or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would always encourage you to consider, I don't know if I have time to do this or not a I get to decide problem. The reason for that is most tasks don't have an objective amount of time that they take, and most lives don't have an objective amount of stuff that has to be done. Now you might feel like it does. Okay. Often there's a lot of things that we do with our lives that we just take for granted as have to be done, where actually it's, it's often [00:23:00] not true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, if you are somebody who has to walk for an hour every day, there's lots of people who don't walk for an hour every day. If you are somebody who has to cook, cook all their kids' meals from fresh, there are lots of people who don't cook all their kids' meals from fresh. Many of these things are decisions. Okay. The reason I really like going for the, I don't know if I have time as being an I get to decide problem is because what you then get to do is you get to decide, okay, how many hours do I have access to that I am willing to give this, that I am able to give this, what am I able or willing to stop doing in order to buy myself some more hours? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How fast or how limited in scope or quality am I willing to do this in order to get it done? And then I get to decide whether I want to do that or not. It might be that sometimes you get to decide that you wanna put more of your own resource into it, that you wanna work more hours than you normally would in order to get this thing done, in which [00:24:00] case we then get to decide how we look after ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or it might be that you get to decide that you are gonna limit the scope of it, or you are gonna limit the quality of the piece of work that you are doing, or that you get to decide, you're gonna have to just be decisive on your first idea and go with it. For example, rather than exploring all the different ways this could be written. We get to decide how long things take. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I would always encourage you to make the, I don't know if I have time for this problem as an I get to decide how much time I'm giving it and therefore what it's gonna look like by the end. If you have other examples, if you can think of, I don't know, questions that you have that you can't fit into one of those four categories, I want you to let me know and I will help you out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So all of you who are already on my newsletter know this, but if you're not, you can sign up for my newsletter on my website, and then every week you'll get [00:25:00] an email from me, which tells you about the podcast, but also gives you the opportunity to reply to me, ask any questions, follow up, tell me anything you disagree with. I'm an academic. I love nothing better than people disagreeing with me about things. So if you can think of a problem where you are saying, this is an I don't know problem, and I don't think it's any one of those four. Let me know and I will reply to you and I'll talk about it in a future episode. I hope that helps you see a route forward from that kind of place of confusion. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.  </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 08 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-15-what-to-do-when-you-dont-know-what-to-do thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-14-what-to-do-when-the-hits-the-fan <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Short one this week - I am using a current example from my own life to talk you through how to look after yourself when it all goes wrong. I talk through how I decided what work I am and am not going to do, and how I am looking after myself in the process. It’s short and the audio will be less crisp as I’m recording on my phone but I think it will be useful for many of you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Um, I'm not gonna lie, I nearly didn't record this podcast. Um, a lot is happening over here and I am not gonna go into the details on the podcast. But suffice to say that life is complicated right now, if you're concerned. I am fine. I don't want you to be worried about me, but there is a lot of stuff going on that means that things are more difficult than I would like them to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and I need a podcast for this week, and so when, when I found out all the things that I've recently found out, I had to stop and think, right? What am I actually doing? What do I need to do? What can I do? Defer. What can I decide not to do? Essentially, how can I look after myself while I navigate all this other stuff? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for a moment I thought, right. I have a podcast episode that I've already recorded, intending to cover off the one of the Christmas period podcasts. And I thought, you know what? I can just move that forward and share that with them. Um, and so I was like, okay, we'll do that. That's fine. But then I thought actually for two reasons, I didn't wanna do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Firstly, from my perspective, I don't want to disadvantage future me. Okay? I am super proud of the fact that I have already recorded one of the podcasts for the Christmas period, and I didn't want to then put myself back behind that if I. Used that one. Now. I was proud that I had the option, right? I was proud that I had something in the bank that I could use, but I didn't want to mess up my carefully lay plans to be ready for Christmas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also thought that actually it might be useful for you guys. To hear a little bit about how I am navigating managing my workload while things are challenging. And actually that decision was reinforced when I sent a message to my membership, explaining to them how I was gonna handle it and what implications it might have for them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I got a lovely email back from one of my members saying how much she values that I not only coach them, but I model. Like in my own life, how I navigate things. So I thought it was a really good opportunity. So this episode is about what to do when the bad stuff hits the metaphorical fan. Um, it's gonna be short. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, you can already probably hear I'm recording on my phone because I'm away from my usual setup. There's not going to be a YouTube version of it. So this, and I'll explain in the podcast why all that is so. The first thing is pause and breathe. Okay. I am a few days into the situation unfolding, and I haven't made all these decisions immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes we think we have to like just. Immediately cancel everything or immediately decide that we're doing everything or whatever. I gave myself a little bit of time to pause and breathe. I decided that there definitely would need to be some adjustments, but that I could take a little bit of time to figure that out, and I would always want you guys to do that too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just take a second to have a deep breath, a few deep breaths, and give yourself some time to think about it. Um, the second step always is to gather a small network of support. And I'm saying small because sometimes when difficult things are happening, some of you will want to retreat into your shell and not tell anybody at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Others of you will feel a kind of urge to tell lots of people. Um. I was probably in the latter half where it was like, I kind of wanna talk about this stuff. Um, but actually sometimes having a large network of people just adds, you know, trying to help you can add to your cognitive load. So I basically told a few people what was happening, people that were able to help me either pragmatically or emotionally. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I haven't talked, I've got lots of very close friends that have no idea of anything happening. Um. But having a small network of support is easier to navigate and it means that the sort of, you get the things that you need. Um, one tip for when you're asking for support, partly, you know, we have to balance our own feelings of guilt and whatever that they're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This, I try to. Acknowledge that that's okay to feel like that, but it's also okay to ask them. Um, but one practical tip is, um, ask people to take the cognitive load, not just give them tasks. So as a really small example, I'm away from home at the moment, so, um, my dog is with my mom and my sister will be taking the dog to the field. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I could be messaging her with details about what time 'cause he gets a secure field 'cause he's a naughty barky boy. Um. I could be messaging her with details about what time the field is and how to get in and what the code for the padlock is and when to pick him up and blah, blah, blah. I'm not, I've just told my sister to talk to my mom. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They can sort it out between them. So do your best to ha wherever you can to hand over cognitive load as well as needing to sort of navigate the, like, give out the tasks yourself. Next step is cancel anything unnecessary. Now, thankfully this week I actually had a relatively light week. I do do workshops for other universities as one-offs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and I didn't have any this week. I have a small number. I have my usual member member sessions, and I have a small number of one-to-one sessions, but I didn't have any other workshops. I don't know, I don't think I would've canceled them, but have a look through. I did have a few other bits and pieces that I was intending to do that I have let people know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That. Um, so to go immediately canceling anything that you can truly go, yeah, that's just not necessary this week. When you are considering the rest, when you're considering what you do wanna do and what you don't wanna do, really avoid all or nothing thinking. There can be a real tendency to either tell yourself, I've just got to keep going. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's too much to do. I can't, you know, I can't cancel anything or to tell yourself I absolutely can't do anything I need to just. Cancel everything now. Sometimes nothing might be the right answer. For some of you, depending on what's happening and everything, doing absolutely nothing might be the right answer for me this time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't think it is the right answer. I think I, I am perfectly capable of doing some things and in some ways it's quite nice to return into a little bit of normality for a period and do the things that I do normally and that I get, like I get nice feelings from doing and whatnot. Um, so for me, nothing was not the right answer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And remembering that it's not an all or nothing thing is super important because then you can kind of pick and choose in a intentional way what things you want to do. And for me that means balancing up two things. It means balancing up what is kind of most important, what will cause the most disruption if I don't do it, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, but it's also thinking then about what things do I have cognitive space for and what things do I. Get some benefit from doing. Okay. So at the moment I'm actually recording this, sat in a coworking session with my members. Um, and I, I love seeing my members. My members are great people. They always make me feel better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I love being with them. And so it's actually really nice to be, to be doing this. So thinking about what things actually give you those little bits of joy and what things you don't need to do. The other thing I would really encourage you is to think about your future self as well as your current self. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I gave you an example of that at the beginning of the podcast. Okay. So I, um, I could have just used a, um. A prerecorded podcast for today, but that would have penalized future me. 'cause I would've then need to think of something different to talk about for the Christmas podcast, for example, that I've had planned for a while. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and I decided not to, I decided to be kind to future me and do this now. Now, does that mean that I'm doing a slightly half-assed version of a podcast? Yeah, absolutely. There's no YouTube. The sound's not gonna be great. It's gonna be shorter than usual. Is it gonna be super useful for you? Yeah, I think it probably is to be fair. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and. So it, it, it does the job. And I think, to be honest, I think it does the job in a good way. And I'm really pleased that I'm not adding to my list of now having to think of more things for the holiday, for example. The other thing is once you've decided what things you are doing or what things you aren't doing, think about whether there's anything you can either reduce or preempt. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, I've sent a message to my members saying, look, at the moment I'm intending to go ahead with all of our sessions. I enjoy talking to them. It's about, it's a load I can manage. Um. But I have also given them a heads up that it's possible I may change my mind about that. It's possible I may need to cancel some sessions and I've given them some, um, practical information about what that will look like, that I'll essentially delete it from the calendar or I'll send them a message in Slack that I might not be able to access the membership site to send a, um, send a specific message. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So by doing that, I sort of. Preempt the fact that something unexpected might happen, if you see what I mean. And it just means that I know that they're kind of aware and it means that, um, I will have less logistics to sort out if I do decide that something needs to change. And you can think about how that applies to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For example, you know, maybe there are deadlines you still want to try and hit or something, but you can then, um. Make sure that you, you know, if you've told people that there might be a problem, then it's much easier to quickly send your supervisor a message saying, yeah, it turns out that was optimistic, not gonna hit it, or whatever, than it is to have to explain it all in that moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um. Final thing is just be really kind to yourself. Even this sort of planning, even trying to think through what you do and don't want to do can take a lot of cognitive load at a time when you don't have much to go around. So keep it really simple. And my final message is don't forget that you are a body. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are a human body, a human being body, as well as just a brain. Um. I just took a break in the, um, body double session to have a big stretch on the hotel room floor and I feel a lot better for it. We've been really mindful to make sure we are drinking water and trying to eat some food and all those sorts of things, so when it is all going down for you, don't forget those basics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Looking after your body, I am keeping it really simple this week. So that is your podcast. I suspect it will be something that is useful for some of you when, when these things happen. Um, thank you all for being there as usual, and I will see you next week.  </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:16:11 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-14-what-to-do-when-the-hits-the-fan thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-13-how-to-celebrate-big-wins-without-getting-too-big-for-your-boots <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> We’ve talked before about celebrating tiny wins, so now we’re talking about big wins. If you feel uncomfortable celebrating papers being accepted, finishing your PhD or getting a job, or any of the other big objective successes, then you’re not alone. In this episode we’ll talk about why this can feel so uncomfortable, how we can expand our definition of “celebration” and how we can ensure that we recognise and remember these important events. This is particularly relevant for you if that sounds much too embarrassing and social awkward to even consider! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out “ <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12601828-26-how-to-be-kind-to-yourself" target="_blank"> how to be kind to yourself </a> ”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this is really building on an episode I did a few weeks ago about celebrating tiny wins, and if you haven't listened to that one, don't worry. This one entirely stands alone, but this is sort of the other end of the scale, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I think all of us can benefit from learning to celebrate our tiny wins a lot more. Those day-to-day things that we either take for granted or disregard as easy, where actually we have that opportunity to fill our lives with positive reinforcement and praise for doing the small things, but we then also have this question of what to do about the big things, what to do when we get a job, what to do when we get a paper accepted, when we get a promotion, whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  at the moment I'm doing a lot of work helping my members and other people who attend workshops that I run to identify their strengths. And one of the things that comes up over and [00:01:00] over is that people are really worried about being too big for their boots. They're really worried that people will see them as big-headed or arrogant and conceited. And so many of them find it really difficult to identify their strengths, and many of them find it really difficult to celebrate their big wins. They somehow feel that by celebrating their wins, that means they're diminishing other people or they're making other people feel uncomfortable or any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so this episode is really about how can we celebrate big wins in a way that doesn't feel like we are getting too arrogant and we're making other people uncomfortable, or how can we at least reframe that so that we're comfortable celebrating our big wins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the things I always teach my members is that when we have little anxious thoughts, um, not big anxious problems, but like little anxious thoughts. It's useful to put 'em on the table in [00:02:00] front of us and ask us before we do anything else. Is there any truth here? Okay, so we're gonna do that with this one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it possible that you do sometimes get a bit too big for your boots, as it were, that you do sometimes behave in a way that is perceived by general people, not by just one person? By is perceived generally as a bit arrogant, a bit conceited. Is that true? Okay. Now I'm gonna put a rule on this. We don't count childhood. When we are kid, we're all idiots, right? When we are kids, we don't know. We almost all have probably been told at some point, oh no, don't say that. Or whatever. So this is', I don't want you traipsing up some memory from when you were 10 years old and going, oh, Mrs. Knight told me that I'd get too big for my boots. Screw Mrs. Knight. Mrs. Knight was my Class five teacher. Screw Mrs. Knight. She doesn't get to live in your brain anymore. You were a kid. You were finding out what was okay, what wasn't. So we're not gonna use those [00:03:00] memories. But if in your adult life you can genuinely think of times where people who care about you have had a quiet word and said, dude, maybe tone it down a little bit. You're kind of going on about yourself much more than you go on about other people , we're gonna touch on that very briefly at the start of this episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reason I'm doing it very briefly is because I don't think that's most of you in my experience, the people who are perceived as too arrogant and conceited usually aren't the ones asking, how can I celebrate this without appearing too arrogant? They're not the ones asking it. And that means they're probably not the ones listening to this episode. The vast majority of you are probably worried about this in a kind of hypothetical. I don't want people to judge me way, but with no grounds for thinking that they actually do judge you in that direction. But let's touch on it. And when you're thinking about this, I want you to remember this is not just somebody who like feels bad 'cause they haven't succeeded this in the same way as [00:04:00] you have, or that you know, you've reminded them of something they haven't done in their life. The definition of arrogant is unpleasantly proud. With overconfident, with being conceited, there is an element of dismissing other people's wins as well. So this is not just about you celebrating yours to an excessive or unpleasant amount. It's also that you dismiss other people's achievements as well, if that still feels like you. I have a few small tips. The first one is don't generalize your wins too far. And this is true for all of us, right? Is that just because you've got one paper published, it doesn't mean you are the greatest thing ever. It doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy forever. It means we get to be proud of this one thing. So we get to make sure we are not generalizing too far. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to make sure that we are feeling and expressing gratitude for the things and the people that helped us along the way. Usually when people are unpleasantly proud they're sort of taking all the credit without [00:05:00] recognizing how other people have contributed. We wanna make sure that we're all so celebrating other people's wins. And again, this is true for all of us, however loud we are about our own wins. We wanna be that loud about other people's wins as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And finally, if this is something that you struggle with, I want you to take some tips from this episode where we think about quiet ways of celebrating, because sometimes if you are somebody who feels you have something to prove, you are somebody who has often been told that maybe your own self celebration is a little bit much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can be useful to practice some quiet celebrations, not to manage other people's emotions, but to see what that feels like. So if you feel like you genuinely actually are in danger of being a bit arrogant and self-absorbed, then those are some tips for you, but we're gonna move on now 'cause I think for the vast majority of you, that's not the case. For the vast majority of you, this is something that you are worrying about that probably isn't based in much [00:06:00] other than either your own brain or like the occasional comment you've got from somebody who probably had other motives anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first thing that I would remind you, which is always, always true, is that other people are allowed to have thoughts and feelings about you. If you are behaving in a way that you think is appropriate, if you are celebrating in a way that you think is appropriate and that is in line with who you want to be and comes from your best self, other people are allowed to have opinions about that. That can be hard to stomach sometimes, but it's true. Everybody isn't. You are entitled to your opinions about people. You can think that people around you should behave differently than they do. It doesn't necessarily mean that we then have the right to make them change or anything like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to remember, yeah, there it is possible that by saying, I'm celebrating this, somebody will get upset about it. And that's their responsibility. Okay. [00:07:00] As long as we're comfortable that we've behaved in a way that's in line with our own personal, like code of ethics, our own personal ways of being, other people are allowed to have that, those emotions and the reason that has to be true is sometimes us just existing can have those impacts on each other. Okay? We all know, and I agree with the kind of the sensitivities around this, we all know, you know, companies who give you the option of opting out of Mother's Day celebrations, for example, if that's something that is really upsetting for you, for whatever reason. It doesn't mean that we can't celebrate our mothers. Those of you who have had children, there will be people who will be upset when they see other people having children, having families, because that's something they weren't able to do. For those of you celebrating professional success, there will be people that will find that upsetting because it will remind them of the things that they haven't done. We can be compassionate, we can be understanding, but it doesn't mean we have to not celebrate ourselves. [00:08:00] People are allowed to have emotions about whatever they have emotions about, and we don't have to micromanage ourselves in order to eliminate that entire possibility. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because apart from anything else, it's not possible. You just existing means that people will have opinions about it. If you never celebrate anything, people will have opinions about that too, right? There is no way of avoiding other people having emotions, so we get to check in and say, is this an okay way to behave as far as I'm concerned? And then we can just be compassionate to other people's responses to it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, why is it even important to celebrate? Well I think there's a bunch of reasons it's important to celebrate. We wanna make sure that we are getting a nice reward for the hard work that we put in. Now, I'm a big believer, this is why I talked about tiny wins first. I'm a big believer that we should focus on enjoying the process as well as [00:09:00] waiting for that end goal. But we can give ourselves a lot of positive reinforcement by then celebrating that end goal. What I see in academics and PhD students so much is the second that thing has been achieved, we somehow discount it in our heads and move on to the next thing that we haven't done. And what that does is it doesn't give us any positive reinforcement for having achieved the thing that we've achieved and if we don't get positive reinforcement, it's much, much harder to work towards these things in future. So we wanna be positively reinforcing the process on a day-to-day basis by celebrating our tiny wins, but then also celebrating the actual achievements so that we get that bigger scale positive reinforcement as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second reason I think it's important to celebrate is so that our wins are just as memorable as our losses. I want you to think about how much time you have spent, thinking about times where you failed or where you got embarrassed 'cause you did something wrong or you didn't live up to [00:10:00] your expectations or whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to think how much time you have spent ruminating on those experiences, I bet all of you can think back to times in your childhood and the ones that will be very vivid, that have popped into your head many, many times, are the ones where something really embarrassing happened. Where you were ashamed, where you were, you know, where people were judging you, where you were getting to hold off. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those things live rent free in our heads so often, and we reinforce them by rehearsing them over and over again. One of the things that celebrations can do is make the wins more memorable too. So that when we are feeling a bit nervous, we also have vivid memories of times that we've celebrated. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Celebrations also give us the opportunity to learn from our experiences, and I'm gonna tell you more about that in a second when I give you some ideas about how we can celebrate. But when we just move on quickly past our [00:11:00] wins, without truly celebrating them, without truly analyzing them, we often miss the opportunity for a lot of learning and self-improvement as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Finally, I don't want you to underestimate the extent to which you can serve as inspiration or example to others. So for everybody who sees your win and goes, oh no, I've never achieved anything like that. I, you know, I feel bad about myself now because they celebrated their win. There's somebody else going, oh is that possible? Is that possible for someone like me? And this is particularly, this is true for everyone, right? But it's particularly true if you come from demographics that are traditionally underrepresented in academia. Every time you see somebody who looks a bit like you or comes across a bit like you achieve something, you get to go, oh this is something that's an option for me. This is something that could happen. Somebody else who [00:12:00] looks a bit like me or sounds a bit like me or experiences a bit like me has done these things. Maybe I could do this too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I'm gonna give you an example there. And this is a combination of tiny wins and celebrating success. So when I was a academic, you have all these sort of admin, leadership service type jobs and one of the ones that I have for quite a long time was a sort of welfare tutor. Now, this was back in the day, right? This was way before the university had kind of minor counseling services, but beyond that, there really wasn't the focus on wellbeing that there is now. And so a lot of that really fell on academics. And I took my job as welfare tutor probably a bit too well, but anyway, that's a story for another day. And we're also personal tutors, so we have people who don't necessarily have problems, but they're allocated to us throughout their undergraduate degrees and we're like their first point of pastoral care. Anyway, so I was welfare tutor, I was personal tutor, and that meant I got thank you cards, right? And I loved my thank you cards because frankly, I am not organized enough to ever write. I write [00:13:00] thank you cards for my Christmas presents. Thanks, mom. I definitely do that. But beyond that. I rarely get round to it. So if anybody ever thinks to send me a thank you card, I absolutely love it. And they used to say really lovely things and so I used to stick them on my wall and I didn't stick them on my wall to show off. You know, some people may have thought that, that I was saying, oh look, students love me. I stuck them on my wall because when I was having bad days, I would notice them and I would remember why I do what I do. So it was very much positive reinforcement of tiny wins for me. I'm sure some people had opinions about it, but I knew that I benefited from it and I knew that some people probably had opinions about it, that I was trying to demonstrate how popular I was with the students. That's fine, they can have opinions. But the bit I had underestimated until somebody said it to me was the extent to which they also served as inspiration for my students. So I had a gorgeous personal tutee who I loved. She was a really, really lovely girl. And she didn't have many particular problems [00:14:00] as we went through and stuff, but she was good at turning up for her personal tutorials, which anyone who's personal tutor will know that's not necessarily expected. So I knew her reasonably well anyway, when she was ready to graduate. And it was her final post, final personal tutor meeting of her degree program. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She came to see me and she'd got a card and that was really, really lovely and she said to me, I remember coming in here for my very first personal tutor meeting, and I looked at all those cards and the first thing I thought was that I'm gonna be well looked after, because if all these students are saying thank you, then I'm gonna be well looked after. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the second thing I thought was that I can't believe in three years time I am gonna be giving her a thank you card having done my degree, it feels like such a big thing. I can't believe I'm gonna get there. But seeing those cards reminded me that I will. And she said, and every time I come from my personal tutorials, I look at the cards and I think I'm going to give you a thank you card. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When I finished my degree [00:15:00] and it became her, like it was her symbol that she was going to get there, and I had no idea. They had never been put up with that intention. But that little mini celebration of myself, that little mini, I'm proud of the impact I've had, that little mini, I want to remind myself of this, when things are tough was also unbeknownst to me acting as inspiration for somebody else. And anytime you celebrate anything, that is also true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if I've sold you on, then it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but there might be benefits from it. What are ways that we can celebrate without this sense that we are bragging about ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first question I want to ask you is, what would be a really you way to celebrate? And you might be going, the you way to do it would be not celebrating, but if we look at you and the things that make you different, the things that make you interesting, the things that make you, you, what might be a really you way to celebrate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As an example, I was celebrating a good [00:16:00] launch last summer. I went for a flying trapeze lesson. I can't think of anything more me than going for a flying trapeze lesson. It's something that people go, what really? At your age about, it's something I'm not. I'm o, I mean, I say I'm okay at it. I'm okay at flying trapeze compared to the population. I am not okay at flying trapeze compared to flying trapeze people, but compared to most people, I've done it a few times. I can vaguely. Do it. Um, if people want me to, you have to have to reply to my emails and tell me you want this. If you want me to, I will post a video on Instagram at some point and you can see my best catches anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I booked that, that was a very me thing to do. That might, that is probably not a very you thing to do, although if it is, I recommend it. It's incredible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what would be a very you way to celebrate? Are you a crafter? Could you make something to commemorate your success? Could you, you know. Do a little embroidery or make a piece of art or something like that. I [00:17:00] also did that. I don't even know where it is now actually, which is bad. I'm looking around my office madly. I made a piece of art to celebrate the people that entered my very first round of the quarterly membership, so I did that as a little mini celebration 'cause I love craft too. What could be things that just make you stay in that moment a little bit longer and commemorate it in some way so that you are sort of spending more time on it at the time, and so that it's something that you think about more regularly than you would if you haven't got something that exists like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the nice thing is it can be different every time. I tend to do something different every time, 'cause you know my brain. But you might find that you wanna be somebody who has a little tradition that maybe you do a little mini cross stitch every time you get a paper published or you add a crochet tile to, to a blanket every time you get a paper published or something, um, they might have to be quite big. 'cause otherwise that's gonna take a while to make a blanket unless you're a genius, but you get [00:18:00] my point, right? You can set up little traditions where you do something like that. I've seen people get their abstracts printed onto mugs and things like that so that they remember when they got their first paper published, for example.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Could you start or continue some sort of collection? So if they're, you know, I don't know by yourself, a little Lego figure for every time you get a new paper or each time you get an achievement of some description. I keep my, I Haven hadn't even thought about this celebration, but it's totally true. I have a whole row of champagne bottles in my lounge. People always think I'm an absolute alcoholic, but they represent many different achievements generally in my life. So I've got one from when I got my undergrad degree. I've got one from when I got my PhD. I've got a couple from two different PhD students. So my first PhD student and then another PhD student bought me a bottle of champagne. So I'm gonna keep it. I've got it from when I got my professorship, that was a little tiny one 'cause it was during the pandemic and so I was on my own and one of my best friends came and put it on [00:19:00] my door step and then retreated an appropriate distance with a party popper. So that was a mini one. And so I always remember that that one's my professorial one 'cause I drank it on my own. Could you start little mini collections of something that you only get when you've got some sort of big achievement? And these don't have to be big, expensive things, right? In fact, often it being something little that kind of accumulates over time can be a really nice way of doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Essentially what we're trying to do is you celebrate as the verb that means to recognize and make special. It doesn't have to be shouting about it to other people. If you find the idea of telling other people really uncomfortable, then you know, I think we should probably coach on that. But we can start from these kind of quiet personal celebrations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing is they can be a route to sharing, right? 'cause it's very different matter what you think. You're scrolling LinkedIn and you're saying, I'm happy to announce blah, I'm happy to announce blah, and you're going, yeah, whatever. [00:20:00] Anyway. Or then somebody posts, um, I dunno. Here is a cushion I made to celebrate getting promoted, whatever. It's such a different vibe, right? People are gonna engage with that in a Oh, it's beautiful. You are so clever. Oh, and by the way, congrats on that. It's gonna change the nature of the interaction.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Others of you, you might be like, I'm not crafty. I don't make things. That's okay. Let's make it memorable in other ways. So maybe you love hiking. Okay. Maybe every time you get a big celebration in your life, paper, published, promotion, whatever, you hike a new hill. So some new summit that you haven't been up to before, maybe you take with you the paper. So you have a photo of yourself at the top of a hill with the paper pointing at it grinning like a maniac. So that you've got a memory and a photo where you are doing something very you to celebrate it. Maybe, you know, you're a canoeist, you go to a new river every time you get published or something. Anything that makes it memorable, [00:21:00] recognizable, where you are commemorating it in that way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I also mentioned that the other really important reason to celebrate is so that we can properly learn from the experience, and this is not to take the joy out of it, right? I don't want you to be like, oh, this is a learning experience. But we dissect our fails. What should I have done beforehand to avoid this? What should I have done during it? How could I have been better? How can I be less crap next time? I want you to bring that level of forensic analysis, but I want you to bring it positively to your wins. This is something I do in the coaching sessions all the time, and I can see people get uncomfortable with it because it feels weird to talk about it, but I promise it is super, super rewarding and that is I want you, when you have had a paper published, when you have got promoted, anything like that, I want you to ask yourself, what strengths did I bring? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then enabled this to happen. If it helps you feel less uncomfortable, also [00:22:00] express gratitude for the support that you got. But I want at least as much time on what am I grateful that I did? What strengths did I bring to this? What difficulties did I overcome in order to achieve this? What can I take from this to move forward? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, and I want that. What can I take from this to move forward to be two different elements? Firstly, how can I replicate what I did? So where did I use my strengths? Where did I overcome difficulties in a way that I liked and in a way that feels sustainable so that I can replicate that? How can I basically reinforce that this is evidence that I know how to do this thing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second bit that I want you to do though is I also want you to notice where you achieve this in ways that aren't how you want to achieve things in future, because some of us are still a little bit stuck in that I achieved it, but I beat myself up, I [00:23:00] worked hours that weren't sustainable, but I hated that were unhealthy, I thought in unhealthy ways, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So we also get to learn from, if I achieved it in ways that aren't how I want to achieve things in future, what can I learn from those lessons? Okay, but don't go straight to that. Strengths first. Okay. Strengths first. What you're proud of first. And I want you to talk to somebody else about it or write about it or speak into a voice note recorder about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anything that really kind of emphasizes that stuff so that it really reinforces it in your mind. You then, if you have got a kind of planning and review process, like the one that I teach in my membership I want you to insert this into there, okay? I want you to have some notes. These are strengths I used when I achieved my last thing, so these are things I want to do more often, and you can build that into your planning and review process. Finally, and I suspect most of you [00:24:00] are a long way from this, but finally I wanna reiterate the same advice I gave the people who were actually in danger of appearing a bit arrogant, which is we try not to associate our wins with our self-worth. So what I want you to be doing, I want you to be celebrating the wins for the fun of achieving those wins. For the fact it was a challenge and you met the challenge and you made it happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we don't want to do is take lessons of, this is evidence I fit in academia. This is evidence I deserve to be here. This is evidence that I am a worthy person, because the downside of that, if you use objective achievement as evidence that you are a worthy person. If you have. A period of time where you have fewer objective achievements, then you are gonna use that as evidence that you are not a worthy person, that you don't deserve to be in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You all deserve to be in academia. You are all capable of being in [00:25:00] academia. So we wanna separate those two things out so that we are super happy that this thing's happen. 'cause isn't that fun and exciting and it's out in the world and I'm doing my thing. Yay. And yeah, it showed some of the strengths that I have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it's not the reason I deserve to be here, and it's not the reason I'm a worthwhile person. All those things, I have intrinsic worth. I don't need to achieve things in order to have intrinsic worth. And so I want you to make sure that when you are celebrating, we're staying in the, I'm celebrating this fun thing that I've put out there that I'm really proud of, not, oh, finally, I'm good enough. Finally, people might believe that I'm enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, if that side is something that you really, really struggle with, then that is a little bit of evidence that maybe you need some coaching and you could consider looking at the membership in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final tip, and this is true for everybody, the best way to feel comfortable about celebrating yourself is to celebrate everybody else at the same volume you celebrate yourself. If we all [00:26:00] celebrate each other's successes, if we all spend more time feeling proud of others, reminding them of their strengths, emphasizing, commemorating, making memorable their achievements, then partly it just makes it such a nicer place to be. And then it also makes it much easier to celebrate our own successes 'cause it all just feels like the same tone, right? We are people who celebrate, so celebrate each other's successes, celebrate your own successes, and let's make academia feel like a much more fun and pleasant place to be making these achievements and making our contributions to the world. I hope that's useful. Let me know what you think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have any questions or wanna let me know what you think, you can always reply to my newsletter, or if you're not signed up, you know how to do it. Go to my website, PhD life coach.com. You'll find a sign up for my community button right there on the front and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 24 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-13-how-to-celebrate-big-wins-without-getting-too-big-for-your-boots thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-12-what-the-celebrity-traitors-taught-me-about-imposter-syndrome <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> THIS EPISODE CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS!! Imposter syndrome is top of my mind at the moment because it’s the focus of my membership this quarter. I’m also utterly obsessed with The Traitors and have been loving the UK Celebrity Traitors which just finished. If you want to hear how the final five (and the winner in particular) made me reflect on imposter syndrome, and hear my tenuous links to an academic context, then check out this episode! If you haven’t seen it, and have no intention of watching it, no worries - you’ll still get some useful insight into overcoming imposter syndrome!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out “ <a href="http://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/14435182-eight-things-that-phd-students-and-academics-can-learn-from-the-traitors" target="_blank"> eight things PhD students and academics can learn from The Traitors </a> ”. I am apparently obsessed….  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I'm so excited because I'm gonna talk about my favorite topic, but I promise I'm going to try and make it relevant to PhD students in surviving academia and all that stuff. As usual, the topic, as some of you will know or suspect at least, is Celebrity Traitors. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am mildly obsessed by like social deduction, reality TV type game. So I'm not so into the sort of let's get married ones, although I have watched those too. Not mocking anyone who watches those, but my favorites are the ones where there's a game, there's a puzzle, there's deceit. They're having to kind of figure each other out. There's challenges and just lots and lots of shenanigans. To give you an example of quite how obsessed I am, when I knew Celebrity Traitors was coming out in October, and I was super excited about it, I rewatched [00:01:00] all series of the UK Traitors, all series of Australian Traitors, all series of New Zealand and i'm currently on season two of US Traitors and I'd like to emphasize rewatching now. Any of you're like, hang on Vikki. How do you have time to do that? Is 'cause I have them on while I'm doing other things. I'm a TV while cooking TV while cleaning my teeth sort of a girl. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway. So suffice to say I'm a little bit obsessed and we were all super excited about Celebrity Traitors here in the UK because whilst many of the people may not be globally famous, international students you may not know who they were, in the UK, this was quite the lineup. This was not yet average. I'm a celebrity, get me outta here, kind of are you really a celebrity kind of vibe. These were proper celebs and it was super, super exciting. It lived up to absolutely everything that I wanted it to be, and to be honest, all the way through, I was like, where's a little tenuous [00:02:00] connection to academia that I can use as an excuse to do another Traitors episode? Because if you haven't seen, oh, you did already do a Traitors episode, a year or two ago when it was series two on in the uk, the Harry and Paul series. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, so if you haven't checked that out, make sure you check it out. I'll link it in the show notes for you. But I really wanted there to be some tenuous reason for me to talk about traitors on the show, and I had to wait all the way to the finale, not just the actual final, but the spinoff show, Uncloaked actual finale, where they had all the celebrities in a theater like celebrating their finale and blah, blah, blah, and talking about their experience. It took me all the way to there. Then I saw it, and then from there I was just super, super excited and that is what we're gonna talk about today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first thing before we go any further, big warning, huge spoilers. Huge. So especially if you are not in the UK [00:03:00] and you are gonna watch the Traitors at some point when it comes out in your country or you are not up to date. Massive spoilers. I'm gonna talk about the winner. Um, so winner or winners, um, in case you haven't turned off yet. So if you do not want to know what happens in Celebrity Traitors, you have to save this episode for another day. Short version. Everyone feels like an imposter and it's not true. There you go. That's the short version. You can now leave without having any spoilers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My second request is at the end of this episode, I'm gonna talk about what I'm waiting for next, which is Irish Traitors, which is gonna come out in the UK any minute. We've been promised it in November. I'm super excited. If anyone spoils it for me, I will cry and I dunno what else, but you'll make me sad. So don't please do not spoil it. I'm aware that it has already been broadcast in Ireland. It is probably already been broadcast [00:04:00] in other places. I am super in love with the host, they're amazing, and I'm just really, really excited about it. So please don't, spoil it, please. Thank you. Appreciate it. Right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what was the moment? The moment was when the winner, alan Carr was being interviewed have immediately after he left the castle, so this wasn't like live in the finale. He was being interviewed immediately after he'd left the castle as he had just won. Celebrity Traitors and Ed Gamble was asking him about his experience and whether he thought that he was gonna win, and he conceded that um, I love this so much, that apparently his agent had booked jobs for him during the second week of the filming because they'd all assumed that he would be knocked out by then. And so he was starting to hint at this sense that he hadn't expected to do well. You know, this sense that he wasn't gonna be good at it and things and my little brain was like, Ooh, [00:05:00] imposter syndrome. Um. But then it went further and he said, and I've got it. Actually, I recorded it into my voice recorder so I have a transcript. It's possible I have too much time on my hands. Go with it. It's all good. And he said when Stephen Fry talks, or David, now David is, David Olusoga, who's an academic, a celebrity academic who is on the show and got into the final five. He says, I go quiet. I'm not worthy. I'm not intelligent, but I've learned maybe sometimes you do need to question stand up for yourself. And Ed said, well I think you winning has absolutely proved that and Alan said "idiots can do well". Some of you'll know that I'm not considering, I am actively going to do merch that you guys are gonna be able to buy. Um, idiots can, well might be one of the greats. 'cause I feel like it kind. Sums up what we all need to hear sometimes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when I heard this, my heart just went out [00:06:00] to him. So for context, those of you who are not based in the uk, I have no idea how globally famous Alan Carr is. Probably not at all 'cause I get the vibe he's very British, but he's. Like big, big, chat show, host, presenter, um, you know, he would be hosting like Saturday Night Live or something like that if he was in the US. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> He's hilarious. He is also one of the guest judges on RuPaul's Drag Race. He's had tons of different series of his own. He is a big name. This is not a sort of C list celebrity. And the fact that when he's then around other celebrities and particularly celebrities who are well known for being very intelligent, he is having this sense that he doesn't have anything to say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you've seen it, he actually like almost shrinks in on himself. He's like shoulders round and his head goes down. He almost like folds in like, I don't have anything to say when these intelligent people are there. And I just found it fascinating. This man's job is [00:07:00] talking to other people as well as being a comedian in his own right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it just really struck me that if someone like Alan Carr can feel like that, then anyone can feel like that. It actually reminded me of another story, which is not quite imposter syndrome, but it made me laugh. And if there are any parents out there, I feel like you'll appreciate this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I saw Michelle Obama being interviewed about her daughters and the interviewer said something like, they must be so grateful to have all your wise advice and help. You know, that's such a privilege to have you as a parent. And she just started laughing and was like, are you kidding? She's like they think I'm an idiot. They don't listen to a word I say. I try and give them advice and they laugh. And then I say, people pay me millions of dollars for my advice. And they're like, yes, shut up, mom. And I'm just like, I'm done. This is great. If my stepchildren don't take me seriously, it's fine. Michelle Obama's kids don't take her [00:08:00] seriously either. Loved it. Anyway so it just really struck me that imposter syndrome can hit anybody at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And from there I thought, you know what, Vik, you could probably stretch just that thought to a whole episode. But is there anything else in the Traitors that has something to say about imposter syndrome? And it made me reflect on the final five. So those of you familiar with Traitors, the people that get through to the final really are kind of treated as winners in their own right? Yeah. It's the next step to be the one who wins the money. But if you make it to the final five, then that means you've done. All the missions you've seen off like 15, 20 other people, you are to all extents and purposes a winner. And particularly in this celebrity version where, you know, they were doing it for the money was for charity, not for themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then really what these people win is exposure. If they are in need of further exposure in their career and things like that. Making it to the Final Five really, really counts as winning in this context. [00:09:00] And I looked at the photos of the people who made it to the final five -more spoilers coming up- and it just struck me what a range of people it was. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What different approaches they had taken to the game. How personalitily, is that a word? I don't think that's a word. How personalitily and demographically they were very different from each other. Yet somehow they had all succeeded in their own way and they all seem to adore each other. That's one of the things, if any of you don't watch The Traitors 'cause you don't like the nastiness watch this version, 'cause they're gorge. They all adore each other. It didn't make them bad at finding traitors. It had to be said, but they just all adore each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we had Alan Carr, the eventual winner who is giggling [00:10:00] and blushing. The dude couldn't even say, I am a faithful with a straight face without starting giggling yet somehow he still got away with it and won the entire competition. Okay. He is bumbling. He is hilarious. He is the exact opposite of cool, calm and collected, yet he was the one that carried out, well, two proper murders in plain sight, plus another one where they met on the chess board overnight. Obviously, as you do, and so managed to show that somebody who appears to be just a silly guy who's got no idea what's going on, actually was running the entire show under the surface. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we had Cat, Cat Burns the singer, who was the other traitor, and I think Cat Burns was pretty famous around amongst young people, amongst the youth , but she's not a household name by any stretch until now. [00:11:00] She is now very much a household name, and Cat Burns is literally the opposite of in terms of demeanor of Alan Carr. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She is calm, she is cool. She keeps her head. She can kind of fly under the radar a little bit, but people really like her so they don't criticize her for it. She talked quite a lot about being autistic and about feeling socially awkward and needing time to herself and not being sure whether she was gonna be able to play these sorts of social deduction games when she usually finds people exhausting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And she came all the way to the final and she did absolutely amazing. And in fact, pretty much everyone who came out beforehand had nothing but amazing things to say about how she was, the type of person she was and what an incredible job she was doing as a traitor. In fact, she was many people's pick for the [00:12:00] winner. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we had David Olusoga, who is an academic. He's not, again, not super famous before this obviously a celebrity, but not super, super famous before this, he's got various TV shows where he talks about clever history related things, and he is. cool, calm and collected, but in a very different way from Cat. Cat is cool as well, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She's a musician, she's young, she's fashionable, she's very, very on trend, um, in the sorts of way where she doesn't follow trends. She kind of sets trends. David is very intellectual, very deep thinking. He's quite quiet. He wasn't as insightful as he thought he was gonna be. I think it's fair to say, but he got this far, right, and he was one of those people who really took his time to think things through often. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think we think that cleverness is kind of a, quickness is the first one to understand something. He was much more of a, I need to [00:13:00] carefully ponder this kind of man, and he was amazing. He was probably I don't know my age, a little bit older, that kind of vibe. Lots of sort of slightly older people in this, which I think really, really added to the sense that this program was for absolutely everybody. So he took a very, very different route to the final. He'd been kind of accused a couple of times, but then managed to talk his way out of it. Again, not in a smarmy way, just in a kind of calm and considered way, presenting sort of feasible alternatives. He got a little bit of luck with the draw. That's a whole other story that we don't have time for, but it's good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So he, again, a third really different character. And then we meet Nick Mohamed, who I adore at a level that is probably slightly unhealthy. You may have seen him in Ted Lasso. You may have seen him on Task Master. He is glorious. I adore him. He is how somebody [00:14:00] manages to be like the sweetest politest way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The only way I can describe it is his mom must be so proud of him. In the very first thing before even the challenges started, they had to dig for a shield in their own grave, and he went and dug Celia's grave for her because, he didn't want her to have to do her own digging. So he looked for a shield for Celia before he'd even found his own shield. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the type of man he is. He's then ludicrously talented. You know, he just, oh, I play the violin. Who knew? He's a comedian, he's a magician. He's in the magic circle. When it got to the puzzle bits, he was just like, just let me, and did all the puzzles and like two seconds flat and. At the same time, he's just gloriously sweet and kind and humble, and I adore him, but he's very different from all of the others. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Super intelligent like the others, but just very sort of personable and [00:15:00] understated. All about the personal relationships. Really insightful. It still baffles me that he messed it up at the final stage. He got almost too clever at the final stage. But he has just secured himself as the nation's darling. I think it's fair to say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then finally last but certainly not least, was Joe Marla, huge rugby player, he's got big beard, he's massive, he's got cauliflower ears. He's hilarious. He is the king of the kind of one-liner put down that he has just enough twinkle in his eye to get away with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he played the game completely differently to any of them. He was, as you would probably expect, unbelievably competitive, unbelievably determined, really insightful, could totally spot not just what people were doing, but also what the people who made the program were likely to have chosen. So he came up with a whole big dog theory. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he really [00:16:00] went hard on several of the traitors, and in fact, he knew who the traitors were. He just got super unlucky at the end. But he was a very, very different person. And it was just looking at physically, they're very different people. Joe Marler is a man mountain, Nick Hamed is miniature . You see them together, they're a whole range of ethnicities. They range of genders, they range of sexualities, and you see them all together and you're like, there's no way. How can you have one competition that all five of these very different people essentially excel at and where they all love each other and where they've all got completely different strengths that they're bringing to it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yet they all belong in something really important. And I think that's really important for us all to recognize 'cause I think sometimes we have this conception that there's a particular way you have to be to succeed in [00:17:00] academia and that there's a particular type of behavior, the particular personality style, a particular intellect style, a particular demographic, sometimes too, and. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think this just really personified in that setting something that I see in academia, which is that that is simply not true. There are things that are traditionally more rewarded. That is for sure, and I'm gonna talk about some unconscious bias stuff in a minute, because this imperfect in traitors or in academia. But there is a whole variety of ways to succeed. There is a whole variety of personalities right at the very top of academia. There is a whole variety of personalities and skills that are succeeding and doing really well in academia.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Remembering that what we really need to be is the best version of ourselves and bring that to academia, I think can be a great way of reducing and in time overcoming, our imposter syndrome. I get to [00:18:00] be the very best version of myself and bring that to academia.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now even amongst those that didn't make it to the top, so let's count the final five as like the professoriate, right? That they made full professor, they got tenure. That's the equivalent. There was a whole load of other people that participated in the game, participated in my academia metaphor, who didn't make it to the top, but had incredibly successful games. I mean, no one is going to forget Charlotte Church on her knees, in her white dress digging the grave, trying to look for shield covering herself in mud. Plunging her head into the well to listen to the music. If anybody threw themselves into that game, it was Charlotte Church. Everyone will remember her for that. Everyone will love her for that. Even though she didn't go all the way to the final five, she had a hugely successful game. Celia Imrie, I [00:19:00] said to my sister, what would I do if I told you this before? I can't remember. Might, should have done anyway, going with it. I said to my sister, Celia Imrie got called a queen and an icon in traces, and I said, what do I need to do to be called a queen and an icon? And the Lindsay said, I think it's too late already, Vikki, which I was hurt by. But Celia Imrie is, she's got 30 years on me, I reckon in 30 years I can do something to be called a queen and an icon. Anyway, I digress. Celia Imrie, amazing actress, known for being like super posh, super amazing actress friends with all my Judy Dench and all that lot like literally girl dreams. Who knew she was hilarious? Who knew that she was going to absolutely carry it there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We had a castle full of comedians and Celia Imrie was the one that on multiple occasions made people laugh more than anything else. If you're not familiar with the fart incident, you need to check it out online 'cause I'm not even gonna describe it 'cause it's too [00:20:00] good. And you need to see the video version if you haven't already. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um. My favorite was her honesty and authenticity. When it came, they were doing quizzes about who was the most, you know, who's leader of the pack and all that stuff. And they said, who's the most two-faced? And this is the one no one wants to receive. And Celia just shoved her hand up and goes, oh, I think that's me. I tell people I like them all the time, and I don't really, just the best thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I love her. She didn't win. She should have win. She was robbed. Alan, I'm not forgiving you for that one. But she went in there with people thinking she was one thing, demonstrating that she was something else and massively, massively winning in a metaphorical sense, the game in the sense that the entire country adores her. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And once this goes international, it has already, I'm sure to some extent. Everybody is going to completely adore her and just again, demonstrated a completely different way of [00:21:00] succeeding in this game. Now, was it perfect? I adore the traitors, but it has issues, issues that I believe are not specific to traitors, but that actually reflect the world that we live in, which is that there is a really, really troubling tendency across the entire traitors franchise for the people that are, eliminated initially to be disproportionately people of color, people who are not straight or not cisgender , people with disabilities. Essentially, people who are different in some way to others, and I don't actually believe that in the vast majority of cases that people are consciously saying, I am gonna eliminate the people who are different to me, or I don't want those people here. But what I think is happening, which happens in life as well, is this unconscious bias where if somebody is different to you, you give them less benefit of the [00:22:00] doubt than if they're more similar to you. And I think this is what happens a lot of the time in the traitors is that if somebody, so for example, we've had people who have later told us they have autism things being eliminated first. For example, when if at the beginning of the game you've got very little to go on. Somebody behaving in a way that seems a little odd to you, can be enough reason for them to go. Now in celebrity traitors this had another level to it. 'cause it had a level of celebrity hierarchy to it as well. 'cause I think it's fair to say that whilst it was a way better lineup than any of us anticipated, there was still a range and a range, not just in degrees of famousness but also in terms of who you were famous with. And I think it was apparent that the people who were either slightly less famous or who were more famous to younger people, so people who were famous through YouTube and things like [00:23:00] that went earlier than people that were kind of household multi-generational names. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think that's mirrored in academia too. I think there is a tendency that if people conform to the what might be considered the sort of norm, I guess, or the historic norm , people who conform more closely to that or people who have hierarchy and prestige on their side are given the benefit of the doubt more, or it's assumed that they fit and therefore these other people who are a little bit different maybe don't fit so much. And I think unfortunately, the same sorts of biases are very much true in academia. This is not the episode for a whole, how to deal with that. Maybe that's an episode I'll do in future. It's something that I'm addressing in the membership at the moment. What to do if people treat you like you're an imposter. I will translate some of that into a future episode. Give you a little glimpse of the sorts of things we do inside the membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the [00:24:00] short version is that we don't beat ourselves up for experiencing it. Sometimes we can kind of gaslight ourselves that it's not real. Let's not beat ourselves up. That is evidence of intrinsic biases, unconscious biases in. Academia, there absolutely is. There's evidence of conscious bias in academia, so if you are experiencing it isn't just the figment of your imagination, however, what we do get to choose with support and love 'cause this is not straightforward. We get to choose how and if we internalize that, whether we make that mean that yes, we actually don't belong in academia and how we choose to respond, to what extent we choose to advocate, to what extent we choose to ignore. We get to make those decisions from a intentional place so that we show up as the best versions of ourselves as well. And importantly to recognize how we get support to do that. Because I do not believe that this is something that is for the people who are being discriminated against to solve on their own. These are structural [00:25:00] issues that we all should be trying to reduce. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So. Celebrity Traitors is not perfect. Academia is not perfect, but both are settings where a whole variety of different types of people can and do succeed. This has given me the perfect excuse to whitter about Celebrity Traitors to you all. I did a workshop last week. We got talking about Celebrity Traitors in the break. 'Cause it was the day of the final that evening. So at that stage we didn't know who'd won. We talked for so long, I forgot to start the next session and we had to run over. Oops. Anyway. It was super exciting. I hope you enjoyed listening to me squealing. I hope most of it was audible. I'm told that sometimes I'm only audible to dogs when I get excited. I hope all you can hear everything that I wasn't squeaking too badly. I hope you're excited about watching Irish traitors if you are based here in the uk and it is coming out to you soon too. No spoilers. Anybody. Please don't make me [00:26:00] cry. If you have any questions about imposter syndrome, make sure you're on my newsletter. You can just reply to that, ask me questions, and I will answer them in future episodes. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.  </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 17 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-12-what-the-celebrity-traitors-taught-me-about-imposter-syndrome thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-11-why-my-phone-addiction-confession-might-help-you-too <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> This week I’m confessing my dirty secrets. Have a listen and compare your screen time to mine! I talk through why I’m unhappy with my current phone usage, why I’m not beating myself and what I’m doing instead. If you’ve ever felt like you can only change by “being more disciplined” or “criticising yourself into wanting it enough” then this is an important episode for you. I might not have a success to report back yet in terms of reducing my phone usage, but I’m feeling very proud of how I’m going about this challenge!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out “ <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/11640476-5-how-accepting-where-you-are-is-the-first-step-to-getting-where-you-want-to-be" target="_blank"> how accepting where you are is the first step to getting where you want to be </a> ”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] I hadn't decided that I was gonna talk about this, but I've decided I'm gonna, I feel like it's something that lots you gonna empathize with and I. I'm gonna tell you some secrets that I'm hoping my mother won't listen to and what I'm gonna do about it. So let's go. Welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and I am talking mobile phone usage. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm recording this on the 3rd of November. It'll be coming to you in what, a week's time? Something like that. So it's a weird time for New Year's resolutions, right? But. I've just, I've reached a point where I have so many things that I want to do and where I really want something to change with my phone use, and I'm gonna share with you today [00:01:00] why that is. I'm gonna share numbers, which makes me want to cry, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I'm gonna share numbers. I'm gonna share my screen time numbers and all that sort of jazz. I'm gonna tell you why I think it's. A problem why I am bringing a lot of compassion to myself. So I'm gonna try and demonstrate how I'm practicing what I preach with all of this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm also gonna tell you what I am doing about it. And whilst I don't believe in sort of external accountability, I do hope that by sharing this with you and potentially updating you on my journey as I go through it, it might be interesting for all of us, so let's crack it out. Let's crack my gorgeous little phone here out which wastes far too much of my time and let's go to screen time. We are going to screen time, see all app. So we'll go week. Why not last week's average, I don't even [00:02:00] wanna say it out loud. Last week's daily average was six hours and 54 minutes. Before that it was 5 44, 6 11. So it's that kind of ballpark of which last week, apparently I spent 12 hours on Instagram. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm just. Outraged. In fact, when you throw in Facebook as well, it becomes 15 and a half hours. I'm not gonna count WhatsApp, WhatsApp's talking to my friends. Talking to my friends is important. This makes me wanna vomit, genuinely makes me wanna vomit. I am somebody who feels like she has a hundred thousand things she wants to do. There's things I want to do for my business. There's things I want to do for my health. There's hobbies, there's interests, there's friends. And I don't tell myself I'm too busy as much as I used to, but I do tell myself I'm too busy [00:03:00] and I'm doing that, and I'm gonna bring a whole load of self-compassion 'cause I'm feeling the judgment in myself. Even as I talk to you about this today. I'm not unusual, right? I am pretty confident if you guys open up your screen time now, there'll be a whole bunch of you. There'll be a whole bunch of you, probably parents who are going, what, how on earth. And there'll be others of you going, mate, you should see mine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? So I'm well aware there's a whole range of this. I'm also well aware that this isn't by chance, right? These things have been designed specifically to engage us, to draw us in, to keep our eyes on their information so that they get our information and so they can sell us stuff. So I am not holding this up as a me being weak or me being stupid or lazy or any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I genuinely don't make it mean those things about myself. And I [00:04:00] have been quite careful in curating what I look at. So some of you, yeah, I'm sure you've all heard the phrase doom scrolling, and I'm sure a lot of you do engage in it. I do a little tiny bit. So I follow this. Have you seen the, there's, there's a brother and sister on Instagram who are very liberal and their parents are very right wing and they interview them essentially so I do scroll things like that sometimes. I'm not gonna give you links. You can find them if you are going to spend more time online. So I do doom scroll, things like that from time to time. I do look at the news from time to time, but it's mostly not that right. I've quite carefully curated, particularly my Instagram feed, so that it is essentially hobbies that I like and dogs, lots of dogs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The problem is that I'm spending far more hours looking at pictures of dogs than playing with my dog or looking at people doing circus tricks than [00:05:00] practicing my circus tricks or looking at people doing calisthenics than doing my calisthenics or looking at people doing art than doing my art, et cetera. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Can you tell, I have a lot of hobbies. You hopefully know that about me already. And so whilst i'm not blaming myself and whilst I'm not kind of beating myself up in a sort of, you're so weak and stupid sort of a way, I do also wanna take control over this because this is not what I want my future self to be like. I wanna be able to do some fun stuff. You know, when I'm, if I'm laying on the sofa, showing my husband cute dog videos, I wanna do that. Sometimes It's cute. We laugh together, we enjoy it. It's fun. But if I'm designing my dream day, my dream day doesn't start with an hour scrolling, and my dream day isn't punctuated by scrolling all the way through the day, and it doesn't end with an hour scrolling. [00:06:00] So that's one big reason. This is not what I want my future to look like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another reason is I've become increasingly aware of when I grab my phone and I grab my phone when I haven't made a decision about something else. So when it's not clear what else I want to be doing and I grab my phone when something gets difficult. So I do genuinely, you know, I'm being really open with you here, right? Because I think you guys value that. But I think it's useful to know that somebody who gives you lots of advice doesn't have it all figured out. I notice that if I'm saying, oh, should I do this or should I do that? Should I write it like this? Or write it like that? I grab my phone and the only explanation is I'm grabbing my phone to avoid the mild, and it's only mild discomfort [00:07:00] of not knowing what I'm gonna say or not having decided what I'm gonna say or not having decided how I'm gonna do something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the other thing that scares me is how often I go on my phone to do one thing and then 15 minutes later, get back to what I was doing and realize I never did the thing I intended to do on my, you know, I'm going on my phone to check the weather for tomorrow or something, and I come back 15 minutes later and I've, you know, I've answered something on LinkedIn. I've liked somebody's, whatever, and I've, you know, just double checked my emails for no reason whatsoever. It is just so unintentional, and when I spend so much time talking to you guys about time blocking and being intentional, and I do that stuff right and I'm much, much better at time blocking than I used to be. But those interstitial spaces, those [00:08:00] gaps between the blocks and sometimes in the blocks, I'm not gonna lie, but mostly between those blocks are pretty full of phone time, and I think it becomes a crutch. I think it becomes something to look at, to avoid thinking about anything else. You know, I pull it out in queues. I pull out on the train. I pull out when I just finished driving before I go into the house. I'm told that might be an A DHD thing, right? That trouble with like transitioning from one area to another. And so again, I see that with kind of curiosity rather than judgment, but it does slightly freak me out how, if you ask me how many times I've picked up my phone in the last hour, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I have no idea. Half the time I don't even notice I've done it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've [00:09:00] decided I want it to change, and I'm a big believer that one of the best ways to make things change is to make it easier for yourself. I used to think that the key was to be better. I just needed to be more disciplined next time. I just needed to be stronger next time. And in reality, I don't think that's true. In reality I think we need to make these things easier, especially when we're up against something that is technically designed to draw you in. And that is, you know, filled with a perfectly curated a load of stuff you're interested in. Of course, we need to make this easier and so I wanted to share with you what I'm gonna try and I'll give you an update and we will see how we go in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the things I'm gonna try, I already got myself a little. I already got myself a Fitbit. Joby. Garmin, that's the word. Which means that if my phone isn't with me, then I [00:10:00] hear it go off 'cause it buzzes on my wrist. And that's helped a little bit, but my phone is still almost always with me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I decided that I needed to try something a bit more extreme than that. And I am trying, and I'm telling you right now, ain't doing a review 'cause it hasn't even arrived yet. But I will share, I'm trying one of these Brick joby, the little, little devices where you can tap it and it bricks your phone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can decide which apps it blocks, and then in order to, um, un brick it, you have to tap it back on the thing. And for me, that is a, it's not a barrier, right? I could just walk back to the brick and unbrick it whenever I wanted. For me, it gives a definitive decision that I'm not using my phone for a period of time, and it is also forcing me to think, encouraging me to think, I should say, encouraging me to [00:11:00] think about when do I actually wanna check my phone because this is one thing in my life where I get a bit all or nothing, and I go, well, I, why would I want to spend any time scrolling? This is ridiculous. It would be stupid to block an hour of my day to scroll, Instagram. Why on earth would I do that? Completely separate from the fact that I usually do that before 7:00 AM. Um, so. What I'm hoping, and the way I'm planning to use it, is to make it so that I'm much more intentional about whether I'm intending to use my phone during that time period or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not gonna set any automated things. You can set it so it comes on at particular times a day and all that sort of stuff. I'm not going to do that at first. I'm gonna experiment with it a bit, but my intention at the moment is to use it to physically tap, I'm gonna allow WhatsApp still come through 'cause [00:12:00] connecting with my friends is very important to me. That's not the bit that I'm worried about. Spending too much time doing chattering on WhatsApp, that feels worth it to me. I'm gonna block the things that lead to unintentional scrolling. I'm gonna block Facebook. I'm gonna block Instagram. Thank goodness I never started TikTok. Thank goodness Elon ruined Twitter for me. That used to take hours of my life too. But that's gone. I am gonna block Rightmove as well. I'm not moving house guys. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I moved house like three years ago. I have a very bad Rightmove habit of just looking at houses that I'm never gonna afford and I don't like covet them. I just make plans as to, oh, I'd put this in there and I'd put this in there and Oh, that wouldn't work 'cause I couldn't possibly not have two studies or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm gonna block Rightmove as well. And I'm gonna try and be really intentional and I'm gonna try and kind of experiment with it. 'cause I can already feel my brain overthinking of well, exactly when will you block it and what exactly when will you not and [00:13:00] dah, dah, dah. I'm gonna try and be experimental with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the other thing I'm gonna be really clear about, and this is the bit that I'm naturally very good at, is what do I want to do with that time? Because I think it's one thing to tell yourself to stop doing something, but you also have to decide what you are going to do with that time, and I am really excited to actually go a lot more analog. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So often what I do is I'm looking on Instagram for inspiration to do some fun art or crafts or something. Well, I've got a ton of art books. I've got a brain, I've got a ton of art materials. I don't need a phone to do that. I watch people doing circus tutorials. Well, I've got a load of circus toys. I know some stuff. I've got some books. I've got friends who do this. I can. You know, I can figure out that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Calisthenics, I don't need, I don't need some guy off the internet telling me how to do pushups. I have been physically active my entire life. I have a [00:14:00] PhD in sport and exercise sciences, which was, it wasn't specific to that. I used to teach anatomy for God's sake. I know how to do this stuff. I know how to broadly, not at specialist level, whatever. I know how to broadly structure exercise programs. I know what I need to be doing. I need to actually be doing it. I tag loads of healthy videos and then I spend so much time scrolling, I eat toast. It's craziness. I have a load of recipe books, I can use them, and so my goal is to swap my screen time for actually specifically using stuff I have already, and this is where, other than buying the Brick, it kind of fits into this sort of less spending thing as well, right? This kind of being more sustainable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So my intention with it is to use this as a way to be [00:15:00] more present, as a way to use the stuff I've got and to actually do the things rather than watch people do the things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason, and this actually directly relates to you lot, and I'm not gonna tell you the details, but on Friday I decided that I wanted a strategy day. I wanted to really think about my business and what I was gonna do next and how I would serve you guys next and what that would look like and everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I decided that I needed to get away from it all. And one of the joys about being your own boss is that you can decide to do whatever you want. And so I booked myself into a very lovely spa for the day. And I took a notebook and a pen and I designed and then printed out some reflective questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so in this spa, they don't let you take care, or at least they discourage you strongly from taking your phone into the spa itself. So I locked my phone in the locker for the whole [00:16:00] day and I took my notebook and a pen, and I scribbled so many notes. I nearly finished my entire notebook, of ideas, of things that I think would help you guys. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Things I want to do over the next year or two, ways I want to support the community, a whole load of freeways. That I want to support the community. I'm going to say. So many ideas about so many things, and because I have a coach too, I discuss them with my coach tonight and we've narrowed them down and I have a plan and you guys are gonna get to hear about them soon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But let's just say getting a little bit more analog and getting a little bit more connected and being more intentional and stuff like that might be coming your way in the PhD Life Coach world. So keep a little eye out. You'll hear more in the new year. But it just really reinforced to me that my brain's got some quite good stuff in it if I [00:17:00] stop spending hours watching a lady's shrimp mantis called Ludo, he's so cute. I'm gonna miss Ludo. I am gonna still have to check in on how Ludo's doing. But anyway. If I spent less time filling my eyeballs with things like that, or why apparently skinny jeans are now coming back in again, I'm too confused, looking at those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I spend less time doing those things, my brain actually comes up with a lot of good ideas and insight and clarity and energy. So yeah, this is my plan and I'm trying it now because as my coach always recommends Karin Nordin who I've recommended before, um, now is the perfect time to practice New Year's resolutions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I haven't decided. I might have a screen time goal next year. I don't know. I haven't decided yet, but now I'm gonna practice and I'm gonna see what's useful and I'm gonna see, [00:18:00] okay, if I'm not gonna wake up and scroll for too long. What am I gonna do instead? What works well? Do I wanna get up and work? Do I wanna get up and exercise? Do I wanna get up and chill out? What do I wanna do? I'm not sure, but I'm gonna experiment and I'm gonna see what happens when I'm not just filling my brain with whatever the machine sends my way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lemme know whether this resonated with you or not. I wasn't really intending to talk about it, like I say, but it was been top of my mind, and so I thought I would share it with you guys instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have already been on this sort of journey, message me. I am often, I say, you know, I'm not looking for tips and whatever, but particularly if you've ever used Brick and you've got suggestions as to how to set it. The only sort of advice I'm not interested in is don't use Brick. It's a waste of money. Or don't do that. Do this instead. I've bought it now, I've bought it and I'm going to experiment with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I don't want to hear that [00:19:00] advice. But if any of you've got tips about setting it up, tips about how you've used it, other ways that you've reduced your phone use, uh, let me know because I intend to really give this a massive shot and keep you guys in the loop about what I've been spending my brain and energy and intention doing when I haven't been doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's see I hope as well as hearing a podcast about phone use, I hope you are also hearing the tone that I'm speaking not just to myself, but about this. I'm not trying to fix myself. I'm not criticizing myself for being where I'm at, and this is unusual, right? I used to, but I'm really not. I'm curious. About how I'm gonna do it, curious about how it's gonna work out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm feeling creative [00:20:00] about what I'm gonna try and what I'm gonna do instead. I'm feeling enthusiastic, and enthusiastic is a really big value for me. I'm feeling really enthusiastic about trying this, and I'm open to kind of collaboration and interest and all those sorts of things from other people too, so that I can explore options and I'm pretty confident that at some point I'm gonna, you know, scramble downstairs in the middle of the night 'cause I'm desperate for my fix and un brick my phone or whatever. I'm sure it'll go wrong at some point, but that's okay. I'm not gonna make that mean anything about myself either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so hopefully hearing me work this through with you like this, as you can tell. I mean, this is even less scripted than usual. Um, hopefully hearing me work it through like this might help you think about how you could address some of the things you're trying to change in your lives. We don't have to be more disciplined. We don't have to criticize ourselves until we have to do it. [00:21:00] I just think, I think being kind to ourselves, thinking how we can make it easier and seeing what happens. Being optimistic about the possibilities is such a more fun way to do this. I'm gonna keep you posted. Let me know if you have been inspired or if you have any advice for me. Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 10 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-11-why-my-phone-addiction-confession-might-help-you-too thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-10-why-we-should-celebrate-tiny-silly-wins <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> If you’re bored of reading people’s “I’m happy to announce…” posts on LinkedIn, where they only seem to celebrate big wins like “I got a new job” or “my paper’s published”, then this episode is for you. I’ll tell you why big wins aren’t as motivating as they could be, why we should look out for tiny wins, and why sometimes the sillier the win, the better! Join my tiny win revolution and share your silliest wins today! Post on LinkedIn or Instagram, tag me, and use the hashtag #tinywins, and I’ll pick my favourite post in November 2025 and give you a free 30 min coaching session!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out “ <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/13061169-36-why-we-should-be-more-proud-of-ourselves-and-how-to-do-it" target="_blank"> why we should be more proud of ourselves and how to do it </a> ”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now where I am in South Cambridge here. Autumn has hit. It is gray. I'm looking outta my patio windows over there. It's drizzly, it's gray. The clocks have already changed and so it is dark really early, and frankly, it's all feeling a bit murky now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not someone who gets massively affected by winter. I use it as an excuse to kind of cozy up and do more inside hobbies and things like that, but. It is tough to stay positive when it's a bit murky. Now, I know I've got listeners all over the world. Some of you might be struggling with other things. I have Australian clients who are moaning about the heat. That's legitimate too. All fair. But however you are feeling this November, I think we all need a little bit of a boost. A boost to kind of end this year strong so that we are not sort of just dripping into the end of the calendar year. And I [00:01:00] think that boost comes from celebrating wins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you might listen to that and say, I don't have any wins. There are no wins. Or you might listen to that and say you've been spending too much time on LinkedIn, where everyone is happy to announce whatever it is they're happy to announce. Okay? That's not what we're talking about today. We are not gonna be talking about celebrating wins, like finishing your PhD or getting a paper accepted or getting a job. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are all legitimate to celebrate, right? Let's do it. But that's not what we're talking about today. Today we are gonna be thinking about celebrating tiny wins, so tiny that they seem utterly inconsequential to anybody except you, but they feel like a win for you. And these are my favorite sorts of wins. So today we are gonna be thinking about why big wins aren't all there cracked up to be, why they're not sufficient to keep us motivated and engaged with our PhDs and even our lives, [00:02:00] frankly. And why celebrating Tiny Wins is a much. Much better idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm also gonna finish 'cause I'm feeling generous. I'm gonna finish with a bit of a challenge for you. I'm gonna tell you what I am gonna be trying to do throughout November of 2025. If you're listening to this live, and if you want to join me, you can enter a prize draw where you can win a one-on-one 30 minute coaching session with me completely for free. So make sure you listen to the end so you find out how to enter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, first of all, let's clear up what's wrong with celebrating big wins. And the first thing to say is. There's nothing wrong with celebrating big wins. If you have big things happen, I want you to celebrate them. In fact, in the membership, one of the things I do is really help people how to celebrate big wins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That sounds really silly, but often we just sort of go, yay, that's nice, and don't feel quite as excited as we thought we would, and we don't really know how to go about celebrating it. So that's something I teach separately. Maybe I'll do a podcast on that at some point. But the problem with big wins [00:03:00] is firstly, they only happen from time to time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? It's not like we're waking up every day going, Ooh, another papers accepted happy days. These things happen every few months at best, right? They can feel really few and far between and that means that they're not enough to kind of sustain us on a day-to-day basis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another issue with only celebrating big wins is that the joy of celebrating a big win never lasts as long as we think it's going to. So often people tell me, oh, I'll feel more confident once I've got my first publication. I'll feel better once I've got a full draft of my thesis. I'll feel better once I've got my PhD. But what actually happens is once we have achieved that thing, that thing we've been striving for, for ages, that thing that we've been telling ourselves will make everything feel better. What actually happens is we generally take it for granted pretty quickly. We often [00:04:00] discount it in some way. Oh, I was lucky. Oh, not many other people applied. Oh, it's a lower rank journal. Oh, my supervisor helped me loads all that stuff. Right? We discount it because it's somehow not in line with our perception of ourselves. So sometimes it's actually more comfortable to discount it than it is to accept, actually, maybe I am capable of doing things . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we take it for granted. We often discount it, and because we are. Ambitious, interesting, curious people. We are usually pretty fixated on the next thing pretty quickly. In fact, there's a book, I'll link it in the show notes. There's a book called The Gap and the Gain, which I think I've talked about before, where it talks about how people are especially highly educated, highly intelligent people like you lot, tend to look at the gap between where they are now and where they want to be, much more often than the gain IE where they are now compared to where they used to be. And only [00:05:00] celebrating big wins is real reason for that. You'll find you're happy for a day or two, and then you are looking to the next thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another reason why only celebrating big wins is not great is because. A big win often doesn't actually generate any momentum. A big win often comes with a bit of a crash afterwards. So if it's getting a paper published or something like that, often you are submitting your thesis is a big one. Often you've had this really big push of effort to get it done. You get it done, and then whilst you're celebrating, there is also this sort of energy and motivation crash afterwards where it's actually hard to start the next thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is almost like, I love reading, right? And it's almost like when I read an amazing book, it always feels a bit at the end of like effort to start the next book. 'cause I loved that book and all I had to do was pick it up and just get straight back into it sort of thing. And starting, even just starting reading a new book feels like a bit of effort and I [00:06:00] often have a little bit of a lag after a good book, before I start the next one. Now, when it's stuff that you are actually creating, that's even more pronounced. And so these big wins are wonderful and we all want them, right? But they don't necessarily generate men momentum to do the next things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I am a massive fan instead of tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny wins. And when I say tiny, I mean. Tiny, tiny, tiny. And in fact, when we do our quarterly review, so in the membership, we always do a planning session at the beginning of our three month period together and a review session at the end, one of the things that I encourage them to do is share the smallest wins they can think of. Things that feel unbelievably stupid, unbelievably tiny, and specific to you but somehow are really important to [00:07:00] you. An example that I always give when I'm getting people to do this is. Literally, every time I put my electric toothbrush on a charger, I'm like checking me out being a functioning adult. Look at that. Now, for those of you who just don't even think about putting an electric toothbrush on a charger, you just do it. You'll be like, uh, what? Why? Why would you celebrate that? I am somebody who has spent three, four months probably at times, brushing my teeth with a electric charger that is not charged. So it's essentially just a chunky manual toothbrush because every time I look at it, I go, oh, I should charge that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Clean my teeth, put it down, don't charge it. Now that hasn't happened since I've been married 'cause my husband's an absolute superstar and if he notices it needs charging, he does it. But I still, if I clean my teeth and then notice the little red light and I go, I'm going charge it, I put it on the [00:08:00] charger. Look at me. I dunno why I break into Geri Halliwell there. That's not a reference that will resonate with many of you. Anybody old enough to remember? Look at me by Geri Halliwell. It's a pop classic. Anyway. Focus in Vikki Toothbrushes. That wasn't the point. Tiny, tiny wins is the point. Yours could be anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My husband loves Bin Day. This could make him sound very strange. I promise. He's adorable. He loves bin day. It's so he's, it's so satisfying. You just put the bin out and they take it away and you got an empty bin. It's so satisfying, and it sounds silly, but I bet the vast majority of you go, oh, gotta put the bin out. He goes, it's bin day. I'm gonna put the bin out and off he goes, right? These, celebrating these tiny wins, especially when they're really specific to you and the things that you find hard, they give you a boost way more than big wins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we decide that we are gonna celebrate [00:09:00] tiny wins, what it does is it makes us look for those tiny wins. And I wanna be really clear, this is not gratitude. So when we're talking about wins, we are not thinking about the things that we're so lucky to have in our lives. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of evidence that that's really useful too. But I want this to be things you've done specifically. So not, I'm so grateful my partner did this is, I'm so lucky to have a warm house or whatever. No, nor that, sir. The stuff that you've actually. Done. And when we decide we're gonna celebrate those things, we start noticing the tiny things that we do for ourselves. We're slightly more likely to do some of those. I charge my toothbrush much more regularly now 'cause I know I'm gonna have a little celebration when I do it. We're much more likely to repeat them and it reinforces the sense that you are someone who does these things, that you are someone who has tiny wins. So you are much more likely to go into the next thing with that energy as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm gonna give you some more [00:10:00] examples. So over here I've got my chat document from. So in the sessions that we run in the membership, everyone's in the chat, chattering with each other, sharing their ideas and thoughts. So we had things like, I replied to an email I was anxious about without overthinking it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um. I asked people in my shared office to keep the chatter down a little bit, which I found really difficult. I'm proud, um, for following through. Um, somebody said I ordered a bunch of candles and stuff in advance the other day, said that I have birthday presents sorted for anyone whose birthday's coming up. Anybody who struggles like she and I do with remembering birthdays and so on. Genius. Love it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Somebody else found the changing rooms in their new place of work so that they could cycle to work. Um, somebody called five utility providers in one day 'cause they were trying to sort out house stuff, which I think is amazing. Somebody celebrated spending more time with their cats. Somebody celebrated actually spending the full two minutes cleaning their teeth rather than cutting it off early. Lots of things and some of these things you'll be like, [00:11:00] well, I always clean my teeth for two minutes. That's fine. That one's not for you, but for other people, that's huge. And the point is we celebrate the ones that are relevant to us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I love when I do this with the members, is it also sort of normalizes finding small things hard because if we celebrate when we achieve small things, that kind of implicitly tells us that these aren't things that we should just be able to do as normal adults. It normalizes, the fact that actually some of these hard things are hard for people. Some of these tiny things are hard for people but they are worthy of our celebration, and we feel so much better when we do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also makes the people around you feel better because suddenly they can celebrate their tiny things. People always sort of pause a little bit when I ask for tiny celebrations, but then once some come up in the chat, people start noticing quite how tiny they are. For you, it might be things like taking a bag to [00:12:00] the charity shop that has been in the boot of your car for six months. That'd be, I think that's a medium sized win. That's not even a tiny win, but things like that, right? It can be. I opened the document that I'm meant to be writing, that I've been putting off opening for the last two weeks. I opened it and looked to what I needed to do. It can be as simple as that. So this can be life stuff, this can be PhD stuff, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are gonna be spending November and hopefully going forwards, celebrating our tiny, tiny wins. So my commitment to you, I have decided. So you may have noticed I don't do much on Instagram. I'm at the PhD life Coach, if you wanna follow me. I don't do loads. Um, I have a kind of fixed, um, like, what's it called, the posts. God, I sound like such a grownup. The posts the main really bit. I have like a fixed one of those, but I do use stories, right? So my commitment is that for the month of November, 2025, I am gonna try and post at least once a day, a [00:13:00] tiny win. I'm gonna say what the win is. I may say why it's important, who knows? And i'm gonna use the hashtag tiny PhD wins. I know hashtags is not really a thing now, but it makes it easy for me to find stuff. I'm also gonna post some posts on LinkedIn, sharing my tiny wins, asking for other people's tiny wins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you wanna join me in this tiny win revolution and have the potential to win a one-to-one coaching session with me, what I want you to do is either follow me on LinkedIn, look out for those posts, and share your tiny wins when I post or share in your own Instagram stories or reels, tag me and use the hashtag tiny PhD wins. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pick my favorite tiny wins. Okay, so the way you are gonna stand out, is it by being something that is so tiny or just really cute that you've done it, or that really resonates with me because it's a tiny win that I would find [00:14:00] difficult too, or that is something that we wouldn't normally share, but that I can see is a big deal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anything like that? I am gonna pick my favorite and my favorite will get a one-to-one coaching session at the beginning of December at a time that works for you. We'll do 30 minutes on whatever PhD type topic you want. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I do have another sneaky reason for doing this, and I'm gonna be open about it and I'm gonna ask for your help. That is my podcast is pretty amazing. I think there is so much really, really good content on it. I keep hearing from you guys how useful you find the podcast, how much things have changed for you, how you know you're using it all already, da, da, da. I want it to get to more people. It's already getting to a lot of people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm somewhere in the 125,000 download area now. I love that. Which is amazing and super exciting. But there are a lot more PhD students in the world. There are a lot more [00:15:00] academics in the world and I would love for more of them to find and listen to and find my podcast useful. So I'm partly doing this 'cause I want us all to share oh, tiny wins. 'cause I think it'll be super fun. I'm also doing it because I want people to find my podcast. So anything you can do that also helps share your favorite episodes or anything like that, please, please do. Tell your universities about it. Tell them to link to it on their virtual learning environment or whatever it might be. Right? It's all, the podcast stuff is all free. It will always be free. So please do help me share that. But let's share these tiny wins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So make sure you're following me on Instagram at the PhD life coach, so that you will see my silly stories, and you can share yours. If you share them, I will repost them on my stories and everything. So let's have a tiny win revolution and start celebrating all the little things that actually make our days feel so much better and [00:16:00] get the stuff done that we want to do. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 03 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-10-why-we-should-celebrate-tiny-silly-wins thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-09-why-you-are-more-than-a-gantt-chart <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Sometimes it can feel like the only thing that matters is whether you are “on track” or not. We measure our self-worth in progress, we report to our supervisors about where we are against our plans, and the only answer we can think of to “how’s it going?” is “busy”. In this episode I talk about why you are so much more than a Gantt chart and how believing that can change the way we interact with our supervisors, our friends and families and, most importantly, how we treat ourselves. This is perfect for anyone who is fed up of feeling behind all the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you liked this episode, you should check out “ <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/11787739-9-how-to-manage-annoying-comments-at-christmas" target="_blank"> how to cope with annoying comments at Christmas </a> ” (even if it’s not Christmas!) </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and this week's topic, I'm gonna tell you the truth. I hadn't planned anything for this episode and I, I was kind of working towards my launch and I'd cunningly planned out which episodes I was gonna talk about when in the run up to the launch, which was last week, as you'll remember. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I then realized I hadn't planned today. I was in this quite unusual position. I'm getting quite better at kind of planning all these things ahead. I was in this unusual position of sitting there going, Hmm, I need to record a podcast. I wonder what to talk about and my brain throws out 47 million things as usual, and I start getting in my head a little bit about what would be most useful, what haven't I spoke about for a while, you know, what will be the thing that they really need that will really help them right now? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then I reminded myself of the most important thing in everything [00:01:00] I do, which is the students that I work with. And so I thought back to the coaching I'd done literally yesterday, so I had two different coaching sessions yesterday. I run them at different time zones, so they worked for people all around the world, had two coaching sessions, and I thought, what was particularly interesting. What was particularly universal? What got everybody going wild in the chat going, oh my goodness, this is me too. This is me too. And a couple of different things sprung to mind. And as I pondered those things, I realized that they were all part of the same problem. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is kind of true for almost everything that I coach on. And a little phrase sprung into my head, and that little [00:02:00] phrase became the name of this episode, which is that you are more than a Gantt chart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in case you're not familiar, a Gantt charts are those graph things that kind of show where you'll be by when during this time block i'm gonna work on this stuff until October, and then in October till November I'll be doing this stuff and so on. And they're a crucial part of project planning, right? But people get really stressed out by them because they get really stressed out by how on earth am I meant to know how I'm gonna do things, in what order, and how fast and whatever. And then they get really stressed out by being behind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I coached somebody who'd had a period of illness during the quarter and was beating herself up about being behind the curve as she put it. I coached somebody else who was, finding it really difficult. She was very much at the end of her PhD and people kept asking her how it was going and when she'd be finished, and she was finding those questions really hard to answer because she felt like she kept saying, oh, [00:03:00] next month. Next month. And they were like, hang on, you said that last time. And she was really judging herself about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then I looked at my podcast episodes, right? If you guys are familiar with the podcast, you'll know this. But for everybody else, I've got like a hundred and something. I don't even know how many 'cause I do them in seasons, but like 150 probably episodes at the moment. And in my little podcast host thingy, I can rank them by most popular. And the two most popular are two of the very, very early ones, which is kind of understandable. You know, gotta love a thorough PhD student. Going back to the beginning with the, I going to listen to them all attitude. So I kind of get that. But then after that, which are the most popular? How to plan your academic writing, how to read academic papers more quickly, how to get ahead when you are behind, how to make your week more effective. What to do if you feel stuck. They're all about progress. They're all about sticking to your plans and smashing through and making [00:04:00] progress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I'm not gonna tell you not to listen to these episodes. They're really good episodes. Make yourself a little list, go listen. But today I want to talk about why I think it's so important to remember that you are so much more than a ganja, and I'm gonna have three sort of demonstrations of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One about why it's important for your self-worth. One about why it's important for your interaction with your supervisors, and one about why it's important with your interactions with your friends and loved ones. Okay? So let's go. Why you are so much more than your Gantt chart.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's think about the first one, how you think about yourself, not just in terms of kind of self-worth, but also in terms of imposter syndrome, which is what we're focusing on in the membership this quarter. And in terms of actually enjoying this PhD process that you're putting yourselves through, that you leapt on into enthusiastically. And [00:05:00] when we solely think of ourselves as somebody who is on track or not on track, somebody who is where they're meant to be in their Ganttt chart or not, where they're meant to be in their Ganttt chart. Or their Ganttt chart is in a drawer over there somewhere that they haven't looked at for four months because they know they're not on track, and therefore they don't even want to look at it anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If that's you, I get it. Okay. I used to do that too. In fact, I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I'm feeling particularly good about this at the moment, so I have a wonderful coach called Karen Nordin, who I've waxed lyrical about many, many times on the podcast. If you don't follow her already, you should. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She is at Karen Nordin, N-O-R-D-I-N, on Instagram. She's a behavior change expert. She's got a PhD. She's brilliant. Love her, and, i'm in her change academy and one of the things that I set myself as a goal this year, which she set herself too, actually, is 3 million steps. And when that breaks down, [00:06:00] it breaks down to like 8,200 a day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now do not come at me, right? I'm a sports scientist. I know better than anyone that arbitrary numbers, like 10,000 steps are made up by manufacturers of pedometers. Don't come at me, but I know that my walking has dropped off massively, had dropped off massively, certainly since the pandemic, and especially working from home. Right. I spent a lot of time, you guys will see me with this background. I spent a lot of time in this room and I wasn't aiming for any kind of particular arbitrary number, but I wanted to increase it. 3 million steps seemed nice. And then those of you have been around for a while. Well, no. I broke my ankle in June. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was pretty much on track. Not entirely. Certainly wasn't doing it perfectly every day, but I was pretty good. I was pretty much on track and then I broke my ankle and that sucked. And I could have said, I, oh, I'm gonna sack that off, 'cause you [00:07:00] know, I had a six weeks where I was barely walking. I'm gonna sack it off entirely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I really spent some time, and this is where you can see that I've worked on myself through my own coaching and things, that is exactly what I would've done. I would've either forgotten this existed and not been tracking it at all, which was my usual thing. Or I would decide it was rubbish, decide I couldn't achieve it, and therefore not think about it because it made me feel bad about myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this time I thought, you know what? The version of me that I want to be is someone that when things go wrong, I kind of recalibrate, and crack back on. And I don't mean sort of forcing myself to do a hundred million steps in order to try and hit an arbitrary target that's got squished in the middle of the year, but there's no reason I shouldn't be building back up to and then trying to do at least the daily average that I'd been intending.[00:08:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I've actually spent the last few months still tracking my steps, and I don't just mean looking at them in my app. I mean, I have a little Google Sheet with them all in where I can see how many I've done each month and that sort of thing. And actually reflecting on it and learning from it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've continued doing that even though my June and July stats really annoy me. I am learning to tolerate that because it has meant that I am actually engaging in that walking behavior more than I thought. Now. I'm also diving in on weekends a little bit more, too extra steps and I'm, it's possible I'm gonna put it out there. It's possible I might even hit my 3 million, but that is not the point. The point is that I'm staying with it because I haven't made it mean something terrible about me. Now you might say, yeah, but you had a good reason. But I know lots of you guys had good reasons. The person I coached had a great reason why she was behind and she was still beating herself up for it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we put our entire [00:09:00] self-worth on, whether we are on track or not, suddenly that's a very fragile place to be, 'cause there's a whole bunch of things that could take you off that track. I went back to, I want to be somebody who walks more than I am at the moment and walks more than I have been for the last few years. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so as I've been able to, I've gone back to that core reason for setting that goal. And this is what I want you to think about. I decided this didn't mean anything about whether I was an undisciplined person, whether I should have pushed myself, whether I should be making up for it now, I didn't mean mean any of that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just make it made it mean there was a period of time when I wasn't walking as much, but now I can walk more. So let's go. My self-worth as somebody who exercises, somebody who gets outside is unaffected by the fact that I had a blip where I broke my ankle. I want you to really ponder [00:10:00] how does getting behind or not reaching the goals on your Ganttt chart affect the way you think about yourself as an academic? Because if you are somebody who makes that mean that you are maybe not good enough to be here, or that your supervisor will probably be regretting appointing you or that other people are on track and therefore you are not as good as them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If that's you, I get it. I'm here with you. I understand. But I really, really want you to notice that. Notice that you are equating yourself, your self-worth, your ability to do things with some Ganttt chart you decided on. And you don't have to, your self-worth, your abilities are measured by so many other things than just whether you are on time or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another reason we know [00:11:00] that to be true. Here's a little bonus for you. Another reason we know that to be true is your Gantt chart, your plan. You might not have a full Gantt chart, but you take the metaphor. Your Ganttt chart was designed by a version of you that didn't know what was gonna happen and didn't know as much about your research as you do now. Often we design these things at the beginning of our PhDs or at the beginning of the academic year. I didn't know I was gonna break my ankle and that wasn't on the Bingo card for 2025. I actually, I actually have a 202 5 Bingo card. That's a story for another episode. I'm sticking to that too. Very exciting. It wasn't on, I didn't put brief ankle tick. When you designed your projects, you didn't know the things that were gonna come up in your personal lives. You didn't know that the piece of equipment in the lab was gonna break. You didn't know how difficult it was to recruit participants. You didn't know that the British Library search engine went down for however long it went down. You didn't know any of these things. You didn't know how long things [00:12:00] take. You put in there. Really have Oh, right. Introduction between middle of January and the beginning of February and went, oh, that's actually way harder than I thought. You are holding yourself against the standard that you set when you knew less. Now, does this mean we should have thrown out the window? No. Plans are meant to inspire action. That is what they're there for. They're there to help us prioritize. They're there to help us make decisions, to force us in some ways to make decisions. But they are also flawed because they are supposition. They are things that are gonna change as we learn more and we experience more. So pinning your self worth to something that was designed when you were less knowledgeable than you are now is simply not fair on you. Please, please don't do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second time that you are way more than a Gantt chart is when you're meeting with a supervisor. And I've been talking about this, so over the last quarter in the membership we've been talking about improving your relationship with [00:13:00] your academic supervisor among other things. And one of the things we've talked about is how to have more effective meetings with your supervisors. And one of the biggest problems I see when I talk to my clients is people who have regular meetings, that's great. Love a regular meeting, but who use those predominantly as progress updates. I've done this bit and next I'm going to do that bit, and the supervisor goes, well done. Or maybe you need to hurry up. Or any version in between that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are only using those meetings to tell them where you are up to and to then tell them like, commit to for accountability, what you are gonna do next. You are missing so many parts of that interaction. You are more than your Ganttt chart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I want you to be using those meetings for are three things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> - Moving your actual project forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> -Learning, developing your own learning and understanding,[00:14:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> -and developing a collaborative relationship with your supervisor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those are the three purposes of any communications, whether it's meetings, emails, whatever you need to move your project forward. You need to develop yourself as an academic, learn more, and you need to build a collaborative relationship with your supervisor. If you are solely updating them on what you have done, what you haven't done, and then making further commitments, you are barely doing any of those things. You are using them as a checkpoint and checkpoints are just not that helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you think I am more than a Gantt chart, I want you to think what conversation can I have with them that will actually move this project forward? What hurdles are in my way? What am I finding it difficult to make a decision about? What am I worried isn't clear at the moment? How do I get them to help with that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What do I not know how to do? Whether it's about evaluating your own work or actually conducting a particular technique. What do I need to learn in order to move my project forward? Or just in my kind of professional academic [00:15:00] journey? What do I need to learn? How can I get that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And how can I build a collaborative relationship with my supervisor? Now that doesn't mean being friends with your supervisor. Some of you will be, some of you won't be. That's not a prerequisite. But having a collaborative relationship is, and one of the examples of that is if you focus on what's interesting or curious or like unusual or hard to explain in your research, and you have a discussion about that stuff. That's where you are doing the real stuff. That's what your supervisor came into academia to talk about, right? No one became an academic because they love Ganttt charts. If you love Ganttt charts and that's all you wanna do, go be a project manager and you'll be amazing. Trust me, we need people who can run clinical trial unit and keep all this stuff on track. If that's your baby, perfect. There's a billion careers out there for you. But most people didn't come into academia because they love Gantt charts. So if in those meetings instead of saying, oh, I'm, [00:16:00] you know, I said, I'll have done the draft, but I haven't. And then everyone feeling a bit bad about it, if you come into the meeting going I know I said I was gonna have a draft, but I've come across this thing and I just dunno how to explain it. Like in the data, I can see this, this, or in the archive, I can see this, this, or I found these two different arguments and I just can't work out how they fit together because one's saying this and one's saying that, and you know, and then suddenly you are having an intellectual discussion. That's what we wanna be doing. That's what we wanna spend our meeting times, doing, not updating a project manager about why we are not where we said we'd be. Okay. So that's the second reason. We are more than a Ganttt up because it helps us to have more effective meetings and communications with our supervisors if we remember all the things we are on top of that. We're an academic conducting a piece of research. We're a learner, we're a human being. If we remember those things, meetings so much better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then the third sort of [00:17:00] circumstance that I want you to remember, your more than a Gantt, chart, is when your friends and family ask you how it's going. Now, I have a whole episode on this, which has got a title that slightly puts people off. It's called How to Cope With Annoying Comments at Christmas. There's nothing specific about Christmas. I might change the title of it at some point but it is about why it's so triggering when somebody asks us, how's it going? When are you gonna finish? What are you gonna do after your PhD? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, I'm just gonna tell you a story. So in my membership, they people come on for one-to-one coaching, right? They appear next to each other, but then in the chat they're all like cheering each other on sharing </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  their experiences. If you're not watching YouTube. I'm doing like typey typey hands at the moment next to my face. Dunno why. Anyway, go with it. Um and somebody said, you should produce cards, Vikki, that just say, do not ask how my PhD is going. Give me money or food. And I'm just like, you know what? I think I can make a fortune selling those. And then when somebody asks you just [00:18:00] hand over, gimme money or food. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, I have advice beyond that, but. When somebody asks you how something's going, if you are thinking of yourself solely as a Ganttt chart, that your worth is only if you're up to date on your Ganttt chart, then suddenly it's like, oh no. They wanna know when I'm finished and I dunno when I'm gonna finish 'cause this has happened and I thought I'd be finished already and I'm not. And all this drama spins off. Right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it doesn't have to because you are more than a Gantt chart. What that means is we can remember a, as human beings, we are allowed to not share our heartache with anyone we don't wanna share our heartache with, which is, this is Mama Vikki, giving you full permission to lie. Okay. If somebody says, how's your PhD going? Your PhD's going crappy and you can't be asked to get into it because you don't like this person, or because you can't be bothered to explain or in a public place and you don't wanna cry, you can just say, fine. You can say fine. Great. Thanks for asking. How are things with you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You do not owe everybody [00:19:00] your truth. I'm not saying hide it. I'm not saying lie about it like because it's something shameful. You don't owe everyone your truth. You can choose what you share with who. So first thing, if you can't be bothered, just lie about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Second thing though, is to ask yourself, what is that person actually interested in beyond me and my Ganttt chart? Because if it's a fellow researcher, they're probably interested in your actual findings. They're probably not interested in the timelines. So they're prob when they're saying, how's it going? They don't wanna hear, oh, I've handed in my results section on time, but I'm a little behind on my discussion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They don't wanna hear that they wanna know what are you studying, what have you just found out? What's the new data showing? What have you just uncovered? What's the new thought that you are grappling with right now? They wanna know that stuff and if they're your friends and family, they might wanna know that stuff, depends on your friends and family, but they definitely wanna know, are you enjoying it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are you enthused at the moment? What are you finding overwhelming? Which bits do you like? Which bits [00:20:00] don't you like? They wanna know that stuff. They're not there to check up your positioning on your Ganttt chart. They're asking how it's going. So you get to decide to recognize I'm a human being who is way more than a Ganttt chart, which bit of that is this person interested in? And you can share that bit with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my reasons, my three situations where I think it's super important for you to remember that you are so much more than a Gantt chart. I wanna finish by saying this is no shade to Gantt charts. I think it's actually really useful not just to decide when you are gonna have done things by, but the most important part of a Ganttt chart is to notice where you've got conflicts and where you're trying to do too many things in a single block of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I actually love a Gantt chart because I think deciding what things you are doing in a period of time and what things you are not doing during a period of [00:21:00] time is a really important part of prioritization. I know prioritization is something we'll struggle with. That's a topic for another day. But a Gantt chart helps you to think those things through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It helps you see where you've got three bars all happening in the same month, and assess whether that's plausible or not. So this is no shade to Ganttt charts. I love you Gantt charts. You're not perfect, but you can be very useful. But you are so much more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you're listening to this on a Monday morning, you're thinking, oh my goodness, I'm already behind. I want you, in fact, I might even, should I make a sticker? I think we need stickers. Let me know. Reply to, if you're on my newsletter, reply to the email that you'll get about this podcast and tell me that you wanna buy a sticker that says, I'm more than a Gantt chart. Um, we are gonna do it. Merch is definitely coming. I hope you find today useful. I hope it reminds you quite how much more you have to offer this academic life and how I want you to be focusing on all of those things, not just on the extent of your progress. Academia is not a productivity wheel, even [00:22:00] if it feels like that sometimes, even if the sector feels like that is the only thing it cares about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are here to do important interesting research and to enjoy the process and to love working with other clever people who are interested in the same things. So let's focus on that stuff and let our Ganttt charts just sit over there as one of many tools we use to make that all happen. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 Oct 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-09-why-you-are-more-than-a-gantt-chart thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-08-how-to-stay-focused-when-a-lots-going-on-a-special-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode, I talk with Gabriela, a student in my PhD Life Coach membership. She is taking a few weeks off to get married and is struggling with getting distracted, worried that she’ll feel guilty while she’s away, and that she’ll dread coming back. Listen as we work through ways to address these challenges. Whether you are taking a big break like Gabriela, or you struggle to switch off even for the weekend, this episode will help you! You can also hear more about what it’s like being a student in my membership.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you like listening to coaching episodes, you might like <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16273544-3-17-overcoming-overwork-and-overwhelm-in-the-final-months-of-your-phd-a-special-coaching-episode" target="_blank"> this conversation with final year student Swagata </a> , about overcoming overwhelm and overwork in the last few months of her PhD.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:00:00] I'm just jumping on here quickly to give you an update before this episode even starts. So today I am talking with Gabriela, who is a student in the PhD life coach membership at the moment, and she has a lot on her mind at the moment. You are gonna hear all about it in this episode, but I also wanted to give you a sneaky preview before we start the whole story. So Gabriela was preparing for some time away from her PhD for reasons that you'll hear about, and the day before she left, she put a message into the Slack channel. So we have a Slack channel for all members. She put a message into the Slack channel was saying, "hi all. This is just a quick message to let you know that I've officially sent the most upToDate draft to my supervisor today, and while it might not be as completed as I'd hoped for, I am incredibly proud that I've been able to send it on time and without compromising my non-negotiables. I'm ever so grateful to Vikki and my coworking lot. Whether you came once or you are a regular, these sessions are one of the best part of my resubmission period, and that is something I would never have thought of saying six months ago. I will miss you guys and [00:01:00] see you all in six weeks." So if you wanna know where she's off to and what challenges she was overcoming in order to get there, you've gotta listen to this episode and if at the end of this episode you're like, oh my goodness, I need some of this help too, then you are in luck. If you are listening live, the PhD Life Coach membership is open for new clients this week, so this is going out on the 20th of October, 2025, and that's a Monday. You can join between now and Friday. So if you wanna be part of that community, if you wanna be getting this sort of support so that you can achieve your goals the same way Gabriela has then go to the PhD life coach.com, click on the membership and you can sign up straight away. If you are listening to this at some other time, don't worry. We open once a quarter. You are always welcome in, so go and check it and I'll hopefully see you in the membership soon. Hope you enjoy today's episode. Gabriela is amazing. You will love her. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hi everyone, and welcome to their PhD Life Coach podcast and we have another coaching episode this week. Now many of you will [00:02:00] know that I often ask for volunteers to come on the podcast to be coached about something that is useful and relevant for them at the moment, but they might also be relevant for my listeners. And often I give that opportunity to people who I don't work with in any other context. But today is a special, special occasion because today I am chatting with Gabriela, who is one of my PhD life coach membership students. So, hi Gabriela. Welcome.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Vikki, thanks so much for having me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No problem. It is a pleasure. Those of you who don't know, my PhD life Coach membership is a quarterly membership program where students get access to a ton of coaching resources, online resources, communities and coworking opportunities as well. And Gabriela is in for her second quarter now. So we have worked together for, what's that, four, four and a bit months, something like that and so I know her background quite well, but what we're [00:03:00] gonna do today is you'll give everyone a little bit of context just a brief story of where you are at at the moment and what you want some coaching on today. And then we'll go at this as though it was a one-to-one coaching session like we do in our group sessions. Except you get a bit longer because we're on the podcast. Okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Awesome. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So tell people a little bit about where you are at at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Right. So I had the dreaded sentence by every PhD student. I had my Viva last November and my PhD was deemed passable, so my Viva was accepted and I passed my Viva. However, I got resubmission and in my institution, resubmission means that you have to take a year long basically for your corrections, and they are more than major corrections, which means that I have to go back to labs, reanalyze my data, entirely rewrite my literature review, and I [00:04:00] have to resubmit it. It's basically like I'll be submitting first time, but this time I'm not allowed to have any other outcome, but minor corrections, PhD, and fail or fail. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So this was absolutely not on the cards. I have done my. PhD since 2021. So I'm at on my like five years. It's a very long time. I had two months of a bit of a break to decide what I wanted to do, and at the end of that break I joined a membership. And one of the first things we talked about with Vikki was to make a decision. So I've made a decision that for some unknown reason, I'm going to go for it for another year. And so here I am however life keeps going, and I didn't want to stop plans, which I have already put in motion. It happens that I'm getting married, during the time we're recording, this is going to be less than three weeks. And [00:05:00] today I was hoping that we could talk about how to engage with these big life events, which are so important to us, and in my case, leads to a whole other, opportunities within my family life. And yet do it while we're in the PhD system and we are during our program, especially when we have this feeling of like lack of closure before we move on with our life. So I was hoping that at this stage I'm going to be done and dusted. My PhD is going to be submitted or at least resubmit it. But I just, life happens this way and I am still here. I have some stuff done. I've got deadline before my break for the marriage. I've got some deadlines I have to hit. But then I'm basically off for month and a half. And what I worry about is that while I'm going to be during my honeymoon, I'm going to basically like [00:06:00] thinking about it, and I'm not gonna be able to immerse myself completely knowing that when I come back, I have to drop into this mayhem I left behind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. And I think. For people listening, you may not be in the exact same situation. You may still be pre Viva. You may not have something like a wedding and a big honeymoon and things happening, but I think so often people have this sort of parallel things happening in their personal lives, and particularly this idea of wanting to take time away without it getting spoiled by thoughts of the PhD, without it being super stressful before you go and afterwards I think is really, really relevant to, to lots of people. So yes, excited to chat this through with you today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Before we do though, just because when you say time of recording, this is three weeks before your wedding, which is very, very exciting and the membership are looking forward to getting photos. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You will be [00:07:00] our second wedding actually. But this is also actually gonna come out just before the membership opens up again to other people. So you talked about making a decision and things like that. I thought it would be useful, just give a little bit of background as to why you decided to join the membership. What was it that sort of, you hoped you would get?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So this is very out of character for me because I am very much so just get on with it. I'm going to deal with it on my own terms, um, and kind of don't bother other people. Just move on with your life but I was thinking to myself this way, I've done it my way and it didn't work my way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: And the supervision and support I got from my institution was lacking for multitudes of reason, I decided not to blame anyone. I just wanted to find another way of doing things. And I've been actually directed [00:08:00] to an achievement coach in my institution first, and we started working together and I was like, do you know what? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: This is really good, but I'm kind of still feeling lonely within my cohort who moved on or they don't experience the same struggles, or they are in a completely different journey. So for example, they're being wildly published or they've got a massive grant or whatever. And I needed someone to maybe validate my feelings a little bit, maybe to find like this camaraderieship. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So my institution was, uh, running this monthly updates on Vikki's like free workshops she was doing and still doing, and I was like, do you know what? I've seen her before on one of the conferences. I think that she was actually straight to the point and not really like, fluffy about some stuff and like, just believe in yourself. It's all gonna [00:09:00] be good. So I was like, she seems like she seems like the right person to do it. And I gave it a shot and I submitted like a little form if I can join the wait listers. I've done another meeting with Vikki and I was like, after those two meetings, I really felt like something progressed within me, even not with with my PhD within me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: I kind of found myself again and kind of be like, oh, okay, so it's okay that I feel this way. It's been such, I know it's like incredible, right? It's okay to feel the emotions you're feeling, but I just think that the way you said it to me for the first time, it's like, it's okay. I just felt at home and I decided to, to, to progress with it and I found my community and, um, you mentioned coworking sessions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: They're the ones which are like the community spirit is really there. You're not alone. You can, you can say, oh, the software really doesn't work, or my Word document is just keeps [00:10:00] closing on me and I'm losing stuff and, and you know, we cry and laugh and meme together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And just to really clarify for everybody and just to give you the credit that you deserve, the co-working sessions, there's only two official co-working sessions per month that I run. The rest are all entirely led by my members, of which Gabriela is one of my super, like, super organized, super doing loads of them person. So they are community led and I actually really like that because it means that they are that bit more informal space. They are a bit more, you guys set them up when you need them, when you want them, use them however, and I know different people do different length work blocks and all of that, and so you get to kind of really, really adapt them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The reason I wanted to touch on that is partly 'cause I think it's useful for listeners to hear from somebody who's made a decision that they might be trying to make at the moment. But I think also this notion that you have chosen really, really [00:11:00] intentionally that "No, no, I do want to do this". 'cause when we met, you were in a bit of a, I want to do it, but I don't want to do it and so I should do it, but I'm not really doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you were in that kind of slightly annoying, I think you were annoyed by it in Betweeny place where </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: a hundred percent </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: it's like, Ugh, I've gotta do this thing, but I'm not doing the thing. And this is just feels very stuck. Tell me a little bit about the progress that you've made since then, because I think understanding how you have already changed so much will really help you to then believe that we can change this next bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Um, so the first thing I've done, I kind of divided my. Months, according to quarters, um, when I've joined you, you, you do this quarter kind of setup and it really [00:12:00] works for me, uh, first because I'm, I'm a person who likes planning. I'm a person who loves to have agenda, all of this detailed stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: And I felt like if I'm going to have these smaller goals I'm trying to achieve throughout the next year , it's going to feel a little bit more achievable. So that was my first. That was my first, like big progress I've made because before then I was just looking at this clump of stuff I have to make with no particular direction and no particular plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So that was the first, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and, and you didn't wanna open your laptop, right? I don't wanna call you out. I remember our very, you were like, I did not open my laptop.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. 150%. I was there. I looked at it like I had to change my setup because I physically couldn't bring myself to sit in a place I received the news that I am not deemed submittable or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So I changed my setup and I [00:13:00] was not opening my laptop. So that is a good, the good thing to to, to mention, I just started to follow the plan. It's, it's not, it's not been super smooth by the way. Like, I, I wanted to submit basically like two chapters a quarter to say like, yeah, kind of two chapters a quarter or at least a draft of each chapter, um, uh, each quarter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So. It's not been exactly this way. But I've came back to dreaded labs, which was a huge mental block, uh, I experienced, uh, which we also coached on with Vikki on one of the group coaching. I came back, I asked for help. I continuously update my supervisor about my progress, which was not the case in my previous submission. Even if it's a small email to say I'm still working on my data analysis, you're going to have something by the end of next week. I'm still doing this every single Friday. So she's got kind of clear progress [00:14:00] report. I rewrote my literature review. It's patchy and I still have to add stuff, but I received feedback from my supervisor in the beginning of August, and she's pretty happy with how the things are going. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: It's more streamlined, which was one of the biggest confusion during my viva. It was actually what my PhD's about, because I had to combine three failed experiments and three failed routes into one big PhD and now I just focused on the one which is the closest to, to being a good project. So that has been done. I submitted recently my methods and yay, it's patchy again. And I was dreading it. And I also asked Vikki for a bit of an advice. I, I, I've done it. I just sent it. We'll see what they're going to say. So yeah, and I drafted my results and I drafted my discussion, but this is something which I'm going to have to really, really work on, on the other side of honeymoon and, [00:15:00] and my marriage break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And I know that feels like that's not central to the stuff you asked a coach on today. Mm-hmm. But one of the things that academics, PhD students, everybody, at every level has a habit of doing is taking for granted the bits you have done and immediately looking to the next bits. And what that does is it gives us this perpetual sense of not getting anywhere where in reality, and as you say, we've talked about this in group coaching before and I know the community's super proud of you too. You've made an enormous progress both in terms of the amount of work you've done and in terms of the difference in how you're showing up to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Thank you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: In this four months. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And taking a minute just to go, I've come a really long way is actually a really lovely way to then look forward. [00:16:00] Yeah, because we get to say, okay, if I go back to past Gabriela who was considering whether to join the membership or not and told her where I am now, I think she'd be super, super proud. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: I think that I wasn't even imagining it if I have to be absolutely honest. I, I've, you know, I've done some like soul searching on the beginning of this year where I want to really achieve and where I want to be, and it's, yeah, I, I have to be honest with you, in, in the beginning of my, of the year, I was just hoping to not approach it from the PhD level I was thinking of approach it from an MFI level and submit, um, anything by July to have it over with. But once I started working within like membership and I started working with my new supervisor, I've seen that [00:17:00] maybe it's still worth to, to put forward the PhD and just see what they say basically. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So tell me a bit more about what you are worrying about. You've got this three weeks, then you've got just over a month, isn't it? And then you're back. Yeah. So tell me more about your concerns.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: I think it's comes from two places. One concern is that I'm not going to be fully present, fully immersed in this one, once in a lifetime event. It's just not fair towards me and it's not fair towards my family. It's not to, you know, then my husband is not going to be fair towards him. And then the second, like streamline of worry is that I have so much to do when I have to come back, you know? I'm gonna come back and I'm not expecting from myself to like immediately jump into it and just produce, produce, produce, which means that I'm going to have a little bit of downtime, which means that I'm going to have to readjust my schedule again and kind of get back into the swing of things [00:18:00] and then I basically have like, I dunno, let's say four weeks I have to complete. So I'm trying to be conscious of the future Gabriela, and I'm trying to be conscious of the Gabriela who's going to enjoy her marriage and her and her honeymoon, and I'm trying to make the both of them happy with what I'm doing right now, but what it does to me currently is kind of just this overwhelm that I'm not doing enough and that I'm not focusing enough, and that maybe my work is not up the up to standard, which I was holding myself to. That's, that's basically where I'm, where I'm at right now. Um, and I'm trying to remind myself that I can only do what I can within the time I have. Like, it just become like my mantra, basically. But it is this, it, this is this s nagging feeling, which I can't switch off. So that's, that's kind of part of my problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And like I said, I think this is really, really sort of adaptable to lots of different [00:19:00] situations that listeners will be in. So we've got these kind of three time periods, haven't we? We've got now to the wedding. We've got the wedding and honeymoon chunk and then we've got this period of time afterwards and you sort of slightly divided that. And I think it's actually quite sensible into a bit of a kind of gear back up as it were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If people are watching on YouTube, I'm making like ramping up things with my hands. I'm aware that doesn't work on podcast. So you, you may well have it, you're not gonna come back. Land your airplane, wake up the next day and then go, right, seven hours work, let's go, kind of thing. So we're gonna have a little bit of a ramp up period, but essentially we've got these three blocks of time. And I love this notion. I love that you are using this notion of thinking about what does the Gabriela who's on her wedding and honeymoon need, and what does the Gabriela, when you come back need? The one I think you're neglecting a little bit at the moment is, what does Gabriela right now need? Okay, so let's have a little bit of a [00:20:00] think about for these three weeks. What do you need from yourself, from other people?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: From myself, I need to keep showing up, but while I am actually physically present for my work blocks, I need to be able to focus on the work rather than daydream or go into my little tangents about like, I don't know, research some stuff for the wedding and, and all of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah, all of this around because I have actually blocked some time in between my working blocks to finalize plans, and I have a week before the wedding to like completely immerse myself in this, like I'm getting married feeling. I need to be able to, rather than putting another, I don't know, another day of work on myself, I need to really make these hours, which I'm putting [00:21:00] currently work for me and what I need from others. And I'm definitely happy with what my supervisor is providing me with right now. And I've got additional support through university and through the community. . I just would like people to keep showing up for the coworking sessions. So I've got, so I've got someone physically with me going through it. Um, so yeah, I think, I think that's, that's mainly what I would say I, I need.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Cool. So this notion of being there and being focused while you're working, tell me a bit more. What are you expecting that to look like? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: More being in the actual PhD mode and less being, I'm gonna call it scatterbrain, but [00:22:00] it's maybe unkind words to use to my towards myself. I just feel like I have never experienced fully immersive like focus flow right now. Mm-hmm. It's like there's always this sparks which are coming off this focus flow and I am immediately drawn to them because they are more attractive and they're something I'm, I'm authentically and purely excited about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: While the work I'm putting in my PhD requires from me to hype myself up. Yeah, it's just the focus. I can be incredibly focused on stuff towards, you know, the, the Happy Life event, but when it comes to PhD, I feel like it's kind of draining my energy more. Um, so I would, I would love to be able to submit next Friday this really nice chunk of literature review, which is not perfect, not edited, not grammar, spell [00:23:00] checks, nothing. Just content. It exists. That's what I want. Okay. It exists.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Cool. So I'm gonna take you in for a little bit more detail. So you want to turn up, I've got a 90 minute coworking session where I'm gonna work on my thesis. You wanna get straight in? You wanna work for 90 minutes and use all that time? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yes. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What if that's not gonna happen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: When it's not going to happen, then I'm sitting a little bit longer in front of my computer and hoping that, maybe if I run out of things to look at or run out of physical energy to focus on more than one thing, I will just be able to focus on this, on this one thing, which is my literature review and open, open mind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But what if you don't need to? [00:24:00] Take it, take me through. So you're, you're working, you, you're like, right. This is a section of my lit review i've got to write, we are writing, I'm doing the keyboard fingers for people who can't see me. I'm writing away, I think, "Ooh, ribbons on the chairs. That would be nice. What color ribbons might I have on my chairs?" </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you shoot over here and you get onto Google and you start looking at different color ribbons. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: That's pretty much it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Okay. So what do you then do? How long does it take you to realize that you are doing something that's not what you were intending? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Pretty much immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, okay, so you notice. It is not that 15 minutes later you're suddenly like, oh my goodness, I'm looking at wedding things. What am I doing? It's pretty much immediately,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: it's pretty much immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, now that's good. Okay. Because often people don't necessarily even notice what they're doing and the [00:25:00] fact that you are already using time blocking helps with that because you know that this is a time period that you've put aside for writing and you are recognizing very quickly that you are not writing. Might not sound like a big thing, but that is actually a big thing. So you've noticed. What's happening in your head while you are looking at these ribbons over here? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's basically like  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: this little, this little finger, which is like, you should really not be doing this. You know that you're going to have time to do it. I don't know, like on Saturday or on Sunday, and right now it's the time you've got yourself into position. And mental space to actually be doing this. And because I work around my fiance, that means that I have got no one else in the house to care for, or, I dunno not, I'm not being distracted [00:26:00] basically by anything else but my brain. So I feel this, all of this comes into my head when I'm looking at these ribbons.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Perfect. So you will know. But just for the listeners, we talk a lot in the membership about having the boss version of us who decides what's happening and who makes these decisions. And then the implementer version of us who has to actually do it. So boss you is kind of planning out when they should be working and things and then implementor you is going, Ooh, ribbons. And then it sounds as though boss Gabriela wanders past and goes, hang on a minute, dude. That's not what I put on your schedule. What is implementor you saying in response? How are you kind of justifying that you're carrying on doing it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Okay, so my go-to about the wedding stuff is, this is going to be once in my lifetime. This is like one thing I give myself to being [00:27:00] unreasonably attached to these ribbons. You know, um, because they matter. Yeah. And I know this is so silly, and I probably won't remember the ribbons on the actual day, but at the moment that feels like this is something much more important for my future than, doing my work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. If that's true, why are we not time blocking ribbons or whatever?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: We are time blocking ribbons. It's just, it's just, when I'm doing my PhD, I always have this feeling that I should be able to do stuff which I want for the wedding. I know this is, you call it a toddler, right? It's kind of like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: In a loving and compassionate way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah, but it's true, right? Because it's unreasonable. I'm an adult woman. I shouldn't be like, I just want a candy, so I'm going to eat it before dinner. Like [00:28:00] it's, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, you're a human being, so we all do that, right? Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Let's not, I mean, you know, we're teasing you about being a toddler or whatever, but we all do this, okay? There's nothing, we do not need to sit in judgment. Especially when you've got something as huge and exciting as a wedding coming up, right, it is completely understandable that you are very distracted by it. Now, people often ask me. If you don't wanna be like super strict and awful to yourself and be like, no, no, no you must work and you don't wanna be all indulgent and just say, oh, well, doesn't matter. We'll just do the ribbon instead. What's the place in between that? And the place in between that is not shaming yourself for being distracted. The place in between that is reminding yourself what you decided. Okay. It's completely understandable, especially [00:29:00] when you know, you've got cognitively difficult work to do on your PhD. There's a whole bunch of, and I know you've worked on it lots already, so it's a bit better than it was, but there's a whole bunch of negative emotions around the PhD and stuff, and the sense that you shouldn't be having to think about it at the moment, it's not at all surprising that given a choice between sitting in that or sitting in ribbons, that it's much more tempting to be over there. We don't have to beat you up for that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. What I want you to do, and actually I'm gonna suggest that you look at this on a week by week basis between now and the wedding, is I want the bit of your brain that thinks you need to finish off PhD stuff to get in the same room as the bit of your brain that thinks you should be able to focus entirely on your wedding and look at ribbons whenever you want, and I want you to help them come to a [00:30:00] decision. Because once we've come to a decision about what is genuinely reasonable when I'm being level-headed and compassionate. Compassionate to the me that wants to be excited about my wedding, compassionate to the me that wants to get my PhD to a place so that it's, you know, so it's easier for me when I get back. It's compassionate to all those versions of you. Because you could do either way, you could just say, oh, I'm not doing anything more on my PhD. I'm in full wedding mode for the next three weeks, or you could decide, weddings organized. I'm not gonna faff with anything else, I'm just gonna completely focus on work or any version in between. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What I want you to get to is a place where you've agreed that with yourself. So that then if you are in a PhD block and your brain is going, oh, but I should be able to look at ribbons. You get to go. "Yeah, you can. Between [00:31:00] three and six tonight, I've scheduled you three hours of ribbon time. We agreed. This is PhD time. Come back."  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: I, I see where you're getting at. I think, I think I do remind myself about it, but I think I'm a little bit worn down by how long I've been at it. That's, I think is like something which makes me very moody. Yeah. If I, for, for the lack of better word, it's a moody. Yeah. Yeah. So. I, I worry a lot about the ability to handle myself because I have thoughts that like, oh, when wedding's out of the way and honeymoon's out of the way, and I'm like, super chill about it because I'm, I'm, you know, I'm in this still honeymoon zone and everything's fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: I'm totally going to go back and smash it in the six weeks. [00:32:00] But then I also know that reality of it might look a little bit different. And I'm trying to prepare myself. I don't know if it's a good thing, but I'm trying to prepare myself for, a bit of a, you know, like as you said, downtime. A bit of a disappointing, no, not as much as I wanted to do during day days. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Um, and I think what I'm thinking about is this decision making alarm is like. Yeah, it's like even, even even stronger, even harder. Um, and I'm making decision and I'm tired, you know? So that's kind of the circle of Yeah. Circle of weariness I'm at, at currently.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And that's really understandable, right? It's been a really long. You know, it is like getting to the end of a marathon and then being told you've gotta go back again. It's like you, you've got got yourself to the viva and now this is all additional time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's [00:33:00] understandable, but I think that consideration needs to be in the planning room as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's like I'm tired of regulating myself at the moment. Yeah. I've got this exciting thing and I'm tired of having to do that too. So then we also start to think, okay. What is actually reasonable to ask of myself at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. How can I make it easier that I don't have to regulate myself quite as much? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. I think you've done, yeah, I think you've hit the nail in the head in here. This regulation is what's exhausting me. That's absolutely it. It's like I'm, I'm parenting myself too much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's, it is tiring. We need to keep doing it, but we need to be reasonable in what we're asking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And some of that is gonna be reasonable in terms of how many hours you ask yourself to work for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But some of it is also being reasonable [00:34:00] in terms of what level of focus you're expecting. Because I actually think if you could get to a stage where you do some work. And you do go over here and look at some ribbons, and then you notice you're looking at ribbons and you go kind of, okay, no ribbons. We're going back over here. It's all right. We'll do that later. But the fact that you got distracted and you spent 10 minutes looking at ribbons doesn't have to be a big deal. So I'm distracted at the moment, my wedding's coming up and I'm tired of tired regulating myself. Of course, I'm gonna wander off, but that's okay because I can bring myself back too without it adding extra hours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is something that you mentioned before we came on to record, this idea that if you haven't focused enough in one time block, then adding more and more time on the end. And the problem is that means implementor you doesn't believe boss you anymore. 'cause boss you says you need to spend three hours working in your PhD this morning, but actually implementing you turns [00:35:00] it into five hours because you haven't met your required amount of actually being focused or whatever.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. But then I don't believe my implementer me either because they don't do the work within the time allocated to them. It's like a self defeating kind of exchange notoriously between the implementer and the boss. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, so yeah, so, so one of the things I suggest with time blocking is even if you realize I intended to do 90 minutes on my PhD and I've done 15 minutes on my PhD, I recommend you go on to the next time block anyway. If you were then scheduled a break, go take your break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If you were then scheduled time to do wedding organization, go do it. Because if we have this perpetually moving schedule. Where actually if I didn't do [00:36:00] my 90 minutes well enough, then I won't take my break. Then I won't have the time doing my wedding stuff. Then I won't have this other things that I've organized. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Then it doesn't reinforce the need to do the things when you're intended to do them, because you give yourself the option to do them later. And it means that you almost don't believe that you'll have time to think about the wedding later 'cause often you kind of take that away from yourself if you haven't been good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah, I, I think it's, it perpetuates as well in like someone asking me like, oh, you know, how is your day going? And I'm immediately going it like. Oh yeah, it's fine. I'm technically here. I'm technically in front of my computer and technically working on my PhD, but I'm not really doing anything PhD related. And I think even like saying it out loud to someone or like writing it to someone, it also feels, I don't know, like it just [00:37:00] makes it too real. And then I feel like, okay, I really have to put like rubber to the road right now. I have to write it down. But as you said, it's kind of eating away from the time I blocked for something else. And it's just, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I would just, if you set yourself 90 minutes to do your PhD, you are trying to do as much work as you can in that 90 minutes. And if 50 minutes of it was spent getting distracted, okay, but the time block still stops at the end of 90 minutes and you do what you were planning then. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, because it then it does reinforce the kind of, I've actually only got this bit of time. I used to have this conversation a lot with academics who used to work late and work on weekends and things like that too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There's nothing that will make you less efficient than knowing you'll make up the time later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. I, I get, I get what you're saying last, last week, I've. [00:38:00] Kind of bumbled about for most of my week. And then on Friday I had this big block scheduled and then a little bit of like a tiny block on the end of the day, which I usually don't do because I'm kind of a work life balance mastering trying to, at least. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So, but I had some Friday evening by myself and I was like, okay, let's do it. And I produced a lot during that time because I felt I had this mindset of like, I didn't work as much as I should or would normally, so I'm going to do it right now. And there was nothing else I would be doing. I just wanna do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So I get what you're saying with the, the motivation of making up the time, which I already bumbled about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think it's different to say, you know, I'm actually, I'm gonna slot in an extra couple of hours on Friday. Because you know what? There were some bits that I missed and I can smash out a few bits [00:39:00] there. I think that's fine. I think it's the, i'll let this session run a bit longer because I didn't focus as much as I wanted to. You know, I said I was gonna go for a walk, but I didn't really do anything, so I'm not gonna go for a walk. It's that kind of thing I want you to avoid because actually that structure, that sense of I've only got this period of time to do it, is part of what gets us going on the things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: It's almost like punishing yourself comes more naturally than rewarding yourself. So you just go into this, um, this self-fulfilling prophecy of, oh, I didn't do it, so I'm gonna do it. So I'm, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it just means you don't trust any of your time blocks anymore. 'cause you don't walk in your walk blocks and you don't chill out in your chill out blocks and you don't, you know, you don't do wedding planning in your wedding blocks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. So. Do you think that's going to be the thing? Which is going to help me to feel a little bit more immersed in the happy event.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So this is, so we've really focused so [00:40:00] far on this period, running up into to it. I have one last comment about that and then we'll think about while you're </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: okay. Of course. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The other thing on this bit, running up to it is I want you to be a little bit more decisive. So what I mean by that is if you are genuinely saying, I had time blocked 90 minutes to do my PhD, but I don't feel like doing my PhD, it's the right decision not to do my PhD, and it's the right decision to look at ribbons, as my little analogy for all things wedding. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I want you to write that down. Turn off coworking. Go and look a ribbon somewhere else because this half-assed, I'm sort of meant to be working, but I'm not really working, but I'm feeling guilty about the fact I'm not working 'cause I should be working. It's just the worst of all worlds. [00:41:00] I would rather you just left. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You just said, you know what guys? Brain's not in it, not doing the PhD. I'm gonna go and look at ribbons. Love you all. That's easy. Okay. And go sit on sofa and do it. Okay. Yeah, because at least that way you'll feel like you've had your wedding planning pleasure properly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm sitting on the sofa, I've got a hot drink, I've got my laptop. I'm looking at whatever I wanna look at. Yeah. Is when we end up in this neither or space that it's just really unsatisfying.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. 'cause Yeah, of course. 'cause you're not really focused on either of them, so your brain doesn't even register that you're doing it a hundred percent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that doesn't feel like I deserve a wonderful wedding experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That feels like, oh, I'm so useless. I'm still looking at ribbons when I'm meant to be writing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah.[00:42:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I suspect that when push comes to shove, if you say, I need to make an intentional decision about this, I suspect that nine times outta 10 you'll decide to continue with your PhD.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. It's, it's probably a Right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Making that conscious decision  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: It's probably correct assessment because even the physical action of picking myself up and going back downstairs and sitting on the sofa and stuff like that is already, you know, I'm already here so I might as well like do the PhD. So I get what you mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we've really focused so far on that period running up to the wedding, and it might feel like we've not thought about the others, but actually the exact same principles apply. We get to choose really intentionally what is the kind of, I was gonna say, right, right [00:43:00] is never the right word. 'Cause that implies there's only one version. We get to choose really intentionally what we want that time to look like, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then from there, what we get to do is decide when other thoughts come up. How am I gonna manage that? So I assume that you have a, you have decided that you're not gonna do any PhD work while you're away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: That's correct. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is that fair? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: That's, that's correct. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, okay, perfect. So what are the worries that you think will come up while you're away if you don't have the fear? Oh, I will find myself starting to do some work. What are you actually worried will happen?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: I worry about the mindset itself being like, oh, this is awesome. I'm really enjoying it, and I totally deserve it. However, there is this massive chunk of work I could have been doing during that time. Okay. That's what I worry about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. So what we get to do, this is why it's so important to focus on this first [00:44:00] bit. 'Cause the more you can look back on this period, as you know what I did the best I could, the easier everything else is. Even if this doesn't go perfectly, we can still do it, but it's easier if we've done this bit is in that period, you are, I'm gonna tell you now, sorry to be disappointing. You will have those thoughts while you're away. A hundred percent. Yeah. You will have your brain back here thinking about this Gabriela, and what she should have done, and you'll have your brain in the future about what it's gonna be like when you're back. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. The fact that your brain goes there isn't a problem. What we get to choose is what you say to yourself, how you respond when your brain goes, oh, I should have set myself up better. I've got so much to do when I get back. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What sorts of things do you think you could say to yourself in that situation? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm. I think one of the things which I would [00:45:00] try to convince myself of is that I've done things in a short period of time. So even if I think that the work I have waiting for me. Is a a, a big chunk of work, I can still manage to finish it on time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Um, another thing is that once I come back, I'm going to have more feedback from my supervisor because she's, kindly agree that she's gonna work on my literature review while I'm away so I can have the kind of appropriate direction when I come back. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: So I'm not going to start from scratch. I'm going to have a nice layout of where I'm going with it. And that I've done the bit I said to myself that I will, because I believe strongly that I'm going to submit that literature review next Friday. So I've done it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: And [00:46:00] maybe it's not been as completed as I hoped to be, or maybe I was thinking that I can do even more, but I didn't compromise on stuff, which I really didn't want to compromise on, which is spending time with my family, spending time with fiance, exercising, eating properly, et cetera. Yeah, so I think that's  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: perfect. So really reminding ourselves of the things we have done, of the things we're capable of doing, of the support that we've got, is all really, really important part of reminding yourself that this will be okay. I'm gonna offer you a more flippant one that I think is also useful, okay. Which is reminding yourself, this is not my business right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so what I want is I want you to start by reassuring yourself with exactly the things, you know. I did what I could do beforehand. I trust myself to be able to [00:47:00] handle what's there when I get back, I'm gonna have support, I'm gonna come back to the community. I'm gonna have, you know, all my different bits of support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I, I've done hard things before. I want you to reassure yourself with that first. But if your brain is then going, yeah, but you could have done more. But it's still a lot left, which it probably will, right? 'cause we have a tendency to do that. I want you then to switch to maybe, not my business right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Okay. That's gonna be a hard one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's a really useful one to practice because the thing with, like logic and reasoning is you can argue with it. Okay. You can say, you know when you offer, yes, but you did everything you could. Yeah, but you didn't do that bit, did you? You know, you can have that little argument with yourself about whether you did enough before you left. You can have that argument with yourself if you allow yourself to about whether you are capable of it when it comes back, and we don't know because, you know, you haven't done it yet. It's still [00:48:00] uncertain. But if we can get to, no idea not my business. My business is to have a wonderful honeymoon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah and reminds it's okay that you're stressed about it. Of course you are something, it's gonna happen. But that's future Gabriela's challenge. I trust future Gabriela. She's gonna be great. Now we don't wanna like pressure future Gabriela now by being like, she'll be able to do everything. Let's just dump it all back. We wanna make it as while you are still in the bit where you can influence it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We want you to support her as much as you can. Right. We want you now to be like, how can I make this and clear and straightforward for her to come back to as possible. And we'll talk in the membership about how you can set yourself like a little plan for when you get back so that you're not coming back to a, Ooh, where do I start? So that you kind of send yourself a note in the future, as it were to come back to, we'll go through that in one of the sessions. But when you are on holiday, you can't do anything [00:49:00] about what you did in the past.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And you've decided you are not gonna do anything to help yourself in the future other than get resting and having a great time. But as in, you're not going to do any of that work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's literally not your responsibility.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: That's going to be a challenging one, but, um, yeah, I can, I can definitely argue with myself. My then husband might be like, what did I marry into? But </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: not my responsibility. Not my responsibility. What am I doing? I'm doing this. My time blocking today says snorkeling, hiking, and then relaxing with my husband.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yes. Yes. That's, that's it. That's, that's exactly it. Isn't it crazy that we're always like, I think PhD is like this one thing which always makes you attached to it so incredibly much. It's not like you're leaving [00:50:00] the office and like, okay guys, see you in two weeks. It's like, it's always with you. It's always. You're always working in the background. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, but this is whereby being more intentional. We can actually wrap it up. We can, I want you to go away feeling like may, you know, maybe even you, you write a note to yourself and you seal it in an envelope and you put a bow around it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's like wrapped up, literally wrapped up on my desk for when I get back, and it's gonna have a motivational message in it to tell you that you believe you can do it. It's gonna have some clear instructions at first steps, some expectations, da, da, da. So that you're coming back to something. Yeah. Then you can say, I, I planned for this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is how I've designed my entire year. This is why I invested in the membership. This is what I decided to do, is so that I can have this time. And if it pops up, it doesn't have to be a big drama. Oh no, I'm ruining my my honeymoon by thinking about my PhD. You don't, there's not ruining it, [00:51:00] doesn't matter, but you can just remind yourself, no, no, it's not my business. My business right now is do I want this drink or that drink this food or that food?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Okay. That sounds really reasonable when you say it. I might, uh, yeah, I might, I might say it to myself a few times with your voice before. I'm gonna translate this to my voice.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, you can have this on podcast. You can listen to the whole thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Yay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it will come out probably just about right. I think.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: Oh, that's amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Anyway, great. So much. Thank you so much for coming on Gabriela. I really hope that was useful. I think it's something that challenges a lot of people, so, um, I think it's really useful for other people. So thank you for being so open.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gabriela: It's always useful, Vicky, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie to you. It's always useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Good. Thank you so much and thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and [00:52:00] your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 20 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-08-how-to-stay-focused-when-a-lots-going-on-a-special-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-07-why-you-need-an-instruction-manual <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> When you buy something like a car or a piece of technology, you get a manual - it explains what you need to do routinely to keep the product running well and helps you troubleshoot common issues. Today we consider what would go in YOUR instruction manual - what does it take to keep you as a human being running smoothly during your academic experience and how should we deal with common challenges that come up. I help you identify what should go into your “manual” and how this can help us thrive in our studies and careers.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this episode on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/11997498-13-what-to-do-when-you-know-you-re-behaving-like-a-toddler" target="_blank"> what to do if you’re behaving like a toddler </a> !  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now I have a confession to make if you've read the title of this episode. I have a complicated relationship with instruction manuals. You see, half the time, especially if I'm left to my own devices, is like instruction manuals don't exist, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to get that bit of kit, whatever it is. We just got a new air fryer 'cause we somehow broke the other one. I'm gonna plug it in. I'm gonna press some buttons. I'm gonna assume that I'm clever enough to figure this stuff out in my little non imposter syndrome anyway, and I'm gonna make it up as I go along and that means there's gonna be a whole load of buttons that I'm never going to use. Hello? Washing machine setting 10. Only one I ever use. That's fine. All good. That's half the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other half the time, and this is where somebody else is involved. So my husband has similar opinions about instruction manuals. Just they don't exist, just crack on. However, when he says that, I suddenly [00:01:00] become the instruction Manual dictator. No, no. We have to read the quick start guide, darling. We have to do this properly. I dunno what it is about somebody else behaving the exact same way that I behave, that makes me suddenly want to be little miss organised knickers. But it does. So I have a complicated relationship with instruction manuals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, when it comes to looking after ourselves and trying to figure out how we are doing this whole life thing. I actually think they're a really, really useful analogy. So today I am gonna be telling you why you need your own instruction manual and like broadly what I think should be in it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want more help building one, this is something that we are gonna be doing in quarter four of the PhD Life Coach membership, which if you're listening to this, live opens for new members next week. So check it out if you want more support on this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I also have to [00:02:00] confess that, when I'm recording this, it is the morning after I just watched the first episode of Celebrity Traitors uk. And for those of you who've been around here for a while, you all know I am a big big fan of the traitors. I have been rewatching lots of series in preparation to get myself in the mood ready for celebrity traitors. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It has got an amazing cast, so I'm a little bit over excited this morning, so I don't think we're actually gonna refer to the traitors in it at any stage, but I just wanted to warn you that I'm feeling kind of upbeat. It may get mentioned in future episodes. If you haven't seen it, I did do an episode a while ago where it's nine things or 10 things or however many things you could learn from the traitors. So if you're a fan too, make sure you check that out and make sure you're following me on Instagram 'cause I will be wittering pointlessly about traitors in a way that does not relate in any way to PhDs, but will be fun and distracting. So make sure you're following me there if you're not ready. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> [00:03:00] So right. Focus instruction manuals. That is what we're doing today. Instruction manuals. Why do I think you need an instruction manual? Well, I think we often live our lives the same way that I approach machinery left of my own devices, which is we just kind of start using it. Okay? We're born into these bodies. We grow up, we, you know, we're socialized, we're trained with all those things, and we just sort of go with it, and we don't necessarily often really stop and think what works really well for us, what doesn't? People who listen to podcasts like this and people who engage in memberships like mine and things like that, we often get a little bit more reflective, right? We start thinking, oh, it helps when I do this. It's not so useful when I do that. We sometimes come up with lots of shoulds about what we should be doing, but we don't often take a minute to just stop and kind of condense that into something that is actually useful, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because we've all [00:04:00] had these instruction manuals where they're like massive. They've got 47 different languages, which is wonderful, inclusive. Love that, but huge, huge documents, loads and loads of detail loads and loads of stuff that you don't need. We just don't need them, right? What we need is something that actually helps us get started, helps us figure out what we need to do to it regularly and helps us if something goes wrong. Those, to me, are the main things, right? Oh, and where to get further support. So let's say four things. How to get started, how it kind of, how we should help it run day to day troubleshooting and where to get further support. And I actually think those are the four things that we need in instruction manual for ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How to get started of a day or when you start your new project or whatever. What I need to run effectively week to week. You know, 'cause we've all got, are you one of those people I'm gonna. Are you one of these people who's like, never taken the fluff out of your tumble dryer, [00:05:00] or I shouldn't tell you, but a certain, a certain sister of mine never realized you had to empty your hoover. I dunno where she thought it was going. I hope she doesn't listen to this. Led to quite a messy mess in the end. So, lesson learned, you need to empty a Hoover. We need to know those things about ourselves. What do we need for our own basic maintenance? And then troubleshooting can be super useful. 'cause if something goes wrong, it doesn't have to be a massive disaster. As long as we know, do I need to turn it off, turn it back on again. Do I need to change something? Are there one or two things I could check to see what's going on? If we know what to do to troubleshoot in these situations, then it doesn't have to be a massive drama, we just follow those steps, and if we know where to go for further support, not only is that useful if we need it, but it's also just kind of reassuring to know it's there, right? That if all else fails, we've got something to fall back on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I wanna do in today's episode is think through what each of those [00:06:00] sections might look like for a human being, a researcher, someone like us, if we were to write an instruction manual for ourself, now who is this manual for? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before we get into the details, I want us to really consider who this manual is for , because you might be thinking, Ooh, I can give this to my supervisor. I can give this to my partner, I can give this to my friend, or whatever, and I'm gonna say maybe, maybe. Okay. We don't know necessarily how they'll respond to that. Some of you might know that they'd love it. There are specific circumstances, which I'll tell you about in a second, where I really think we should be sharing these things , but the main person that this instruction manual is for is you. If one person needs to know how to operate this human being, that is you, it's you, that sort of self understanding, that kind of clarity of thought will really help you navigate all the things that are happening in your life at the moment. So this, this manual is primarily for you.[00:07:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The one time that I would highly recommend sharing it. Is if you are in a position where sometimes you can't advocate for yourself effectively. So if you have, um, let me think. If you have seizures, if you have periods of mania or depressive episodes, things like that. Firstly, you must be getting medical support for this. Do not take anything I say as alternatives for that. But if you ever, you are in a position where you have things where you're like, you know what, there are times when I can't implement this for myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then it's useful for the people around you to have these things. If you are in that sort of situation, I want you to go back and check out an episode I did called How to Look After Yourself When conducting emotionally distressing work. I had Dr. Tina Skinner and Dr. Sarah Warbiss on to talk about this. They're experts in the area, and one of the things they talked about was psychological safety plans. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this is for people who either have psychological conditions or it does translate to physical conditions. [00:08:00] Or who are doing work that is very distressing and having a plan in place as to how to look after yourself is really, really useful. This idea of an instruction manual for yourself is sort of an extension of that, where it's not just if you are in something that is sort of an objectively, always emotionally distressing situation. It's accepting that life generally can be challenging and distressing sometimes, and it's taking it further so that it's not just about psychological safety, it's about thriving and enjoying your life too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I wanna say before we get into the details is I don't want you to take this too, too seriously. I want you to put fun stuff in this as well. So yes, we can think about what to do if you are feeling stressed. So troubleshooting when you're overwhelmed, for example. And we can think in terms of sensible things. We can think in terms of kind things, but let's also think in terms of fun stuff, right? Let's also think about silly [00:09:00] things that help you. So for me if feeling overwhelmed to the point that you can't work, stick her in front of an episode of the traitors. She will definitely feel better if you just stick her in front. That is essentially my, you know, restart the computer button. Put me in front of an episode of Traitors. I will come back with opinions about how they should change the rules, what they should have done instead of what they actually did do. Lots of very smug interpretations that absolutely ignore the fact that I would be terrible in the castle in real life. As a viewer, I'm amazing, so keep it lighthearted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's think through what these sections could be. And for me, the first one is that quick start that I mentioned because often when I talk to my clients and my members, one of the biggest things that people struggle with is getting started on something. Whether that is getting started in the morning or whether it's getting started on a new project or getting started on [00:10:00] anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, going to a new art class. I just started a new art class. Did I tell you I like hobbies? So think getting started on anything new can be challenging for a lot of people. And so one of the things that's useful is thinking through what helps you to get started. If you wanna take this human being from not doing the project, to doing the project, what do you specifically need? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What is effective for you? So as an example, I would have in there something like the purpose and likely efficacy needs to be clear. So I am very bad as my parents and former employers would tell you at doing something just because I've been told to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just because of how it's how we do it. It's what needs doing. Yeah. I'm not so good at that. I need to understand why I'm doing it and why it's useful. Others of you, the quick start guide [00:11:00] might be really clear, step-by-step instructions. For example, I need that too. If, especially if there's a lot of steps in something, I need to know where to start. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't need necessarily lots of detail, but I do need to know where to start. I need, I'm ashamed to say the old diet cake is a very good way to kickstart me. So thinking through, what things do you need to get started? You can think about your physical environment. I don't need a tidy house to get started, which is good. 'Cause otherwise I would rarely get started. I do need a somewhat clear desk. If my desk is chaos, then I really struggle. If in doubt, gimme a piece of paper and a pen rather than a computer. Happy days. Let's stick that in as a quick start guide if you just want to get going on a project. Encourage me to write about it, encourage me to talk about it. So those might be things that would go into my quick start guide. I want [00:12:00] you to think about what would go in yours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I do have a cautionary tale for you. Those of you who spend too much time on self-help Instagram, and if you're here I suspect you might. If you spend too much time on self-help Instagram, what you might be telling yourself is my Quick Start guide is I need to get up at 5:00 AM and do three morning pages before meditating for five minutes, drinking my lemon infused water, walking for 10,000 steps, and doing my stretches and strength-based workout before the day starts today. If you are already doing all these things, happy days, I suspect you don't need my help. I love you. I'm glad you're here, but. For most of you, you don't need any of that stuff. You need one or two bits of it, maybe, possibly, perhaps sometimes, but that kind of notion of a perfect start is holding you back from starting. So emphasis on the quick bit of quick start. What do you need? Another example for me? Quick [00:13:00] start. You want me to get going? Stick me in a shower. Okay. If I get up and get in a shower. Get actually proper up rather than deciding that I can work in whatever I've just thrown on without showering, you are gonna get much better outta me. Okay? So I want you to think about those things. The kind of bare minimum, this is what would lead to a day or a project starting reasonably well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's our quick start guide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then second section is general maintenance. What do you need on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual basis to stay functioning broadly? This is not, again, this is not about, if you're on a big fitness improvement or a big self-improvement of whatever, you know, this is not where you're gonna put, I'm trying to read however many books a year or whatever this is what do you need basic maintenance. Okay, so here you might reiterate stuff [00:14:00] about, you know, how often you need showers, things like that. What sort of food keeps you broadly functioning, what sort of social things. Now, for some of you, that will be not too much. Some of you, the maintenance will be no more than one social night a week. Others, it'll be the other way round. Make sure you spend at least two nights a week doing something fun with friends. I'm at that end of things, right? I start to get miserable if I'm not doing things that are hobbies or social. So I need to make sure that even when I'm busy, that stuff gets prioritized in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What else helps? For me, daily knowing what my tasks for that day are, and preferably having that set at least the day before helps massively. A to-do list that actually has everything on it. [00:15:00] Now if you want more information about my to-do list system, I have a whole podcast episode about how to use role-based task management, and that's still the system that I'm using miraculously three years later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I haven't changed it for some new version, which I always used to do. Knowing that all the things I need to do in my business are in the same place, and, uh, kind of categorized and stuff helps me function on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis. I know that when I get overwhelmed, there's a tendency not to put everything in there just to think, oh, I just need to get on with things, and that's when it all goes a little bit wrong. So, in my manual, I would have stuff about my tasks needing to be in there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Part of your regular care also includes things like sleep. So on a regular basis, by roughly when should we be putting this human being to bed? I stayed up late last night to watch Celebrity Traitors 'cause I'd been at my art class and so I couldn't watch it live and I had to watch it before I got back in case I saw spoilers online. Did I mention that I love [00:16:00] the traitors? Uh, so I stayed up later. Last night. I wasn't in bed till like 11, which for me quite late. I am a, tuck me up by nine 30, lights out by 10 kind of a girl. I am also a girl that sometimes feels like she wants to go to bed at eight when she's exhausted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And part of my regular care instruction manual is do not let her go to sleep before nine. 'cause if she falls asleep at half past eight, she'll wake back up at half past 11 and be fairly confused and unable to get back to sleep. So think through what else would be in your kind of regular care stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Personalize this. I cannot emphasize enough. Personalize this. If yours says, eat enough protein, get eight hours of sleep a night and walk 10,000 steps and do three sessions a week of strength training. These are all very worthy things and great. Brilliant. Let's try and do those. I am actually trying to do most of these things, but I want you to really personalize this to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it really eight hours? Does it matter whether it's late [00:17:00] or early, or what? When do you need to be in bed? When do you need to get up? How do we look after this amazing machine that is you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Section three is troubleshooting. Okay? And troubleshooting is where we get to identify stuff that's likely to come up. Common things that affect you as an individual. And again, these need to be really specific to you. And I want you to think either about a challenging situation that often comes up. So for me, let's say feeling overwhelmed. Okay? Feeling overwhelmed or having too many tasks, and I'm saying too many tasks in like inverted commas, because how it needs too many, who knows? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if it feels to me like it's too many, that's a common challenge that I need a response to. The second thing you can have in your troubleshooting guide is warning signs. Okay? Warning signs for me [00:18:00] starts canceling social things. If I start going, I just haven't got the head space to see my friends, we have a problem. That is a bad sign, that needs some support, that needs some help. Second one for me, if I start eating toast for multiple meals, we also need to intervene. That never goes good places. Okay? So if I'm deciding, you know, what, toasts good enough for lunch, toast, good enough for dinner, and I'm doing this in any sort of sustained way, then that, I'm gonna put that as a warning sign in my troubleshooting guide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? So first job is we get to identify and let's not overwhelm ourselves. Come out with 5, 6, 7 things that commonly happen to you, okay? And then we start asking ourselves in a loving, supporting, compassionate, curious way. And if you dunno how to do that, you need to join my membership. 'cause this is what we're gonna be working on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What do we do in those [00:19:00] situations? Because for most of us, our solution to those things is I just need to get on with it. I just need to plan an evening out even though I don't need to, I just need to cook a decent meal. Whatever it is, I don't want it to start with the word, just because the fact you're finding this challenging means that there isn't a, just do this solution. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> 'cause just implies it's easy and we ain't gonna do that to you. You are finding this hard right now. However, what we're gonna do is try and make it feel as easy as possible by having something that's supportive but also helpful. Okay, let's take an example. When I am overwhelmed and I think I've got too many things to do, I need to remind myself that it's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I need to remind myself that I've felt like I've had too many things for a long time. I need to remind myself that I am capable of getting stuff done quite quickly when I pick [00:20:00] and I need to pick one thing that I can crack through and get on with. Because there's nothing my brain likes more than some evidence and actually, and some momentum. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Once I get some momentum going on a task, I actually smash through things reasonably quickly. My problem is that freeze thing of where you look at all of them. So I need reassurance. I need kindness. Reassurance is that it's okay that you're stressed. Reassurance is not i'm sure you'll get it all done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That. You are liable to get snapped at if you tell me, "I'm sure you are doing it. Oh, you always do." Shut up. Not helping. That's not what I mean by reassurance. Reassurance is, it's okay. You've got a lot of things. No wonder you feel overwhelmed. That's the reassurance. Yeah. But you are capable of doing lots of things. What's the one thing you're gonna do right now? Let's do that. That would be my little thing there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The toast thing is one regular care. Have things that are easy to grab when you are feeling like you can't be bothered to make a meal properly that are [00:21:00] not just toast. So that would be in my regular care section. In my troubleshooting section, it's essentially, I'm gonna say this in a loving, respectful way to myself. Don't believe me when I tell you that I, I just really need toast right now. It's not true. It's not coming from the best part of me. It's coming from the carb craving can't be bothered to think part of me. Two solutions. One, somebody else cook something for me. Two, pick something that's slightly better than toast. I have a tendency to be perfectionist. I suspect many of you guys do too. I have a tendency to believe that if I'm not going to be just eating toast, I should be having a perfectly balanced Buddha bowl with a combination of proteins, carbohydrates, healthy fats, little snacky, crispy things on top of it, et cetera, et cetera. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I have made it a lot easier to make those. I'll talk about that another time. But best [00:22:00] case if I'm tempted to have toast for dinner. Well, let's have fish, fingers, waffles, and peas. Okay. Actually, not that bad. Yes, it's oven food. Yes. It's probably got all the preservatives in it but it is better than toast and butter. Okay. It's got some protein in it. It's got some vegetables in it. It's vaguely got some fiber in it. Let's go. So thinking through for each of your troubleshooting things, what would be a kind and compassionate response? What would you want to do in that situation? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the final section, just a quick one, is further support, which is reminding you who have you got in your life and what are they useful for? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because different people are good at different things, right? My husband. I choose, well, my husband's amazing. He can help me with absolutely everything. Other people, I have some friends that are really good at picking me up when I'm down because they'll make me laugh. They'll take me somewhere ridiculous, they'll distract me. It's amazing. Other friends are really good at helping me prioritize in my business if I'm trying to make a decision or whatever. I've got [00:23:00] people that I can go to and talk that through with. I have people who will listen if I just really need to talk something through without getting offered solutions and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I can kind of, I'm not gonna name them now, but I can kind of picture in my head who these different people are. And so noting down who are the key people, who are the kind of support system here that if you are struggling, these are the people you can go to and what they're useful for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's what I mean by an instruction manual is a guide to running you. We have to build it with compassion. This is not about making a perfect version of you that will always function beautifully. This is about creating routines and kind of emergency protocols to implement that will make this feel much easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As I say, make sure you don't limit it just to dealing with challenges. I want part of your self-care in there to be around how you make your life feel positive. What do you need in your life in order to thrive? Not just [00:24:00] cope with the things that feel difficult, what's stuff makes life feel really fun? We need all that stuff in there too, so that we can support ourselves to build the best phD academic life we possibly can. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want some support with that and you're listening to this live, make sure you go to the PhD life coach.com. Click on the membership. You'll find all the details. We are open for new members between the 20th, which is the Monday and the 21st, second, third, fourth, fifth. Is that right? 20th, first, second, third, fourth, Friday, whatever date the Friday is, we're open till the Friday. You can join in that time. It is three monthly membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'll be in until the end of January. We are gonna be talking imposter syndrome, and we are gonna be talking identifying your strengths, figuring out how to look after yourself. We are gonna create our own instruction manuals with support so that you do it in a compassionate, non-judgmental, fun, and thriving kind of a way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Come join us again and have a little look. If you get on the wait list ahead of time, you will have access to some discounts [00:25:00] and to some other little freebies as well. So jump on the wait list. Hope to see lots of you there. Thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 13 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-07-why-you-need-an-instruction-manual thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-05-i-answer-listener-questions <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today I’m answering listener questions in the same way that I answer questions for students in my memberships. People have submitted questions about all aspects of PhD Life and I’ve selected 7 to talk about today - for each question, I help you unpick what is really the problem, what is making it feel difficult and try to give some tangible ways forward. In the membership I do this all the time and post the answers into our private podcast. Listening to other people’s questions being answered helps you apply the learning to your own life so have a listen and see which of these resonate for you!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15868442-3-05-client-q-a-getting-it-done-when-you-don-t-feel-like-it" target="_blank"> client Q&amp;A episode </a> , where I discuss getting stuff done when you don’t really feel like it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and I promised you in a previous episode or previous email, can't remember which one or the other that I would answer some listener questions in an upcoming episode. Now, I try and do this from time to time. Anyway, 'cause I like to try and make sure that I'm really addressing the real life challenges that you guys have. But I also wanted to give you a little insight into what it's like being in the PhD life Coach membership program. This last quarter that has run, what would it be, August, September, October, I introduced a private podcast for members and what that means is they can go into our Slack channel. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we have a Slack channel where we can all talk to each other, share our wins, share our problems, all that sort of stuff. They can go into the Slack channel, go to the questions for Vikki channel and just drop in questions, and what I then do is I record them a little informal podcast, a little voice note that I then post into the private podcast .I post it anonymously with just what the question [00:01:00] was, and so everyone then gets to hear it so the members get. A pretty quick response to their questions, but other people can also learn from those experiences. And this is brilliant for people who either have something pressing or who for some reason can't make some of the live sessions right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's one of the most common questions I get. What time zone are the sessions? When are they, what happens if I can't come live? Well, we try and have them at a nice range. I have one early in the morning, one sort of middle of the day and end of the day, so that it's sort of. Works for lots of different time zones and different commitments, but this is one of the things you can do if you can't make one of those live sessions this week, is you can submit a question and then you'll get a response from me in a few days or so. And so I thought I'd show you exactly what that's like. What that means is I haven't actually planned this. 'cause these voice notes are pretty impromptu. I read the question and I give people immediate thoughts. Now, quickly, this isn't necessarily advice. Occasionally it is if you ask [00:02:00] me, you know, good note taking or something like that. I'm probably gonna give you some ideas. Yeah. I'm not a pure coach who only ever says, but what do you think? Um, I will give you some advice, right? I have too many opinions and too much experience not to do that. But I'm also not gonna tell you what to do if you say, should I work on this or that? Should I apply for this job or stick to applying for grants or whatever. I ain't gonna tell you what to do. I don't know you, but what I am gonna do is raise some questions and thoughts for you to ponder on that will help you come to your own decisions. So we're basically gonna do that live on the podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've got seven questions that you wonderful people have submitted to me. These are all non-members, just listeners and they've submitted them. I'm pulling up the questions in front of me now so I can see them. I'm gonna tell you what they said and give you a quick. Voice note podcast-esque response to each of them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think which of these questions apply to me? And even if they immediately don't seem to 'cause their [00:03:00] circumstance feels quite different to yours, I want you to think what you can take from this. 'cause this is one of the joy of hearing other people getting coached, whether it's asynchronously like this or whether it's live in a coaching session, is you can so often see yourself in at least some of the questions and apply what they're learning to your life too. So let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Question one is I'm working on my literature search after much procrastination, I've planned what to do, how to approach it. I still don't feel like I know where to start. I have my topic categories, which I'll use to search, but I get overwhelmed by diving in. Which podcast episode do you recommend to help? They say, I checked the archive using controlled F and didn't see anything about literature reviews, but I could have missed something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first of all, if you guys only listen to the podcast and you're not on my newsletter yet, you'll not know about the archive. Make sure you sign up to my newsletter. Go to the PhD life page.com, and click on the button that's right on the front there. And I have a. Searchable Google Drive, that [00:04:00] will usually help you find the answers to your problems. Now, the problem here was that this listener search for lit review instead of searching for overwhelm or procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I tend not to have episodes that are, this is how to do something. Occasionally I do. I've got stuff about, you know, shortening your work and writing better notes and things like that. But usually it's more about the stuff that's actually making it difficult. So let's have a think about how we can help this person. Now, the first thing I noticed is you're saying that like, I've planned what to do, but I don't know where to start. And the problem with the, I don't knows, my members will know this 'cause we talk about this quite a lot. When you tell yourself you don't know, you take away all your creative problem solving and it sort of implies there's a right answer. There is a place you should start, and if only you could figure out what that was, everything would be easy. And that's simply just not true. Right? When it comes to writing a lit review or something like that, there's a bunch of [00:05:00] places. If you ask different academics for advice, there's a bunch of different places you could start. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no, I don't know where to start. There's just I haven't decided where to start. So what I want you to think about is from a kind of curious and creative point of view, where could you start? What options are there? Why might you choose to start here or there? And then from there, it sounds really basic, but you then get to pick and start and not tell yourself that there was a place that you could have started that would've been better, or that would've, you know, been less painful or whatever. Just start and see how it goes and we figure it out from there. 'cause the fact is, what you are trying to do here is avoid the emotions that come up when it feels difficult and you're uncertain and you're confused. And so what we do is we procrastinate because we think once, I'm not uncertain, once I'm not confused, it won't [00:06:00] feel so bad. But those things don't just miraculously go away. So what we get to do instead is we're like, okay, I'm a bit uncertain. I'm a bit confused. That's all right. I can make a bit of a decision about where to start and I can tolerate those emotions. I can make sure that I'm not making them mean that I'm stupid or that I shouldn't be doing this or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm just a bit uncertain right now, and that's okay. Academics should spend their lives in a place of uncertainty, right? Say, okay, I'm gonna be a bit uncertain. But I'm gonna see what happens if I do a little bit of this and see what happens if I do a little bit of that. And you'll find that by doing that, you start to unpick your own uncertainty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You start to say, okay, well I could do some of this and that will move that part on, and I could do some of that. And as long as we're super kind to ourselves about the fact that it feels kind of difficult at the moment, and that's okay, you'll start making progress way faster. I hope that helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Question two, let's go. [00:07:00] I attended your motivational webinar. That was a cracker. That was, that was a little while ago. That was in July. And I have a question regarding my personal experience. I find science interesting, but I struggle with lab work and find it very stressful. I'm struggling with motivation and I find myself subconsciously avoiding the lab where I can. I have lots of autonomy, but little support and low perceived competence. Uh, now you, if you don't know what I mean by those things, that's 'cause you didn't come to that webinar. I will do it again at some point. I am sure. But essentially they're saying that they don't have many people to help them, and they're not really convinced that they know what they're doing and that they've got the skills that they need and that can really affect our motivation. I want to be competent in the lab so that I can materialize my theory and improve my relationship. I'm now wondering whether it's a personal incompatibility and not necessarily an easy change. And the question went on a little bit longer than that, that about their supervisory support and so on. And it says, do you have any tips about how I can improve my capacity, my competence, or my ability to handle this situation sustainably? [00:08:00] Okay. I thought this notion of a personal incompatibility was really, really interesting. So I think I'm interpreting what you mean there as being that you think you are sort of not cut out for lab work, that it may not be what you want to be doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's not surprising. If you are in a situation where you don't feel like you're very good at it, you don't feel like you've got lots of support and you've got lots of choice, so you feel sort of a bit fragile, really, it's not surprising that you feel like you are incompatible with it, that it's not for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we wanna try and get to though is this actually a sort of internal gut feeling that, you know what, this is not what you wanna spend your time getting better at, or is this something where actually once you feel more competent at it, you will enjoy it and feel motivated to be there? You know, I started out in a not very lab [00:09:00] end. I was more sort of questionnaire based early on in my PhD and as I progressed in my academic career, I did more and more lab stuff and I felt a bit, not so much the low support, I had a lot of support around me, but the not necessarily being confident and feeling competent in the lab, I had that quite a bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things I did was I decided in the short term, is this something I want to learn to do? . I'm not making big decisions about whether this is my life forever, but in the short term, is this something I want to learn how to do? And I decided, yes, it was. It would enable me to answer some questions and then once I'd decided that I decided that learning how to do this will enable me to answer these questions that I'm interested in, I then really quite consciously decided not to think about whether this was for me or not, whether I was somebody who was good at lab work, whether I was somebody who always wanted to do lab work. It wasn't relevant. What was relevant was that I wanted to learn to do these specific [00:10:00] things in order to answer these specific questions. And the reason that's important is when we're second guessing all the time, that every time something goes wrong we're saying to ourselves, oh, it's probably 'cause I'm not really cut out for lab work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we start, oh, should I even be doing this? These huge spiraling thoughts. That's exhausting and it doesn't help us build our motivation. This is all, if you guys heard me talk about decisions before then you'll have heard me touch on this, if not as a podcast episode about how to make decisions you love. But essentially I recommend and not only to decide for reasons you love, but for decide how long you are deciding. So in this case, I would decide, do I want to learn how to do these tools in order to do this stuff in my PhD? And if so, we then get to really focus in on how can I support myself? How can I gather in the support I need in order to learn these skills given whatever my natural inclinations towards this is. Then over time, once you've done that bit, you get to decide, do you want to do your next [00:11:00] study in the laboratory or something slightly different. Do you want to continue this after your PhD? I did eventually decide that lab work is not my baby. It does not play to my strengths. I'm super glad that I learned the things I learned and it meant I was better able to understand other people's science. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I have a sort of broad sense that if I needed to learn how to do a assay in a lab, that I absolutely could do it and I could do it to high quality, but that kind of careful, repetitive. Introverted often in terms of not being super interactive. Really focusing on the details and double checking and all that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just not playing to my strengths. Okay. Perfectly capable of doing it. Doesn't use the bits of me that I love the most. It was part of my reason eventually to, um, leave research. I, I moved into a teaching focused career with, before I left academia entirely. It was part of my reasoning for leaving research was that, that [00:12:00] stuff just didn't use my strengths to the extent that I wanted, and it always felt slightly like I was forcing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so I want you to decide is it what you want to do for the next six months? If it's not, this is a great time to have a conversation with your supervisor about are there alternative ways of doing this, different focuses that you could have in your PhD or thesis, or even whether you want to be doing your PhD at all, maybe a different PhD or some other option is a better fit. But if you then decide, actually no, this is it. This is what I wanna do. Even if it's not my bag, even if it's not what I'm naturally good at, then we start thinking, what can we wrap around ourselves to make that feel as good as possible? So we stop telling ourselves, I don't know how to do this. And we start telling ourselves things like, I'm figuring out how to do this. I hope that one helps. Are you guys resonating? Remember that one? I'm talking specifically about laboratories and new arts and humanities People might be going, oh no, not really. Me. That can translate out. That can translate out [00:13:00] into, you know, whether you enjoy archival work, whether you enjoy field work, if you're a social scientist, for example. So you can translate that out into different settings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Next one. Here we go. Every four to six weeks I seem to crash. Not in a dramatic burnout way, but in a slow, heavy fog that settles in. What's strange is I'm not overworking. I spend work less than six hours a day strictly on campus, and I don't take work home or touch it on weekends. Did I mention that I like my project? I'm also in a very supportive lab and have a strong network. If anything goes wrong, I have people to turn to, but when the crash hits, I can't do anything. I struggle to lift a pen, eat or do basic tasks. Most of all, I lose all motivation to engage with my research. Best case, it lasts a week worse, it stretches into two months. For a long time, I thought it was a motivation issue, but after attending your motivation coaching a couple of months ago, I began doubting whether it was something else just to be on the safe side, I checked with my doctor and they said, I'm as healthy as I should be. So my question is, what do you do? When everything, everything around you is supportive, but your internal systems still shut down. [00:14:00] Is there a way I can reduce its impact on my PhD in research? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first thing I say, I wanna tweak that last question. It is not just how can I reduce its impact on my PhD research, it's how can I reduce my its impact on my life? 'Cause you are far more than your PhD research. Second thing I'd say, I'm super glad you went to your doctor, but I would also say that doctors are not necessarily always good at discovering underlying things that are more complex than the basic stuff. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that just because doctor says you're fine, that you're definitely, definitely fine. The reason I say that is because we can't mindset our way out of health issues if they're health related issues. Obviously I can't tell you whether it's health related issue or not, but I don't want you to just completely wipe that out of your head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing that flagged for me was the fact that you said every four to six weeks from your name, I'm gonna assume you're a woman. I hope that's [00:15:00] okay. I want you to consider whether there's anything menstrual cycle related to that, because it's that kind of length that sounds about plausible and not necessarily it coinciding with your menstrual period, but potentially with ovulation or anything similar. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Apologies if I'm making any assumptions about your biology or stage of life or whatever. But the four to six weeks really stuck out to me. The reason that's important is because there's a difference between something being wrong and something being kind of not optimal, if you see what I mean. When something's wrong, we might want to look at ways that we can fix it if possible, when something's just not optimal, we might wanna like think of ways that we can support ourselves through these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to notice, start doing some observations. Are there any patterns as to when this happens? Could it be cycle related? Is it related [00:16:00] to the weather, for example, is it related to particular events that if there's a particular type of event, and one way you can do that is a little bit of tracking . It sounds as though you are quite good at some routines in terms of how many times you work a week out, how much time you work a week, uh, where you work, and those sorts of things. So I'm hoping that tracking might be something that. You think you could do? Just very simple. There's a ton of apps for them and things like that, but equally, a piece of paper where you just jot down a few words about how you were feeling that day and what sorts of things happened might help you just collect a little bit of data to better understand when this happens. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I want you to notice in that kind of tracking is are there places where you could have seen it coming? Because sometimes what we do when we don't pay much attention or when we think we have to soldier on, we breeze past warning signals and kind of keep going until [00:17:00] we're actually forced to stop. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So maybe there are some warning signals that would help you feel this coming and allow you to plan for it. So that's the first thing. Some tracking so that we, you know, it is bring your best researcher plans to this so that we better understand exactly what's going on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is I want you to think about how you can be kind but not indulgent to yourself during that time. So I want you to really think, in that period where it's coming up and or during that time when you actually crash, what actually helps you. Because sometimes what we think helps, or what we kind of having the drive to do at the time isn't necessarily what helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as an example, if in the evening or weekend. I am feeling kind of tired and lethargic. My drive is to scroll. It's to sit on the sofa, [00:18:00] scroll Instagram. And if I need physical rest, then that's not a bad she okay? It keeps me entertained while I am physically resting my body. So if I am physically tired, happy days, let's do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But usually if I'm tired in the evening or weekend, it is not 'cause I'm physically tired. It is usually because I'm cognitively tired from the work I've been doing, or maybe I'm socially tired because I've been spending lots of time people, I don't get socially tired easily. I'm someone who gets energy from other people usually. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there are times when it's like, okay, that was a load of people today and I need to just not talk. There are different reasons you are tired and getting really aware of what actually helps during that time can really help. So, what activities help? What food helps? What thoughts help, what social support, help, and just getting much more intentional around that so [00:19:00] that we are not thinking about it in terms of, oh no, I'm crashing. Why is this happening? I'm not doing any work, dah, dah, dah. We are thinking about it in terms of, okay, I'm feeling like this. I've got these symptoms. Here are things that help me in that situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you then to think during that period of time, what is good for you in terms of your work. And this is a really tricky one, and I'm gonna be really nuanced in my answer. Because if people are in full burnout and you say it's not burnout, but sometimes when we're in burnout, we don't think it's burnout. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes doing absolutely no work for quite prolonged periods of time is the best way to recover from these sorts of things. Other times though, what we do is we need a bit of time off. We need a bit of time with [00:20:00] either a lighter load or no load, but then actually it then becomes quite hard to get started back up again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think, not during this, but you know, you talk about struggle to lift a pen, eat or do basic tasks. We don't wanna be even thinking about working during that time. If you can't lift a pen, eat or do basic tasks, we are in no position to be thinking about working. But if that then spirals into a period where maybe you could work, but you're telling yourself it's too late, you've wasted all this time, you really don't want to dah, dah, dah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to start thinking about what are small things that you could do in a way that feels good, that might give you a gentle route back in, because it sounds as though you do come back, you know, this is a cyclical thing where you feel bad and then you come back after a period of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what we wanna think is what is that sort of ramp back into your working again? As the [00:21:00] fog clears, what is your little gentle route back in? And the clue is that it should be gentle, it should progress, and we shouldn't be telling ourselves that we should be doing it faster. I hope that all helps. With the tracking it might help you better understand some of the underlying causes, in which case come back and we can discuss again. That one hopefully is helpful for people who have got any chronic health conditions, anything like that, or whose personal circumstances are cyclical or who struggle with menstrual cycle issues like I mentioned. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Question four. How do you manage two supervisors who are quite different? IE they have quite different disciplines and therefore different ideas about project directions in terms of what to prioritize and what will or won't work? Really good question. So the focus in this quarter in my membership has been networking and academic relationships. So managing your supervisor's been a big one. And we just had a webinar about how to manage when you are very different from your supervisor. [00:22:00] But we also translated that out, thinking about what happens if they're very different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first thing I would ask you to reflect on is why is it a problem that they're different? What issues are you experiencing because of your perceptions of them being different? Now, sometimes it can be disciplinary differences, sometimes it can be personality differences, approach differences, and all of those things. But why is it causing you a problem? Usually it's something around because person A says do this, and person B says, do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't know what to do that you want to please everybody. You feel like everybody's advice should be followed and therefore you don't know which to do. Interesting. This is a really good example of how some of my podcasts are relevant to more than one type of thing. I have a podcast episode called How to Deal with Contradictory Feedback, and whilst [00:23:00] that sounds like a different topic, it's very, very similar to this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The key here is remembering any advice that your PhD supervisors or anybody else gives you is information. That's all it is. Advice is not direction. Advice is information. And particularly if you've got two different supervisors who are telling you to do different things, you can't do both of them. It would not make sense to do both of them, usually, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're saying, do this, not that. And they're saying, do that, not this. Now that's actually a brilliant position to be in 'cause whilst it's annoying and confusing at first, it means that you get to decide. Now that's true when you have just one supervisor, but with just one supervisor, it's harder to believe that you get to just pick and that it's your decision. 'Cause you're like, but I'm surely I should do what they say. But if you've got contradictory ones, of course you've gotta pick. So then we get to think, well, why does that feel hard? Well, it's [00:24:00] usually because we're telling ourselves that we don't know. We're telling ourselves that there's a right answer, that if we pick the wrong one, it'll be massively problematic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And also something about not wanting to offend and upset the people who gave us other advice. So those are the problems. The problems are not that you are getting contradictory advice. The problem and your supervisors different from each other. The problems are that you're telling yourself you don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are telling yourself that it's a problem that you don't know and that if you get it wrong, it will be massive. And you're telling yourself that people will be upset if you pick the other thing. Okay? What we get to do is deal with those thoughts instead. We get to remind ourselves that there are many ways to do this thesis that end up in a successful PhD many, many ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of you have got infinite roots to a successful PhD. You get to pick one of them, but it doesn't mean that the others wouldn't have worked. It doesn't mean there is this one magic golden thread that takes you to a PhD. There's a whole [00:25:00] variety of different ways. We haven't gotta pick the right one. We've gotta pick one that we can defend and justify and hopefully enjoy doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing, and I spend my life telling my members this, your supervisor's emotions are theirs to manage, you have to behave in a way that you think is reasonable and ethical and all of those things, okay? I am not saying just go be a dick. That's not what I'm saying at all. But if one of them is gonna be disappointed 'cause you didn't pick theirs, well that's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're adults. They're allowed to be disappointed. They can be disappointed. They can manage that themselves. We get to make sure that we explain why we've picked what we've picked. We thank them for their contribution. We consider whether there are ways that we can incorporate some elements if, if only if it improves our thesis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Not just to placate them, but are their ways. And as long as we've done all of those things, they then get to disagree or be disappointed [00:26:00] or whatever. 'cause the fact that you know, you're in a no-win situation, if they're telling you two different things. We're gonna disappoint somebody. And if we try and wedge it all in, what we're probably gonna do is disappoint ourselves ultimately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So remembering any advice is information. You get to decide. There's no right answer. Behave like what you consider to be a reasonable human being. And my fifth one, if it's ever really, really tricky, I highly recommend getting them in the same room. I used to have two supervisors as well. They got on with each other very well. They probably agreed 70, 80% of the time, but when they didn't agree, they really, really didn't agree and sometimes I would be spending myself literally going up and down the corridor talking to one of them. Well, what about this? Oh no, no, don't do that. Do this. Go down the corridor to the other one. No, that's stupid. Don't do that. Do this, da da. And I would be like, right, come with me. We need to be in a room and actually having the conversation as a three. So one of the things we learning coach training is about normalized by naming, [00:27:00] by actually pointing out something that's happening. And so a useful conversation can be get them in the room and say. I want us to discuss this. 'cause at the moment you are saying that we should do X and you are saying that we should do Y, and I think it's clear that I can't do both X and Y. So I'd like to discuss as a group collaboratively the possibilities that we have got available to us. Mostly X, little bit of Y, mostly Y, little bit of X or Y, Zed, something completely different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want us to discuss them together and actually come to a conclusion and sometimes involving them in that discussion can help as well. Okay, hope that helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Question five. I am so scared of starting to write my discussion chapter. I put it off by doing something else. I wrote an article which has no relation to my research to avoid the guilty feeling of not beginning to write the chapter. I'm too scared because this is the most challenging part of my thesis. My supervisor too stated that this is the key part to your thesis. I'm so scared I can't do it. Well, help me sort [00:28:00] this out. My supervisor also said I have to finish the full draft by Christmas, which makes me so scared. I need to write the discussion chapter and revise part of my findings chapter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is such a good example of why procrastination is emotion avoidance. You are feeling scared because of the things you're telling yourself about this chapter and the things that people are saying to you. I'll take that. Okay? And we are therefore avoiding those feelings of scared. And in the short term, that's very adaptive, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We get to feel less scared 'cause we are doing something else. The problem is, in the long run we are gonna get to that scared place at some point. And what usually happens, I said this, I said this at a training session yesterday, so I did one of my rare live sessions yesterday and everyone was nodding a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is that what usually happens is that we are avoiding the feeling of scared right up until the point that the feeling of [00:29:00] pressure of an impending deadline feels worse than the scared about doing it. And then we flick over and start doing it. So that's why we often actually do get this stuff done in the end is because yes, we're avoiding the feeling of scared, but actually that becomes the lesser of two evils once the pressure of the deadline gets up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The trouble is that gets it done, but it doesn't feel very nice, right? So we want to think of a different way of doing it. What we get to do is we get to think about what thoughts are making you feel scared. So, um, what thoughts that you are having. 'Cause it's not having to write it. That's just a circumstance I will be writing my discussion chapter doesn't necessarily have to make you scared. It sounds from what you've said, that you are scared because it's the hardest part that you might not be able to do it. I'm scared I cannot do it. Well. Okay, so is those thoughts that are generating the feeling of scared and it's that scaredness that you're trying to avoid and that's making [00:30:00] you procrastinate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to take two approaches. How can we make it feel less scary? How can we tolerate the scariness? So first of all, how can we make it feel less scary? Well, we can start checking whether these thoughts we're telling ourselves are even true. And I'm gonna start by asking you a funny question, which is, are you actually right gonna write this, this discussion? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are you actually going to? Because if you are, and I suspect you'll be saying yes, I I will. I know I will. Then we know we are going to do the scary thing eventually. And at this point I will refer back to last week's podcast where I was talking about writing the scary email 'cause it's a very similar thing. If you know you are going to write this, you know you are going to do the scary thing at some point, then we start looking at it not as something to be avoided, but something that we can make feel better and actually get on and do. Yeah. So are you gonna write it? [00:31:00] I'm gonna assume you're saying yes right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how can we make it feel less scary? I'm scared. I cannot do it. Well. Well, you probably can't do it. Well straight out the bag, but that's not a problem. You don't need to, we don't need to write a good discussion in the first version of it. If you're saying, I'm not sure I can get it good. I would really encourage you to defer that thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what we usually do is we try and reassure that thought. We try and say, oh, no, no. Of course you are capable, but your brain is still going. Yeah, but what if I'm not? I like to use, it's not my business. It's not my business to know whether I can get this to a good standard or not. It's not my business to know whether this will be good enough or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My job at the moment is to move towards that and get it as good as I can get it. Is it good enough? Who knows? That's for my [00:32:00] supervisors, that's my examiners to decide, not for me to second guess. So instead of telling ourselves that we're scared we can't do it, and we should know that we can do it in order to do it, we can go, okay, I don't know if I can do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What would be the first steps? Let's do those bits and see how we go. Okay? Don't need to know that you can do it. Just need to do the next bit. We can stop telling ourselves that we are worse than other people. That everyone finds. It's easy. Everyone says this is the scary bit. That's okay. We do the scary bit. Everyone who's ever written a thesis thought their discussion was the scary bit. Somehow they wrote a discussion. Somehow they got a thesis. So we get to say it's okay. I know this feels scary. But we are not gonna make up a load of drama to make it sound more scary. It's okay that it's scary, but we're not gonna feed that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we're gonna ask ourselves, what if I was gonna do it, what would be the next bit? What would be the next few steps towards that? And we try and [00:33:00] keep our brain in that room. So what would be the first steps to roughly working out how to write your discussion chapter. If you were giving an instruction to an assistant or you're giving instruction to chat GPT to write your discussion, what would be the first step? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do not ask chat GPT to do it, but think through what would be the prompt that you would write if you were gonna do that? What would be the first steps? And then we get to say, my only job is to do those steps. Because you'll never write a discussion. You will make an approximate plan. You will review your plan, modify your plan. You will identify a few more papers that you need to read and slot in. You will draft the first paragraph. You will draft the second P, no right point. Do you write the discussion? It's just a series of small other tasks. Okay? Do you get to pick one? Say, okay, can I do that bit? I can do that [00:34:00] bit. Right. Next one. Can I do that bit? Yeah. I can figure that bit out. You can do this. It's normal to feel scared. It doesn't have to be a reason to avoid it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Question six. I know you are a PhD life coach, but I thought this might fit well as a PhD is not a separate individual than their life as a person. So I believe, um, life coaching as a whole would also help. First thing before I go into actually the question, that's literally why I call everything the PhD life coach, and it's not the PhD. Life coach. It's the PhD life coach. I coach on PhD life and in my membership we talk about stuff outside of PhD as much as anything else. So this, I do not separate. This is not about getting your thesis done and nothing else. You are not your PhD. You are a human being who is going through the PhD experience at the moment, and we want that whole life and experience to feel great. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this person says, sometimes I can question [00:35:00] prioritization at all levels, not just PhD tasks or work tasks, like spending time with loved ones, especially elderly family members, and how important that is given that time passes so quickly. And I don't want to reach a time where I feel sorry for not spending much time with them, but then I have to work and earn money and also develop my career and advance my PhD, let alone my personal needs and my leisure. I feel exhausted and sometimes depleted in cognitive, emotional, and physical energy. Sometimes I feel like I need a hundred hour day rather than a 24 hour one. It might look silly, but really am I asking for tips and tricks? How to prioritize all aspects of life based on what? Do you have any life management tips, not just time management? Most importantly, is there a system or scale that you recommend to rate important things in life at an individual level sort of scoring? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Actually, we are gonna be doing something about this in the new quarter of the PhD life coach. It's funny that you ask. There are things called wheels of life that you can use to kind of think about your current satisfaction levels with different areas of your life, and I have some [00:36:00] tweaks on that, that I will take the membership through to think about not just how important they are, but also how much effort you're currently putting in, how much effort you want to be putting in, and how you can divide that when you've got limited effort to go around. Okay? So that's something we are gonna go into. I won't have capacity to talk about that now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I would really encourage you, if this is something you struggle with, I'd really encourage you to be in the membership next quarter, and we'll do that in more detail. Short answer is I really like the idea of dialing things up and down. So deciding which bits of your life are in maintenance mode, you know, doesn't mean they're perfect, but they're fine at the moment, and improving them is not a priority and which things are dialed up at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what we then get to do is decide what that looks like. What does maintenance mode look like? So as an example, if you've got somebody elderly in your life who is not [00:37:00] imminently sick, is not imminently a sort of big, big priority to be spending lots and lots of time with, but you want to maintain a relationship, you want to feel like you're there for them. What is that minimum level of engagement? What does that maintenance look like? How often do you want to visit them? How often do you want to call them? What do you want? Importantly, what do you want that time to be spent doing? Because sometimes it's not about more and more time, it's about more presence and intention when you're actually with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what would maintenance level look like, and you can do that for different aspects of your life. What is maintenance level for your personal needs? What is maintenance level for leisure? Enough that these things don't deteriorate. Your health stays about where it is now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Your relationships with people stay about where they are now. Your PhD progresses at about the state. It's progressing at the moment. What does maintenance look like? [00:38:00] And then we get to identify which one or two areas of our life are we kind of turning it up at the moment ? Because we can't turn all, we can't be trying to progress all areas of our life at a time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just not possible. So which parts of our life are we trying to dial up at the moment? Where are we trying to put in a bit more? And what does that look like? What does a bit more look like? Now, you might be telling yourself everything needs to improve. I'm not even maintaining in any area of your life. And it can really feel like that. And that's an exhausting feeling. And when that usually happens is because you're comparing yourself to somebody who is doing that thing with a lot fewer other things. Okay? We all have a tendency to compare ourselves to parents who are parenting full time and to compare ourselves to people who are working full time and compare our leisure to people who have lots of leisure time and compare our beauty to people who are beauty influencers or whatever, right? We compare ourselves to people who are putting lots and lots of effort [00:39:00] into that one thing. So if you're telling yourself that it needs to be everything, that's where part of the problem is coming from. We could tell ourselves that we should be doing all the things, and the problem is we actually end up doing worse in all the things because when we're with people, we're thinking we should be working. And when we're working, we're telling ourselves we should be with other people. So what we get to do is we get to decide, okay, given that I'm a human being with 24 hours, not a hundred hours, and that I need to be sleeping for eight of those and that I have these other basic needs that need to be happening, how do I actually want to distribute my time? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then given the amount of time, what do you want to spend that time doing? What would be, if you have one hour a week to give elderly relatives, what do you want that one hour to be doing? What's a good use of that one hour? If you have 15 hours a week to give your PhD, what do you want those 15 hours to look like? What would be [00:40:00] useful use of that time? And that way we get to be intentional so that instead of during that time telling ourselves we should be doing something else, we tell ourselves, this is part of my phD time. This is part of my leisure time. This is part of my personal needs time, whatever, and this is the most important thing I can be doing. It is normal to feel dragged in lots of different directions, but we don't have to perpetuate that. We don't have to tell ourselves it's true. I hope that helps. Like I say, we are gonna be working work-life balance, feeling like an imposter and trying to figure out what actually works for us is gonna be a real focus next quarter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then question seven, so this person talking about, they needed to make a plan. They've made a plan, and they're struggling to follow their plans, so they say, I am trying to read a hundred pages a day and write coherent essays for my comps exams as practice. I'm struggling with all the words and ideas to write these essays. I've considered doing audio into Google Docs. I'm trying to recall what I'm reading, so I would have it accessible when I take the exam in November. I'm trying to get it all done. [00:41:00] Now in a previous answer, this person's contacted me a couple of times. In a previous email you mentioned that you are aiming to read a hundred pages a day. You actually end up reading 20 pages a day and still feeling overwhelmed. And so how do you stick to your plan? Well, one of the things I encourage, so, my members have access to be your own best boss, which is a sort of online self-paced course. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the elements of that is, getting your boss self, the boss who makes the plans, and your implementer self, the person who actually does the work to have a conversation with each other. And so if you are in a position where boss you is saying you should be reading a hundred pages a day and writing coherent essays and implementer you is saying, I can't. I'm struggling to do this. I don't get through that much, and they don't feel coherent, then we need to have a little sit down and decide is the problem happening with the boss and the plans that are being set, or is the problem happening that we are not implementing in a way that's reasonable? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And often it's a bit of both, right? But [00:42:00] usually we blame the implementer. I just need to be more disciplined. I just need to work harder. I just need to get on with it. But sometimes we're asking ourselves unrealistic things, and I said at the beginning, I wasn't gonna give advice, but I'm gonna give a little bit of advice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. I wanna know what you mean by read. And I want you to think about how long you are giving yourself for each of these a hundred pages. Because if your definition of read is, read all the words, digest all the words, and fully understand each page, I think a hundred pages of a day of what I assume is academic text is a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's too much, you know, what you're capable of. Um, but I think that's a lot. Now, could I read a hundred pages a day? 100%. I could read a hundred pages a day as long as I decided that I'm skimming them for key information, that I know what that key information is, that I'm choosing to ignore elements that are not relevant to what I'm doing [00:43:00] right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you put your own numbers in, right? You could be like, oh, I usually do that. That's fine. This question's not for you, if that's fine. Okay. I'd then think about what you are meaning by writing coherent essays. Because again, if you are trying to prep for exams and usually, so this is somebody, I believe you're in the us certainly in the UK and many other places, we don't have these sorts of exams. So this is not something that I've helped PhD students prep for, but I did used to work a lot with undergraduates who had to write essays in exams as well. The other thing is, do you need to write them in order to practice them or do you need to plan out what it would look like and what the key points would be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often it's much more useful to if the question was this, here are the five key things that I would need to get in here. Here are the eight pieces of evidence that I would use. This is the conclusion that I would take is often much better to practice generating that bit than actually writing the [00:44:00] whole thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because you know, students would always tell me, I get marked down 'cause my essays don't sound academic enough. Almost always, that wasn't why they were marked down. Almost always they were marked down because the key arguments were not clearly presented. And that's not the same thing as not writing academically that means that it wasn't clear what you were saying. So if you can get much clearer on, in this type of essay, I'm gonna say these things in this sort of essay, I'm gonna say those things that works much better for an exam and can be much faster to produce. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am also a really big fan of what I call blank page revision, which is where you don't start with all your notes. You don't start with all your reading. You just take an exam question and say, okay, if I was gonna write this, you know, I would have an hour to write it. I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes to plan it. What would that look like? What would my plan be that I would do at the beginning of it? And [00:45:00] then once you've done that, then you use your reading to go back and go, okay, that was what I planned, but if I had access to my texts, how would I improve it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so now, instead of reading in a kind of, I'm just reading linearly, beginning to end kind of way. We are looking to go, oh, that argument would've been better if I'd mentioned this. Oh, actually I missed one of the elements out. We should put that in. Oh, actually, I don't think that section's relevant. I'll cross that out. And so then we're sort of going, okay, how can I make this better now that I have access to my notes? That can be a really, really useful way of doing it. Those of you who aren't doing comps aren't preparing for those sorts of exams. The key thing here is if you are routinely planning to do one thing and you are routinely not doing it, we need a sit down conversation with ourselves about is it unrealistic plans or is it that we are not implementing in a way that's reasonable, reasonable, not optimal, not perfect. We don't expect perfection of ourselves, and therefore do we need to be working on [00:46:00] boss self to make clearer plans, more guided plans, more reasonable plans, or do we need to work on implementer self to work in a way that is more efficient or more effective or more focused or whatever? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to sit those down. The answer is very rarely I just need to get on with it. 'cause we tell ourselves that all the time and it doesn't work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that is my seven questions. That is an example. I don't usually, so in the membership, I record them out as little individual. So they're usually like five to eight minutes for each question, and they go in as a separate little question into the private podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can log out, oh, that's a question that I have, and click on it and hear my answer to it, as well as getting them for yourself if you're the one who submits. The question, but there's seven examples of the sorts of voice notes that I do in the membership all the time. If you wanna find out more about the membership, please just go to my website, phd life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Click on the membership. You'll find all the information there. If you join the wait list, [00:47:00] there are some special bonuses that only people on the wait list will get. I'll tell you more about them soon. We open on the 20th of October. If you're listening to this live, that's two weeks time. We are open Monday through Friday, so we are taking new members between the 20th of October and the 24th of October. If you don't come in now, we don't open again till the end of January. So you come in now for that winter period. So for the, November, December, January. Period. And if you don't come now, you'll have to wait till then. So if you want support through this winter period, if you wanna make sure that you get a restful and intentional winter holiday, you wanna make sure that you start next year strong. You need to be thinking about the PhD Life Coach membership. New Year's resolutions do not start in January. They start right now so that we make sure that we take this year in exactly the directions we want it to go. Hope to see lots of you there. You can sign up for the wait list [00:48:00] now. Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for listening. I'll see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 06 Oct 2025 04:00:01 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-05-i-answer-listener-questions thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-05-how-to-send-that-scary-email <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today I’m sharing a real life coaching experience we had in the membership this week. One of the members came to an online coaching session because she had a “scary” email to send and she realised she’d been procrastinating for what felt to her like ages. You have likely experienced this too! The trouble is, when it feels scary, we often end up overthinking it, making it more complicated than it needs to be, and/or putting off actually sending the email for a long time. In this episode, I take you through the process I took my member through to go from “I’m too scared” to “let’s get this done”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16003736-3-09-client-q-a-post-deadline-slumps-uncommunicative-supervisors-and-judging-your-own-work" target="_blank"> client Q&amp;A episode </a> , where I discuss post-deadline slumps, uncommunicate supervisors, and judging your own work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, this is not the episode that I'd planned to record for today, but I had such a good coaching session yesterday on a topic that just super resonated with everybody in the room that I decided to turn it into an episode and give you guys a sneaky peek inside what happens within the membership. So in the PhD Life Coach membership, I have students that have joined the membership to get the support they need so that they can enjoy their PhDs and get. The stuff done, you know, achieve the goals that they want to achieve. And we have these online group coaching calls. So you dial into a webinar, you can't see yourself, you can only see my big face. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then if you've got particular challenges, you can either ask them in the chat or more often and you raise your little zoom hand and come on. And so you appear next to me as if by magic. And we have what feels like a one-to-one coaching conversation while everybody else gets to see sort of your [00:01:00] thoughts coming out and the realizations that we have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. And it's a wonderful learning experience because you get that one-to-one support, but also watching other people getting coached makes you realize that other people worry about the stuff that you worry about too. And it helps you see all the different options that are available. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, I'm sharing this one with permission, but anonymously. So one of my regulars, she's been in for two quarters now, so she's been with me about five months at this stage came because she'd been putting off writing an email to her supervisor. She's at the tail end of her PhD. She's feeling like she's not quite as far ahead as she would like to be, and she hasn't been in that much contact with her supervisors for the last couple of months and feels like she really needs to update them. So that's sort of where we were at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And she came on and she was telling me that she was very scared about sending this email, that she'd been procrastinating it for [00:02:00] ages. She'd sort of written it and rewritten it. She'd avoided it, she'd ruminated on it. She'd done all the stuff that is so normal when we've got something that we kind of think we have to do, but that we're also really scared of actually doing. And as soon as she said this, everybody in the chat, 'cause the people watching are able to drop in the chat, right? Everyone in the chat was like, oh my God, this was me last Friday. Oh my goodness, this happens to me all the time too. And so people were really, really empathizing with it. And I also got quite a bit of grief and I got my chat over here 'cause I record the chat. I got quite a bit of people laughing with me, because I used some fun and analogies to make my point as we were going through the coaching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So some of you'll know I'm a big fan of using analogies to kind of understand complex ideas and particularly analogies that relate to things that are either [00:03:00] relevant to me and my life or relevant to the clients that I'm working with. And one of my other regulars commented in the chat, I live for Vikki's Circus analogies, so I thought why not? If this was such a common topic, it was something that everyone was really resonating with, that really helped the client. And where people seem to enjoy the randomness of the analogies, why not also share it on a podcast? So that is what we're gonna think about today. We've all had it right where we need to send an email to somebody and for whatever reason it feels scary. Maybe we're applying for a job, maybe we're asking somebody if they'll have a mentoring conversation and we're not sure what they'll say, or we are telling our supervisor, we're not gonna hit a deadline, we're asking for an extension, we're asking for feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All these things can feel quite scary, and that act of kind of pressing send on an email can feel like a massive deal.. Everybody's had that feeling, right? [00:04:00] So you know, you're tight in your chest, you feel a bit sick in your tummy, your brain's spinning with all the possible consequences of what you're about to do. It can feel terrifying. And when it feels terrifying, it's no wonder that we don't just crack on and get it sent. And that was where this student was at. Because she's been in my membership for a little while. She kind of knew that a bunch of this was about stories that she was telling herself that weren't necessarily true, and that definitely weren't helpful, but she couldn't quite get herself outta that herself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the first thing I always remind my clients is. That's completely normal, right? This is why people need coaching. This is, I have a coach. This is why people need these sorts of things, because even if you've learned the stuff, even if you've actually got quite a lot of insight into your own behaviors and things, you get better at dealing with it yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when it's something super challenging, you can't necessarily just do it on your own. And that's the gorgeous thing about these sessions is you, [00:05:00] they run three times a week so you can just drop in whenever you've got something that you need to talk through and get that sort of immediate support and cheering up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So she stuck a little zoom hand up. She'd actually given me a little note in advance that she had something that was quite urgent that she wanted to, and I always try and prioritize people that do that. So she'd drop me a little note and say, she was my first person that I promoted on. And as soon as she came on, I could see how tense she was and how upset she was about this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She knew that she wanted to get it sent, but she was really struggling to do it. And so I took her through a process. That I'm gonna take you through today, and it's based on doing bungee jumping. It's based on bungee jumping, skydiving, any of these sorts of things. And so the first question I asked was, are you actually going to send this [00:06:00] email? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sounds like a really weird question to ask. She was wanting to update her supervisors and she thought she had to send an email, and I wasn't saying don't send an email, but I was just checking in. Do you actually have to contact them? You could not contact them. You could talk to them in person. You could contact them in some other way. Right. Do you actually need to email them? And she had a little think about it and said, yep, I do. I do want to contact them and I do want to do it by email. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason I asked that based on my skydiving and bungee jumping endeavors is I remember being on an airplane in New Zealand, which is where I did my skydive, and I did one of those ones where you've got a dude strapped your back. Right. I'm not brave enough to do the actual technical stuff myself, [00:07:00] and we're on the way up. We're in the back of this funny little airplane that had no seats or anything. We were just sat on the floor and I had a little cry because I was really scared and he was a lovely, lovely fella. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he said to me, look, I'm not gonna jump until you give me the okay. Because the thing with partner skydiving. Once the door opens, he's sat on the side of the plane, you are hanging off him. So the choice is his when you go. And he said to me, don't worry, I will never jump without your consent. If at any stage you don't want to do this, all you need to do is tell me, we'll just land the plane again. It's not a big deal. People have done it before. And through my tears, I said to him, if that was on the cards. I wouldn't be crying, I would just be deciding I wasn't gonna do it. The reason I'm crying is because I know I am gonna do this, and that's kind of [00:08:00] terrifying. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's what I wanted to check in with this client is are you actually gonna do this? 'cause if you are not, or if you are not sure, we need to have a different conversation about how you are gonna decide rather than focus solely on how do we get it done? Because sometimes this fear and dread and everything is you or your body saying, I don't actually wanna do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if any of you are sitting there thinking, I would never have got in the plane, or I have got on a plane and gone up and come back down again on a skydive and not done it, fair play to you for making a brave decision to decide to come back down is a super brave decision, to decide you don't want to do it, super brave decision. But it's a separate decision. So first we check, is this just my gut and intuition telling me I don't actually want to do this. In this case though, it wasn't that she did want to send this email. She did think it was necessary. She was just very scared. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Next, I asked her why does it [00:09:00] feel so scary? What is it that's making this scary? And this is not to kind of decide if it's legitimate scariness or not. You're allowed to decide what's scary and what's not. We all have different conceptions of that, right? Some of you might think I'm an absolute fool for the things I've jumped off in my life, but you could not pay me. Well, you probably could now, to be fair, I have very little shame these days, but when I was like 25, you could not pay me enough to make me sing in front of people. Like literally could not pay me enough money to make me sing in front of people. I'm a terrible singer. If I was a good singer, I would be dangerous. You just never get me off stage. But I'm a terrible singer. I'm mortified, embarrassed at how bad or I used to be, at least at how bad a singer I am, and it would be terrifying. You'd never get me to do it. So no, like judgment or shame here, but we get to ask ourselves, why is it so scary? Because sometimes things are scary because there are consequences, [00:10:00] potential consequences that are feasible and potentially scary feeling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sometimes it's scary 'cause we're telling ourselves a load of junk that's not true. Okay? And we do that stuff 'cause of culture and whatever, right? Habit, upbringing, blah, blah, blah. But we can decide whether the reasons it's scar are actually kind of legitimate to us. And so for her, I think the scariness was stuff around, you know, feeling like not scared necessarily, but sad that the relationship's not better with her supervisor. Scared about what feedback the supervisor's gonna say, whether she's gonna give her loads of changes and things like that. There was certainly some fear or worry about disappointing her supervisor or frustrating her supervisor. And I'm pretty confident all of you're sitting there going, yep. Yeah. Yeah, I've been there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So a lot of it was around the sort of fear of what might happen, fear of what they might think, and fear of what that might mean for the [00:11:00] future. So we get to go. Are there any bits of that? Any bits of these stories I'm telling myself that make me feel scared that I am able to refute or minimize or put down or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, not to like de-legitimize your scaredness, but to take the edge off some of the bits that are unnecessary perhaps. And the one I always point out to my clients, is the ones about micromanaging your supervisor's emotions. This does not mean you shouldn't considerate, this does not mean you shouldn't be polite, act in a reasonable way and all those things, but your supervisor's emotions are your supervisor's responsibility. Your supervisor is allowed to be disappointed if they think thoughts that make them disappointed. They're allowed to be disappointed. They're allowed to be frustrated. Should we try and disappoint 'em on purpose, frustrate 'em on purpose? No, obviously not, but we have no actual control over their emotional responses. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They might have absolutely [00:12:00] unrealistic expectations of you, and that's why they feel disappointed. They might have very low expectations of you, and that's why they feel really disappointed. There's loads of reasons, they're responsible for them. We get to decide how we act and we get to decide what's we believe is reasonable and in line with our own personal, ethical code and all that good stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? They are responsible for their emotions. The reason that's important is partly it can take the edge off some of their scariness. If they have, if they're disappointed, they're disappointed. If they're frustrated, they're frustrated, they can manage those emotions. I don't have to like put that on me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason that's so important to remember is because worrying about disappointing someone, worrying about frustrating someone is the first route to making you behave like a right weirdo. Okay? It makes you massively apologetic. Or it makes you avoid talking to them entirely, right? Because you don't wanna disappoint them, so let's not tell them anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it might feel like a kind thing to worry about their emotions, but actually when [00:13:00] we worry about their emotions and take them on as our own responsibility, crucially, then we start behaving weird and that don't help anybody. So we dealt with a little bit of that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We kind of felt like, yes, she was a bit trying to micromanage some of her supervisor's emotions, but that there was some other stuff that was actual consequences to her. She was a bit scared about what her supervisor would say, and she was a bit scared about the implications for whether that meant she could hit her deadline, what quality of work she could produce and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we got really clear on what specifically she was scared of. And the gorgeous thing there was, she started to notice more specifically that the scaredness was all stuff that was being made worse by waiting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That actually it was things, am I gonna have enough time to make the changes? What if I can't make the deadline? Now? All of these things are actually avoiding that sensation of scaredness was making it more scary. Now, it was [00:14:00] just interesting for her just to kind of notice, so we've asked ourselves, am I actually gonna do this thing? We've asked ourself why we're scared, are there any of these I can put aside? So as an example, right? Go back to the bungee jumps or whatever. Why am I scared? I'm scared 'cause I'm jumping off of fricking bridge with a thing tied around my ankles. Of course I'm scared. It's inherently scary. It's scary 'cause I'm up high. It's scary because evolutionarily we're not really designed to be falling like that and just enjoying it. I'm scared because I'm worried it might go wrong. I'm scared about, you know, potential consequences. Is it gonna hurt? Am I gonna enjoy it? Am I gonna be sick? All of these sorts of things. Yeah. So why am I scared? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you get to ask yourself, okay, which ones of these do I actually legitimately believe it. So, well, people do these things all the time. Obviously there's some risk associated with it, but there's risk associated with everything. So, you know what, I'm not gonna tell myself the, I might die story because I [00:15:00] probably won't. The. I'm scared because I'm jumping off something and that's an inherently scary thing to do. I'm gonna take that, that's fine. I'm not gonna be able to mindset myself out of that, but I can stop telling myself that the equipment might all fail and I'll die 'cause that's just not helpful if I'm gonna do it anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are clear on those things. Then what we do is we do our best to make it safe to do the thing while scared. So a really useful mantra to keep in your head is, I'm capable of doing things while I'm scared. This is a good one for any of you who are scared of doing presentations or any of those sorts of things, right? I'm capable of doing things while scared. We get to think about how can we make this safe. Now, in the case of bungee or skydive, that's quite obvious, right? I did things like, I checked in with the guy who was strapping me up to say, you know, , am I ready? Are you comfortable? I'm ready? Is I looked down, but I've got any expertise, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But like, it seems like it's fixed. [00:16:00] I've watched him do it up, all that stuff? So you check anything physically safe. Obviously that's not quite the same when you are talking about e sending an email. But how do we make it safe? We make it safe by not telling ourselves stories about how terrible it's gonna be if it goes wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We make it safe by saying to ourself, it's okay if you can't see me. If you are watching me on video, you can, on YouTube, you can see me. But on podcast, I've like put my hands on my chest, right just below my neck. And that always just feels like quite a calming place to put your hands. And you just say. It is okay that I'm scared. I don't have to not be scared, but I'm gonna be kind. This is where the self-talk comes in, right? Part of being safe is deciding what you are gonna say to yourself. So I'm not gonna tell myself that it's all gonna be awful. I'm not gonna tell myself that she thinks I'm an idiot. I'm gonna tell myself that I need support with this next step, and that's what I'm asking for. These are my reasons for [00:17:00] messaging and it's perfectly reasonable for me to send this message. It's perfectly understandable for me to ask for this help or to tell them this. It's okay to be scared, but I can do this anyway. And that can help you feel kind of psychologically safe as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are not trying to make the emotions go away often. We think I will send it once. I'm not scared anymore. I don't know when that not scared anymore comes. Usually what actually happens is we end up sending it, not when we are not scared anymore, but when the deadline gets so close that we panic overcomes that fear. Yeah. When the panic is higher, then the fear of sending the email, then we send it. But that's a horrible way to live your life. Many of us did it or are doing it for a long time, but it's not fun. So we get to say, I don't have to stop being scared. I just have to make it safe to be scared. Sometimes it can be, especially if it's an important email, don't do this other thing. Getting somebody else to check it through, making sure [00:18:00] they think it's clear and reasonable, all of those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another way you can make it safe is by just double checking that you've made it really clear and easy for the person that's reading the email. So you're not over justifying. It's one of the things we do when we're scared. One of the things we do when we're worried about other people's emotions is, you know, we're asking for an extension or whatever. I used to have this as a, oh my goodness. I used to have this as a academic so much that people would ask for an extension. And they'd give me pages and pages and pages of why their life was so terrible. Why? It was like I felt for these kids, right? I felt for, these were my undergrads. I felt for them so much, but it was so unnecessary. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They needed to give me a quick thing as to that there was a legitimate reason for this, and beyond that, that was all they needed to do. There was no need for that massive story. So checking you're not over justifying, checking that you're making it very explicit what you need from the person that you're asking and making it real easy for them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we're [00:19:00] talking reattaching the thing you want them to read or having, my two key questions are X and Y, making it super, super easy. That's another way to make it feel as safe as possible, that you are sending something that is as likely as possible to get the responses that we need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And then after we've checked we wanna do it, checked why it feels scary, made it safe, decided how we're looking after ourselves, we get it done. So this was advice I actually had to call on last weekend, so it's a long time since my bungee jumping days, right? But when I did my, I did my bungee in Australia, and when I was there I was so scared. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was so, so scared. And I saw somebody else go up before me. It wasn't anyone I knew, but I saw her go up and she stood on that platform for gotta be 20 minutes. [00:20:00] She just would get herself all ready to go and then be like, no, no, I can't. And come back again. And then she'd get herself ready to go and then she'd went, no, no, I can't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I remember, and we are talking over 20 years ago, and I can just so vividly remember watching this and just seeing how much harder she was making it for herself. And I mean that with all the love and whatever in the world, right? I am not judge. I have no idea who she is. I'm not judging her in any way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is terrifying when you have that physical freeze response. It's awful. But it was so much worse 'cause of the time she was taking. And so I decided then and there with scary things. If you're gonna do 'em, you've gotta decide you're doing them. Make sure you're safe, say nice things to yourself and just do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when I went up for my bungee. I literally [00:21:00] went up the queue and I decided in the queue I wasn't gonna look down. 'cause you're going up this tower, right? Total to toddle up the steps. And I'm like, I'm not gonna look down. I'm just gonna look at the horizon. I'm gonna admire the beautiful countryside and I'm just gonna look at the horizon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I went, got to the top and the guy said, you're next. And I said, thank very much. Excellent. He said, you're okay? And I said, yes. He said, you're not looking down. I said, no, I'm not going to either. He said, okay, that's fine. And he did my ankles and I said, are they all safe? Yes. Are you happy? Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everything checked. Am I ready to go? Yes. He said, stand there. He said, yes. He said, I'm gonna say with 3, 2, 1, bungee, you go on Bungee. And I said, okay, fine. He said, 3, 2, 1, bungee. And I jumped and I actually ended up loving it to be fair. I'll tell you a funny story about that in a second. But I actually ended up loving it and I decided I wanted to do it again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so when I went back up again, he said to me, and I so remember this, he said to me, no one does that. No one doesn't look down, puts it around their ankles and jumps. And I was like, but it meant I was scared for about 14 seconds where she was scared for 20 [00:22:00] minutes. It's like, if I'm gonna do it, I might as well do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he was like, I think you're right. But most people don't do it. So I decided that time I was gonna do the same again, but go off backwards. High recommendation for you. Don't bungee backwards. Don't, just don't. I have a beautiful photo of me swan diving gracefully, backwards, which I'm very proud of. But other than that, it makes you boing around in a horrific way. So after the first one I was like, oh, bungee's not that bad. And then after the second one I was like, okay, bungee is awful. And I never do, so, never go backwards. Anyway, I digress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The point is, if you are definitely gonna do it. Don't take too long over it. I passed this on, I was at a holiday park last weekend with some friends and their kids, and the kid, and I did one of these drops, right where you go up a tower and you jump onto one of those big, like, I don't wanna say air bed, do not picture a domestic air bed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I mean like a stunt person type air bed. And he was [00:23:00] scared. Gave him exactly the same advice, little time as possible, and we go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's my final tip for you with your, these emails. Once you've decided, make it safe by making it as clear, as informative, as straight to the point. Short. If possible, people who know me well will laugh, but that's something I've learned over my career. Keep it short, um, and get it sent. We get it done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope you found that useful. I know my client found it super useful and so did everybody in the room. They could all apply it, even if you haven't got a scary email to send, which most of us do at some point, but even if you haven't, you can apply it to most other things that are quite scary, particularly where they're self-paced like that, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a bit different if you've got a booked presentation or whatever, but if it's something where it's like, I can get this done sooner. Let's decide we're doing it, make it safe and get it done. I really hope you found that useful. I'm actually off to teach another workshop now. So, if you wanna find out more about the membership, it we open quite soon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Actually, we [00:24:00] open in about three weeks time. So make sure you go to my website, the PhD life coach.com, click on the membership and find out all the details. Get on my newsletter and you'll be the first to hear. When we're open and all the different things that we're gonna be doing next quarter. So make sure you sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 29 Sep 2025 04:00:02 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-05-how-to-send-that-scary-email thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-04-how-to-prioritise-when-you-have-competing-challenges-a-coaching-session-with-predrag <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this coaching episode, I’m chatting with a part-time, international student who is juggling full time work, a family, a disability, and a PhD that started many years ago. Predrag contacted me for help with prioritisation and time management. Regardless of your own situation, this discussion will help you think through how to balance your different commitments and how to structure your time when everything feels important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/17292145-3-40-how-to-read-academic-papers-more-quickly" target="_blank"> how to read academic papers more quickly </a> and this recent one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/17787701-4-02-how-to-take-better-notes" target="_blank"> how to make better notes </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and today is another one of my coaching episodes. So if you haven't come across these before, I occasionally do a shout out to my newsletter list asking people are interested in coming on the show for coaching so that you guys can hear what coaching is like and hear somebody else working through something that they're finding challenging at the moment. And I did a shout out a little while ago and Predrag got in touch. So welcome Predrag.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Hello. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what I will do in a second is I'll get Predrag to introduce himself to you all, and then we will launch into this as though it is a normal coaching session that I would do with one of my clients in my membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So Predrag, maybe you could tell people a little bit about yourself and why you got in contact for coaching.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Hi there. Hi there. Hi everybody. So my name is Predrag and, I'm doing my PhD right now that I started many moons [00:01:00] ago, so 20 something years ago. Then I made a break about 15 to 20 years I went to industry. Then I went back to academia. Right now I work fulltime as a faculty lecturer here in Montreal. So I teach and I'm trying to do some research. So anybody who worked full-time knows how tough it's to do the PhD or any kind of study when you work full time. So that was one of the reasons why I heard about Vikki and I'm a regular follower everywhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: The second reason is that I study in my second language. I live in Montreal, so I have to speak French, which is my third language as all. So, it's not easy. I have to say. Then a couple more reasons. I have a speech impediment, so it's not easy to teach when you have a speech impediment. So I have to overcome all that. And the fourth reason is that I'm fairly old, let's say, to be doing PhD. So I'm over 50 years old. So all of that combined, I [00:02:00] realized I need some kind of help. So there we go. I'm here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Perfect. When Predrag got in touch, he explained that he'd heard me talk or people on the show talk about various elements of this, but never all at once, which I think is a really, really fair point. And actually one of the reasons he just sounded like a really interesting person to talk to. But one of the reasons I was particularly keen is because I think one of the things that I haven't talked much about on the podcast is studying internationally, working internationally, studying in a second language. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And obviously it's not something that I have direct experience of as an individual though I do as a supervisor. And I thought that whole element of it would be really, really useful and so interesting to so many listeners. So tell us a little bit more about how all of those factors you mentioned kind of combine. What, what does it look like at the moment and, and why does it feel so challenging?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: [00:03:00] Well, you can think of it like this, so you have, if you have to do anything, you have like two or three or four or five obstacles, and I'm used to having like at least two or three more extras. So it's more work, more time, more physical and mental energy as well. So at some point you get used, however, it's at some point you get very exhausted, let's say.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So I'm, uh, I'm reaching a certain point in my life when I am, I don't have that kind of energy as before. So I'm trying to give that final push and finish my, my PhD in the next couple of years. So actually next year if all goes well. So you mentioned second language. Yes. The second language is, it's an obstacle, however, even when I came to Canada in two, 2000, actually 25 years. Very cool. So I spoke English a little bit. So I improved it, of course, when, when I came here. So writing, reading everything in English is not a big deal for me. [00:04:00] However, it is not my, my, my other language. So. That's another obstacle as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, absolutely. And how does that affect the actually doing your work day to day?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: More time. More time. I need more time. And I need, especially 'cause I have speech impediment, which is connected to my, to my second language. So I had to expand my vocabulary. I have to learn to speak slowly. I have to think first and, um, speak after that, of course. So especially 'cause I teach, and when you teach with uh, students, you must have a good accent. I hope that they have a good accent here. So you must have a good accent. You, you must have a good, good, uh, vocabulary. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: And uh, you have to be ready to explain the same thing in at least two or three different ways. Because if somebody doesn't understand it one way, maybe he's gonna understand in second and so on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, that's fascinating, isn't it? [00:05:00] Especially the pressures. On you in terms of being what the students need? I always think it's, so, I used to oversee teaching at my old department and it was something we'd hear, you know, we had very international staff and it was something we'd hear from students from time to time. And I always got a bit cross, to be honest, because with the students, I mean, because from my perspective, there's the responsibility on the person speaking the second language to be as comprehensible as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I think there's a responsibility on the listener, especially a listener who wants to work in international settings, to learn to understand different accents and to learn...  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: exactly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: To listen and not just go, oh yes, that's not good enough. I can't understand. And I, I feel like we don't often put a lot of emphasis on that side. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Actually, I agree with that. I'm not sure what is the situation over here in the uk? Here in here in Montreal actually [00:06:00] have a lot of students like from overseas, from from everywhere. So when I started my masters in 2001, I heard people speaking English from all over the world. And I said to myself, Hey, I'm not that bad. My English is actually like fairly okay. So that boosted my self-confidence and I started reading more in in, in, in English and reading helped a lot.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. No, definitely. Definitely. And I think it's because I think anybody listening to you is gonna be like, what's the problem? He's got amazing English. Um, but I think this notion that it just makes things feel more effort, that you have to think first, that you have to, you might be a little slower than you would be if you were speaking your own language and things like that. I think people underestimate the sort of cognitive effort, even if you come across as very fluent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I just imagine, you know, if, uh, if English was my first language, I can, uh, you know, right now, actually right now I can, [00:07:00] but, but, but, but before I couldn't. If, for example, if I have to go to, to a store and argue about something, explain myself, it was tough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: You know? So I had to accept it as is.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I remember talking to, we were at a conference and I have a lot of Dutch colleagues and we were talking to a Dutch guy and he was, and his English is superb. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, and he was talking about the cognitive effort associated with speaking in English all the time. We're like, but, but you are amazing. You are so, so fluent. He's like, no, you don't understand. I'm really funny in Dutch. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Exactly. Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: He just make me laugh. It's like, I can't do that in English. I can't play word games in English. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: It's like I have, I have a second personality when I speak English. I have a third personality when I speak French, so I, it's almost like I'm not the same person.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. That's fascinating, isn't it? Okay. Right. I could talk to you about that [00:08:00] side of it for forever, but I want to make sure that we focus in on the things that are really helpful for you. So the big challenge was how all these things interact with each other, right? Yes. That you are working full time, you've got these other things that are making it more challenging than it already could be. So how is that affecting you at the moment? You mentioned some exhaustion, but how, how is it affecting you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Affecting me? 'cause I would like to finish, you know, I started my PhD. I'm not gonna hide. I started it in 2003, so I didn't finish it in, uh, in the first, uh, in the first round. Let's say I moved from academia to industry in 2008 because we had, uh, kid number one kid number two. So on. And it was about time to find a real full-time position elsewhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So I moved in 2008 industry and I stayed until 2023. So I worked in food industry, in, uh, medical devices, uh, cannabis even. So I [00:09:00] worked  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: mostly, in the regulatory affairs, quality assurance, food safety, food quality. And so I was, I was everywhere. Then a couple years ago, uh, I got an opportunity to come back to the department here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I applied, I was, I was accepted, and fortunately my old supervisor is still here. So the very first week he came to my office and he said, oh, I believe you promised me something 15 years ago.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I, i, I know what, what, what that is. So here, I'm, so basically I have to finish my PhD and, uh, I don't have time. I work full-time as a lecturer, so I have to use my summers as much as I can. Because when I teach, I teach, uh, for example, in, in the next fall, I'm going to teach six, six courses.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Which is like a full, full work time load. And I try to be realistic, realistic with, with myself. I'm not going have any time to do an experiments and research anything. So I have to try to finish as much as I can now and then [00:10:00] over the holidays if I can, and maybe next summer, if everything goes well, I should be submitting my thesis by the end of summer next year. Okay. So working full-time as I try to work full-time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I believe I have a good, uh, student evaluations for my teaching. So I was even nominated for the, for the Faculty of Art award, for teaching.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Congratulations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I was, thank you. I was very happy about that. Yeah. So students, I believe students like me, I like do it as well. So there we go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So when we're thinking about actually sort of structuring out the time that you have, are you saying that during term time you do no work on your PhD or you can't do experiments or tell me, so talk me through that a little bit more how that, how that works.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So let's, let's take for example, from September to December. Yeah. I, I had to teach, I have assignments, I have exams and so on. So I do almost nothing. Yeah. To be honest, I did, the only thing I can do is maybe [00:11:00] read some, some paper here and there. I cannot do experiments because I have to plan for experiments and it takes me least a couple of days ahead. So reading papers, maybe trying to finish, because I was fairly lucky. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Let's say in last year I was doing my literature review so I didn't have to do experiments. However, it took almost, I wouldn't say a year, but let's say seven or eight months. So that should be out any time now  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So after that, uh, uh, unfortunately or fortunately, I have to start experiments, so that is going to be ideally next week. So, okay. Uh, organizing everything during, during semester is very difficult because I have to think, uh, about all the courses that I have to teach. And I also do student advising. So if, if uh, any student has any question about their, uh, their path, which courses they have to take, they're, they're gonna come and see me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So one of the things you said there sort of pricked my ears up 'cause it's something that comes up with my clients quite a bit, [00:12:00] which is that you said you wouldn't do PhD work between September and December, but you might do some bits of reading, you might do some bits of writing, but  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: there's not really much time just to keep myself in shape and I don't have time. So basically, yes, I'm still doing my PhD, but at a very, very slow pace.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so one of the things that I want us to spend a little bit of time thinking about is how we can make that as intentional as possible. Because what I see a lot and people do that, you know, a lot of people aren't in your position, but they are taking some holiday or something like that and they say, I don't really want to work during my holiday. I need a break. I need some time off. But I might do a bit of reading. And the problem is you may have heard past episode about making half assed decisions. The problem is when we say, I'm not really going to, but I sort of might, we put [00:13:00] ourselves in this position where we are likely to end up unsatisfied. One way or another because on one hand we're telling ourselves, so in your case, on one hand we're telling ourselves that actually what you genuinely need to do is get your head down and get your six courses taught, advise all your students and not have to worry too much about your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But on the other hand, you are also telling yourself that it would be good to do maybe some reading or writing. Okay. And you can just end up disappointed either way that if you only teach. Oh. But I didn't really get to any reading or writing and I said a word I thought, you know, I sort of said I might and I didn't or the other way round I really needed to get my head down and do the teaching but I interrupted it with PhD stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So do you recognize, and before we go into what we do about it, do you recognize that that this kind of </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: hundred percent </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: vague plans? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. [00:14:00] Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How does that affect you when you do that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Well, lately, let's say maybe next six or, well, in the last six or seven months, I try not to beat myself down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So I said, okay, I, I'm hired to be a teacher, so I'm gonna be a teacher. If I have time during semester, I'm going to do some readings and experiments, but only if I have time. Which is not always the case, which is almost never the case. Of course.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So what would it look like? What could it look like to decide really intentionally what, if anything, you are gonna do over that teaching? And we'll think more in a minute about how we handle between now and term starting, but for that term period, what kind of options have you got, I guess, to make that really intentional?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: My main problem was that I'm not going to start to write anything. I'm not going to start an experiments if I don't have at least a full day.[00:15:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Which I don't, which I don't, I teach every day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. However, put experiments to one side. Okay. Why is that true with writing? Why do you need a full day for writing?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I, I'm not sure if it's mental, but I have to talk myself. Okay. I need to put myself in the writing mode, and for that, I need a couple of hours at least. I know that you talked about it in one of the, at least one of the podcast. Of course. So, but honestly, I, I could, you know, there, there I have a time period during the week when I teach, I have like four hours. Four hours is more than enough. But still I have, I'm gonna come into my office, I'm going to open my PC and, and say, okay, I have four hours. I, I actually can do, can do anything. So, but, uh, no.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So there's a challenge. So for the writing side of things, there's a challenge around this belief that you need bigger blocks of time. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And we can, we can poke around as to whether that's true because I. I can go both ways on [00:16:00] that, in that I strongly encourage clients to figure out ways that they can do small chunks of writing in smaller chunks of time. Okay. And we can talk about how to do that, but that is not necessarily appropriate when you've got this huge cognitive and organizational load of six courses to run. So let's say we could say that unless there's a full day, you won't do any writing. How about the reading side of things? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: It's very similar. I like to look at reading, like, uh, that's an activity that I'm gonna do not during my, like, regular time. Maybe the evenings or, or, or on the weekends. Like when I'm relaxing, let's say. So </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: why is that? Why then?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: To be honest, I don't know. I also connected when I'm in the office, I should be productive. I should do, you should see something when I finish. Okay. Reading, reading is more, oh yes. Especially because I [00:17:00] live, uh, I live in Montreal downtown, and my office is like, uh, 40 kilometers, away. So I, I usually take a bus and I have about three hours per day of a commute.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, wow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Okay. So I try to use that for reading, actually.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So I try, I try to fill my reading.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Reading for your PhD or reading for your courses.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Actually more for PhD. However, when it is a semester time, no matter how prepared I'm for the lecture, I, I'm going to, okay, maybe I should do this, maybe I should, maybe I should go over it once more and so on. So it, it's like a fear. I'm never ready enough, uh, to teach.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Ah, so many good things that we can coach on here. This is good. So first thing and this isn't about being really black and white about things, so it's not saying either, you must be using all your commutes to do your PhD work all the way through term no matter what. [00:18:00] And it's not saying you're definitely not going to do any PhD work. What I would really encourage you to think about is, is there a portion of time each week, let's say, or each two weeks, where you could say, on my Monday morning commute, or on a Friday after lunch, or on a Wednesday after lunch or whatever, I'll spend two hours in PhD student mode and we'll think about how to use that time effectively in a minute, but so that you can say, you know, during my teaching period. They say that whole semester, the only time I'm a PhD student is two hours on a Tuesday morning and I start work early on a Thursday, or I work late on a Thursday, or whatever works for you. Right? So that you are not constantly going, oh, I could probably do some [00:19:00] PhD, but I'm really tired. Um, or you're not going, I must be doing this consistently all day, every day in order to stay on top of it. I just wonder what those little sort of almost dates with your PhD could look like through a teaching semester.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I believe that's doable. It's feasible. I have almost every day. I teach every day, but not all day, of course. So on a couple of days during the week, I have, let's say half a day off, off, let's say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So maybe I can, I can dedicate that. My obstacle is that I have to convince myself that if I have four hours, that's enough. That's enough to do something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And why does feel hard to believe? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Well be honest. I believe I'm slow. I need more time to be efficient, so, uh, which, which is not always the case, you know, and I need, actually, I need more time to prepare myself to do the [00:20:00] work than do the actual work because once I'm, once I'm in the mood, I'm, I'm fairly fast.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And what does in the mood mean for you, for this being efficient? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So, for example, for DI had to format, uh, my latest paper and I was reading for a couple, couple days how to format it, and I formatted it in like one hour. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So once you know what you're doing, you are quite fast at cracking on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Exactly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But you believe it takes you a better time to figure out </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. Never, never forget, please, that I've worked in industry for 15 years, so over there quality comes after efficiency. So I'm used to work very fast and quality is important, but not as important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So would you in industry have said that four hours was insufficient time to get on with a task?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I wouldn't have a choice.[00:21:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So what then happened </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: here? Here? Okay. If I don't read my paper this week, I'm, I can read it next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: There are no hard set headlines. Over there. I, I had, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how did that make it easier to get on with? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I care a little bit less about the quality of my work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Here, I, uh, any, any material, any report, any paper that's, uh, that I had to finish, I try to be like as good as possible.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And this is, this is so good. This so many people will really resonate with this. I hear this all the time that this. So it's a slight perfectionism that I've gotta do it really well. It's important. It's gotta be good quality. All of this stuff. It sounds so worthy. Right. It sounds like who could argue with this is important work and it's important to do it. [00:22:00] Well, we can't. We can't argue with that. And then when you add on top of it, given that I'm doing this in another language, given that I'm coming back to it after a long time, given all these other circumstances, I'm slower. Again, how can anyone possibly argue with all this stuff? Makes total sense. Right? And adds up to this very strong story that you can't do anything useful with four hours.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yep. Right? You are.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I just don't think it's true. Now, I don't think if you've been teaching all morning, I don't think you should expect yourself to get four hours PhD work done in an afternoon. No way. You know, there's only so much brain to go around on any of these days and teaching's tiring, right? Especially teaching in a second or third language. The third language bit is blowing my mind. You're having to think of that as well. Um, so this absolutely isn't about, and how can I use all of those four hours?[00:23:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I just wonder whether when you've got four hours, whether we can make a plan. That means you can do an hour's PhD and it feel nice. It feel like your little respite in a busy lecturer, you know, where you get to be a proper academic instead of rushing from course to course where it almost becomes something rather than something else you've got to wedge in. It almost gets to become, oh, I get to go and do the good bit. Now I get one hour of doing the bit that I came back for.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yeah, I agree. So, for example, uh, in the next fall, I completely, uh, set different expectations for me. So like in the last fall, I said, okay, I'm going to teach five or six courses. I, I don't mind, I can, I can publish at least one paper and so on. And so, but for this fall, I said, I said to myself, okay, I do not expect any paper, I mean any, any work mm-hmm. On the, on the phD. So to be honest, anything I do will be excellent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick [00:24:00] interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Perfect. Because you said that you wanted to keep it ticking over. You wanted to kind of keep your mind in the [00:25:00] PhD game, and I think that's really, really sensible. As long as we can do it in a way that it's not a nag in the back of your head. It's like, almost like, I dunno whether they have them in Canada, in the uk um, people who have had children, during maternity leave get keeping in touch days. So they have a few days during the leave where they can, where they come in and they're kind of just kept up to speed with stuff. Whether you can almost think of it as, you know, you are keeping in touch hour or you're keeping in touch day, even if it was only a few during the semester. So that you, you kind of keep that notion that you're a PhD student and this is something you're academically engaged with, but without it having this productivity pressure on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yep. I understand.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So tell me more about reading not being productive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So anytime I start reading something, I'm, uh, I'm constantly tired. You know, [00:26:00] I, I'm not sure if it comes with age or something. Uh, anytime I start reading after a couple of pages, I've, I, I feel sleepy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So I have to walk around, I have to move around. I have to take my, my coffee and so on. So if I read one paper within an hour or two hours, I should be, I should be happy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Okay. So tell me more about how you read a paper.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Okay, now I started changing that as well. So I heard your not the last podcast, but two or three before that. So, uh, before I would be reading from like everywhere. Mm-hmm. Everything like a, like a book. Yeah. Now I start with abstracts. I go to conclusion. Then if it's really interesting, I go into, into methods and for example, when I was doing my literature review, I would be reading everything, like especially introduction and so on. 'cause [00:27:00] I needed ideas, how to construct my, my review. So mm-hmm It all depends on the goal. Depends the how am I gonna read. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Perfect. I love that you've experimented with some other things. Oh yes. So I will link to that podcast in the show notes for people. 'cause by the time this comes out, that will have been a month or two ago. Um, so one of the things I think always be clear about when you're reading is why you are reading that article now. Yes. Um, and one of the ways that you, because I hear this all the time, right, that especially for academics, I don't think it's so much the case with full-time PhD students, but where people are academics, whether they're just an academic or an academic and a PhD student, this notion that reading should be squished into evenings and weekends 'cause it's somehow. Luxury rather than the job. Um, is really, really prevalent. And one of the things that you can do to make reading feel [00:28:00] productive is to set yourself a task. So rather than the task be read this article, which can feel a bit wooly, it can feel, you know, and can be a bit sleepy inducing, right? If we're just working our way through it. If the task, if you are really clear on why you are reading it at this stage, not it's just an important paper, but at this stage I need to understand what my options are for my methods for my next study, or I need to understand what we already understand about this technique or whatever it is, right? Then you can set yourself much more discrete tasks. And one of the ways I like to think about this is if you are telling a student to read this article, what could you ask them to do? So rather than just read this article and them go. Okay boss. Alright. Whatever you say. But if you could say, read this article and summarize its key findings in five sentences. Or read this article [00:29:00] and pick out the key methodological decisions that they made and why. Do you see what I mean? Or, yeah. Read this article and summarize the findings in the first three graphs or whatever. Yeah. Um, giving yourself specific tasks like that make it much more engaging than just reading. It makes it feel productive 'cause you've got a thing that exists afterwards and it makes it easier to fit into a small amount of time because if you've got an hour and you've got a very specific task, it's like, okay, I can do that task in an hour. Mm-hmm. Therefore, it's worth me trying if you see. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes, yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How does that feel? Have you ever experimented with anything like that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Uh, nothing like that. However, like, like I said, I started to modify my reading methods, so I might incorporate, uh, this, like I said now. So I'm going to establish a goal [00:30:00] and then, uh, based on the goal, I'm going to apply the reading methods. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And are there ways, I mentioned about making it feel lovely as well, so that it's a bit of a respite rather than something else you are wedging in. Are there ways either environmentally or like in your location or in how you're speaking to yourself that you can make those times feel really nice? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I wouldn do it in the office, to be honest, because my office is always open, everybody's coming in and out so it's always noise in the background. So I would be doing it either, either on the bus or at home.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Are there places on campus that you like going other than your office? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I can go to the library. I don't like spending time in library because its, again, too many people. It's very silent, but too many people going, uh, in and out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Are there any places I can find some where you're like, Ooh, I like it there. [00:31:00] It's a nice place and it feels calm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I, I've never looked for one, for one spot. I might though.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because it can be a nice way of differentiating, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If you are, if you are constantly cycling between different tasks and in your office, students come and find you and your emails going off and all those sorts of things, it can be nice to think about whether there's somewhere so, like on my, when we were very lucky on my old campus, but my old campus we had an art gallery and there was a botanical gardens and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it was quite easy to be like, I'm just gonna hide for a couple of hours 'cause I've got something I need to do and take your laptop, take your book wherever it was off to one. And it felt quite pleasant. You weren't sort of feeling like you were just hot housing yourself on something different. It felt, it felt almost a little bit like you were slacking off except you were doing the work that actually they you to [00:32:00] do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: That's actually actually very nice.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it'd be worth maybe having a little explore as to what that looks like. 'cause I'm really reluctant to encourage you to just try to wedge PhD stuff on top of everything you're already doing. So during term time, I would only try and do any of this if you can do it during office hours and you can make it feel like a nice break rather than just another task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I see.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So we've talked a little bit about this fall semester coming up, where you've got the very heavy teaching load, but you also mentioned that you've got some time now and into September where you are looking to get some experiments done. So tell me a bit more about how you're feeling about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I'm feeling excited because I'm, uh, I, I was always like a hands-on type of guy, so doing some actual experiments in the lab. And, uh, actually my PhD is, it's a mixed bag, so [00:33:00] I'm going to do some computer simulations. So again, office work and I have to validate my computer simulations with actual experiments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So I have to do some HandsOn experiments, which I'm gonna be doing as of next week. So I have to get in that mood again. I haven't done any experiments since 2005, 2006 maybe, so I have to go to my old lab. Everything is still over there and I have to learn how to use them again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So it's going to be a learning curve and, uh, again, I'm afraid I'm gonna need more time, uh, like when compared to some, like, regular students, but still.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what's your strategy for. getting back in there getting familiarized  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: one experiment at a time. I'm not going to hurry. So even I have like four, five weeks, and uh, based on preliminary idea, I should be finishing that in two weeks, learn everything again. So should be [00:34:00] fine. I have to organize myself, I have to learn again. Knowledge is there, the will is there. So I have to finish everything before my classes start late August.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And would that be then all your data collection?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Ideally, yes, because I would like to do it as much, as many experiments as I had. Yeah. So I'm gonna have, uh, data that I'm gonna use later on for writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So the idea would be that by the time terms starts you'd have collected all the actual data that you need. And then the remainder of the work would be analysis and writing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Exactly, yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. And how are you looking after yourself this summer? Because it sounds as though there's a potential for you to work hard on lab and experiments and all of those things and go straight into a hefty teaching semester, [00:35:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: actually, uh, up, although maybe middle last year, so let's say some, beginning of the summer, 2024, I took care of myself very well. So I went for a run three or four times a week. I went to the gym two or three times a week. I was in a fairly good shape. Now, in the last year, I've, I'm not looking after myself very well, so I tried to eat healthy, which is not always the case. I stopped going to for a run. I stopped going to gym. So I try to incorporate all that, which is very difficult when, you know, to have time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's interesting that that was your interpretation of looking after yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because all that stuff sounds great, right? Looking after our physical bodies. Brilliant. Love. Um, and it can really help, right? It can help us feel healthier and all those things, but it can also just be another pressure, right? That we, we've got to fit in. You know, I'm not, I'm not doing enough on my PhD and I'm not running either and I'm not doing this. How are you incorporating rest [00:36:00] or play or just unstructured fun into this?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: To be honest, if I catch one movie a week, I consider myself lucky. I have a wife, of course, and , she has like a regular work. She has her evenings off, her weekends off, and she's expecting us to do stuff and, uh, for reason she's not very happy when I have to work on weekend. So trying to find balance is very different.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. What would help, do you think, what does it feel like you need at the moment?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I'm gonna repeat myself time, time again because I, well, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: on the basis that time is the one fixed entity. The only way we get more time is doing less of something, essentially filling our time differently. What does it feel like your mind, body, or spirit's craving [00:37:00] at the moment?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Maybe better, better organization of my time and, uh, lower expectations for some items or actually for all items. I don't have to do my, my teaching. I like it, but it doesn't have to be hundred percent. Perfect. Yeah. So if I, if I, if I want to exercise and don't have to exercise six days a week, maybe two or three would be enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. I love that. And a short amount, right? Yes. Three runs of 10 minutes a week are better than no runs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I agree. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What makes it hard for you? Because you know that's true, you know that's true of all your different things, right? Yes. But what makes it hard for you to accept that good enough is good enough with all these things?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Let's say that all my life, I, I try to be as good as possible. So I try to be a perfectionist. So if I say, okay, if I have half an hour [00:38:00] for a, a run, it's not enough. I'm used to like 45 minutes, hour at least. So half an hour is plenty of time to get some sweats to get exhausted. So I know.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what kind of gets in the, say the thoughts come up? Oh, no, no. That's not enough time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Let's say the first negative part. Okay, I don't have an hour now. I'm not gonna do this. So I had to overcome that first rejection and yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And we take that first rejection at face value.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Exactly, yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So, and this is just a really good example, right? So many clients, so many of the listeners identify as being perfectionist and have these exact things. It's not worth starting reading a paper if I don't have four hours. I can't write anything if I don't have a full day. It's not worth running if I don't have an hour. All of these things, right? And it's really, really common and it's grounded in some really, like [00:39:00] on one level worthy kind of, I wanna do my best and this is important stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then potentially some kind of societal pressures around productivity and all that stuff. Yeah. But one of the things, one of the techniques that I found clients find quite useful is instead of thinking about perfection in each element of your life, is thinking about what a perfect version of what you are currently trying to do is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And by perfect, I, I still mean within the realms of realisticness, but on the basis that, you know, because if you were a full-time PhD student with no job, no children, no partner, no nothing, there would be a certain, you know, you'd have other challenges, don't get me wrong, but there'd be a certain amount of time you could spend on your PhD, but you have got many roles that are important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, you've got, you as a human being, you as a [00:40:00] partner, you as a father, you as a teacher, you as a PhD student, even aside from any of the others. So what would a kind of gorgeous. I'm making like round shapes with my hands on the video here for people listening, what would be like a gorgeous, holistic version of this where you look at it and you're like, you know what? I am not perfect in any one of these things, but this is adding up to weeks and months that feel pretty good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Can we talk about priorities? So, okay, at a certain time you don't have the same priorities. So, uh, I was in the best shape of my life maybe eight years ago when I had like a stable, not that demanding industrial position, and I could, I could exercise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I, I was in a perfect shape. Then we had some issues at work. We had inspections, audits, and everything. So completely that [00:41:00] because my priority became to answer the inspector. So it's very similar situation. Now, I would like that my priority number one is PhD, which is not unfortunately, however, I have, I have an issue. Okay, I have priority, but I don't have to put hundred percent of me into that. I can put 70%, so that still leaves maybe 20, 30% to do other things, which I don't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Why do you think you don't?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I feel bad, you know, if I have priority number one, I feel bad if I don't dedicate myself fully to that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I, uh, I don't know. It's like, it's me. It's me personally. It okay? If, if I have to do something, I'm going to give hundred percent, because otherwise I'm not, I'm not able to do it. I'm not good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But so at the moment, I know you said [00:42:00] that you'd love PhD to be number one priority, but it can't be. But you've still got, you as a human, you as a partner, you as a father, you as a worker. So what's number one priority then out of those four?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Family first. So that's, uh, I always say my, my wife, my kids, family. After that, I would say work, because I got hired to do one thing, so I should be doing that thing as good as possible. And after that, myself, I'm fairly healthy, actually not in the, that I would like to be. So my health is not priority number one for now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: After that, my entertainment, let's say, so if we can go to cinema, we can go to theatre, but not as often as a, as as I would like. Oh yes. Before when I was doing my master's, I, I read [00:43:00] a lot, a lot. Right now I don't remember the last time I read a book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm. So one of the things I think is really interesting with priorities is it is absolutely useful to know if push comes to shove this is the number one thing. However, I think the notion that there's a singular focus is unrealistic for most people. And I think one of the things that can really help with that is deciding which bits of your life are in maintenance mode at the moment, and which bits you are pushing on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then being clear,. This is where the kind of role-based time blocking that I talk about in the podcast a lot becomes useful. And then thinking that what your kind of macro priorities are [00:44:00] doesn't have to be true in every single hour of the day. So let me explain better what I mean. You could decide. And so it sounds as though your health, your sort of physical health is in kind of maintenance mode at the moment. You are right. You, you're healthy enough, you're not pushing to like really, really improve your fitness, but you are right, you're there or thereabouts. And during your, um, teaching semester, maybe PhD's in maintenance mode, it's like ticking along, but I'm not pushing on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Whereas over this next six weeks, it sounds as though PhD data collection will be in kind of push mode. Yeah. So I think it's useful to kind of almost have it as like little slidey dials that you can move up and down and understand that not all of them can be at the top all the time. Now, one of the ways that can be useful to do that is if you imagine those are all scales of one to 10, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think we identified like five and you can add whichever [00:45:00] ones you want to, right? But just as a in indicator here, say you've got you as a person, let's bundle family together. 'cause it sounds like you're treating that in the same thing. I don't think people should necessarily treat it as, because I do think relationships and kids maybe need separate attention, but let's put family and then we've got PhD and work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So like, let's say four at the moment for simplicity's sake. If you rated all of them out of 10, then that's 40 points. Okay? Now trouble is we can't be at 10 for everything all the time. So let's say like six out of 10. So four sixes, 24, you've got 24 points to distribute amongst those six sliders. Okay. In your kind of day to day life, and it can be a useful, so like during this summer period, where are you putting those 24? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, maybe you're dialing up on PhD, you are dialing down on work a bit, maybe you're dialing family up a bit, if kids are off school or whatever, [00:46:00] dah, dah, dah. And you kind of think where you're doing and then in term time what happens in term time. But what you can't do is miraculously bring up more points. You're just moving them between roles. Does that visual sort of help think about </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Exactly. I'm going to use the same analogy because, because I'm an engineer, so if you have a finite amount of energy, you cannot create energy or power, so you have to distribute that energy wherever it's needed.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. I love that. I think the, so one of the podcasts that I want to write in that month or so's time I'm gonna do it, is about finding analogies that work for you because they're based in things you really properly understand. Yes. And so I love that you bring that to an engineering analogy because I can see that go even further. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So partly you can't create energy, you've gotta think about how you're distributing it, but you can also think about where you can remove friction or resistance or whatever, so that the energy is used [00:47:00] effectively. So I think really thinking about this as your life is an engineering machine essentially, and you can't change 'cause you have 24 hours in a human body to put in at one end of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you've got your different roles, your different bits of your life that you want to put time into, and you can decide how much of you goes into each of those. And you can think about where's create, where's draining, you know, where are you losing energy? Where's making things harder than it could be, but essentially, which ones are you diverting more into? And that will change in different phases of your over the next year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Exactly. And they constantly, I'm trying to find these to do, for example, one task in a more efficient or shorter time period. So like they say, you know, if you want to do something efficiently, give it to a lazy person. So I, I [00:48:00] guess I'm lazy. I'm always trying to do one task in a, in less and less time. So that's another, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: gimme an example of that. Gimme an example, because sometimes, that helps and sometimes not.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I have an excellent example. Uh, a couple years ago I worked, uh, for a food industry here in Montreal and they were doing some kind of data analysis of temperature loggers for, uh, cooking. And we had a technician, she was working on that, let's say, almost full day, one day per week. So I, I said, okay, that should not be that hard, you know, it's like a, it's like a manual analysis in Excel. So I remember, okay, Excel has has packers, so maybe I can program Excel to do it on its own. So basically from seven hours a day, we went to 15 minutes a day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Because , that's a brilliant example of where, you know, you can identify a task that's being done manually or being done unnecessarily and automate it or speed it up in some way. Okay. Definitely looking for [00:49:00] those sorts of things. Great shout, be careful though that you are not trying to engineer out the academic process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so one of the things I see with people, and again, I think I've talked about this on a previous episode, but one of the things I see a lot with people who want to be more efficient is they start saying things like, um, so when I start writing, I need it to be a good first draft so that I don't waste lots of time rewriting it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the problem is, what that can do is make it really easy to procrastinate, getting going and can actually make it hard. It's a little bit like, so I used to do all these team building exercises with post grads and stuff, and um, one of the things that the engineering post grads were actually really good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So they'd have to like build a self-powered thing out of paper plates and straws or whatever that we used a hair dryer to like blow it along or whatever. And one of the things that the engineers were better at than most of the others, wasn't necessarily coming out with a good [00:50:00] design. It was that within 10 minutes they'd cobbled together something just to have a little look at how it went. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Whereas some of my more theoretical academics, an hour later hour into the exercise, we're still planning and hadn't touched any of the materials. Sometimes the efficient thing to do is actually to dive in and have a go doing it this way, have a go doing it that way, accept that you might rewrite it a few times, accept that you might read that paper multiple times for different reasons, but enabling yourself to actually kind of get going on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So just be cautious that you're not trying to engineer out the academic process. 'cause there's some bits that just are slow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yeah. I still have to adopt, I still have to adapt to that because coming from industry where everything is was like, go, go, go. You have to be efficient. You have to be fast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: So on. I came back to academia and everybody's so relaxed. Yes, we can do it tomorrow. We, yes, we're gonna have a meeting. Like, so I still have to get used [00:51:00] to that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it doesn't mean being ... you know the whole, we'll have a meeting about that in two weeks time, drives me mad. I wasn't good at that. It doesn't mean being lethargic, but it means that thinking and trying stuff out is part of productivity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Okay. Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's not just the bit where you are producing the end product. You know, it's the pilot testing essentially. You know, if you try writing it one way, try writing it a different way, that's your pilot testing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. Actually, the thing that you mentioned that, uh, few seconds ago, that my first draft has to be as well as possible because I'm gonna spend less time after that. I'm guilty as charged. I'm like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I thought you might be. Lots and lots of people are. And from what you've said, I'm not surprised at all. But I want you to, you know, translate that out to an engineering context and it's like, I'm not going to try building anything until I know for sure it's going to definitely work and we'll [00:52:00] need minimal tweaks to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's probably not how people come up with innovative designs and how people try things out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yeah. I agree. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's sort of thinking what are the kind of, okay, so this, this comes to my, some of my opinions about AI, right? That for me, using AI to do crap tasks that none of us care about. Brilliant. Let's do it. If I can get that to rename all my PDFs by the name of the author and a date, instead of having to do it manually, happy days, let's go. What I'm not gonna abdicate to AI is reading and interpreting the paper, because I want my human brain, because what I care about is the intersection between that paper and my human brain and how those overlap and interact. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yep. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what ideas it gives me. So I'm not gonna give that intellectual work to AI. And the same, I think, is true in efficiency. Let's think about how we can be as efficient as possible in the crap bits. In the, how can I upload student [00:53:00] marks to the virtual learning environment more quickly than the crap system they give me or whatever, but not, how can I get through this thinking process as fast as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I completely agree. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So going back to this notion of, you know, taking your analogy of having this engineering piece of kit and we've got the same amount of energy and we are thinking about how we distribute it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The other element of that is that when you have the parts of your life that are currently in maintenance mode or in lower priority mode, is that if you can think about what time you're allocating to them, it can be number one priority for that hour. So often we think that if something's not a priority in our life at the moment, that not only do we not allocate too much time to it, we also don't sort of give ourselves to it a hundred percent when we are doing it.[00:54:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And one of the things I think is just really useful to remember is, so for example, during your teaching term term, your PhD's not gonna be your number one thing. However, if you chose that there were two hours a week that were PhD time, you could be 100% in on PhD for those two hours. So that during that time, if your brain's going, oh, I could just check those emails, it's like, no, no, for the next two hours, PhD is 100% my priority. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And so those little dials where we're putting up, you can use a kind of macro version of that to decide what proportion of your week you are giving to different things. But you can also use a little mini version of it so that if on a busy day when you're in the lab all day, you only get an hour with your kids when you come home before their bedtime. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can be all in being best dad ever for that hour. [00:55:00] And that's the bit I think can be really useful for the kind of perfectionist bit of your brain is it's like if I've got an hour with my kids, let's go. I am not thinking about my PhD, I'm not planning my class, I'm not checking my emails on my phone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I am dunno how big your kids are, but I'm down on the floor, I'm on the sofa, whatever, all in on whatever I'm doing with my children. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How does that feel to kind of know that even in a kind of short amount of time, you can be number one priority on any one of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: It's not finding enough time and finding enough energy to do it. It's, I believe it's less, less of an issue than, uh, being mentally satisfied. Okay. If I have an hour to spend with my kids, with my family, that should be family time. I should not be answering my emails. I should not be, I should not be thinking about which experiments I'm doing tomorrow them. So it's like more mental obstacle than I else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So tell me more what you mean by that. So the thoughts come up, you mean, you know? So [00:56:00] what do you do then? So you're playing with your kids, you've suddenly realized you are thinking about tomorrow's lecture or whatever. What do you... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I believe I'm doing the worst thing, uh, that I could be doing. And these, I'm trying to do two things at the same time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that often happens, and I do this right, this is, it is a very, very common human thing, is that we think that, so say we decide we're spending time with kids, that our brain goes, oh yeah, yeah, but what about this thing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The biggest mistake we make is not that that thought comes up, it's that we take it seriously. That if you are playing with your kids and a thought of tomorrow's lecture comes into your head, that means that you now need to, it's like, oh, okay, brain, I'll think about that then. 'cause you offered it to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I want you to think about all these different thoughts that pop in as like canopies that you can either take or not take as they go past. Because in that moment, [00:57:00] I mean, you can do whatever you like, but the most sensible thing probably isn't to try and do both. 'cause you'll probably end up doing both badly. Right. And feel dissatisfied. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is to go, oh, that's interesting. My brain's started thinking about tomorrow's lecture. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I get it. But we are gonna be thinking about that on the bus tomorrow, you know? Is there anything I need to quickly jot down so I don't forget it? If it was a sudden, oh, I'd forgotten that thing. But other than that, yeah. Yeah. It's okay. Brain I've, I've got that. We're thinking about that on the commute. It's all good. You've got an hour and a half all the way. We're gonna think about nothing but this teaching right now we're building Lego or whatever. Yeah. So even if your brain brings these things up, it doesn't mean you have to act on it. It doesn't mean you have to now go, oh, I didn't manage to focus on my kids. I didn't manage to focus on my PhD or whatever. It's like, okay. Yeah, of course. Well, you've got tons going on in your brain. It's no surprise. And you're doing all this in a country that's, you know, different from where you grew up and is everything different language you're doing? [00:58:00] Of course these things are gonna come up. But you get to go. Yeah. Yeah. But not now. Right now this, right now I'm doing this. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Sounds easy, but, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: oh, it's not easy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: I, I can try doing it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Yes. And that's the key. It is not easy to allow thoughts to come and go like, that is not easy. Right. This is how, you know, I've never really done the whole meditation thing, but it's, it's why people find that so, so tough. Right. This is, it's not easy, but it's something to try. It's something that you can return to, I think is probably the best way to describe it. And you'll notice if you can persist with that a little bit, you'll notice they come up a little bit more less vehemently. They come up a little bit less often. And this is why, you know, we work on all this stuff in the membership , so that you kind of get that structure for practicing all this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But you just [00:59:00] notice that you are less convinced by these stories. You're a little bit better at not thinking about 'em for a little bit longer, staying on task a little bit longer. And that is all progress. We are never going to get to a stage. The goal is not to get to a stage where you are like single-minded. Nothing else enters my mind when I'm with my children. Nothing else enters my mind when I'm teaching. It's just. Not plausible, but we can get to a place where it's like, no, no, that's not what we do now. We do this now. Okay, good, good. How is, how is that, how are you feeling?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Interesting. And, um, I believe I got something that I expected, like some ideas, ideas how to organize actually to change the, how I think. Not radically of course, but slowly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Perfect. And hopefully it's enabled you, because I know you're a long time listener, which is amazing. Hopefully it sort of allowed you to kind of connect some of the things that you've heard me talk about on the podcast, but [01:00:00] to really bring them into, to your life and your scenario. So hopefully that gives you some things that you can, you can try and practice and work on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: Definitely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Fantastic. So much fun talking to you, and I think that will be so useful. We have so many listeners and members who are part-time studying overseas, a lot of the things that you're talking about, so I'm sure there'll be lots of people empathizing with that. So thank you so much for coming on </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Predrag: and thank you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And thank you everyone for listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next [01:01:00] time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 22 Sep 2025 04:00:01 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-04-how-to-prioritise-when-you-have-competing-challenges-a-coaching-session-with-predrag thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-03-how-to-mentor-anyone-in-academia-with-dr-maria-lamonaca-wisdom <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Whether you’re a PhD student or an academic, we need to be thinking about how to make mentoring more effective and enjoyable for everyone involved. This week I’m talking with author and university leader Dr Maria Lamonaca Wisdom about her new book, How To Mentor Anyone In Academia. We chat about why mentoring can be so challenging, how we can set ourselves up for success whether we’re the mentor or the mentee, and what we’d change if we were in charge of university systems.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12225337-18-how-to-have-a-great-relationship-with-your-supervisor" target="_blank"> how to have a great relationship with your supervisor </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and I am joined by a guest again, and this time I'm joined by the author of a new book, which we are gonna be talking about today. So welcome Dr. Maria Lamonaca Wisdom, who is the Assistant Vice Provost of Faculty Advancement at Duke University. So welcome, Maria. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you, Vikki. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for this invitation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are excited and I've got your book! Anybody watching on YouTube can see me flashing it at the camera. It is how to mentor anyone in academia. So why do you think we needed a book on how to mentor in academia? Why did that feel important right now? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sure. Well, there's, there's several reasons. One is that I think mentoring is always messy and complicated because mentoring involves two or more human beings interacting in a professional relationship and human relationships are [00:01:00] inherently messy, so that's one reason. A second reason is that the professional and academic landscape for those now in the mentee position in higher education is incredibly complicated, and it's far more complicated say than it was for me when I was a graduate student a few decades ago. And I think one of the problems we run into in mentoring is this ingrained assumption that, you know, the mentor is modeling the professional trajectory for the mentee, and the mentee will follow in the mentor's footsteps. Oh, and by the way, the mentor has to give lots and lots of advice and know all the answers. That model isn't working so well right now. I mean, it hasn't for a while, and I think it's just getting worse. And so I think there's that second, reason this mismatch between what mentees need now and mentors feel like they should be giving. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'll finally say the third reason I think why this book is hopefully necessary is that I don't need to [00:02:00] explain to this audience how busy academic mentors are. I mean, they're stretched in a million ways. There's a million claims on their time. It only just seems to be getting worse as university resources contract and resources thin out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Mentors don't have time to, you know, take a semester long course in mentoring or even, I mean, we sometimes have trouble getting faculty in the door for a two hour session on you know, thinking about their mentoring so you know, what is going to be the most time efficient, effective way to get them the information they need when they need it. There actually are a ton of resources on mentoring. Mentoring is a field of study that's existed for at least 30 years, and if you were to Google mentoring in, you know, in a search engine, an enormous amount of stuff will pop up. Can you go to chat GPT and get it to summarize best practices on mentoring? Yeah. But you're gonna get just a lot, a lot of stuff and not curated. So, ultimately, my hope was to have to create sort of a friendly, accessible guide that mentors could keep on their bookshelf. [00:03:00] Um, and, you know, not some ground pathbreaking, new research on mentoring. There's plenty of that and it's great, but I mean, my book really is meant to synthesize a lot of the best practices and here are the things, you know, I recommend that you pay attention to right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it helps mentors think about mentoring in a way that's easy to grasp and understand and it encourages mentors to think about coaching in new and different ways and in ways that are fresh and interesting, and hopefully that will resonate with mentees. So, so that's the reason. Those are the three reasons I've written the book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Perfect. And yeah, just to, to reiterate, you know, my audience as you know, is majority PhD students, but a lot of academics as well. And I see all the time my interactions with listeners and then my members , the issues around mentorship, whether that is your direct, sort of advisor, mentorship from them, or whether it's the people around you. Issues around mentorship are some of the most challenging things that people face from both sides. Right. You know, I coach academic members of [00:04:00] staff who are having issues with the people they're mentoring and vice versa. And I think anything that helps give people tangible things that they can think about, tangible steps that they can take to improve some of these relationships, I just think is, is hugely important. 'Cause it's these relationships that are, they're fundamental to everything we do, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Absolutely critical. And there's research that links, you know, success in academic programs and success in careers to the quality of mentorship one receives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, for sure. And whenever I talk to people about their books and things, I also love to get to know a little bit more about the person behind the book. Right. So what's been your most meaningful experience of mentorship? Either you mentoring somebody or somebody mentoring you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, that's a really, a really wonderful question. I mean, I've had so many people throughout my career who were so [00:05:00] inspirational to me, and I think maybe, I think this is actually one thing that is maybe a, a takeaway it, it is in the book as well, is that I, when I think about people who were important mentors to me, many of them were not mentors in the most formal way where, you know, we would, have a conversation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We would, we would say to ourselves, okay, we're, we're mentoring now and we're in a mentoring relationship, but I can think of so many people who were teachers or my choir director in college or you know, or maybe professors I just had for a single semester. And looking back, I think when I think about people who shaped me the most, it was often those folks who were not formally mentoring me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I can think of peers who were really inspirational to me. But the formal relationships are also really valuable. And I think particularly having, getting mentorship from somebody who is in a formal relationship to you as a PhD advisor or as a boss or supervisor, I think because it might be even more [00:06:00] difficult to mentor well and effectively in those power relationships. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think when you do find that kind of mentoring in that sort of relationship and you feel like your professional growth is being supported, it feels particularly special and rare. And I think too, and I think most recently, what's inspired the book directly is, you know, now, and I guess it's helpful maybe to explain for listeners is my current role at Duke University, I mean, I, I am a certified professional coach and that's a hat I wear on top of my role as an academic administrator at Duke, you know, developing programs for faculty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Much of what I do is coach faculty. So when I'm coaching people, I am their thought partner and I'm helping them to think through problems in a sort of semi-structured way and help them to think creatively and differently about things so they can solve problems, meet goals. Before I did that, I came to Duke in 2017 and for the first three years, my role, I hadn't trained as a coach yet, and I was asked to serve as sort of a free floating academic advisor for doctoral students in the [00:07:00] humanities and social sciences. And this was a new, this was intended to be an innovation, at least in American universities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There isn't usually somebody outside the PhD program who serves as any kind of advisor. So, but there I was and I was working with roughly 400 humanities doctoral students and it was just drop in advising. And they could come and talk to me about anything related to their academic professional trajectory. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So often it was about things that they didn't wanna talk about with their advisors. And here's the funny thing, when you asked me what was most impactful for the book in terms of a mentoring relationship, I was actually unable to think of myself as the mentor for these students, yet they were coming to me and I was supporting them and giving them, you know, designing workshops for them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I think ultimately that was actually really beneficial. Because I didn't think of myself as their mentor. I was freed up not to act like a stereotypical mentor. I didn't feel like I had to know all the answers. I didn't feel like I had to advise them. I was doing a lot of listening, asking a lot of open-ended questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> [00:08:00] And it was that, those realizations that made me seek out a certification in coaching because I realized that that's what I was doing with them. I was coaching them, I wasn't advising them. And then looking back, it's always thinking about, you know, who are you mentoring even informally. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think, again, it's really those, those were the relationships that inspired me to write the book. Actually after I got certified to coach the university asked me to design a two week course for doctoral students. And the course was called Best Practices in Mentoring. And as I discussed in the book that that was sort of the birth of the book. I would teach this course to graduate students in the summer and they'd find it very engaging. And suddenly people started to ask me to give talks, and then I started writing about it, and then suddenly the Chronicle of Higher Ed said, can you write about this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one thing led to another, and then the book contract. So, and I think that's an maybe important thing for graduate students to understand. The way the book is titled, it sounds like how to mentor anyone in academia. It's, it's for people in these formal mentor roles, but that's actually only partly true. I mean, first of all, we can all be mentors [00:09:00] to everybody all the time. I mean, you know, so I, I want people to feel empowered to, to think of themselves as a mentor and be a mentor, even if they're not in that formal role. Many graduate students, especially as they advance in their programs, start becoming more of formal mentors to other students, right? I've worked with graduate students for example, who become, they, they end up informally supervising undergraduates in these, in these labs, in stem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so many times, you know, we're both mentor and mentee at the same time. So when I wrote the book, I was mindful of that. And so, I think mentees or anyone who identifies in the mentee role, like a graduate student would, would gain a lot from the book. I think it would help them to think about maybe things from their mentor's perspective, because I speak to a lot of pains that academic mentors experience, and I think there's a lot to be gained from bringing empathy to any relationship, especially difficult ones, and trying to see things from the other person's point of view. But at the same time, at the end of every chapter, and there are nine chapters in the book, I have a little section at [00:10:00] the end called Takeaways from Mentees. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for example, I have a section on how mentors can navigate power dynamics and relationships. You know, mentees can feel very powerless in, in formal mentoring relationships, but at the end, I suggest to mentees, okay, well here are some things that you can do if you feel like, you know, power dynamics are getting in the way of you having a productive relationship with your mentors. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think honestly, you know, I mean, what a lot of mentees want better and more generative mentoring relationships. There's only so much we can do if we sit around and wait for other people to change. You know, there are techniques we can employ to try to, you know, manage up or mentor up, so to speak. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They may or may not be effective, but I think for people to feel fully like they're in control of their own professional trajectory and their mentoring relationships, they need to take stock of what am I not yet doing that I could be doing to improve the tenure of this relationship? Or what am I not doing that I could be doing to [00:11:00] get more of my professional needs met? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think that's a really important part of the equation. You know, there's been a lot of talk in the academy about, okay, we need to train faculty mentors. We need to help them up their game. Um, I mean, this isn't just me talking. I mean, these conversations are going on at education's all over the country, all over the world, maybe. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, you know, change happens notoriously slowly. In higher education. I talk about that a little bit in the last chapter. So I think for a mentee who only has maybe two or three years to, to work with a mentor, they're going to need to do some things now and, and it's much easier to change our own behaviors and mindsets than it is, uh, you know, that of another person we're working with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A hundred percent. And I think, yeah, I think that notion that we're all mentors and mentees at pretty much every stage of our life is a really important one. Right. Because I think often, like you say, more senior students underestimate the extent to which they're role models to the people that are junior to them. But I think we also underestimate [00:12:00] how much their academic advisors or supervisors are likely to also be mentees to more to more senior academics who are supporting them to develop their career and things. And so I think having this sort of almost dual role that at most stages in our life, we are both of these things, or we have the potential to be both of these things, I think is a really useful way of, of thinking about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Absolutely. And you know, I think our tendency to think that we can't mentor somebody or won't mentor somebody, I have a term for it. I think I coined it in the book and I call it mentor imposter syndrome. And it is basically the false belief that we cannot help somebody else. We can't be helpful and like one example is, I see it so much, happening among, among disciplinary lines because one of the things, you know, I, that's, that's I find a little odd is that different disciplines try have been, you know, I think people have been trying to solve, if you will, the problem of academic [00:13:00] mentoring through disciplinary ways, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the folks in the humanities will be like, okay, here's our white paper on mentoring in the humanities and the folks in the sciences here's our white paper on how to be a good mentor and the sciences, so on and so forth. And if you look at like, all these studies and white papers that are out there a lot, they're saying a lot of the same things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're just saying it to different audiences. So if we think about that, that if we, if we accept or play with this idea that that good mentoring actually is, the ingredients for that recipe are actually pretty similar from one discipline to another, then maybe it stands to reason that somebody, let's say in mathematics could actually help somebody in English literature, in some really profound ways, even if they're simply listening, asking questions, helping support them in problem solving, connecting them to other people who could serve as resources, that those are all really important components of mentoring and they have nothing to do with disciplinary background.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A hundred percent. I think that comes back to your point of really figuring out what we mean by mentoring in the, and really [00:14:00] expanding that definition of mentoring anyway. 'cause the disciplinary boundaries kind of make sense in the model where you are going to come and be me. You know, if you are trying to figure out how to be a sports science professor, great. You know, find a sports science professor they'll mentor you through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if mentoring as it is is far broader than that, then it starts to be a bit more plausible that lots of different people from different types of backgrounds, different expertises can help you overcome these different challenges.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right. And I do get pushback sometimes from folks who will say, well what about, you know, if I'm training somebody in the lab and they have to learn how to do the experiments, like of course, right? I mean, there's always going to be times and places for mentors to, to be more prescriptive and to give advice. Um, you know, another example of this is if you're, let's say, you're in an organization and a new hire comes in and this person needs to learn the unwritten rules of the organization. They're never gonna fi They might, but, you know, they can try to [00:15:00] figure them out themselves, but they're gonna flounder for maybe six months to a year and maybe make some dumb mistakes. And so, yeah, there are times in situations when there needs to be a mentor who is an expert in something to, to show that person the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I argue in the book, most, a lot of mentors do it way more than they need to be. Speaking from that expert role.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that expertise can be a variety of things, right? One of my most useful, very short term mentoring experiences, but that led to pretty much everything I'm doing now came from somebody completely different discipline to me. Very senior member of staff at my old university who essentially I was gonna be asking for funding to establish a coaching program within the university. So whilst I still worked there and I'd got the opportunity to go and, um, like propose this to the tops of the top at our university. And the person that was mentoring me was mentoring me essentially on [00:16:00] how to manage that person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How to make this something, not how to present what I was wanted to do well, but how to present it in a way that this person was likely to see it as useful and it appeal to them. Um, and it was one of the most useful mentoring conversations that I've ever had, and it led directly to them choosing to fund that, which then in turn led directly to me in leaving the university to set it up separately, which is maybe not what their original intention was, but, that was so useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that person didn't have expertise in coaching, didn't have expertise in my discipline or any of those things, but they had expertise in working with that one specific person and they were able to help work with me so that I could make it something that was likely to land and, and it did. So I think, yeah, the, what people have expertise in is can be very, very wide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. Yeah. And I think some of us, again, we tend to [00:17:00] underestimate how much we do know and how much of it might be valuable to other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A hundred percent. Now, I did wanna ask you, so there was one, the very sort of first part of the book, you talk about mentoring with backbone and mentoring with heart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I thought this was a really, really interesting concept. And I'm gonna ask you about it in the context of mentoring first, and then I'm gonna afterwards tell you why it struck me so much. But just give people a little bit of an outline about what you mean by mentoring with, with backbone and heart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. So one thing I'll mention is, I really wanted the book to be simple. And that's sometimes a hard thing to convince academics that there's value in things that are simple. You know, academics crave complexity for a lot of reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I mean, mentoring is a really big, messy concept and there is no universal consensus on what mentoring means or what it should be. And this is true. I mean, if you were actually to look at the literature on mentoring, you would, you would actually identify hundreds, if not maybe thousand or more [00:18:00] definitions of what mentoring is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think sometimes the more complicated something is, the more simple we need to go. It certainly works in coaching and I think it applies to other areas. And so I was thinking about what is a very simple schematic I can use to help people think about coaching. And I found it, um, the concept of backbone versus hard is not unique to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I give credit in the book to Mary Beth O'Neill, who has a book called Coaching with Backbone and Heart. And it's really for coaches so that when you're coaching somebody, you have to, to have a certain rigor to what you do, but you also have to be empathetic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when I read that title, I realized, whoa, this sums up many of my conversations with faculty mentors. And by that point, I'd had a number of conversations with faculty who felt like their mentoring wasn't going well for various reasons and the reasons were different, but I realized that those mentors seemed to be falling on some kind of imaginary spectrum in my head. So if there were two kinds, I think so that so many mentors were floundering or having trouble in their mentoring relationships because they had never taken the [00:19:00] time to build a solid foundation for that relationship. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? When they started working with a new mentee, there was no conversation where they sat down and said, okay, how are we going to work together? What are our expectations? What are the learning goals? How will we know we've been successful together? There was none of that. And then often, at various points in the mentoring relationship, there were no clear norms for giving feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So mentors didn't know when they could give people feedback on their work, what they could say, what the mentee would find inappropriate or off-putting or offensive. And so all of that, to me, or at least in the way I'm developing this, suggests a certain lack of backbone. Um, at the other end, were maybe mentors who were very big on process and feedback. But they were maybe going about it in a way that wasn't terribly thoughtful. That they weren't maybe taking into account how the mentee might be feeling. They might've been sort of these mentors who are , you know, nose to the grindstone, it's all business all the time. And that approach fell apart if the mentee was having a bad day or if there [00:20:00] was a death in the family or maybe the mentor was just so pulled in a million directions, they just were not being fully present to the mentee. You can't build a relationship with somebody if you're never present to them. And so to me that suggests a lack of heart. And so that's, so when I talk to mentors about mentoring, I usually will introduce that, that schema or that spectrum. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And often again, everything is, you know, people respond differently to different things. But that concept has proven pretty productive and generative in my coaching conversations, and that's why I use it there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Definitely. And I think one of the things I like that you emphasized is that those things aren't mutually exclusive. Right. I think sometimes people do see them as two ends of a spectrum, and you have to either be more at one end or more at the other end. But I thought it was interesting some of the models that you use where people could be high in both, where people could, you know, I think you talked about a high challenge and high support, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh, right, right. That's the challenge. Support matrix.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. Where you can have [00:21:00] a good amount of backbone, a good amount of structure and things, and a good amount of empathy and appropriate levels of, um, kind of contact and caring.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. Absolutely. For listeners here, we're referring to it's like a, a grid, right? And so we, we, another way of thinking about mentoring or how we calibrate especially with supporting mentees who are maybe easily discouraged or maybe they're first gen students and they feel like, oh my gosh, I can't hack it In this environment, the mentor needs to be especially thoughtful about the level to which they challenge the student. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is not about, you know, watering down one's expectations. This is about continuing to hold the mentee to high expectations while also matching it with a, with an appropriate amount of support. And that is a very delicate balancing act. And, no grids or schemas or, or are gonna make it an easy task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's challenging, but I think that's, that's really the thing is that there's, there's no one right setting right on, on the mentoring hearts like, you know, dial that works for every mentee in every [00:22:00] situation. And when I present the book, I've gotten some great feedback on the idea of how do you balance challenge with support or backbone with heart? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, and I've, you know, had some experienced mentors point out, well, you know, in the very beginning of a relationship it might be we need a little bit more backbone, and then maybe later on it, there may be reasons to, to lean more into the heart quality. So it depends, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sort of choosing that balance for the particular situation and adjusting it is necessary. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you [00:23:00] need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I alluded when I asked the question that I had other motivations that that may, that stuck out to me. And the reason for that is one of the things that we talk all about a lot on this podcast, but also my membership is this is notion of sort of self-management, is being a better boss to yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things I've noticed within individuals is that they, either think they need to have a lot of backbone with themselves and be really strict and like hold themselves to very, very high standards. Or at the other extreme, they'll be very indulgent. Oh, it's okay, I can do it tomorrow. I'm quite tired today. I don't need to do it, da da da. And we spend [00:24:00] quite a lot of time trying to find a boss, as we call it, that sits in an appropriate place in between those two things, um, that enables them to support themselves to do challenging things in a way that feels kind of supported and looked after. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you could see that kind of backbone and heart metaphor applying to how we mentor ourselves as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, that's, that's great. And I think that that's also a very strong, I hope people will see it that way. A strong message throughout the book, especially for mentees, is, you know, I think at one point in the book I offer what I call the $10 million question to mentees, which is something like, what does it look like for you to, to take control, take ownership of your academic? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I take ownership. That's your, thank you. Alright. I liked the question so much so I've got it written down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. What would it look like for you to take ownership of your progress, you know, or your professional trajectory in the context of this [00:25:00] relationship. So, so yeah. So taking ownership, and it is hard because when we think about taking ownership, then we do have to think about the level of rigor we hold ourselves to, and the level of maybe understanding or grace we give ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I will say in my experience of working experie with academics, both faculty and students, I personally find that people tend to be too hard on themselves rather than too easy. I have often said that in fact when I coaching faculty or grad students, they often need more help not working than working. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because everything in their experience has drilled into them. They need to work, work, work, work, work. So, so that's, that's one thing. And you know, how do we pull people back from that, the overworking ledge, right? It's a great question. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think my solution or my approach in coaching tends not to be like, oh, you know, go have a bath, take a rest, get a massage. Or nothing's wrong with those things. But I try to encourage people to tap into what, what gives them energy, what makes them [00:26:00] happy, what makes them joyful. And much of the time when they're able to do that, they actually work better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they work more effectively and, but they're working in fewer hours. And hopefully they will also take the time to think about, well, what gives me energy outside of work? What makes me joyful? How can I make time for those things? And I think the concept of flow is really important. When we're in a state of flow, we, it's like time stops. We just forget what we're doing and so sometimes it's a question of like, what is the kind of work that is going to get you more into a flow state? And I think another strategy, and this is something in the book, um, there's a book called The Inner Game of Tennis that a lot of coaches love. You may be familiar with this one, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not, but again, it's so funny that you're picking these bits out again. That is, um, the inner Game of tennis on my notes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. So the inner game of tennis, it's an old, it's funny, you know, sometimes I think we should just all sit down and take a year and read all the old books that we haven't read yet before we read anything new. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's a book by Timothy Galway, the Inner Game of Tennis that was written in the seventies. And Galway was kind of interesting guy [00:27:00] because he was an expert in adult education, I think, and he also taught tennis at this like exclusive club in California. And he was able to write a book that drew on both those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he observed that when he was teaching anyone how to play tennis. The real game was not being played on the court, but it was being played inside the head of the player. And he said, all of us have two players inside of us. Player One and Player Two, and Player One is the critic. Player One is always judging what we do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's always telling us that we suck at everything. And he doesn't use that word, you know, he is always telling us that, you know, it's just not good enough. We need to do better. And when we listen to Player One, guess what we, our performance suffers because we're so obsessed with being perfect and doing it well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he said, but Player two is the player who just naturally knows how to play and loves to play. And so he said, if you are teaching anybody anything, it's not just tennis that, you know, one of the best things you could do as a teacher is to help them access Player Two and to spend as much time being Player two [00:28:00] as opposed to Player one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's another concept I use with people I coach and mentor is, you know, what, who are you when you're Player one? What are what? How are you feeling? And what are you doing as Player One?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, definitely because I think so many of these skills that we develop when we're thinking about how we relate to others, right? We are thinking about how can we be curious about what's going on without being judgmental, for example, right? You know, one of the first things of mentorship is that you don't just rush in, tell 'em they're stupid and what they should do instead. Yet so often that's what we do to ourselves, right? It's like, oh, I procrastinate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I need to stop being lazy and I need to just get on with it. Just, just is banned, the word just is banned in my membership and just get on with it. Yet when we're developing these mentoring skills, we are learning how to ask interesting questions about what might really be going on, how to think through all the different options there might be, how to validate those different options, et cetera, et cetera. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> [00:29:00] And these are all the things we need to do with ourselves as well, right? And that's where I think this work is so interesting is. A, as we said earlier, I truly believe that everybody is both mentor and mentee at most points in their life, if not all. And even if people listening are like, no, no, I'm really not a mentor to anybody, you absolutely can practice your mentoring skills on yourself because I think if you can get that bit right, a life's gonna feel so much better. But B, I think it makes you a more effective mentor. You know, for me, the worst mentors are the ones that are highly critical of themselves. Highly overworked, overstrung, all those things, and sort of kind of believe their mentees probably need to do that too. You know, if we can't manage this stuff for ourselves, it makes it really hard to then be [00:30:00] a compassionate and empathetic mentor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right. I think, one of the coaching moments I felt most passionately about I mean, when, in, in the chapter where I discuss feedback I ask, you know, coaching moment, time out, you know, I ask mentors to reflect on, well, how do you receive feedback? And so often a lot of the mentors are so uncomfortable with getting feedback on their own work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Of course, there's no way they're gonna be comfortable giving mentees feedback because they maybe have maybe some issues. I mean, this isn't therapy, this is coaching. But, maybe they've never really fully appreciated how difficult it, it just, the whole concept of feedback is for them so how can they develop a comfortable culture for giving feedback when they have all these hangups about it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. And also, I really enjoyed the chapter about can't remember quite what you called it, but about looking after yourself while being a mentor, that kind of self-supportive side of things. And I thought there was some really useful bits about how it's really hard to mentor effectively if you are burned [00:31:00] out yourself. That to have this sort of time for a reflection, it's really hard if you essentially right at the end of all your own coping capacities as well, which I think sums up quite a lot of academia at the moment, which is obviously a challenge to everybody involved. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. And I think it's really kind of a, a radical thing to think about, right? Because, you know, there are a lot of, now, over the past few years, at least in the states and we have the national Academies of Science, engineering and Medicine, and they've developed all these trainings and curriculum. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm also certified to teach that curriculum, these are great trainings, but they always, they emphasize competencies, you know, it's like, okay, well, you know, communication and, giving feedback to your mentee. But what about the competency of wellness? You know, I think, I think there's competencies that mentors need to have that we don't always think about and then if we really take the competence of wellness seriously, I mean, that affects so much of who we are. You know, we bring our whole selves to mentoring. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if we're really gonna up our games as mentors, it's not just about, you know, taking a few [00:32:00] trainings and honing a few competencies. It is a lifelong process, I think, of constant reflection on who am I? How am I showing up to other people and how can I be most helpful to them? These are not easy questions to, to think about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, for sure. And I was actually gonna take you back to the question that you asked. 'cause I'm aware partly I chatted over 'cause I was so excited that I had written it down too. But I also, I want you to give some ideas for the listeners because I'm actually, again, people who aren't signed up yet for my newsletter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I always have three take home messages, two reflective questions, and an action from each podcast. And I'm with your permission, I'm going to steal this question for one of the reflective questions because I think it's brilliant. So I'm gonna say, again, I'm gonna ask you for some tips that might help people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What would it look like for you to take ownership of your academic and professional growth in the context of this mentoring relationship? So what sorts of things do you think mentees can do to take ownership of that growth?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Such a wonderful question. I would say probably the beginning [00:33:00] point is for the mentee to have a clear understanding of what they need and what they want. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Which it is just complicated in itself because there are plenty of situations where a mentee may not fully understand what they need, but we gotta start somewhere, so, right. And so, you know, if you need somebody to talk to you about, let's say, writing grants or getting funding, what is it you need? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I think it's really identifying, first of all what those needs are, and then thinking about what can I do? Who can help me meet those needs? And then how can I communicate to that person that I need help with this? So I guess it's really three parts, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Identifying the need. Identifying the likely person and then actually the communication or making the ask, which I think for some people is the most terrifying thing. There is a tool in there that I did not invent. I have a link to it in the book. It's called a mentoring map. And there are, there are examples that exist for both faculty and for graduate students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I mean, there are really available online, and again, there's links in the book. But if you, if you're a graduate student and you have a mentoring map, the mentoring map has, it is like, if you look at it, it's like [00:34:00] a bunch of squares and they're all sort of linked to each other and you, the mentee is in the middle, is a bucket of need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so it could be like, you know, here's, here's someone to help me with writing skills. Here's somebody to help me with maybe the soft skills. Here's somebody to, you know, he's a confidant and can provide a safe space. And so it starts with asking the mentee to list all the needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then, then we start brainstorming about who are the people both known to you and maybe less well known, who could maybe serve as mentors, either as formal mentors or informal mentors. And then we get into things about how do you make the ask. So there are different ways to approach this, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If it's a formal mentor, we may need to think ahead of time about how can I frame this ask, you know, what's, maybe I should practice this with a friend. You know, how to ask without sounding too needy or, or anything or resentful or anything like that. Um, so there's that. And then if it's not, if it's an informal mentor, that's even more complicated sometimes because that might involve something like cold emailing somebody you've never met or finding a third [00:35:00] party who could introduce you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Definitely. And that made me think of your backbone and heart thing again 'cause I think when you are doing something that feels challenging, like contacting somebody you don't know, for example, I think having that kind of backbone and heart with yourself is so useful too, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That on the backbone side, right? How can I make as best case as I can as to what this should look like and what I can learn about doing this well? So having that kind of structure so that you don't send an email that's accidentally rude or accidentally over the top or whatever. But then also the heart side of how can I be kind to myself so that if they don't reply or if they say no, I don't end up telling myself loads of stories about how it's because I'm rubbish and I wasted their time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right, right, right. And I talk in the book about self-limiting thoughts, you know. I think that's actually the most common self-limiting thought I hear when people are not willing to reach out. And [00:36:00] I, I think, you know, I think also students may be intrigued to know that I have worked with very senior people who are afraid to reach out. I mean, I think all of us on some level, we never get over being in middle school afraid of that rejection. But I think one way to think about it, like for example, this concern that, oh, they're gonna ignore me and I'll feel awful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I mean, this is actually a way of bringing in some backbone to it because it involves some metrics. But if you imagine, let's say you say to yourself, okay, well for let's assume, I don't actually know what the rate is, but for every cold email I send out, every two I send out, one will get answered. If you can tell yourself that upfront, then suddenly when only half your emails get answered, it's like, oh yeah, look, I was right. You know? And it, that suddenly is not about you anymore.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, a hundred percent. I have to remind myself this and reminding yourself that for everyone who didn't reply, because they think you should never have contacted them in the first place, there will be a whole load that don't reply because they are overwhelmed, because they keep intending to and [00:37:00] not getting round to it, or because they now feel bad 'cause it's been too long and they feel stupid replying this late. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's right. There's all kinds of reasons. Right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there's so many reasons. Okay, so I'm gonna take you in a different direction now 'cause towards the end of the book, as you know, you talk more about change and you particularly talk about kind of some of the structural stuff that underpins all of this and the things that institutions can do to support mentoring. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I have a question for you. If you were in charge of the universe and you could make one change at kind of senior university level, so a new rule, a new policy, a new procedure, you can't just suddenly make everybody motivated to mentor as their favorite thing. But if you were in charge, you could change one rule or process or policy. What do you think would have the most impact on improving mentoring?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's, to me, that's [00:38:00] easy. We need to change the rules around tenure and promotion. I think that so much of this is generated by, you know, again, faculty, they don't, they don't have a lot of time and inevitably they're going to put their focus and energy on the things that are going to give them job security and stability. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think many mentors would love to spend more time and energy thinking about mentorship, working with our mentees. But the books must be written. The grants must be written. The presentations must be given. The classes must be taught, and that's important too. But I think what's happening right now, we have this funny thing where we're kind of, we're saying one thing but doing another in higher ed, which is we're telling mentors, oh, you must be better mentors. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, this is so important for student retention and success and we're not giving them much incentive, you know, to take time away from that, all important work of, of teaching and or, and in many [00:39:00] institutions it's just research, right? You know, research one, that's what it means. It's most of what you do is research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what that means is, and I think for people who don't fully understand this, that at a research institution, you are not gonna get tenure if you don't have a really impressive research program. You just aren't. Even if you're the most amazing teacher in the world, you know, 'cause I've heard people talk about, right? The basis for tenure and promotion being sorted. This, they call it through, at least at our institution, they call it three legs of a stool. You know, but, but it's a very uneven stool because the research leg is the biggest fattest leg. And then there's teaching and then the thin stool is what they call service, which is another sloppy category. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But mentoring is, is like, is this the fourth leg of the stool? I don't know. You know, so again, we, I think what we need to do something about this misalignment structurally.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A hundred percent. Because not only does that change what people are incentivized to do, but it does also change ultimately who gets promoted as well. Because one of the things that never fails to baffle me is that universities will design promotion structures that promote people who are particularly [00:40:00] good at hitting those targets, right? And so at the moment, especially in research intensives, like you say, they're gonna promote people who are really good at getting grant funding and who are really good at chugging out papers or books, right? Depending on the discipline, and that's great, but then if you start moaning that those people aren't loving, caring members of the community and aren't spending lots of time looking after their students and all those sorts of things, it's a little bit like, well these are not the people a lot of the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of them are, don't get me wrong, they just need more time and they just want to not have so much pressure on the other stuff so they can do that well, but others are just not good at that stuff and we've just promoted the wrong people. Whereas there's a whole bunch of other people who maybe aren't quite getting as many grants, aren't quite publishing as many papers often because they are spending their time in the mentoring stuff, even though  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> it's not kind of valued and it's not promoted. If we promoted them to [00:41:00] tenured professor, then they would be the people who are actually good at doing this stuff and actually could be doing it and leading other people doing it well. Drives me mad. It's so frustrating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is. It is very frustrating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I guess it is tough. This is now getting you into technical questions. This is my senior leader hat coming back on for, or change is. How do you measure that stuff? If you were going to have mentoring, effective mentoring as part of promotion criteria, how do you measure it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's such a wonderful question. Because, you know, I think, you know, we think about when, you know, you ask me like, well, who are your most impactful mentors? I mean, I had to think about it and I think in a lot of cases it wasn't clear to me even like the effects of mentoring right? Until years down the line. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, oh yeah, that talk I had with so and so, or I'm glad that person made me take this class. Um, you know, it, it would not be scientifically [00:42:00] sound to to link any student's successful career outcome to one factor, right? Including mentoring, because there's so many factors. So we really can't look at that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I mean, it helps, but it can't be the only thing. Um, I think so often it comes down to, um. A lot of subjective measures. I mean, including, and especially the mentee's own sense of how helpful the mentor has been in the moment. Um, what, what's different for the mentee? Because they've worked with the mentor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and I think because the measures tend to go back to the mentee and then, um, we have to collect that information, it, it can be very difficult to collect that information, right? Because, you know, especially if the mentor has power of the mentee, the mentee is less likely to complain to higher ups. I didn't get what I needed, um, yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think another way, which maybe takes us away from this more delicate situation of power dynamics, which individuals is to think about what does it mean to have a robust mentoring culture and [00:43:00] what are the hallmarks of a healthy mentoring culture? And I think that's easier to measure, right? So how many hours are mentors spending with, in working with mentees? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um. What are the trainings and support programs available for mentors? What are the opportunities for informal mentorship for mentees? And so I think if, you know, we're thinking structurally and having our leadership hats on, it may make be more effective to work at the level of culture, then trying to tinker with the quality of individual mentoring relationships which, which among other things can make faculty mentors incredibly defensive.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, it it, and that's the challenge, right? I think in the book you describe it all as a wicked problem because it is one of these just so complex. 'cause you know, I've seen like supervision awards and all this sort of stuff, which is lovely until the point that you find out that some academics tell their students to nominate them 'cause I need it for my promotion and whatever. Yeah. And other supervisors just wait and see whether they're lucky enough or don't [00:44:00] even have time to think about it or whatever. And then you have situations where the problems are actually on the student side rather than on the advisor side. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so then an otherwise amazing advisor is having complaints against them that are more, sort of originating from the student. It's, yeah, it's incredibly difficult. And I think you're right, that's sort of trying to create a culture where this is what we do, that looking after these people is what we do, and that that's supported and that there's time for it is  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> right and another indice, I think would be just how often does the department convene even to have a conversation about mentorship or is it even an a bullet item on the agenda of the department meeting? I mean, that's something that surprised me initially where I talked in the book about this, where I occasionally get, you know, invited into a program or department to talk about mentoring and it's like huge event. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is like the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, except it only happens once every five years. Right? So it's like, oh my gosh, we're gonna talk about mentoring. [00:45:00] But it's like, well what's keeping you guys from talking about mentoring regularly? Like you do with teaching or research or anything else you do as a faculty member? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, no, for sure. And as we mentioned, the book's got nine, I think, isn't it? Different sections. One of those with, well they were all fascinating, but one struck me was thinking about mentoring across careers that go beyond the kind of traditional academic career. So maybe tell me a little bit more about why you picked that as something distinct to talk about why that felt so, so salient.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. Well, I think more and more mentors are being called upon or expected to mentor mentees who aren't going to follow in their footsteps and that's generating a lot of frustration on both sides, both for mentors and mentees. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I first started working with graduate students at Duke, before I started working with faculty, I initially heard about it mostly from the perspective of, I, I don't think I'm gonna get a job in the academy, or, I don't want a job in the [00:46:00] academy, and I don't feel like I can tell my advisor about this because they're gonna write me off or think I'm not serious or at worse sabotage me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so real fear of, of being honest with mentors about one's career objectives, and then in cases where, you know, for mentors, some, it's about like, well, how can you make, make your mentees feel safe, even coming to you to talk about different career objectives? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What, how do you feel about those careers? Right? But then the ones I think who really got it, who understood that, okay, there's only gonna be four jobs in our field this year, you know, nationally, so what are we gonna do? I think often that mentor imposter syndrome flares up most acutely for mentors who feel like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm gonna have to help this person figure out what to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's not being an English professor. And I don't know anything about these careers and oh my gosh, so often the refrain, right? We weren't trained to do this, I guess, from the mentors. And, and I think, you know, I'm hoping in the book to try to just reassure mentors. You might need to do more than you're currently doing, but it's not probably as much as [00:47:00] you're, you think you need to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? Which is, which a lot of it is simply, you know, what are the ways you can be helpful to somebody if they wanna do something you don't understand at all? And well, there's actually a lot, right? And so again, it goes back to more of these coaching mode, more than this advising or answer giving mode, which is listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, providing that, that support and understanding, asking thoughtful questions, helping to be a problem solver, helping to connect that student maybe to someone in their network who knows more than you do. You know, you may not know much about museum management, but maybe your next door neighbor manages the museum, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's things that you can do. And also, again, help encourage them to build a larger network. So, so they have that infrastructure or help them find career services on campus, right? So I think those are the kinds of things. I talk about mentoring also the function of what I call connect, being a connector. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yes, it becomes really important for mentors, right? In these situations. So I think those are some of the, the issues that that crop up on, on both sides. And we talk about mentoring for careers that are not academic ones. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing that struck me when I was reading it [00:48:00] that um, I'd love to hear your perspective on is I think there's also an extent to which the mentors need to manage their own emotions about the situation too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because often the, in my experience on all sides. You know, I've been, I've been an advisor, I've been a mentor, I've been a student obviously, and now, now coaching all these PhD students and academics. And one of the things I see a lot is that it is not just a lack of knowledge that the mentors are dealing with, it's that they're a bit disappointed that the person doesn't wanna stay on in academia because they love sending their people off into the different research groups around the world or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or they're somewhat embarrassed that, you know, have I put them off academia or they're judgy, that they're actually like, Ew, why would you want to do that? You are selling out and that sort of thing. And so I wonder whether you had any thoughts about, well, whether you see that sometimes it's their sort of [00:49:00] emotional reactions that drive behavior and what we do about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. There is, there's so much emotional entanglement in between relationships, probably because, you know, there's this, such a tight association with, you know, that somehow what you, your mentee does is a referendum on you and your career choices and your career trajectory. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think it's really essential for mentors, develop a kind of self-awareness where if they're having feelings about what the mentor is mentee is deciding to do, they need to step back and think about what, where are these feelings coming from and what's this really about? And so all those things, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Disappointment, maybe this person is convinced that their mentee, you know, is the answer to all the problems in the discipline. And they're gonna save the discipline because of their amazing dissertation and suddenly this person's gonna go into banking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or they're gonna stay in the lab and help you. Right. I've seen that as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right, right, right. And actually I was wanting, you know, some of these coaching moments can be a little provocative and, and one of, I didn't, I don't know no, nobody's, nobody's written me hate mail yet. But one of the pricker ones I felt was one [00:50:00] where I actually imply or suggesting that maybe mentors might be dealing with some disappointment about their own careers and the reason I feel bold enough to say this is, you know, I was a, tenured faculty member at a small college for 11 years, and towards the end I felt trapped. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, because, I mean, for me, I, yeah, I ultimately, I'm not, I'm not making a statement about tenured careers, but for me, it being tenured at this small institution just increasingly wasn't a good fit. And there were a couple situations where I had not people I was mentoring, but colleagues who, who, who left. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I suddenly realized, oh my gosh, I feel kind of jealous. I mean, oh my gosh, this person has freedom. I don't feel brave enough to do this. But there could even be situations where, you know, when you think about like faculty, you know, I, I actually use this metaphor in the book. I talk about academic careers being like roller coasters, not so much the ups and downs, which are real, but then once you're midway through the ride, already built it in, it's very difficult to get off. Right. Especially after you're tenured because, you know, here you now you've sunk, what a dozen years into this career, and frankly, you're not really trained to do anything else. I [00:51:00] mean, you know, it gets harder and harder to switch gears or, or even go to a different institution with tenure. I mean, it's gonna create all kinds of issues around how you think about career stability and risk taking. And, you know, and I, I'd argue too, tenure tends to attract folks, including myself initially, who are risk averse because tenure, what, what's safer than tenure? I asked this in a sardonic way right now, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, for sure. For sure. And then to finish off, I'm gonna get you to tell people where to where they can find you on all of those things. But let's finish with what is the most surprising thing that you would recommend that mentors do? Something that people go, oh, I had never thought of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, I don't know if it's surprising. I mean, it shouldn't be surprising, but, if I could only say two, uh, two words to mentors, it's stop talking. Please stop talking . You know, and I, I, I just, oh my God. I mean, we just talk too much. And, and, and honestly, it's not something I would even have thought to have said [00:52:00] until I trained as a coach and it was just completely eye-opening. And you know, I'm the kind of person who like, like people will say like, you know, if I'm in a group of people, I do tend to be kind of quiet and, and do more of a listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I mean, I just naturally fall into that. Even I realized, oh my God, I spend way too much time talking. Right. Especially in one-on-one or if I'm trying to be helpful to somebody. But, you know, if mentors did nothing else, but just talk a little bit less after reading this book, I will consider it a huge win. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And because everything else flows from active listening, even in professional coaching, I mean there, a lot of coaches love their tools and techniques and frameworks, and there's a place for those. But I like to call active listening, the Swiss Army knife of coaching because you can help anybody solve just about any problem through listening with presence. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Amazing. Thank you so much. I'm gonna flash the book up for people watching on YouTube. Again, how to mentor [00:53:00] anyone in academia., Remind people where they can find out more about you and about the book.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, I would, I guess I would direct them to the Princeton University Press website, skills for Scholars series. So you just Google Princeton University Press and the title of the book, my little page will pop up. I'm also a member of something called PUP Speaks. So we're a Speakers Bureau, where we're Princeton University press authors who are available for, you know, talks and workshops and things. So if anyone's interested in, in something like that, they can contact Prince University Press through the Pup Author website. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Perfect. And I will link all of that in the show notes as well. So thank you Maria, so much for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your [00:54:00] university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 15 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-03-how-to-mentor-anyone-in-academia-with-dr-maria-lamonaca-wisdom thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-02-how-to-take-better-notes <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Pretty much all PhD students have a vague (or very strong) sense that they’re not taking “good enough” notes. Yet for most of us, we’re not really clear what good enough notes would actually be like, and often have really unrealistic expectations about what function our notes should serve in the future. In this episode, I don’t give you new systems or softwares to improve your notetaking - instead, I talk about how notetaking is your first opportunity to practice being an academic who is IN the field, not just reporting ON the field. I’ll give you some specific notetaking activities to try and a pep talk on how important it is for the world to hear YOUR academic voice.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15139170-2-37-why-you-should-never-read-when-you-re-writing" target="_blank"> how to read more quickly </a> and this one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16773943-3-29-how-to-stop-wasting-time-by-trying-to-be-too-efficient" target="_blank"> why we should stop focusing on being more efficient </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. And today for once, I'm gonna start by telling you what this episode is, not by the fact that you've clicked on it. You'll know that I'm gonna be talking about how to make more effective notes and. This is a, this is a whole topic, right? This is a topic that you probably have had sessions on at your university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You will definitely have seen people going on about, on Instagram and YouTube and all these places where you get tons of really, really helpful advice. Um, helpful. Helpful, sometimes helpful, sometimes less helpful. Yeah, but helpful in theory advice. This episode is not gonna talk about software. I'm not gonna talk about whether you should be writing your notes by hand or in long form documents, or in software that has nodes and connections and the ability to find your entire second brain and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are doing those [00:01:00] things, if they are working for you, happy days. Great. Probably we'll still get something out this episode, but it's probably not specifically for you. I'm not gonna teach you a specific system. I'm not gonna teach you a specific software, and I'm not going to tell you you have to do it like this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You may be like, well, why am I here? Well, why you are here is because none of those things are the problem. All of those things are just a massive distraction. All of those things are an excuse to spend your time watching YouTube videos on how to make good notes instead of actually making some notes. So what we're gonna do, that was harsh. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm feisty today. It's okay. Let's go with it. So. What we're gonna do instead is we are gonna think about what is the problem with how we're doing it at the moment, and what are the mindset shifts that translate into techniques. Don't worry, this gets super tangible, but what are the mindset shifts that we have to make that are not just gonna make your notes better? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are gonna help you establish yourself as an academic in your own head, [00:02:00] establish yourself as someone who has academic viewpoints, someone who has thoughts and messages that they want to put out there in the world. And we often don't think about that starting at notetaking. But today I'm gonna explain to you exactly why notetaking is the bit that is the foundation of all of that, and how your approach to note taking tells me a lot about your opinion of yourself in academia at the moment. So let's go. So I want you to think about the last time that you were taking notes and what you thought the purpose of that was. Now, if you've listened previously to the podcast, you may have heard the episode about how to take notes more quickly. If you haven't after this one, I strongly recommend that you go back and listen to that because there is, there's a little tiny bit of overlap, but it really backs up a lot of what we're talking about today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's also one about how to be more efficient or something like that. How to stop thinking about being efficient and be more effective. It's called something like that. [00:03:00] If you've got the archive, you'll find it easily. If you haven't, why not sign up for my newsletter? You'll get the archive. You'll be able to search and find all of these episodes. Anyway what do I mean when I say that how you take notes tells me about what you think of yourself as an academic. What I mean is the biggest issue I see with note taking, particularly for people towards the beginning of their PhD, but to be honest, it progresses all the way through is that you think the purpose of note taking and therefore the purpose of you as a person is to accurately understand and be able to summarize what other people have done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Most people start their note taking journey with reading an article. What did they do? What did they find? What did they say that means? Okay? Really focused on what the other person did, said, thinks. And then in some way, our job, we often [00:04:00] see our job as collating that. Taking what they say, taking what they say, taking what they say, pulling it together into a piece that explains what the field thinks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if that's what you do, it's okay, but it's not the whole job. What that makes you is a kind of reporter on academia, and that's what you have to do right through undergrad and master's and to some extent the beginning bits of your PhD, particularly if you have taught courses as part of your PhD, um, you often are doing that, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are collating what everybody else says and presenting it as some sort of coherent like overview of the field. The fact is, as an academic, what we want you to do is we wanna know on the basis of all of that, what do you think? What's your take on it all? And often what [00:05:00] happens is that you note take like a reporter, you write your lit review like a reporter reporting on that field, and then you get feedback from your supervisor that says, yes, but what's your argument here? Yes, but what's your viewpoint? You're like, I don't know. I've just read a whole load of stuff and written it into a really nice essay for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. And you're like, I dunno, I'm just little me. The reason you still feel like just little me, the reason you still feel like an imposter, the reason that you don't feel like an academic a lot of the time is because you are not building that practice into your note taking and stuff, right from the very beginning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are seeing yourself as a reporter, right through to the point where somebody tells you you've gotta have an argument, and then you are panicking about, well, what is my argument? I don't know. So this is why I am not gonna teach you specific softwares and techniques, but instead teach you an approach [00:06:00] that, yeah, it'll get good notes. That's fine. That's almost by this wayside. What it will actually do is help develop your thinking as an independent academic who has got something to offer your field, because you do. I don't even know you and I know that you do. Those of you, I do know members listening. I know for 100% sure you guys have really important, interesting things to offer the world. We just have to convince you of it too. So, and this is the bit that you will have heard slightly if you've listened to that one about how to read more quickly, the point of note taking is not to make a true and faithful representation summary of what somebody else did. That is not your job. If you think that's what note taking is, you may as well let AI do it. All of you who are using AI to summarize your papers for you and stuff, if all you want to do is get a true and accurate summary. I mean, accurate can be a bit of a mixed bag, but often AI will be able to do [00:07:00] that for you. That is not your job. When you are reading an article, when you are taking notes about an article, about a book, your job is to think about the intersection between their research and your brain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you think about it like a big Venn diagram with two overlapping circles. You've got the stuff that they know and are presenting in that article, and then you've got the circle stuff that you know, and we've got this overlapping section, which is where the stuff that they're writing about in that article meets the stuff, you know, in your brain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's what we need to be writing about. What thoughts are you having while you read this? What is it making you think about? What is it making you realize? I have a few little questions you can ask yourself. Things like, what did this remind me of? This paper reminded me of an article by so andSo, where they argued something [00:08:00] completely different, and that's interesting because blah, blah, blah, blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, what did it make you wonder when you read this article? What did you, okay. Well that was interesting 'cause when they did that, they found this, but I wonder what would've happened if they'd controlled statistically for X. I wonder what would've happened if they'd asked them this. I wonder what would've happened if they'd added an additional condition. I wonder why these were the documents that were saved and not other documents, whatever it might be, depending on your discipline. Right? What does it make you wonder? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What are you still unclear about that should be going in your notes? I've read this and they've now clarified that. However, I am still unclear why blah, blah, blah, blah happens. What are you still unclear about? What have you now realized? Where has your thinking progressed to because your brain met this article. Okay. Where did it click and fit with something that you've read before [00:09:00] or that you understood before? What did it suddenly explain in a way that you'd never thought about that like that before? What do you now believe to be true based on what they said or what are you still unconvinced by and what do you want to further explore? What do you want to delve into a little bit more? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, tip here. This does not mean reading one article, saving 40 more PDFs of references that they referenced, and now you wanna look at all of those. Now, that's not how this works. What I want it to be instead is what specifically do you want to further explore? What's one thing that now that you've read this, you are dying to look up somewhere else? It's all about where does your brain meet this paper? Because you are not reading this because you are a reporter who is going to report on this field. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are reading this because you are [00:10:00] part of this field. You are an academic in this field. Whatever level you're at, I don't care. You're a Master's student, whatever. You are an academic working in this field. That means you are part of this field, which means that your viewpoint of this literature is what's important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we get to practice that right now from the very beginning. And you might be going, oh, but Vic, I've been doing this lit review for the last year and I haven't done this. Now I need to go back and do this for all of the No, no, you've done what you've done. You've read what you've read, which means your brain is now in the state, it's in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You have the knowledge that you have now because of what you've done over the last year, two years, whatever. All good. Not a problem. But the next thing you read, try and practice some of the things that we're talking about. Ask yourself those sorts of questions. Now we start from where we're at, not from where we wish we were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we're thinking, where does our brain meet [00:11:00] this? Now the only way that works is if you are clear on why you are reading that article. And for that I want you to go back to that other episode about how to read more quickly 'cause I really talk through how the purpose of reading an article will vary and why that's really important for how you read it, but essentially know why you are reading it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are you reading it 'cause you're gonna use the same method. Are you reading it? 'cause it's super similar to what you're gonna do? Are you reading it? Because it gives background into why this is a big thing in the world. Why are you reading it? And by the way, because my supervisor said so it's not a good enough reason. You need to know why you are reading it because then you are reading it in different ways. If you're reading it 'cause you're using the same method, you will focus on the methods and the results. You won't focus on the introduction and the con and discussion quite so much and the notes you take will be your thoughts about the methods, not your thoughts about how they back up their argument 'cause they're probably using it for something completely different. So get clear on your why and then remember the note taking is your [00:12:00] thoughts about that article where the two intersect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are thinking, this is the problem where I do my podcast, I plan what I'm gonna say to you, right? I have my little points down here that I wanna say, and then I know you guys so well, but I can almost hear your little responses coming back to me. I spend so much time with my members listening to them talk about all this stuff that it, it kind of comes to me through the ether, what you're gonna be saying. You're gonna be saying, but I don't know anything. But who am I to judge this stuff? That's why we practice. Okay, because at the moment, this is just for your notes, no one's gonna read this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you don't practice in your notes, the first time you start thinking about where your brain intersects with all of this, and what viewpoint you have is gonna be in a draft that your supervisor reads. And that's scarier, right? We wanna make it not scary, and I'll coach you through it so that it doesn't feel so scary. But that's a higher stakes time right at the moment. We get to practice [00:13:00] in our notes. What are my thoughts on this? Knowing that no one else is gonna read them, knowing that it's only for us, and that we'll come back to it later, which I'll talk about in a minute. So we've got other opportunities to rethink and consolidate our learning and whatnot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is where we get to practice. So this is, especially for those of you who are going, oh, but I don't know what my viewpoint is. Brilliant. Perfect. Let's develop your viewpoint. Let's start experimenting with it in our notes in this lovely low stakes situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second tip, so that's my first one. The second tip is I would really separate out thinking notes from keeping notes. Most people don't distinguish this. Most people think of them as notes. Maybe you think about like rough notes and polished notes, but I don't even want you to think like that. I want you to think of them as thinking notes and keeping notes. Thinking notes can be destroyed at the end of your [00:14:00] session. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might wanna keep 'em, you might not, but they're literally, that's not the purpose of them. Thinking notes is what helps you to kind of stay focused while you're eating, to help you feel like you're actually doing something. You're not just staring at words while they drift around your head. They are what help you keep track of things. These are scruffy, these are little rough notes. These have got arrows. These don't make sense to anybody. They won't make sense to you in a month's time, but they help you keep on track. You might jot down words you wanna look up, you might wanna jot down things that surprised you or whatever, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are just to help you think. Okay. You can use those prompts and those are on my email. I'll, I'll send you a list with that in. You can use those prompts to stimulate what am I thinking? But the point of those notes isn't to keep them. If you ask me which notes are more important, [00:15:00] thinking notes or keeping notes, and I'm going to go as far as to say, thinking notes are more important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would rather you made good thinking notes and really got your thinking going and binned them than you make beautiful records of what you've read that summarize other people's thinking without really thinking. And if you guys are writing 'em up in better handwriting, we are gonna have words. 'cause that is 14-year-old stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We aren't doing it. Okay. We don't need to make it neat. We don't. We don't need to make it beautiful. Any of you who enjoy doing like color coding and stationery and all that stuff, take up art. Let's do art as a hobby. We do not need to make our work more complicated by insisting that it's beautiful as well. I've been there. Let's not do it anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when we're talking about keeping notes, we are not talking about just making those other notes pretty, we are talking about turning them into something that is actually a useful record to retain, and I'm gonna give you some tips about how to do that in a second.[00:16:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the way this works, we do thinking notes first, then we do keeping notes afterwards. Free yourself from the pressure of your notes, having to make sense the first time. We are thinking, we're pondering, then we're turning it into something that's short, that's easy, and that is not colour coded. Um, so that we can keep it afterwards and keep it wherever you like. I don't care if you're using a notebook or word or Google or obsidian or whatever. Keep it wherever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing then is what are these keeping notes? What should we be doing? Now, some of this I've already show told you. The keeping notes need to refer to the reason why we're reading it. So they should be focused on the reason we're reading it at the moment. They should be focused on what our thoughts about it are. What I want you to do though, is I want you to do that for each article that you read. I read this article because it changed my thinking like this. It made me realize that da da. Okay? And I want you [00:17:00] to write them in sentences. You might wanna make a quick summary of what they did and what they found. Just for your sake, a couple of lines. I used to like a table. If you were like comparing experimental trials for example or something like that, I used to like a little table that told me how many participants I had, what type of exercise regime they were put through, what the outcome measures were, blah, blah, blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I used to like that sort of thing. Maybe you want a bit of a summary, but the key thing is sentences about what you think now because of reading this article. That's the bit we keep. Now the bit that everybody misses is they think you go from, let's make notes about paper A, paper B, paper C, paper, D for a hundred papers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we go, let's write a lit review. And we go, oh, that's scary. I don't know what to write. I don't know what I think. Where do I start? This is hard. Let's make a plan. Oh no, that's a hard plan's too hard. I know what I'll do. I'll read some [00:18:00] more and we go back off into the literature in order to read some more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If that's your problem, I also have an article about why you shouldn't read while you're writing, so make sure you find that episode somewhere if that's your problem, I also have an episode about why you shouldn't read while you are writing, so make sure you check that one out, but it's because we are trying to make this enormous jump from notes on individual articles over here through to coherent lit review that somebody else can write. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's not do that. So what I want you to do is I want you to pick five papers that you've been intending to read that are all on similar things. I want you to do short notes on each of them and remember short notes, but not summarizing the article. It's focused on what you think about the article, what you know now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then, after you've done the fifth one, before you do anything else, I want you to read your notes about those five. And I want you to consolidate them into a mini [00:19:00] paragraph about what you know now that you've read those five articles, I want you to compare and compare, oh, I realize this here, but I realize that there, how does that come together? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are they the same thing? Oh, that backs up my, oh, that doesn't back up my argument. Turn those notes for five articles into a paragraph, two paragraphs about those five articles where you don't just summarize them, where you pull it together into a coherent. Now that I've read these five, this is what I know and what I'm thinking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, the key then you do that again next week and then you, so then you've got two where you've got, this is what I think based on these five, this is what I think based on these five. Now we consolidate those and we write something slightly else. That's now what do I know having read those 10 things and consolidated it down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you see how this starts building towards having something that will resemble a [00:20:00] lit review in due course and is centering you as the academic in the middle of this? Because what I would get out of reading those five articles will be different than what you get out of reading them and what your supervisor would get out of reading them and other people. And that is exactly what you should be doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It should be unique to you, and we practice it by doing it in these low stakes ways, in ways that no one's ever gonna read. Now, when I say this will build towards a lit review, I want you to hear me very clearly. I am not saying you use any of that text. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes people who bang on about efficiency on the internet will say, and if you do your notes using my amazing system, you can then just pull it straight through and your lit review is practically written. No, we're gonna rewrite it 'cause we're writing that for a different purpose. We've then got the reader in mind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are then making sure that we can get [00:21:00] our viewpoint across to our designated reader. We need to write that in a different way. That's fine. We don't, we're not gonna just cut and paste this stuff. That's not the purpose of it. The purpose is to develop your skills, to develop your understanding, for you to figure out what your viewpoint is so that by the time it's your turn to actually write the lit review, you know what your viewpoint is and all you've gotta do is just write it. Because the problem is most of us, the problem is not writing a lit review. The problem is we don't know what point we're making and we dunno how to figure out what the point is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are deciding why we're reading something. We are remembering that all of our notes should be about the intersection between that article and our brain. What do we know now that we didn't know before? What are we still wondering? What are we still unsure about? What are we querying that they did? What do we wanna check? All that good stuff. We are gonna separate the notes we take while we are reading the thinking notes from [00:22:00] a very short version of the keeping notes that we're gonna make. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The keeping notes are gonna be about our thoughts. They're gonna be written in actual sentences and they're not gonna be beautiful. And then we are gonna try and consolidate. So we are gonna put time aside after we've read a few to summarize what I now know is this. And all of this is making you more effective at notes, but more importantly is making you more effective at thinking, and it's convincing you what I know already, which is that you are an academic and you deserve to be here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we are doing this when we're practicing, when we're expressing our opinions, when we're testing our opinions by reading other people's work and clarifying against it and thinking, Ooh, actually I'm now a bit more convinced of this and less of that. That's interesting. Let's document all that stuff. This is why you will then come back to these articles, read them again in the future, and go, oh, [00:23:00] my thinking has come on so far since I last read this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is being an academic, you are an academic. It is very difficult sometimes to conceptualize ourselves as an academic. And that is what I really wanna help you to do over the next few months, is to really think about how you can feel less of an imposter, more of an academic, and more like you're in control of this story. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for those of you who like Easter eggs, that might be a little Easter egg for what you can expect from the membership next quarter. So I hope that was useful. I hope you're feeling super motivated to go away and read some articles and try all this stuff out. Do not regret what you've done in the past. We just start from here and we move forward. Let me know how you get on if you're not on my newsletter already. Why not? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please join. It's all good. Go to my website, PhD life coach.com. Click on the big orange button in the middle and you'll find it there. Everyone on my newsletter also gets invited to my [00:24:00] monthly webinars, which are amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Next week is gonna be super good. If you listen to this live, make sure you check that out. So thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 08 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-02-how-to-take-better-notes thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-01-how-to-use-your-existing-expertise-when-you-feel-like-an-imposter <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Feeling like you know absolutely nothing is perhaps the worst part of doing a PhD. You know you need to become an expert but often you feel like a complete imposter. One great strategy is to identify areas of your life where you DO feel more competent or confident and consider how to transfer that learning to your PhD. This could be a past or current career or even hobbies and life experiences that you often overlook. In this episode, I’ll talk about why this is so helpful and how to use your expertise to make your PhD progress more easily </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might like this one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12798848-30-how-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome" target="_blank"> how to overcome imposter syndrome </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to season four of the PhD Life Coach Podcast . I am so excited that we have even reached season four. There are now 138 episodes and at time of recording over 112,000 downloads. So thank you so much to all of you who have been a part of that. If you still know people that aren't listening to the podcast, why not? Make sure you send them an episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is super exciting to be returning for another year of the podcast and I am really, really looking forward to all the things that we have lined up for you. Today we're gonna be thinking about something that comes up in so many of my sessions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So at the moment I have 83 people in my membership. They're all PhD students who are looking to overcome procrastination, get the stuff done, and relearn how to enjoy their PhDs. And one of the things they talk about most often is feeling like a bit of an imposter. Feeling as though [00:01:00] they don't deserve to be there, that their supervisor is somehow gonna, you know, find out that they're not good enough to be there, that they don't have the capacity to learn to do all this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you felt like that too. Maybe there are times when you are just thinking, wow. Everybody else knows what they're doing, or at least they know what they need to learn to be doing. And I just, I don't belong here. I'm not part of this. This is not something I'm capable of. And if you felt like that, I want you to know that you are in really, really good company. Most people feel like that at some point in their academic career. And one thing I know more than anything is that it's not an accurate reflection of your capacity to be an academic, okay? The fact that you feel like that doesn't actually relate to your actual abilities, your actual skills, the actual place you're at the moment, or your capacity to become more in the future. [00:02:00] It seems to be completely independent and more driven by the circumstances you find yourself in, the experiences you've had in the past and the way you interpret all of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The problem is when we tell ourselves we're an imposter and we tell ourselves that the reason we're finding something difficult or the reason we don't know something is because we don't deserve to be here because we're not good enough to be here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What it does is it shuts down all of our creativity, okay? Suddenly it turns from something that is solvable, is figureoutable, into something that is just a kind of inherent trait weakness on your part, and then we can't do anything about it. It's like you've might seen these challenges where they give some people puzzles that are solvable and they give some puzzles that are insolvable, and if they tell you it's an insolvable puzzle, most people will just stop. Most people won't even bother to keep trying [00:03:00] something that they've been told is impossible. And if you are the one telling yourself you're not good enough to do something, then it's really hard to believe that you are gonna make decisions, that you are gonna prioritize, that you are gonna learn, that you're gonna figure it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason that imposter syndrome can be so sort of paralyzing is that it sees you as a really unidimensional person. It really focuses on this particular context, so the academic context and your current state of being, and take those two things and make it mean that you don't deserve to be here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we've already talked about how it doesn't allow for the fact that you are gonna change over time, that you are gonna learn and develop, but it also doesn't account for the skills and expertise you've got in other sectors of your life. Now, you may say, I don't have other sectors. I don't have skills and expertise, but it's [00:04:00] simply not true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of you have experiences in other places or in other types of bits of life that you have expertise in. It might be previous or current jobs that you have alongside or before your PhD. It might be hobbies, it might be your personal circumstances. It might be the way you look after, you know, say you've got a chronic illness, your skills and expertise are in managing that condition, perhaps looking after other people, parenting, looking after elderly parents. All of us have got expertise and experiences in other parts of our lives that imposter syndrome doesn't really take into account. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's a problem as well. And the reason that's a problem, again, is twofold. One is that, it doesn't sort of recognize that actually we are a sort of rounded human person and that if we [00:05:00] can be an expert in that area, maybe we can be an expert in this area too, but it also prevents us transferring expertise from one setting to another. This is something that actually, many moons ago I used to do some research about, about how skills you learn in one setting can be applied to others. And the main take home of that research was they can be, but you have to do it intentionally and in a kind of reflective way 'cause it doesn't just happen automatically. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we are telling ourselves we're imposters, we don't deserve to be here, that perhaps there's this other place where, yeah, I, I fit over there. I don't fit here. Then we often don't take the time to think about what do I know from that other bit of my life, whether it's a career, whether it's hobbies, whether it's personal circumstances that I can apply to what I'm here doing today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's what I'm gonna speak about in this first episode of season four, is how you can [00:06:00] use expertise that you have from other parts of your life to improve your own experience of your PhD or indeed broader academia if you're not a PhD student anymore.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I think the best way to illustrate this is to give you a couple of examples, right? So those of you who have been around for a while will know that I have a bit of a kind of circus hobby. Okay? So I used to do aerial silks quite a lot, and now I'm more doing sort of poi and generally trying to throw things around poi mostly, little bits of juggling and Diablo and stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you might think that there are no parallels between circus and doing a PhD or surviving in academia. But actually those of you who listen regularly will have heard me draw parallels quite regularly. So as an example, one of the parallels I draw is between tight rope walking and procrastination or staying focused, because [00:07:00] often we think that we need to stay focused all the time, and that focused people don't lose focus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Same as we often think if we don't know anything about circus, that tightrope walkers don't wobble. But it's not true. Tightrope walkers do wobble. People who are highly focused do lose focus. The difference between experts, whether that's in the tight roping world, or whether that's in the staying focused world, the difference between experts and beginners is when and how quickly they notice that they're wobbling, either physically or in focus and how expertly they can correct that. So a beginner tight roper doesn't notice they're wobbling until they've really, really wobbled and then often is either too late to correct, doesn't know how to correct or massively overcorrects and falls off the other side. Whereas an expert type roper notices the little wobble, but [00:08:00] knows exactly what to do just to bring themselves back to in balance again without it being a big drama. So to the non-expert eye, you don't see them wobble when they have. And it's the same with focus. People who are very good at staying focused, they do sort of go, Ooh, squirrel, and then they bring their eyes back to what they were doing, they don't make a big deal of the fact that they just saw a squirrel. They just bring it back to where they were. So that's an example of an analogy from my circus world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now. I find it really, really useful to draw analogies from my circus world because it's a world that I understand. Now, I don't wanna overstate this guys. I am not an expert in any of this by any stretch, but I know quite a few people who are. It's a world that I enjoy. It's a world that I enjoy learning about, and so when I think of parallels from that world, they seem very visual. They seem within my kind of comfort zone and they [00:09:00] give me a fresh way of looking at things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I talk about plate spinning in one of my courses about what to do when you've got too much to do, for example. And that's another circus trick. We think about juggling quite often and that kind of skill acquisition associated with building up the ability to do that. And how often in PhDs we think we can just jump straight to the hard bit without the sort of buildup and so on. When we can translate it to something we're familiar with, and that feels lower stakes often than our PhD academic life, then suddenly it can bring clarity in a place that you hadn't had clarity before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I've used this, this kind of finding analogies, finding expertise from other areas and applying them to your academic life with clients as well. So as an example, I had a client who was very into hiking. They were into hiking. They loved that [00:10:00] kind of route finding, and in fact, they taught others how to do it. They taught others how to navigate. They led climbs and led walks and so on. So this was a world that they loved, that they felt highly competent at and they had a lot of experience at. And we then sort of translated that to the academic world. The idea of way finding through a project. That actually there's not necessarily one correct route that the route you choose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Depends on who's on the hike with you and what conditions there are, and how everyone's doing and all of those things, and how sometimes the route that you planned needs to change. And that doesn't make it a failed hike. It means that you are changing your priorities about where you're trying to get to and why understanding what the, the people, the people in your group are trying to get out of a hike would help you to design what type of hike to take them [00:11:00] on. So all of these things about tailoring it, about responding to setbacks, about considering morale as well as physical ability about prioritizing, whether, you know, are they there for the waterfalls or are they there for the physical challenge, or do they want particularly Instagram worthy photos, or are they trying to build their fitness, or why are they doing this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of those things we can apply to PhDs, and if you are not in that world, then that won't feel intuitive to you. But if you are somebody who loves the outdoors and loves hiking, then suddenly it kind of makes sense. It's like, oh, I'm plotting a route through this landscape. I'm where I am now and my, you know, submission or viva is somewhere over there, the other side of this landscape, and I can plot my route through this landscape. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm capable of doing that, and suddenly, if you are someone who's capable of navigating that and making those decisions in [00:12:00] a kind of geophysical landscape, then you can start going, okay, well how would I do that? And how can I translate that to what I'm trying to do here where it's more of a metaphorical landscape. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's another example. So we've got kind of circus as an analogy. We've got hiking as an analogy. There's also then more professional analogies, right? So lots of you will have either had jobs before, or will have jobs alongside doing your PhD, maybe within academia or outside of and actually taking translations from those can really help too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, some of the biggest imposter syndromes that I get are people who are really big wigs in their like professional area, either previously or still now, but who are relative beginners in academia. And I think it comes across because it's such a contrast that if in your professional life you [00:13:00] are used to people thinking you are great and knowing what you're talking about and coming to you for advice, then suddenly being the one who doesn't know anything can be a real challenge, right? Because you're like, whoa, it has been a long time since I felt this much of a beginner. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, just as a little aside, any of you're thinking? I don't really have any, I don't have another job outside and I don't really have any hobbies. This is a really good reason to take up some hobbies. I'm a big fan of hobbies for work-life balance, and I've got some podcasts lined up about that stuff soon. But being a beginner again in something is a brilliant thing to do and learning how you navigate beginner ness in something like circus, for example, um, can translate hugely into navigating beginners in academia too. But yeah, so these people who have, they have their amazing careers where they're really well respected and suddenly they're beginners again, in academia that can be really, really hard to manage. One of the things that can really help is really [00:14:00] reminding them that all that skills and expertise they have in their professional setting, they can use this in the academic setting too. Now they might have to translate it. Settings work very differently, right? You know, if you are from corporate America, or you are from a small charity in rural Lincolnshire, it might translate very, very differently. But thinking about how do I handle things like that there and how would I handle it here? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or even if you are senior enough that you advise other people, so you have junior people in your either current or past job. Thinking about how you would help them navigate the uncertainties of that setting, again, can create really good parallels for you to bring into academia. I'm gonna give you two examples. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one example I haven't worked with directly, but I love the analogy 'cause I think it really helps lots of people and that is about being a high class chef. So working anywhere where you've got a very kind of [00:15:00] regimented kitchen. So there are so many lessons that we can take from chefing and those of you maybe cooking's your hobby, right? It doesn't even have to be a job. Maybe cooking's your hobby and you are really good at this too. But, in sort of high class French cooking, they have this concept called Mise En Place, with apologies to everybody who has a good French accent, which basically means everything in its place. And one of the things that happens at the end of a chef's shift is that they reset everything back to where it was at the start of the shift. So that's cleaning down, that's restocking fridges, um, recreating basic sources if you have sources that are always in the fridge that you can use and things like that. Getting everything back so that it's exactly where it was and exactly where you need it to be when you return to work tomorrow. That is one of those examples of something that people do in that profession. Or if you are an organized home cook, you may do there as [00:16:00] well. Actually translating through into your PhD, how can you make sure that stuff is back in the metaphorical fridge, that things are processed and put away, that things are back where you need them to be when you start back up again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A second example of a professional setting. I have had several clients and still do, had several clients who have medical careers either before or alongside their PhDs. So they're doctors, their nurses, their physios, their healthcare practitioners of a whole variety of things. And often they're doing their PhDs alongside their clinical duties and often the things that we struggle with in an academic or PhD setting are things that they're handling all day every day. So I recently had a conversation with a client who was struggling with prioritization. They had lots and lots of things that they "needed" to do. They had to do, um, in their mind, or at least that they had choices about doing. [00:17:00] And they were really, really struggling to pick because all of them felt important, and I encouraged them to really reflect this back to how they would handle it in a medical setting. And they said, you know, in a medical setting, I would accept that I can't do all the things and I would prioritize based on urgency, based on need, based on where I can make the biggest impact and so on and so forth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that I would have some acceptance for the fact that there are some bits that I can't do to the best of my ability 'cause I've got to prioritize these other people. And so therefore I do what needs to be done and nothing more. And they're not saying that that's easy, but that they get it. And they accept it and they know how to process it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we talked a little bit about how they would support more junior members of staff. Because when you start out in healthcare, you have the same thing, right? You wanna help everyone, you wanna do all the things. And you, it's hard to realize that you can't. And as they were thinking through how easy that was for them in their professional setting [00:18:00] and what they would say to their junior healthcare practitioners who were struggling, they were increasingly able to see how they could apply that into their PhD and academic world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now that one doesn't work for me. Right? The idea of being in a hospital and having 20 patients, all of whom need me to varying degrees for very different things, I find deeply terrifying. I have no idea how I would, you know, I'm a first aider, so I can do like basic sort of emergency, okay. Those ones are quiet and dying. Let's go that way, sort of assessments. But in terms of in a ward, the idea terrifies me. So that's not an analogy that works for me, but for my clients for whom that's their setting, that's where they feel like a kind of, um, you know, a functioning professional. That's where they feel at their best, whatever the opposite of an imposter is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> [00:19:00] Then being able to see that in this setting and being able to say, okay, there are parallels, there's things I can take from here and apply there is hugely empowering. So I want you to think, I want you to think through professional experiences. I want you to think through hobbies and side hustles and all that good stuff, or your actual personal life. So I think. Parenthood is a great example of this. Some of you might be in amateur theater or high level sports. So I come from a sports science background and some of our best students were the students that were also high class athletes. We called them dual professionals where they were a student and they were essentially a professional athlete and some of them got distracted by it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the ones that could translate through from one to the other, that they could see how the training they did in their physical lives could translate across to the training that they [00:20:00] needed to do in their academic lives. They were some of the best students that we had. So what is it for you? Where's a context that you feel like, you know what? I mostly know what I'm doing, or at least I feel comfortable 'cause I want to take you back. I am not good at circus. I cannot tell you how not good at circus I am okay. If the average person saw me, they might be like, eh, okay. If anyone who does circus, I am not an expert circus, but it's still my little world that I love and understand. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What's your little world where you feel like you kind of get it? You kind of can see it, and I'll set you the challenge of drawing some analogies, drawing some stories, lessons that you can take from that world and apply into your PhD or academic world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now if you're listening and you're not on my newsletter, you need to jump on my newsletter 'cause I will set these sorts of challenges every week in my newsletter. So you get one email a [00:21:00] week, you get a little summary of what I say in this podcast. You get two reflective questions that you can work through and ponder about, either in writing or just thinking about 'em when you go for a walk. And I'll give you a specific action and that is something that will help you to actually apply this stuff that we're talking about in these podcasts say that you don't just listen to them and go, oh, that was interesting, and then never look again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're not on it, go to my website, PhD life coach.com, and there's a big orange button right in the front where you can join the newsletter and you'll get prompts like that. What is your little world that you could take and apply and how could you use that to help you develop a sense of expertise in your academic world too? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's worked so well for me, worked so well for so many of my clients, and I'm excited to hear what you guys all come up with. So do. if you are on my newsletter, just drop me a message back. Let me know what analogies you came up with, what applies out into your world. [00:22:00] Anyway, that is the first episode of series four, and I can't wait to be with you for the rest of the academic year. Thank you all for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 01 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/4-01-how-to-use-your-existing-expertise-when-you-feel-like-an-imposter thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-48-what-to-do-when-you-dont-make-time-for-yourself-special-coaching-episode-with-gillian <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today I’m coaching Gillian who is a member of The PhD Life Coach membership! She has been making great progress on her procrastination during Q2 of the membership, but asked for coaching around making time for herself. She lives with her parents and young son, and finds that she spends all her time in daughter mode, mum mode, and PhD student mode, and hasn’t been “just Gillian” for a while. She also finds the different roles blend together which can make her feel like she’s doing everything and nothing at the same time. Listen in as we work through her challenges and come up with a plan!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you found this episode useful, you might also like this one with Marie on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/13866103-2-7-how-to-plan-your-week-with-special-guest-ex-client-phd-student-marie" target="_blank"> How to plan your week </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Just jumping in quickly with two things that I wanted to tell you. The first, this is gonna be the last episode for season three. So if you're listening live, it is the 4th of August. We will start up again properly on the 1st of September, so there'll be a few weeks without a new episode, but you've got my entire back catalogue. The second thing is, again, if you're listening to this live, quarter three of the PhD Life Coach membership is open. If you want more support with your PhD, you wanna feel like you're not battling through this alone. If you still procrastinate, if you wanna figure out how to have a better relationship with your supervisor, if you wanna feel part of something with other people who have the same challenges as you, make sure you check it out. Go to my website, the PhD life coach.com. Click on the membership. You'll find all the details. You get access to online group coaching, mini workshops that are live. You can get asynchronous coaching where you send me questions and I'll send back a private podcast where I answer those questions. There's self-paced materials. There's everything you could possibly want. The members organize coworking. I organize some coworkings. It's amazing. Check it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Today's episode is with Gillian, who is actually one of my members. So it is a coaching session with one of my members. And if you wanna experience anything like that, you need to join the membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach and we have another special coaching episode and I am particularly excited to be joined by Gillian because not only has Gillian volunteered to be coached here today on the podcast, she is also one of my members in the PhD life coach membership. So welcome Gillian. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Hello. It's lovely to be here, Vikki.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's fabulous to have you here. So why don't you go ahead and tell people a little bit about why you got in touch, what it is that you think would be useful to get coaching on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Okay. So, when I saw the chance to be coach one to one, I thought it would actually be a good chance for me to try and open up a bit because I don't tend to actually take much time to talk about myself. I see it as something that's maybe a sign of weakness and it's something that I know I'm trying to work on. And then I started thinking about what would be better or what could make my life better if I could just do something about it. And that's when I thought, actually, for me, taking time just for me is something that I don't really do. So I have PhD time, I have mommy time, I have, you know, time looking after parents, but I don't actually, there's nowhere in my diary where I do something just for me. And so, yeah, I reached out and, and here I am. So I'm hoping to see if I can get a bit of a better balance in life.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And I think it was such a useful topic when you suggested it. 'Cause I think some people will be in your sort of situation where they're trying to do parenting, their caring whilst doing their PhDs, others, um, I've got lots of listeners, lots of clients as you know, who've also got full-time jobs alongside their PhDs and things like that. And others, it's just their PhDs become so all consuming that it feels like there's never space for themselves. So tell me a little bit more about why it feels like a problem for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Well, I think part of it is when you were saying about you're quite right, we're not not feeling there's enough space that part of the thing with the PhD is there's always this looming, mysterious figure almost over your shoulder going, you've gotta get it done by this date. And then in my mind I get to these negative thoughts coming and going, but what happens if you get ill? You could, you're okay now, but you could get behind. You must try and be ahead, but you know, you're behind, I mustn't stop. And the other thing is of course you can get stuck down that rabbit hole because I do, we all care about what we're researching. So sometimes you could have something you are looking at on a Friday afternoon where you think, Ooh, this is really good. And before you know it, you can be picking up a book you've been looking at again whilst you are ignoring family. And it's an easy excuse, isn't it? I can't come out tonight. I'm working on this for my chapter. So it's an easy out, but it's not a healthy thing to do because I still have two and a bit years to go. That's not a balance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I think that's so insightful to recognize that there's different reasons why this might be, that part of it sounds like it's a little bit sort of fear and anxiety driven, of kind of must do more, must be further ahead, must not get behind. But there is an extent to which that sometimes it's a temptation driven thing. You know, we get all fascinated with our work and actually it's that we are drawn into it rather than it being out of fear. But both can have consequences, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. And that's the thing and. I think I was pretty aware, maybe that was at the forefront of my mind. My son last week he had something where he was hoping I'd be able to take him to it, but I had to coax it outta him and I said, well, why didn't you say something? And he went, well, your PhD is just more important. And I went, no, it's not, it's not more important than your happiness. This is not a PhD versus you. That's when I thought, oh no . So for about 12 years before I started my masters, I taught at secondary schools and I'd left that to have a better balance with my son and then realize that in an odd way, this is not somebody externally putting these pressures on, it's me, but I'm doing the same thing to myself, so I'm still not available to him in the way I should be or could be. You are always gonna get pressure points. I'm not saying, I mean, PhDs are not easy, but I realize I'm not as available as I should be and I'm shutting 'em out, and that's not something I want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think what often happens, and I think this will be interesting for us to dive into, what often happens is that people don't really define what as available as I "should" be. We don't really define what that extent of availability is, and so we always have this kind of general feel that we are not doing enough for our kids, or we are not doing enough for our PhD or for our parents, or for our other job or whatever it may be, without really defining what that would look like anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So do you have an idea as to how available you should be for your son?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I don't, um, I don't think it's necessarily, I haven't really fully set, but I am aware that I am the sort of person where if there's an interesting online thing on a weekend or whatever, that I would be prioritize, I'd go, well, I'm going to that then and you'll be okay, uh, because you've got granny or grandad or, or whatever. So, I think because I have very blurred end of the week boundaries or lack of that, then there isn't a sense of for most people, if you've got a parent who's going off to work once they. Where they're home now so I can access them. But there is this strange thing when you obviously are doing, um, I'm quite a distance from the university I study at as well. It takes over two hours to drive there. So, most of my work is done here. So home and work and all of that blends. And I think that's part of the problem is, you know, when I'm available, it's not as clear as when I used to go and work in a school. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how do you decide which it is? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Um, I don't think I have actually, that's what I realized is so damaging. I don't think I have actually actively thought about being a bit, I tend to, if there's been, um. We more of our time together, it's been if we've gone away on holidays together, and now when I look, I think it's no wonder that he probably really likes the holidays because then I down PhD tools and it's fully family time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I haven't really thought about separating the two, the PhD world from my home world, they have collided in a messy, um, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think that's gonna be really interesting to explore because if you are already doing it with holidays, 'cause I don't want you to think that's inevitable. Okay. I have clients who really struggle with not working when they're on holiday. So it's not inevitable that you down your PhD tools and don't do it that. So you are already setting some boundaries. So I think it's gonna be really interesting to explore why you set those boundaries with holidays and to start thinking about what boundaries might look like at home as well. But before we get into that, I mentioned at the beginning that you are already in my membership, and one of the things I think is interesting with this stuff is to sort of think about what are you already trying to do. So perhaps tell people a little bit about why you decided to join the membership and whether there's any of this stuff or other stuff that you've been kind of trying to work on already. I know you've only been in a couple of weeks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: So I joined the membership after coming to one of your monthly, the free workshops, which was amazing. And then it was one of the first things I'd been to where your advice was actually, there was a support for actually saying it's okay to, to have worries and things, but also you've gotta have that compassion, but also let's look at how we can try and make things better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: You can't just go, it's okay and leave it 'cause that's not what your membership's about. And I, I came away from it and I was buzzing. And that was a workshop to do with procrastination. Which after that I had this huge to do list and I realized that a lot of the problems was my own fear because I hadn't broken things down. That I'd got far too much on it, that I'd got things on it that I didn't need to look at for another six months, but that I still just had. So I had things in the wrong places. And after that, I just knew as soon as, so I, um, had to wait for the, the next round of the membership to be available to join. But I knew that I wanted to be part of it. And, it's been so lovely being part of the community actually, to realize that I'm not the only person who struggles with so many different things. Procrastination, self doubt, organization, and that these aren't necessarily skills that you go into a PhD just knowing. 'Cause that's the other thing I found with a membership is I think so many of us came to PhDs just thinking, we should know this because the way that it, they're not really discussed in a lot of institutions. There's just this suggestion. You should have an innate understanding of juggling. What is the biggest project for, for many of us, it's the first huge project that you will have undertaken. Obviously some people come from different backgrounds, but in a lot of us that is, it's a huge undertaking and you need skills and that's what's been great since joining the membership. It has been brilliant in terms of. I've been looking more at procrastination than family time, actually. Uh, and I think that sort of stems for one thing, does lead, you know, they connect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: But I realized that even though I was on time for things, I was getting a lot more stressed than I needed to be because I hadn't shown compassion and I hadn't broken stuff down. And so that's why I thought with the chance of this, I said actually, if I can use what I've known from joining and actually just being a bit more willing to think about myself, which is uncomfortable, and I don't think I'm probably alone in that. A lot of us don't take time to think about ourselves and give ourselves compassion. Yet we spend quite a lot of time with others, maybe showing them compassion. So I thought actually it would be good to try and, um, yeah, get to know myself a bit better and to try and see that I can get a bit more balance. Yeah. And just make things be better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I love it. And I just wanna reflect that, I want you to recognize that you did take a big compassionate step in joining the membership because accepting that some support would help and accepting that you are worth putting some time into and that you are worth putting a bit of money into. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, I try and keep it affordable, but it's obviously, it is a financial investment for people. You took that first step of putting yourself back in this picture by taking that step of joining as well, which I think is important to recognize. Often people are like, oh, and now I need to learn how to, you know, put myself forward, look after myself. But you are already doing those things by putting yourself in that sort of a situation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but yeah. Right. That it's, um, and it's lovely being part of that community as well. I think I was saying, I think I said yesterday to you, in an online thing, I said, I've found my smile again. I didn't realize how much of a rut I'd gotten. And even by being, you know, so by being able to come along to things of the membership, to be part of that community, is massive. Um, all of us trying to kind of make things better and help each other, which is great.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's always lovely, lovely to hear. And I think you're really, really also insightful to recognize that procrastination and learning to manage that procrastination as you have been this quarter will help with this separation of work and non-work time. I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit more about your thoughts about why managing your procrastination will help with that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think because for me, a lot of the tasks that I was procrastinating on were, partially because of not breaking them down. And partially that was as a result of self doubt of wondering whether I was really good enough and, there's always been that thing of, am I, do I deserve to be here? It's not coming from anybody else. There's not anything negative , everything my supervisors have said and others, it's all been positive. So it is just my own self-doubt. However, that would mean if, for example, I had a paper that I needed to finish recently, I delayed starting it because I felt I wasn't good enough to write the paper and why would they want to listen? And it was, through being part of the membership and then looking at procrastination techniques that I actually was able to get started. Once I could get started, then I was able to get it done. Otherwise, before joining the membership, that paper would've been something where I would've still been struggling with it over the weekend when my son would like, you know, isn't at school and that's when it's valuable time to spend together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: But actually within the last week I actually did the not worrying about doing your very best in everything because you can't possibly do that and always say setting time limits. And I had a second paper to do it and I thought, I'm not putting it off. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And I broke it down and I said to myself, right, I'm gonna spend no longer than six hours working on it. And I actually managed to do it, and get the draft sent to the right people as well ahead of time. And when we talk those intrinsic wins, it felt like an intrinsic win because I hadn't procrastinated, I'd trusted myself and, me prior to joining, that paper wouldn't have been planned. It would've been something just left hanging over me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And I think that is one massive way that learning how to manage the procrastination is gonna help with this work life thing. Because if you can be more intentional about when you are working and know exactly what you are doing in that slot and know that you've got tools, and now we we're always gonna procrastinate you, you and I know I still procrastinate. Other members still procrastinate. It happens. But if we know we've got tools there that when we notice we're procrastinating, we have ways of addressing it and minimizing the impact. Like we talked at the webinar yesterday about then suddenly we can get work done in the slots we allocate to it. Which as you say, then it makes it much easier to have freer weekends 'cause it hasn't just sort of drift. We haven't put it off and put it off and put it off and drifted it into the weekend. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I do think there's another way though. So one of the things that we have talked about before in the membership is how procrastination is often about emotion avoidance. And I want you to tell me a little bit more about what emotions you experience when you are doing your PhD, but feel like you should be with your family or when you are with your family, but feel like you should be doing your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: For me, it's normally a sense of guilt, so if I'm working on something for the PhD and I know it's past six o'clock or something, I feel that I'm not spending time. With my family and, and being with them. And then if I'm with my family doing something, maybe we're watching a film, there's a sense of guilt creeps in just going, wow, there's still work that could be done. And then maybe depending and possibly slightly dread, as well. Not so much with the family, but with the PhD side of thing of just, there's still so much to do that of which I think is a very common thing for many people to feel at all sorts of stage. But that sense of, um, am I gonna get through this? What if I don't get it done in time? So, um, yeah. So those two kind of come together.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, because when we are feeling emotions that we don't like, so in this case, guilt and dread and things like that. There's a bunch of things we sort of almost automatically do. One of them is spiral, like you mentioned, that suddenly the guilt becomes, oh my, I'm a terrible mother. They're gonna hate me. Or, or, oh my goodness, I'm never gonna finish my PhD or whatever. It might, we know whichever direction it is. We tend to spiral, but we also tend to then avoid the tasks. Right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Anything that we are having thoughts about that make us feel guilty, we then tend to avoid it. So tell me a bit more about how feeling that guilt or that dread affects your ability to either get on with the work or to enjoy the time with your family.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think, when it's with the work, I think the dread actually, because it, it's there, it's a distraction, that then slows you down. Um, so whether I'm trying to, um. Do close analysis or whether I'm trying to read secondary things. If you've got a voice in the back of your head going, oh, and if you're trying to look at one text and you think there's another 20 I really should have already looked at, it's actually your own mind is sending you off in directions that you don't need to be in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And then I think when I'm spending time with a family as well, that part of the distraction the other way is that without meaning to sometimes there are con the amount, I've lost count of the amount of times I've been asked. So, you know, what are you gonna do when you finish PhD? Have you not finished yet? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: When are you gonna get a job, a real job? Those sorts of things. So you've got that with members of family where there's that pressure as well. So you're thinking, well, actually I'm sat here watching a film, but with what you're saying, I, I ought to be going off back to the office and doing some more work because if you are not viewing this as a real job, I need to get a real job and I need to get this done to get a real job. And so it sort of devalues, um, you both need to complete the PhD so there is value in it, but it sort of devalues the process. Yeah. Without meaning to  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And ruins the time with your family, right? Because suddenly it becomes you're thinking, I shouldn't be doing this, I should be doing something else. And that makes it hard to relax and enjoy the time with them too, I assume.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. I guess it's just, there's always these constant things just playing on your mind. I suppose, it's like with anything, isn't it? If you go and visit somewhere, but you are aware that you've only got an hour to be there and then you've gotta dash off and you've gotta make a train in time, it just plays on your mind. And it's the same thing of if you are watching a film, and there's also that guilt of, have I done enough? Because if this, if my PhD doesn't count as real work, then do I deserve to watch a film because this, you know, my work isn't worthy. And, you know, films and things and family time. I mean, they're for people who've put in effort. So there's all these sort of, all the bad thoughts going around in circles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, let's grab that one. Films are for people who have done enough work. How, how do you feel about that thought? How true does that thought feel to you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Well see, I, I associate that I have a real difficulty with yeah, feeling that I actually deserve to have free time or spare time, sort of, of, because I see those things as, almost rewards for having, you know, worked hard. Even though being able to spend time with family is, you know, that that should just be part of being healthy, really mentally healthy, having time, whether that's going out walking or playing games or watching tv. I mean, time together is important. You can't just shut yourself off. But sometimes it would be easier, , you know, with guilt that you can make yourself cut off from other people. You realize that you haven't got those connections , because you're pushing people away. So, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and these, these deep seated thoughts that you need to have earned rest and earned time with other people and earned fun stuff on your own as well. Right? Because we are gonna talk about that. This is not gonna just be about finding a balance between time with your family and time with your PhD because one of the things you mentioned in your initial email was that actually there's this whole chunk of time, for just you, Gillian, as a person, that isn't happening at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: These deep-seated beliefs about when people deserve those things can be really, really hard to shift. Right? That starts getting into kind of therapy territory of where does that come from and how can we unpick it and those things. But what is really useful from a coaching standpoint is to be able to go, I recognize I have these beliefs. They come from somewhere. They're longstanding beliefs. However, I don't have to live my life by them. I can believe in a deep down right in my chest way that I don't deserve rest or that unless I finished what I was gonna do, I don't deserve family time, but cognitively I choose not to reinforce that. Cognitively I choose to follow my plan, which involves rest and family time, regardless of what I've got done. How would that feel? Does that feel possible to separate out for you or does that feel like something that's just way too difficult?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: No, I think it does feel possible. I think it wouldn't have been something possible, before I started coming to different coaching things with the membership, to be honest, that I needed, I needed to make those first steps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: But, actually I've made the first step of acknowledging it is something that I need to work on, which is a positive thing. Because before joining the membership, I hadn't even thought about the fact that I don't make time for me and I don't make enough time. So it is, you are right Vikki, it is a mixture of both. I don't make clear out time for my son and I don't make any time really for, so if I do make any time, it's not, I don't ever think about just myself, that it's always me doing either the PhD. I see the PhD as time for myself. Except for realistically, I mean, I'm doing it full time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: It is the equivalent of a job. And you wouldn't say to somebody else? I wouldn't say to myself if I was back, in my previous profession, I wouldn't have gone, well, I mean even enjoyed teaching all week, but that, that was you time that teaching in the classroom. Hope you really enjoyed that you time, I'm sure it was relaxing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: You wouldn't say it. And yet with a PhD, because you get that, well, it's something you're passionate about, it's something you love, which of course we are. It, it's, um, separating that and realizing that actually I need to allow time for me. Because I will be a better researcher, like, because I'll have some balance and actually some space away from things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So i'm gonna pause you on that one just because I don't even want you to reinforce that thought. I don't even want you to reinforce, I deserve time to myself because it will make me a better researcher. I believe, and I would really encourage you to kind of reflect on this. I believe you deserve time to yourself. Full stop. Even if it had no benefits for your research whatsoever. You are a human being and so you deserve time to yourself. Yeah. Because there's something about this weird productivity world that we live in that starts, but you know, you see it with like people who talk about sleep and sleep research and things. You know, Ooh, get good sleep because it'll help you be more, you know, get enough sleep, it'll help you be more productive tomorrow. It's like, no, just, just get enough sleep. 'cause enough sleep's awesome enough. Sleep feels great. Let's do that. Even if I do no more tomorrow than I'm doing today, let's just do it feeling better 'cause I had a good rest. I. And this is why you will know from the membership. But for the listeners, this is why I </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: really discourage you all from setting external rewards and self-care things for after you've done work. So for having a, if I can get this piece of writing done, then I can go for a walk, or if I get this piece of writing done, then I can go for dinner with my friends. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, I really discourage those sorts of motivators because they firstly make the task itself feel intrinsically like something you've got to bribe yourself to do as though it's got no worth or enjoyment of its own. And it makes those things contingent on having been productive enough. I think you should go for dinner with your friends regardless, I think you should sleep enough regardless. I think you should hang out with your son enough regardless of how much work you've done. And the irony is you probably will end up working more effectively. But that's not the kind of ultimate end goal. The ultimate end goal is to have in your life the things you need in your life to thrive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. But actually it's about coming out from behind the shadow, you're, more than what you're creating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hundred percent. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. Because I'll still be me, whether I, you know, whether I had a PhD or not. It's still me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So let's get a little bit pragmatic about it now as well. I think we've done some sort of mindset chat, which is always, you know, that I always like to try and bring together both the mindset sety stuff and the kind of pragmatic steps. So. I think this is a little bit of an example. There was an episode that I suspect you will have listened to 'cause you have always listened to the podcast about making half-ass decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That often what goes wrong is where we sort of decide something. And it sounds to me, tell me if this feels true for you. It sounds to me like you've only made sort of decisions about when you are working, when you are with your son, when is it okay to drop work for your son? When is it okay to leave son with his grandparents or whatever to so that you can work. So tell me a bit more about how you make those decisions and what kind of boundaries are in place?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: See, I think, um, for me that is another challenge. So we, my son and myself, we both live in the same house as my parents. So in terms of. We don't have the separation that some people would have and also my parents both work from home as well. So we've got three adults working different jobs from home in one. So the space is quite a mixed use space. It's more of a workspace than a home space a lot of the time. So there is that difficulty of, um, boundaries. Um, but in terms of, I realized that in terms of practical, I have realized that I didn't have an end of week shutdown process at all. Um, so therefore things were just rolling from one week to the next. So I'd be aware that obviously the week would end and that there'd be the weekend and those sort of typical things that a lot of parents would've to do. So, you know, taking to sporting activities or whatever, way off doing stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: But there wasn't actually a sense of closure or a sense of recapping of the week. And therefore, if I'm not setting boundaries for myself, then it's not any surprise that, there's not that clarity for my son either and that he's not aware or, or is trying to work out, you know, is mommy available now or am I disturbing, or, you know, so, I'm aware that I need to be working on those sort of boundaries. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, absolutely. And we can think, we'll have a think in a second about what sorts of things that might be, and it doesn't have to be absolutely hard and fast rules. You could decide I never work after six, I never work on weekends. I always go to every sporting event my son ever has or whatever. You can decide those sorts of concrete rules if you want to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But there is also a version where they're kind of rules of thumb. In a normal week, this is what it looks like. However, in these sorts of occasions, there might be a bit more PhD time. In those sorts of occasions, there might be a bit more son time, these sorts of occasions there might be a bit more me time, whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we don't have to have hard and fast rules, but when we are not intentional about it, it sort of ends up being a bit of a mush and you end up being disturbable when you thought you were gonna work, but your son comes in and asks for something and you haven't got a good enough reason to say no. So you go with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then other times you do just a bit of work in front of the telly or whatever it is, and we end up in this slightly grey mush where nothing feels very sort of intentional or separate from each other. What would make it hard, before we start thinking about the kind of exactly what things you might put in place, what would make it hard or what does make it hard for you to enforce any boundaries? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think in terms of being disturbed, I think I need to have, um, more, uh, sort of a bit more self-compassion and actually be aware that my work does have value. So therefore, if I have blocked out time saying, I am working on this and I need you to be with granny and granddad who are perfectly capable of looking after you, that you need to respect that this is my job and that I'm telling you I need to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: So I need to have that self value of what I'm doing on one sense , which I know sounds strange when I'm saying I'm working too much, but it is that, that sort of side of things of actually value in what I do. Um, but on the other side , so it is quite tricky because our lounge is also where my parents do their work from as well. So there's not a very, uh, I quite like, like to divide space and it would be quite nice to, to feel that I was finished on the night. But it's quite, can be quite difficult because I'll be going quite often down into a space where somebody else is doing their work as well. So, so boundaries, setting boundaries is quite hard when we all work here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Your son's at school?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you have time, is it PhD time while he's at school? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yes. Yeah. I think as a lot of parents, I think summer holidays are probably the hard, they're both joyous aren't they, but it is six weeks that is, harder when your children are there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm gonna suggest we focus in on term times for now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We can talk in future coaching sessions in the membership and stuff when it comes but I think it's useful. 'Cause sometimes these are the stories I want you to notice. These are the stories where we complicate ourselves. And I do this with exercise. Other people do this with exercise too. It's like, oh, but I couldn't do that in the winter because it will be rainy and it'll be too cold. So to do it, it's like, yeah, but you could do it now through till September. How about that? And then we'll worry about and then do later. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes these kind of, I need a solution that's gonna work for all eventualities prevent us from finding solutions that work some of the time. So I would think, right, let's not even worry about holidays right now. Holidays are gonna be a mishmash until we come up with a different strategy to think about those. They're gonna be a bit of a mishmash, all working parents experience it. I'm just gonna be super kind to myself, but let's think about term times. So is he at school full-time?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, so you've got the kind of full-time days. Do you find you're able to get on during that time or do you find you're called out for parental duties and stuff with your parents? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah so I find that I've managed to get a reasonable pattern 'cause I'm quite an early riser anyways, so I find that I can be up and happily working at quarter past six in the morning because it's quiet and there's no disturbing until about nine o'clock when other people then start to wake up. And I think then I can get disturbed because both of my parents are at home and they can't go to the shops on their own or whatever. So if they need something, there'll be a knock on my office door and then I will go and do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: But generally, yeah, I do manage to get, things done. And I have tried to work on, saying when I'm in meetings or things to, to block out space to not get disturbed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: See, this is a fascinating one. I think this is gonna be relevant for people, even if they don't have kids or if they're not living with parents or any of these things is what is different to you? So you told me before we started recording here that you'd got your do not disturb sign. Everyone knew they couldn't come in 'cause you were recording, you were doing this thing. And you've just said also that you tell them when there's meetings and things like that. What to you is different that you are willing to enforce boundaries around i'm on a podcast. I am, you know, getting coached. I am in a meeting. You must not disturb me versus I'm doing an hour's close analysis. You must not disturb me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think it's, I'm honestly better at saying it if somebody else is involved. I've noticed that. So it would be me saying, don't disturb. I don't disturb because Vikki's kindly giving her time to coach me. There's somebody else. So, it's important that you leave me alone. It's always when this, if it's a group thing, you know, somebody else is giving up their time. Say, let's respect that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So why should your parents, your parents, respect my time who they've never met more than they respect your time. Now, I'm not saying your parents don't respect your time. Let me rephrase that. But why are you willing to put a boundary in place outta respect for my time, rather than putting a boundary in place out of respect for your time? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah, I think it is, honestly, it probably just comes down to just lack of trust in what I'm doing. So just thinking, well, I'm, you know, my stuff isn't good enough, as if it doesn't matter as much, and then so I can see when other people are doing things and I think, wow, that, that PhD sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. But I don't see it in my own. I think, oh, that sounds amazing, but mine's just okay. I'm not putting in the boundaries because I'm not respecting what I'm doing enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And do you want to respect it enough that you can put some boundaries in place?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah, I do. And I actually think that I've started to appreciate what I've been doing more since I've joined the membership. And as you rightly said, I haven't been there that long. So I think it will, it, this is not, it's bit like procrastination will never be fully fixed, but at least this is gonna be a process and starting to build up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I'm not gonna just wave a magic wand and suddenly change my behavior just overnight and go, well, that was perfect but when I can start spotting what I'm doing and then thinking, right, I actually need to set boundaries, then it's a step on the way to actually caring more for myself, which would be a good thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So definitely, and I think it's another one of those examples where you might not at the moment have the deep seated belief that what you are doing is super valuable and important. I think you do have that belief to some extent, but it may not be a completely like I'm therefore willing to do this, but you can still choose to act as though you did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can still choose to say, you know what? I have moments where I'm not convinced that what I'm doing is as important as what other people are doing, but it's what I'm doing, so I'm gonna act as though it's as important as anybody else's job. And I think sometimes when we act like that, the belief comes afterwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, usually you'll know we talk about the self-coaching model in the membership. Usually we think about our actions being driven by our thoughts and feelings. So it sort of goes thoughts, feelings, actions. Sometimes if we've got really deep seated beliefs, sometimes we start from the actions. We start from thinking, I want to behave as though my PhD has real value to the world and feel determined. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so your action is that you block in some time where you are not disturbable. Well, my old coach always used to say she had three young children when she was running a business. And she always used to say that if no one's bleeding, you cannot disturb me. So it was like, if anyone's bleeding, it's fine. Come in, come get me, whatever. No one bleeding. It's all good. You can, you can wait till later. Go and ask your father. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But sometimes it can be useful to act in line with how we want to believe things are and how we hope our future selves will believe. And we start to act in that line already, even when we're a bit wobbly in here at the moment, about whether it has true, true value that makes it enough to put these boundaries in place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And I could actually see potentially, what was that you were saying about them not wanting to be disturb, but probably with me, it's actually a case of my son's quite self-aware. So actually, probably being able to say if you catch mommy's sneaking, you know, sneak in the old book notebook out and stuff, um, when, when we're supposed to be, when I've said we're gonna play a board game or whatever, well yeah, you have the right to call me out on that because you matter too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's where I think being really intentional could be really useful here. But before we talk about, I want, I'm aware we've thrown around the world boundaries quite a bit and people have different definitions of boundaries, and I wanna make sure that you and I are both on the same page with that, but also that anyone listening is, so for you, what do you mean when you talk about a boundary? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think for me, if I talk about in terms of that, it needs to be something where there's a clear understanding of what you are crossing. So if I'm setting a boundary saying I'm working, that there's a clear understanding that if you're gonna disturb me when I'm working, that there's got to be a reasonable reason for you to be doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Not just talking about a game of football or something random. So, yeah, it's about something where both sides, well, I, that, you know, both sides of something, but yeah, boundary is a really tricky word, doesn't it? Because it can mean a lot things,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I'm really glad we had that conversation because I wanna tweak a bit of your definition, if that's okay. Which is, for me, a boundary is something you put in place about what you will do. 'cause even your child you don't have control over what he does. As much as parents would love to have full control over what their kids do, you don't, you don't have control over what your parents do. You don't have control over what anybody does. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You have control over what you do. So in this case, a boundary would be something like, if you disturb me when the sign on my door says don't, for example, if you're gonna go with signs or whatever, I will just ask you to leave and carry on with my work. I'll give you a kiss on the head and you can go and carry on with what you were doing. Because this is mommy's work time, I won't have a conversation with you unless you're bleeding. I will dismiss you and get back to my work immediately. So it is not, you can make requests to the people around you. So you can say to your son, to your family to say, you know, when it says this on my door, please, it would really help me if you don't test my willpower with all of this. It would really help if you didn't. But the boundary is you saying if you come in, I'm not engaging, I'm not going to the shop while I'm on one of those sessions. Shop's for later. I'll do it one later, but in these blocks of time, I won't engage with what you're asking me to do. And you can do that in a super loving way. It's not like not talking to you, please leave. But it's saying I'm in a session right now. I can't. Same as you would if somebody came in now. I mean, I would be understanding, but I'm gonna assume if somebody came in now, you'd be like, shut out. I'll talk to you later. You can do the same thing when it's your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. So yeah, it's about deciding and setting those boundaries for, for me. Yeah, that makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that can be in both directions, right? It can also be, if I'm in time I've set aside to be with my family, I'm not going to pick up my PhD. I'm not going to also just have a quick scroll to look up something that I've just thought of or whatever. But it's always about your behavior. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah, that makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So how could you be more intentional? So this kind of fits also with the role-based time blocking stuff that we've talked about. There's an episode about it, if people wanna check that out. How do you want to be more intentional? How could you be more intentional about when you are in phD role when you are in mom role, when you're in daughter role, and when you are in human being, individual person role?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think that you're quite right. Time blocking is something that I've started looking at, but it's not something that I've had too much chance to work with. But I have found that when I've done the time blocking that it is easier for me to make boundaries, with the procrastination, working on procrastination because, even the sense of a boundary of, no, no, you cannot wander off and go and Hoover because that would be easier. You've gotta just stay put, you know, um, and get going. It's gotta be the same sort of thing that if I'm in boss mode when I'm working out my week, that I actually block out family time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And I think that's what I haven't done is blocked out the time that you actually need to just have that self-care, it needs to be a mixture, mixture of self-care and family time, because I think I'm not alone in that. Um, I've only since joining the membership started thinking about putting in proper breaks in the day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And I think I'm not alone in that. I haven't sort of thought to myself, right, well let's set aside this chunk of the evening. This is the equivalent of it being blocked out rather than for meetings, but this is blocked out for me to just step away and do family time or at some point hopefully, I dunno, okay, maybe I'd like to go and, you know, go see friends or something, but that I can make the choice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I don't want it be, we're gonna talk about this. I don't even want it to be go see friends. Go see friends will be lovely. We're gonna talk about, what would it be if it was literally just you, something that is just you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I dunno what I'd do if it was, I'm not sure I can get there yet.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What did you used to enjoy doing? Pred kids, maybe even as a kid yourself. What hobbies and things did you love doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I like gonna the theater and I like gonna museums and art galleries and things like that, so.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. How far away is your nearest museum or gallery? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Oh, about, well there are local ones to do with planes and things, but more traditional ones about 45 minutes, I think, to the nearest one from here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Cool. And when did you last do something like that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I, no, um, since, well, my son's 10, so since before he was born, so.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how about things at home? Are there any sort of do at home hobbies? You like or used to like or would love to get into but haven't done? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Um, because really for me, I, I really obviously enjoy reading because of the, the nature of, I do a literature degree, but honestly, by the time I finished reading for the day , it's not something that I have the energy for. I cook sometimes yeah, that's one of the things I like to do if I'm avoiding doing stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So, and is that for you or is that for other people? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Um, if I cook it, so I cook for family. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So even if you enjoy it, that still doesn't count. This is gonna be one of your bits of homework and because you're a member, I'm gonna follow up, is to think about, you know, what do you, are you on social media or anything? One of the things I often ask myself is, what do I look at on social media?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: No. See, I, I'm actually one of the lucky ones where I don't really scroll. I'm not, I'm perfect.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Don't, don't start right. Not gonna use that for inspo. I want you to think, and I want everyone listening to think of this, I want you to have one thing that you like doing if you go off somewhere on your own, like if you are looking for sort of day trip or morning trip type thing, and one thing you like doing, if you're just at home on your own in the house, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And if there aren't answers to things, that is partly why you are not making time for this. It's partly some of these beliefs about not deserving it, but it is partly that it's really hard to make time for yourself if you don't actually know what you're gonna use that time for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And so the, one of the first steps is thinking even if there haven't been things in the past, thinking what would be fun. I might learn to juggle, I might learn to do Rubik's cube, I might learn to paint, I might, whatever it might be. Okay. I might go for walks. I might look at birds, see how many birds I can find in my garden or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Right? Coming up with an idea as to what it might be and doesn't have, you haven't gotta pick a hobby forever. That's not what I'm saying,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: but like picking some, if I was gonna take some time for myself over the next couple of weeks, it'd be fun. What? What? Might it be fun to have a go at trying? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I might try looking at some videos to do with sign language. Because it's something that I could reasonably because we're not fully out in the sticks here, but it's not the, whilst I enjoy going to museums and things, it's not the easiest to get to stuff. Yeah. But, videos, there are videos to do with sign language and it's something that I've always been interested in. So it's something that I can have a look and try. So,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: perfect. I went to this, it's called Camp Wildfire. Recommend. It's basically Adventure Camp for adults. And I did sign language choir. It was so cool. We learned the signs to sing, um, stronger by Christina Aguilera and it was amazing. It was so cool. It becomes so much easier. It's all the part of this intentional thing. And people often think that being intentional is about always being productive and being efficient. And it's not. You can be intentional about your hobbies. It's so much easier, like you said about seeing your friends. I want you also after we finish recording, to think of one friend that you want to catch up with, one specific one because it's one thing to say, oh, I should see my friends more, or to say, I want to go for coffee with her. Yeah. The more specific you can get about what making time for yourself would look like, the easier it is to then schedule it and then to say, look, son's at football or whatever. I'm gonna have coffee with that one friend. Well, I'm not gonna stay and watch this time, love staying to watch, but I'm gonna take 45 minutes to go do that. Now I know the logistics of that might not work out, but. take the principle of it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: If you've got something concrete that you're planning to do, then you can put it in rather than just so vague that you can put off. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, exactly. Exactly. How could you then share some of this intentionality with the people around you? Because this is gonna be a bit of a change for them, right? If they're used to being able to come and go, mom always being available, daughter always being available, whatever is gonna be a little bit of a change and people react to that. Right. And one of the things we can do is to try and be as transparent as we can or as we're willing to about why you are doing it and what it actually means. And I'm just wondering whether you got any ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: I think in terms of not working as much on the weekends, I think because it's been impacting on my son, but also means for the sake of whatever has or hasn't been done, I still deserve a break. Everyone needs a break. That probably just an open conversation saying I'm actually going to be working hard on taking a break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: So if you see me, you know, sneaking, going and grabbing my laptop and scrolling, clearly looking at work stuff. You know it because I only, if I have my laptop, I'm doing university stuff, so if you see me sneaking for that then you are allowed to, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: don't put too much responsibility on them. This is still your behaviour mission ok? You can ask for support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah. Probably stuff outta the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Explaining to them why you're doing what you're doing. . I was wondering about whether, whether you could almost have a clear timetable, and I don't mean, when people talk about time blocking, they think they then have to time block all the hours and I, I think that's a really dangerous place to start. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think starting with some time blocks is really useful and being able to say, right in these two hours a day or these three hours a day, please just don't bother me. In the afternoon. I'm more flexible. I'll be doing stuff, but I'm more interruptible. If you need me to go to the shop, that's when I'll go to the shop and stuff. But between eight and 11, please, just unless there's an emergency, let me crack on or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And saying to your son, then, you know, but look at this. This five till seven slot. Five till seven is all you. All you. Mommy will have finished work by five and it's whatever we want to do together. That's our time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So that you're not saying to him, leave me alone. I'm working. Leave me alone. I'm working. You are saying, no, no. Remember, this is mommy's work slot because five till seven's you. Five till seven is all about you and we, yeah. So whatever you wanna tell me, I'm gonna hear all about it. Tell me everything. Everything you've got between five and seven. So that they can kind of see these are the times when I'm interruptable to go and do jobs for the parents. These are the times that I'm proper set aside for fun, social wonderfulness. Here's some grey time that I'll work, but I don't care if you come in and these are my deep focus hours that please just let me have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because I completely agree with you, with blocking that I could end up wasting a lot of my weekend trying to micromanage myself, but actually saying generally, you know, leave between six and nine and then between sort of two and four and unless there's an actually actual emergency, then yeah, please treat me as if I'm not here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And, weekends. Remember, you don't have to be black and white, all or nothing about weekends either. So I always recommend that people are intending to get to a place where they only work on weekends in proper push to deadlines and stuff. I know that's not always possible if people are part-time and things, but if you are used to your weekends being a kind of extension of your week, it might be a lot to go from that to, I do not work between Friday and Monday, but you can choose intentionally about each weekend as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So one of the things that I've really developed in myself and has helped me a lot is that now if I need to work on the weekend, I will say to my husband, I'm gonna work this weekend. Saturday morning, I'm in the study that I'm doing my thing. And then we'll have the rest of the weekend to not do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I used to sort of be like, oh, I need to do some work this weekend, but not now. I'll do it later, I'll do it later, I'll do it later. I should really be working, but I'm not. And then it's sort of the weekend becomes this kind of half-assed thing where you are neither working nor doing fun things. Whereas if you can say in advance, okay, it's not ideal, but I do want to do some work this weekend. I need to do two hours or I need to do four hours or whatever. I'm gonna try and do it in that block, which means the rest of the weekend is free for all the other fun stuff. So even in that, you can be super intentional about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And I think the things have been working on, you've been coaching on the procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: That those then dovetail in because if there is something that genuinely needs to be done or maybe meetings from across the globe that happen to be on a week of, but they usually only one to two hours. So that doesn't give me the excuse of going, well, I mean that's, that's one hour, but I mean, I could just go and do an extra hour. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's basically a work day now, sorry. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Um, and I need to not allow myself to, to opt out quite so easily, so I need to be better with the boundaries and actually write that is, I have, that is blocked into there. That will be how long I'm allowing for it. And then the other time is weekend and step away. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So the last thing I wanna ask you is what thoughts could you kind of cultivate, choose, and remind yourself of for those moments where your brain is going, "oh, I probably should go and spend some time with my son", or, "oh, but I probably should go and do my PhD." What thought? 'cause we can kind of preload those, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because we know these moments are gonna happen. You are gonna go away from this hopefully feeling like, yeah, I've got a plan. This is great, but we all know that a week down the line, or even sooner, at some point you're gonna be like, "oh, I know, but he, you know, he's, he didn't have a good day at school. He just needs some mummy time." </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Whatever. Right. What thoughts can we preload in your head that you are going to use in the moments that kind of make you go, oh, maybe I not gonna stick to my boundary.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Yeah, I think if it's, maybe if it's a case of about not being disturbed that maybe I need to, say to myself, it doesn't matter what other people are doing for their PhDs or not doing, you are here, you are doing it. Enjoy it. Yeah, remember that you're here, here, that you are here, enjoy it. Make the most of it. So you know, it does have value.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm doing this for a reason. My PhD has value. Yeah, yeah, definitely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: And so, and then when it's the other way around, you know, when it's family time, if it's creeping in, just tell myself, I'm more than a PhD and that. I'll still be there whether it does or doesn't get done. Yeah. And that family matters as well and I matter. So, you know, doesn't matter whether I've got that chapter finished or not got that chapter finished, but we all deserve that time. We deserve that time to be happy and to be doing what we want to do regardless of whether you've had a great PhD day or not, it's life is still there. So.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. I love that and I look forward to continuing to support you through it in the rest of the coaching sessions in the membership. So thank you so much for coming on, Gillian. I hope that was useful and what you wanted it to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gilian: Oh, it was brilliant. Thank you so much Vikki. It's given me a lot to think about and, um, yeah, really excited to try some different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely, and I'm sure it will have inspired lots of people who are in similar situations themselves. So thank you everyone for listening . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 04 Aug 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-48-what-to-do-when-you-dont-make-time-for-yourself-special-coaching-episode-with-gillian thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-47-what-to-do-if-youre-lonely-in-academia <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Loneliness in academia is so common yet so rarely talked about. In this episode I’m going to get honest about some of my experiences of loneliness, share why I think academia can be a particularly lonely place, and give some tangible tips that you can use to make it all feel a bit better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you enjoyed this episode, you might like this episode on the <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16494933-3-21-six-types-of-social-support-you-need-as-a-phd-student-and-how-to-get-it" target="_blank"> six types of social support you need </a> and this one on <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/11760313-8-how-to-build-your-own-academic-community" target="_blank"> how to build your academic community </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. Now, I think this episode could end up being a little bit more personal than some of the episodes that I record. We are gonna be thinking about loneliness, loneliness in academia, and life in general, and what we can do about it. But I'm not gonna be presenting it from a, and I've got this all sorted kind of perspective. I'm actually gonna be sharing with you sometimes in my academic career that I was quite lonely, and I'm gonna be sharing with you some of the challenges that I'm having at the moment as somebody who moved away from a place that she'd been for a really, really, really long time, and how that's still not quite where I want it to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's dive into this slightly more vulnerable one together. But I wanna start by thinking about why loneliness is so endemic in academia. You know, people talk about it being a kind of global issue in all walks of life at the moment for a whole bunch of different reasons. But I think academia is particularly prone to loneliness and particularly prone to not talking about feeling lonely. And I think that's for a bunch of reasons. It's a career where you often have to move a lot, right? If you, you know, a lot of people will move at the end of their undergraduate, their end of their PhD, and then at various stages through their academic careers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's not always easy to just up sticks, essentially move away from family or establish networks and reestablish them, especially if you're doing it for a short period at a time. Right. I have clients who, you know, they're PhD students, but then they go and do a postdoc here and a postdoc there, and they're only ever in a place for a year, and that's really, really tough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of you though might be thinking, well, hang on, I've stayed in the same place, but I still feel lonely. And that's because it's not just about moving. So many of you will know that I stayed in the same place through my whole academic career. So I left home to go to university like two hours away from where I grew up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, so not super far from Americans, but you know, that's beyond the commute from British people. But then I stayed there. I was an undergrad, PhD student, postdoc. Lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor. And so I stayed there my whole career and people often think, oh, well you must have had a network the whole time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I didn't because the thing was everybody else left. So at the end of my undergrad, most of my friends went off to do other things, and I had to make new friends as a PhD student. And then at the end of PhD, most of my friends left and I then had to make new friends as a member of staff. And then there's always a sort of cycling of academic stuff in the department. And so whilst I had friends sort of in other bits of my life, that kind of real network that I had at work, we were a very social department. It really did change every three to five years and I really had to reestablish things over and over again. And that was often not that easy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'll, I'll talk later about reasons that was complicated. So whether you move or not, academia has this kind of transient feel to it, which can make it really hard to build lasting relationships. It's also kind of weirdly hierarchical, right? Where we're sort of collegiate and all work together, but sort of also hyper aware of the fact that they're a final year PhD student. I'm a first year PhD student, or they're a professor and I'm only an assistant professor or whatever. And often, especially as the junior partner in that, you are hyper aware of the differences in seniority. Often when you are older, you are less, not necessarily older, but more senior, you are less aware of those hierarchies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you are aware that the other, the, the junior person sees those hierarchies, so that can make friendships difficult. People are also often at very, very different life stages, even if at the, the same career stage. So I, because I did my PhD quite quickly, which if you wanna hear that complicated story, I have a whole podcast episode about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I did my PhD quickly, and then my postdoc was a permanent position that turned into lectureship. So I was in a permanent job by the time I was 24, whereas most of the other people who were starting their permanent jobs were, with the exception of my gorgeous Jen Cumming, who I always mention, they were all five, 10 years older than me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Most of them were in relationships, many of them were having children. It was a really, really different life stage for me. And often we have that that complicates our friendships within the workplace. And then when you think, you know, I'm talking about all, many, many moons pre COVID. So I'm not talking about the modern times, but with modern times, with the increase in remote working and more and more use of Zoom and things like that, people not being on campus, far more distance learning students and things like that, we're often geographically remote from the people that we work with too and the places that we work, which can mean that a lot of that kind of incidental chat that happens around the building just doesn't happen in the ways that it used to. And I think some of that is by necessity, right, that actually we need to do this sort of remote working. Sometimes it's that we've kind of got in the habit of it. Since COVID, we found that it's quite comfortable to be able to work from home with your own fridge and your own dog and all of those things, right? And so sometimes the benefits of going in just feel a little bit oblique and so we don't do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times there'll be many of you that are still being COVID cautious in terms of avoiding getting infections through transport or through going to crowded places and all those sorts of things. So for whatever reasons, a lot of us have got more used to this kind of remote working. Now, I am not someone who doesn't think you can build relationships online, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of my favorite people in the world, I've barely met in real life that I keep in contact with by this sort of connection , but that does make it harder to make new friends and meet new people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are then in a world where we work really hard, right? There's loads to do. Often it's loads that we need to do on our own, other than meetings with people that are in a position of authority over us, like our supervisor advisors or whatever. So often it is lots of solitary working, lots of work so it's sort of bleeding into evenings, it bleeds into weekends if we allow it and then that can be tough. Many of you will also be supporting a family, which whilst gorgeous is not the same thing as necessarily having friends outside of the family and having that time just to be yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Performance is really drilled into us how important it is we do well. And to add on top of that, if your friends and family are not people who have PhDs or understand academia, it can be really hard to explain to people why your life is the way it is or why you are stressed about the things that you are stressed about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember one of my besties works for a really big corporation. Shall remain nameless, but like a proper businessy business and she's pretty high up in it. And I was moaning. I was in some leadership position at the university and there were some dudes not doing what I needed them to do. I can't remember what, it was some crappy form that I needed to make sure people had filled in properly and they were just being really difficult and they weren't doing their role and all that stuff, and my friend was like, I know it's okay. What you should do, you should talk to your boss, and they'll put them under performance review and then they'll get fired if they don't step up. I'm like, oh my dear soul, it doesn't necessarily work like that in academia. Now it might be, if they've been rubbish at their research and all that stuff, it might work like that, but if they're just being rubbish at their administrative roles, I don't think it works like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they were like, and she was like, but can't you just tell him he has to do it? I'm like, I'm not his line manager. She's like, how are you going to do anything? I'm like, exactly. So we have this kind, people don't get it. And that's one of my besties and she tries really, really hard to understand, but she doesn't get the unique pressures that there are within a university environment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. Those of you who are doing PhDs who may be a first generation in your family to do PhDs or where you don't have friends doing PhDs. They don't get it. It's like, oh, you can start work whenever you want and stop work whenever you want. That must be gorgeous. It's like gorgeous or infinitely pressure all the time. So people don't necessarily get it and that can be really difficult when you're trying to make friends receive social support and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's then also, academia, especially if you're not properly supported either through good supervision, advisors, mentors, all that stuff, it can be a bit crushing to your self-esteem, right? You can get yourself to a stage where, you just think you're not very good at anything and that you're just a bit of a boring person 'cause you haven't done anything except work on this thing for ages and you're not even any good at that. Okay. And that is not a great mindset to be trying to make friends from. Yeah. That doesn't make you go, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll go and shine at a party so everyone wants to be my friend. No, it makes you be like, oh, no one's gonna wanna be friends with this. It's really easy for that to translate across into your social life as well. I've been there. I'm a pretty extroverted person, but that can be really tough. And then for those of you who have moved and are like, yeah, I do have friends. I do. I just live a long way from them. I don't see them very much. That can be really hard too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's what I'm struggling with at the moment. To be completely open with you. So I lived in Birmingham, big city for 20 something years. And I moved back to, it's a big village, but it's a village. Um, and it's very families around here. And I'm a family now. You know, I'm married, I've got stepchildren, all that stuff, but I'm not bringing up little people or anything. And almost all my friends are other places, right? They're either back in Birmingham. The people that I spent the most time with, or like my old friends from university and stuff, are all over the country, all over the world. I have one bestie that is still here, who I went to school with and is still local but she has an uber stressful job, so she's very, very busy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the problem is I do have all these friends, but they're not friends that I can do things with tonight. Right. They're not people that I can just say, let's go for a walk on board. They're two hours away and we have to plan it. And they have children and their children have social lives and hobbies and things that fill up weekends and stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's hard. And then you're like, well, yeah, okay. But you could text them or whatever. You could speak to 'em on the phone, say, yeah, I can and I do, but there is a big difference. It's something that I saw on Instagram, you know, that font of all things, but it really resonated with me that there is a difference between catching up with friends and living your life with friends and those of you, this is an emotional one for me, and those of you who are far away from your old friends will probably feel this too is. You can catch up with those people. You can have a conversation with those people. You can arrange to see them for a weekend, but if that consists of getting up to speed on each other's lives, well, how's this? How's that going? How's your job? How's your kids? How's your partner? How's your this da da da? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If it consists of doing that, it's not the same thing as just going to the park together 'cause you see each other all the time. Or like my, one of my besties from Birmingham, we used to just do jobs together. We'd go to like the, you know, the DIY shop, the hardware store for my Americans and get the stuff we needed for our house jobs and we'd help each other with our house jobs and things. Especially 'cause we were both single at that stage. It's not the same thing. If all your friends are far away, even if they're gorgeous and wonderful, I have the most gorgeous and wonderful friends you can possibly imagine. But it's not easy when they're far away, and it's easy to still feel lonely in your day-to-day life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when everyone is so busy, it's hard to meet new people that become friends. We're gonna talk about strategies, some of which I'm trying and some of which I'm setting myself the goal to try over the summer. But that's what many, many reasons that I think that feeling lonely in academia is really, really, really common. So where do we start? We start where we always start, guys, we start with compassion. Because often one of the problems with loneliness is right, you haven't got people to talk to about it, okay? But often, you know, if you had people to talk to about it, you might not be feeling quite so lonely. And so it can become this slightly embarrassing thing, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It comes, becomes this thing where you're like, oh my God, people are gonna think that I'm not a nice person or that nobody likes me, or any of these sorts of things. People are gonna feel sorry for me or think there's something wrong with me and everybody else has got friends, and why don't I, and you know it, it can be really hard to not criticize yourself for this and that's where we always start with compassion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is completely understandable that you feel like this. Some of you might be thinking, I feel lonely, even though I'm surrounded by people all the time, and that is normal too. Loneliness is a completely separate construct from being alone, okay? You can be on your own and not feel lonely at all. You can be in the middle of a crowded place and feel immensely lonely. They're two completely separate things, so if you are like, I've got people around me and I still feel lonely, normal, okay, I'm here. I'm with you. All right? It's completely normal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reason that's so important is that if we are telling ourselves that the loneliness is either a personal failing in itself or the result of other personal failings, like being an annoying person or whatever, then it's really hard to snap out of it. It's really hard to take the steps I'm gonna talk about in a second, because you don't feel like you're somebody who people would want to be friends with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So compassion first, it is understandable that you feel lonely. It is kind of a part, not an inevitable part, but it is kind of a part of the industry that we are either studying in or working in, and more people feel lonely than you think. So what do we do about it? I have a few different tips for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first is about almost accepting where we're at and appreciating what we do have. That's not to say get over yourself. You're not as lonely as you think, but sometimes we don't recognize the bits we do have. So I have had the biggest flip in my circumstances, right? So when I was in Birmingham, I had, especially for the last like five, eight years I guess, where things got a lot more stable in terms of who I was friends with and all those sorts of things. There wasn't such a turnover. My friends were less based at work, there was less turnover, and so on for the last sort of seven or eight years. I had friends coming out of my ears. I had so many people that I could just live life with, have fun social things with , like my sort of bestie friends. And then I had my layer of kind of gorgeous acquaintances who I knew from my various different clubs and classes and things that I did. And so I had this huge swathe of social support, of friends. I did not feel lonely, but I did feel lonely 'cause I didn't have a partner and I wanted a partner. I wanted to be in a romantic relationship and I wasn't. So I'd still felt lonely even though I had all those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, fast forward however many years, I'm now living in a village where I don't have that sort of friend network around me. I have my gorgeous husband and I have, I'm now close to where my parents live, where my sisters live, and things like that. And I often feel lonely because of not having those friendship groups, those acquaintances, those communities around me at the moment. A really, really important thing to do in a really important thing that I do is recognizing the togetherness that you do have. It's not saying we're not gonna go look for the other bits. We are gonna go look for the other bits. Just like back then I was dating. Now I'm gonna be, I'm on a mission to find new friends, but we can appreciate the bits that we do have, so that we love on them. We recognize where we are getting support, offer support to them, and remind ourselves of the network that we do have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes that might be your remote network too. So, if any of my old friends listen to this, be warned. I'm on a mission to be in better touch with you all. So it's whether it's a close network geographically, a far away network geographically, appreciating what you do have is a huge first step. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other part of it is recognizing and appreciating the alone time that you have without it having to make you feel lonely. So having time, I now, my life is so much less chaotic than it was in Birmingham because of all these coaching things that I've learned but I have so much more time. I have more time to just not feel like a hot mess all the time. And part of that is not seeing as many people and not feeling as busy, not trying to cram everything in quite so much. And so remembering to appreciate that stuff really helps as well. Some of the things I'm experiencing, not all of them, but some of them are the result of positive changes. They're kind of that flip side of a positive change. Now when it comes to actually expanding our friendship networks, building these relationships, I have a couple of different tips. The first is to remind yourself what you either love doing or what you used to love doing often, especially those of you who have allowed hobbies to get away from you in your PhDs and, and academic careers often you'll say, you know, what's your hobby? I don't know. Sleeping, don't do anything else. Too much work to do. Once I've dealt with the kids, dealt with, they dealt with that to do nothing left. But there will have been times in your life where you had things that you love doing. This is one where I've always been all this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am like the serial hobby meister. I've always had a hundred thousand things that I enjoy doing and that I've tried to cram into my life. So remembering what those were, figuring out where you can find bite-sized bits of that. Now, remember, it's also worth thinking about the different levels of friends that you need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is really useful to have one or two local besties so that you have people who you can confide in, who you can spend time with, sort of on the regular without having to make big arrangements and things like that. That's really useful, and they're not easy to find. That's what I've not found yet here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're not easy to find, but there's also that level of just nice community. So when I was in Birmingham, I had my bestie besties, my people that came to my wedding and all that stuff. But I also had a whole layer of people who I adore who were colleagues that I knew less well from around campus, but who I bump into, have a chat with people that I paddle boarded with, people that I did circus with, people that I did CrossFit with for my shortlived, ruined by the pandemic CrossFit career. People that I did british military fitness with whatever it was, right? All my different hobbies, I had this like layer of people who I wouldn't arrange to spend the weekend with them. We weren't that level of friends, but I blooming adored them. They were great and they were people that I would see regularly that I would do fun things with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would turn up, I'd go to my adult gymnastics class and we'd mess around, fall in the pits. It was all good. I miss those people. So think about what things you used to enjoy doing or that you currently enjoy doing and think about how could you reintroduce one of those things into your life. Now you might be saying, I don't have time, Vikki. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm too busy. Everyone has time. Everyone has time. I know it can be complicated, especially if you've got children, especially if you don't have family close by. But even if it's one thing a month. Having something like that that you can do where you see people you like. Now we are not necessarily looking for besties here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are just looking for people who we enjoy spending time with, where we are someone other than our PhD self or our academic self. I, for what it's worth, have signed up for a life drawing class in Cambridge, so I'm going to go and learn how to draw rudey nudey people cos why not? I used to enjoy doing art classes, so there we are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And right now, 'cause of my stupid broken ankle, I'm not in a position to do a lot of the active things that I'd planned this summer. So I'm going to do that instead. Happy days. What more can you want? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing, and I stole this callousy from, again, somebody on Instagram who I'm afraid I can't remember her name. I feel bad about it. I feel like it's also quite generic advice, but I found it really, really useful, which is if you wanna make friends as an adult, you have to go to the same places regularly and be open to having conversations. She calls it putting in the reps. You have to put in the reps. So I want you to think, where could you put in the reps? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now this might be going to a coffee shop at the same time each week. So every Friday morning you work two hours in a coffee shop instead of at your own desk, for example. Or it might be at the pickup or the drop off of your kids at school if you have that. So I, I don't have children that I take to school, but I help run a local or guide unit girl scouts from my North Americans. And so I'm starting to get to know some of the parents there and some of the other leaders, for example, things like that. Where can you put in the reps where you keep turning up and you keep having the bits of inane conversation that especially you introverts out there probably go, oh God, don't make me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But how can you put in those reps so that there's an increased possibility that at some point you might find somebody that you're like, oh, they're nice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's where we then have to manage our minds because our minds are gonna tell us there's no point. They're gonna tell us we don't have time. They're gonna tell us other people don't want to that. How do you translate that into being friends anyway? What do you do next? Da, da, da. You have to be willing to put in the reps, willing to stick your neck out slightly. Because that's when you know you have little tiny conversations. If it's someone that you're a bit like, okay, they seem quite nice, quite like them, da, da, da. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You figure out what things you might have in common, you then suggest, you then tell people where you'll be. Now, this was a brilliant one. So instead of saying, do you want to go and do X with me? You tell people, I am going to X, come along if you're about. Completely different vibe. You are doing it anyway, so I'm gonna go, so one of my plans where my foot's a bit better, I wanna start open swimming. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm on a relatively new build estate and we have a, a ladies WhatsApp Chat. Who knew that existed. But anyway, somehow I'm on it and I've decided that when I'm well enough that I can go open water swimming, I'm gonna drop a message in there and say, I'm going open water swimming next Wednesday. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the location, this is the time. Let me know if anyone wants to join me. We can either share lift or I can meet you there or whatever. I'm going regardless. Let me know. Because that way you are doing something cool. You might meet somebody when you are there and you are giving other people the opportunity to opt in to do this stuff with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This all sounds like stuff that takes brain space. It all sounds like stuff that might be potentially quite awkward or difficult if you are quite introverted or quiet or whatever. But loneliness is awkward too. Loneliness takes brain space too. However busy you are, you deserve people around you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You deserve not to feel lonely. You deserve to find people that understand you, and it's okay to take a bit of time to do this even if you feel like you have a hundred thousand responsibilities right now. Now, one option I can offer all of you who are PhD students is my membership. So many of my members talk about how it's a wonderful sense of community. They are all over the world. They drop into their co-working sessions together. They hear each other talk in the coaching sessions, they chatter with each other in Slack. So if you haven't checked that out, yet, we open for new members on the 4th of August. Quarter three starts on the 11th of August. It's going to be amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you are feeling lonely in your journey and you want the sort of support that only comes from people who really proper get it because they are having it too, check on the membership. I hope I will see lots of you there. Thank you all for listening. I'm on on a mission over the summer to build new community and make more friends, and it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna do it doing lots of reps and lots of fun stuff, and I will keep you posted. Keep me posted on your journeys too. Thank you so much for listening everyone, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 28 Jul 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-47-what-to-do-if-youre-lonely-in-academia thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-46-how-to-prepare-for-a-difficult-meeting <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> If you put off having difficult conversations or get frazzled just thinking about it, then you need to bookmark this episode! I am going to give you my three step process for preparing for a difficult meeting. You’ll learn how to manage your own worries, strategize for success, and leave feeling proud of yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you are preparing for a viva or oral defence, check out <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/13912534-2-8-how-to-prepare-for-your-viva" target="_blank"> this episode </a> for more specific advice.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week we are thinking about difficult meetings. We've all had them right where you are, just dreading having to tell your supervisor you haven't done things that you said you were gonna do or waiting for your annual review meetings or whatever it might be, where you find out whether you've progressed enough to go into next year all the way through to meetings where you're just worried it's gonna be a bit uncomfortable. Right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're a lots and lots of reasons that meetings can feel uncomfortable. You are worried about actual tangible outcomes from those meetings. Maybe you are worried about what might be said in those meetings and your emotional responses to it. You might be worried about other people's emotional responses to what's said. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You may be worried it's embarrassing or awkward or upsetting or a whole load of different things. And all of those worries are completely legitimate. We've all been in meetings where it has been super uncomfortable and we've not enjoyed that situation. So it's not a big surprise that when we are looking ahead to a meeting that we anticipate might be difficult, we're sort of not filled with joy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The trouble is what we often end up doing is rehearsing all the ways it could go badly. So we then end up having a horrible time between now and then, and often end up not being as prepared as we could be 'cause often when we experience uncomfortable emotions, we procrastinate. Right? Or we end up super over prepared so that we've come up with a sort of defense against absolutely anything that they could possibly say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we go in there with that kind of mindset, or I've gotta stand my ground, I've gotta convince them, I've gotta do whatever. And that doesn't make the meetings go well either. So often these kind of self-protective mechanisms that we understandably do, end up making the meeting more uncomfortable or more confrontational than it needs to be, and certainly not as calm and helpful as it could be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in today's episode, we are gonna think about what you can do instead. What it is that we tell ourselves that make these things feel so complicated and how we can focus on different things in order to make these meetings feel less uncomfortable or be better able to tolerate the uncomfortableness in the run up to and in the meeting itself so that we can achieve our goals and more move on to more interesting and exciting stuff. Now this topic today is actually a taste of some of the stuff that I'm going to be teaching and coaching on in quarter three of the membership this year. So if you're listening to this in real time, you still have enough time to get on the waiting list and to join before we begin on the 11th of August, we open for people to actually like pay and stuff from the 4th of August. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you enjoy today's episode and you want more advice about managing the relationships with your supervisor, how we can make that work better, get the things that you need, and managing your relations beyond that, whether that's building community, which we're gonna talk a bit about next week or whether it's networking and collaborating across different universities and disciplines, if you need support with all that stuff, make sure you're checking out the membership. So go to PhD Life Coach.com, click on the membership button that's at the top, tell you all about it. And depending on when you're listening to this, you can either jump on the wait list in which cage, you'll get some freebies or you can just join if you're listening in the first week in August. If you are listening to this, I know some people find my podcast and then kind of binge all the past episodes. If you are listening to this going, oh no, it's not August anymore, I missed it. You can join every quarter. So. Four times a year, we have options and each quarter has a different focus but if you particularly wanted this focus on building relationships and all that sort of stuff, it's okay. 'cause when you join, you have access to all the past content as well. So never fear, the PhD Life coach membership is here for you regardless. So let's think about preparing for these difficult meetings, and I wanna divide this into three sections, really. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I wanna think about really understanding what we're telling ourselves about this meeting, because often that's where this all begins, okay? This sort of assumptions that we are making. We are gonna think about how we plan our strategy. For in the meeting, and I've got a bunch of different things I want to talk with you about there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then finally, we are gonna think about how we plan for after the meeting, and that's one that we almost never do, but I'll explain to you why it's so important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's start with the assumptions. I want you all to think about a difficult meeting that you've got coming up. Potentially something where you're just, it might even just be your next supervisory meeting. Might be something kind of bigger scale than that. Try and pick something that feels like it might be awkward in the future. And I want you to think, in fact, you grab a piece of paper and start listing all the thoughts you have about that meeting, why you think it might be difficult. What are you really worrying about? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And as you do that, I want you to really ask yourself, what am I assuming here? What am I assuming about what's gonna happen in that meeting? What am I assuming about what they will say? What am I assuming about what we will say? What are you assuming about what they will think? 'cause sometimes that's just as bad as the things they say, right? Even worse, 'cause we don't necessarily know what they're thinking. What will they, what Are we worried that we are going to think? Okay, try and brain dump as much of that as you can. And whenever you think you've run out thing, write it in actual sentences. As always, when we do our reflections, write it in actual sentences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let it all fly out of your brain. And whenever you think, oh, I think that's everything. I want you to ask yourself, But what else? What are the assumptions am I making? What am I making this mean? We wanna get out as much as we possibly can. When we let thoughts spin around in our heads, they just magnify inside. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And those of you who have been with me for a while will know that one of the first steps of self-coaching is to be able to get thoughts out of your head so that you can see them, so that you can actually look at them in a slightly more rational way than when they were just sort of banging around inside your head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you need to pause and go do it, go do it. But make sure you come back to the podcast. And what we're gonna do then is we're gonna look at these thoughts. And you are probably gonna see a whole bunch of drama there, which is completely understandable, right? We always have these full on dramas in our heads. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's fine. There's no big deal there. But we get to recognize them for what we are, and we're gonna ask ourselves, the three questions that I always get my clients and my members to ask themselves about these sorts of thoughts is, are they true? What else is true? And what if it's true? And that's okay. I might even add a fourth one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I do sometimes also ask, do they help? Okay, so these thoughts you're telling yourself. You're telling yourself that your supervisor's gonna think you're an idiot. They're gonna hate you, they're gonna be disappointed that they're probably gonna tell you that they should never have recruited you. All these sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it true? Is it actually, how do you know? How can you describe it in a way that might actually be true? Because for some of these, it might be right, your supervisor might be disappointed about something, that might be true. Perhaps. We'll have to think about how we know that, but it might be, are they gonna tell you they should never have recruited you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Probably and hopefully not. Okay. So we get to figure out which ones do we think are true and whether they're helpful or not. Because sometimes, even if they are true, it doesn't necessarily mean they're helpful. Okay. Telling ourselves, I don't think my supervisor likes me. It's possible. That's true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. Supervisors are human beings. It's possible that, I mean, I think it's unlikely, but it's possible. But is it helpful to keep telling yourself that they don't like you? Does it help you show up in the way you wanna show up? Almost certainly not, Even if it is true. Okay, then we're gonna ask ourselves what else is true? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because often when we're filling our brain full of the drama of what might happen, we are not filling our brain with the other things. It might go fine. They might be keen to help. Uh, they are invested in your progress. There's another thought that's probably true and that would probably help more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, I can get through a difficult situation. That might be a thought that is an alternative that feels true, but helps more than the others. Okay? Be careful as usual. We're not aiming for manifestation thoughts, we're not aiming for. I can handle any situation at all. I don't feel emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not here for that. This could be awkward. We just need to tell ourselves that we're capable of doing awkward things. And then the third one as usual, is what if it's true? And that's okay. It might be true that your supervisor's gonna be disappointed. It might be true that you'll have to completely rewrite this draft or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In what ways is that okay? And by, okay, I don't mean up not upsetting. I don't mean not a bit of a pain. I mean, how will we be okay if that's true? And many, many of the things we tell ourselves, you know, it will be really embarrassing. It's like, yeah, it might be. Maybe it'll be really embarrassing. But how could we be okay anyway? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are sort of planning just so that we are not going into this with this enormous amount of drama because when we have this enormous amount of drama feels horrible, changes the way we prepare, changes the way that we act in the meeting and after the meeting. So it is not always easy, especially with your own stuff, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's always easier to see how somebody else is being a bit dramatic, but you can kind of peer into those thoughts, pick them apart a bit bit and go, you know what? These ones are probably true, but I can deal with it. These ones I need to stop telling myself 'cause they're probably not true. These ones I don't tell myself very often, but actually probably are true and help. So we get to sort of tease it all apart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next step, step two is that we're gonna start to strategize for this meeting. And no one really teaches you how to do this. And in fact, some elements of this I did quite a automatically. So the sort of pragmatic, what am I gonna say? What solutions am I gonna bring? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That kind of stuff. I generally did that. Okay. I didn't find that stuff more difficult. But we're also gonna think about how we want to show up as a person. And this one I definitely did not do. I remember my very good friend, Jenn Cumming, who friend of the podcast, um, who. Sports psychology professor, absolutely genius. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of my, you know, really, really close friends and I remember when we were junior academics together, her saying to me that before she goes into a meeting or whatever, she thinks about the other person and thinks about what they were from that meeting and thinks about how best to present her ideas in order to make them convincing to them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And how does she wanna come across it? I dunno, just being like. Oh my God, this is, gee, do people do this? Because I was very much a steam in there and be as persuasive as I humanly knew how and not a lot else. The idea of I'm gonna hold back so that they think it's their idea, or I'm going to give them space to raise their concerns rather than me just give them all my opinions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Absolutely like completely unknown to me. So if you're like, oh, I don't think about this. Don't worry, I didn't either, but I've learned and it's really good. It really, really helps. So what are we going to think about? Well, the first thing we are gonna think about is when we want to have this meeting, if it's not already booked, because often what I see more than anything is that people put off having difficult meetings. They sort of feel like, think, oh, things might resolve themselves. It might not be an issue. Maybe they'll change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe they'll stop. Maybe it'll blow over all those things. My first tip is to err on the side of early action. If you've got an awkward conversation. It is not likely to get less awkward. Now it's slightly different, i'm not talking about, you know, if somebody's just left the room in a huff, you don't have to go steaming in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Give them time to chill out. Right? But if you are sort of thinking, Ooh, I've gotta tell my supervisor I haven't done this piece of work, or I need to tell my supervisor, I don't understand that, or I need to get feedback on this piece of work, but I'm worried they're gonna tell me it's rubbish, or any of those things, I want you to err on the side of early action. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because usually what we are doing is we are simply procrastinating experiencing those uncomfortable emotions, and most times it will get resolved more quickly and more effectively if we can get on it sooner. So err on the side of early action.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second tip I have here, and this is gonna sound like a funny one as usual, but my second tip is focus on managing your own emotions, not other people's. And by managing emotions, I don't mean not having any, you know, I've cried in meetings, I've got cross in meetings, I've got frustrated in me, you know? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't have to not have emotions. I don't mean that, but what I mean is often our obsession is not disappointing the supervisor, not frustrating the supervisor, not making the supervisor cross, not making the supervisor, all these different things, right? We are trying to manage their emotions about the stuff that we want to talk about, and the problem is other people's emotions are really, really hard to manage. You can be considerate, right? I'm not saying don't be considerate, but when we're trying to tiptoe around other people's emotions, we often end up making it worse. Yeah. If we end up trying not to disappoint our supervisor, we end up sometimes not being honest and authentic about the problems that we're having, which means they can't help us, which means we get further behind, which ultimately could be potentially more disappointing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am not saying just steam in there and say whatever you want, but your supervisors, the people you're having difficult meetings with are adults. Okay? They are adults who are more or less able to regulate their own emotions. Some of 'em may be better at it than others, but it is certainly their responsibility to regulate their own emotions, and it is not your job to prevent your supervisor ever being disappointed or ever being cross or ever being upset. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do we do instead? What we do instead is thinking about who do we want to show up as? How do we want to come across in this meeting? Now, again, this doesn't mean coming across as perfect. I would really, really encourage you that vulnerable can be a really useful way to show up in a meeting and a really sort of effective and healthy way to show up in a meeting where you are able to say, I've actually found this bit really difficult. Now we don't have to go in there with all our drama saying, oh, and I'm so scared this, and please reassure me, but we can go in there saying, I've found this bit really hard and this is what I want the support with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So think about how do you wanna come across in this meeting? Do you wanna come across as clear? Do you wanna come across as calm? Do you wanna come across as thoughtful? What might it be? What we get to think about is how do we present that? Now I just really wanna reiterate this point about emotions 'cause it can get misunderstood and I have a strategy as well. So often people think that if they get emotional in a meeting, then that's the worst thing in the world. And to be honest, people tend to think that crying in a meeting is the worst of the worst because our gorgeously, patriarchal society has somehow convinced ourselves that crying and sadness are bad emotions where anger and. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Things like that, frustration are somehow more socially acceptable to express. I don't know how this has happened, but anyway. That's beside the point. I am not saying don't express emotions here at all. What I am suggesting though, is that you a focus on how you want to come across, but b, also don't use your emotions as a way to demonstrate how serious a problem is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have experienced many, many times from both staff and students to be honest people coming to me and almost having geared themselves up to emotionally tell me how awful this is, how emotionally difficult this has been for them, dah, dah, dah. And that's fine. Sometimes you may feel you want that release, but I want you to think very carefully. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I actually talked to a client about this recently. In fact, it was the winner of one of my, the giveaways that I did to celebrate a hundred thousand downloads of this podcast. I talked to them about it and if you go to a meeting intending to share all of your emotions in order to get them to see how bad this is, for example, I want you to think carefully what you want from that meeting, because if you present emotions as the problem, the problem is I'm overwhelmed. The problem is I'm stressed. The problem is I'm tired. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'll get likely solutions to those emotions. You are likely to get reassurance. You are likely to get kind of care and attention. If that's what you want. If that is what you're actually looking for, happy days, let's go. But if what you actually want is less work or a longer deadline or less pressure or those sorts of things, then actually it can be really useful to take the logistics rather than the emotion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This doesn't mean not telling them you're stressed. Okay, and what this means is really reminding them that your anxiety, worry, stress, disappointment, all those things, those are your emotions and they're things that you can look after. I can care for myself while I'm stressed and upset and things like that. That's fine. You don't need to look after me. I can look after myself. But the reason this is so pronounced is because I don't have time for X, Y, Z because these things are filling my time. That this thing ended up taking longer than intended, and therefore that other thing has been impacted. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Notice if you're presenting it in that way, you're saying, this is having an emotional impact on me, but I don't need you to reassure me for that. I can look after myself. The bit I need help with is the logistics of how there can be less pressure or less work, or more time or more resource, or whatever it might be in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So think very carefully about what you want for the meeting, and think very carefully about how you want to present to give yourself the best opportunity of doing that. Now part of that is understanding your supervisor, right? What I want you to really do is look for win-wins, okay? I want you to really look for the ways that actually, things that would help you would probably help them too, because often we are pretty entangled in these meetings, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whether they're your examiners or whether they're your supervisors, advisors, whoever, we are pretty entangled. Often what's good for us is good for them too. So yeah, definitely think about what are they looking to get from this meeting? What are their priorities? What would make this a useful meeting for them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you don't have to manage their emotions. You get to manage your own emotions, come across in a way that you think is authentic, in a way that you think is appropriate and professional in the way that you want to bring things forward and they get to respond to that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another part of the strategy is often we get told bring solutions, not problems. And in many situations, that's great advice. So part of your strategy can be being able to say, if I was solely in charge, could make decisions. These are the steps I would take, these are the things I would do. I would drop that, I would postpone that. I would do this first, for example. Okay, so going with solutions demonstrates that you've thought it through, that you're not just looking for them to fix everything for you. It gives you the opportunity to put across the stuff that you think would best suit you, so you can kind of prioritize the things that you think would be useful rather than just what they come up with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it just gives them the impression that you've planned for this meeting. Right. So when we're thinking about how you come across, one of the things I'm sure all of us want to come across at is prepared. And coming with solutions rather than problems is one of the ways that you can do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, and again, this came up in the coaching session that I did recently. The one thing I want you to be cautious of is where the problem is something that is way beyond your pay grade and seniority. Okay. So for me, for PhD students coming to me with a, I'm behind on my recruitment and my data collection problem, I absolutely want them to come to me with potential solutions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is their project. They're gonna be implementing the solutions. I'll brainstorm with them. I'll help come up with ideas, I'll make suggestions if I've got experience that will help. But I want them to come with solutions because this is their project. I want 'em to at least thought about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, if they come to me and tell me that the problem is that someone in the lab has been behaving inappropriately to them or that they've been having bullying emails from a member of staff, or that a, there's not enough funding to fix the piece of kit that they need, you don't need to come with solutions for that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You need to come with observations and implications. So let me know what's happening, let me know what effect it's having. But the solutions to those things are my problem. They're the academics problem, and often they're the people above me's problem, right? So when it's stuff about staffing, when it's stuff about how you're being treated by people, when it's stuff about resources. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please don't think that you have to bring a solution for those things. Your only job in those situations is to raise awareness of the people who can do something about it. Okay, so we are taking early action. We are focusing on managing our own emotions. We're thinking about how we wanna show up at the meeting. We are bringing solutions as well as problems, as long as the problems are things that are kind of within our pay grade, as it were. And we are gonna look for win-wins. We're gonna look for ways that this will be helpful for both parties. Those are my big tips for preparing for the meeting itself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the third thing I mentioned was one that I said almost everybody doesn't do. It just never gets talked about, and this is planning for what you are gonna say to yourself after the meeting. Now those of you who have listened to my episode about preparing for your viva will have heard me talk about this, but it is true across any meeting, any difficult situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can apply it to doing presentations, doing conference talks, anything like that. Anything where essentially you are kind of building yourself up to something you're a bit worried about. One of the worst things that make these situations feel super stressful is knowing that if it goes badly, if the person doesn't react the way we want them to, or if we say something, we regret that we are gonna rehearse that for the rest of our lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? We've all done it. Okay. We've all got stories in our head. Where we're absolutely mortified by something that we did or something that we said or whatever, and we go over and over them and use it as evidence that we are intrinsically useless, right? We don't have to do this. We don't have to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what you can do when you are preparing for a meeting in advance of it actually happening is you can decide here and now that however that meeting goes, you will be kind to yourself afterwards. Now, does that mean we don't reflect on it and learn a bit? No, obviously not. We can still reflect on it. We can still decide, ah, it might have been better to do this than that. That's fine. But we are gonna do that in a kind, supportive, loving way. Not a, oh my word, you idiot. I can't believe you said that kind of a way. Right. We can decide that yes, we'll be reflective, but we are gonna be kind, we're gonna be supportive. And importantly, this is not only if you do your best, I want you, and this, any of you who still have exams to do or any of those sorts of things, I want you to remember this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Most people reassure you with, oh, well as long as you did your best, then it's okay. No, we are not gonna reassure ourselves with that because sometimes you won't have done your best. Or at least you won't have done what you think your best is. You did what you were capable of in the moment, but you may not be able to tell yourself that it was your best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I want you to be kind to yourself even if you haven't done your best, even if it wasn't your finest hour, okay? Even if you did lose it and say something you regret or whatever, I still want you to be kind to yourself, and that is important for so many reasons. It's important 'cause it makes it easy to do things in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you know that you are not gonna beat yourself up for messing things up. You can try literally anything. Yeah, if you know you're gonna be kind to yourself, if you do the worst karaoke ever, you can go do a karaoke, happy days. You can try these scary things because you know you'll be nice to yourself afterwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know that your self worth doesn't have to be contingent on how it goes, so it makes it unbelievably easier to be brave. It also makes that post meeting period much, much nicer, 'cause you're not gonna spend it beating yourself up. Now will those thoughts still come up? Probably, but. We know that we are not gonna feed them, we're not gonna reinforce them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we've got other thoughts to divert ourselves to like it went how it went, and I can resolve what I need to resolve, for example. Then we can actually spend much less time beating ourselves up. And then the third reason that's so useful is it makes it so much easier to fix things. If you did screw something up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, especially people who've got a ADHD got autism, things that mean that maybe sometimes in the moment you don't react the way that you ideally would react. Okay. The way that you want to, it's not from your best self. Okay? Sometimes we get a bit dramatic, a bit reactive, a bit rejection sensitive, whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if we are super kind to ourselves afterwards, not saying that that behavior was okay and that we're just gonna do it willy-nilly and people can put up with this, but if we don't tell ourselves that it makes us a terrible person, it is enormously easier to go back the next day and go, yeah, I got a bit worked up there, didn't I? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Really sorry, that's not how I want to show up. I hope you understand. How can we move forward, makes it so much easier. Whereas if you are at home telling yourself that you are a terrible person, that everybody hates you forever, so much harder to go and fix it afterwards. To go and have those conversations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To go and be vulnerable. To be vulnerable, you do have to have a sense of psychological safety that actually I've made a mistake. I'm gonna resolve my mistake to the best of my ability, but I don't hate myself for my mistake. So those are your three big clusters of tasks. Understand where all this worry is coming from, what assumptions are you making, what thoughts are you having, and let's whittle it down to stuff that is true and is helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we're gonna strategize for the meeting. We're gonna plan how we can what we want outta the meeting, come across the way we want to and look after ourselves in the process. And then we are gonna plan for how we're gonna look after ourselves afterwards. That can be pragmatic too. It's not just about what you say to yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can be things like, if you know you are having a difficult meeting, do not expect yourself to come straight out of it and then get on with writing your discussion section. Give yourself some time for the come down. If you are somebody who just needs to sort of get it outta your system. Go to the gym, go for a walk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plan to meet a friend. Have somebody pick you up so you don't have to drive home. So you've got somebody that you can moan to. Think about how you can have something afterwards that will help you process the emotions that you've experienced and look after yourself and make it pleasant. Those are my three tips planning for a difficult meeting. If you are not already on my newsletter, get yourself on my newsletter. In fact, if you're not on my wait list yet, why not jump on the wait list for the membership if you're not, message me, find me. I'm on Instagram, I you can respond to my newsletter, all that stuff. Lemme know what it is that's preventing you from wanting to join the membership because I think, and I am biased, but I think that all PhD students should be in my membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you don't think it's for you, just lemme know why. Okay? It's a deal. And then I might try and persuade you why I think it actually is, but it would also just be super useful feedback for me too. Thank you all so much for listening, I hope you found that useful and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 21 Jul 2025 04:00:01 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-46-how-to-prepare-for-a-difficult-meeting thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-45-how-to-write-your-discussion-when-you-dont-know-how-special-coaching-episode-with-becci <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today I’m coaching Becci who is writing her final thesis discussion chapter. She told me “I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm just flailing around in the dark spewing out thousands of words and wondering what my point even is. Up to now, I've found it quite easy to understand what I need to do and what chapters need to look like but this part just feels like a huge and important amorphous blob.” Hear how we worked through these thoughts and came to a plan (and listen to the end of the episode to hear where Becci is now!!) </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> If you want to hear other people getting coached, <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.mykajabi.com/newsletter-form" target="_blank"> sign up here </a> to get a full searchable archive of the podcast - you can filter by “coaching” and find all the episodes!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Before this episode starts, I've just got a quick update for you if you're listening to this live. The PhD Life Coach membership is gonna open in three weeks time, which is the 4th of August. That is when we are gonna start taking new members. If you're not on the wait list already, make sure you go there, check it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And join today's episode is a coaching session where I work with a listener, Becky, who is struggling to get her writing done. You'll hear exactly what it's like to be coached by me. This is what we do week, could week out during the membership program. So make sure you check that out and keep listening right to the very end. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 'cause I also have a little update from Becky at the end of the episode. Thanks for listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week we have another coaching session. Now, by the time this goes out, there will have been a couple of others in the last sort of six, eight weeks. It's a little bit of a series at the moment. These are all listeners who responded to a bit of a shout out. I did asking for people who had interesting topics that they would like coaching on, and Becci was one of the very kind students who responded. So thank you very much, Becci, for agreeing to come on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Oh, you're very welcome. Happy to be here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So Becci, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you feel like you want some coaching on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, so I come from a counseling and psychotherapy background, but also really into the outdoors. So that's what my PhD is all been about. How we can use the outdoors to promote resilience in young women. I'm up to the point where I'm three years in, well, nearly three years in. I have to be finished by October and I'm writing my discussion at the moment, but I'm finding that really challenging. The rest of the time i've kind of felt like a way to write things and there's a structure there already that I can kind of follow and just tweak and think about. But with the discussion, it feels like it's just this blob. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Like it's just bringing everything together and it's like, I have absolutely no clue really what that's supposed to look like. I know there's probably no, like, it's supposed to look like this, but it just feels like a big blob of blah. And it's not that I've got nothing to say, it's just that it's just a mess. So I feel like some coaching would be really valuable for me to get a handle on how to even start looking at this mess and making some sense of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And it's such a common thing, right? That we kind of at the beginning Okay. Do a lit review. Okay. I'm not quite sure what that is, but I can figure that out and stuff. But there is something kind of big and I guess a bit amorphous about, about a discussion. So yeah. I'm sure this is gonna be super useful for so many people. So gimme a little bit more background, the rest of the thesis exists. Is that right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So how long has the discussion been your focus for? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Oh, uh, good question. Probably about six weeks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Cool. So you've been working on it for about six weeks, and if I came and peered over your shoulder now, what would I see on your computer? What sort of exists? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: About 20,000 words where I've just like spewed out any old stuff that comes to mind that might be somewhat relevant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So all discussion, but just kind of stream of consciousness.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. And I read, I read through some of it yesterday and was like even, I have no idea what the hell it was on about then, but cool.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So real kind of brain dump stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And was that sort of done like consistently over the last six weeks, or have you sort of had fits and starts? Tell me more about how this six weeks has been for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, definitely fits and starts. So there's been like some days where I feel like, oh, it's clicked, and I'll write loads of stuff. And then a lot of other times where like I'll write a few words and then be like, I don't know what my point is, and then I go down a rabbit hole of like either looking at other people's discussions in their thesis to try and understand like what that's supposed to look like or just like looking at random research that I think might be vaguely applicable and then being like, oh, I don't even remember why I was looking at this in the first place. So it has been very up and down. Yeah. Um, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: A lot of starting and then having some thoughts about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And going off in different directions then from there, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: yeah. Yeah. And kind of looking and thinking, oh, I think I understand now what I'm supposed to write, and then start to write stuff and then reading it back and going, no, that's not, that doesn't seem right, but we'll just leave it there for now, which I think might be part of the problem perhaps, is that I just leave everything in at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. On those days where you think, Ooh, I think I know what I'm meant to be doing now. Mm-hmm. What do you think you're meant to be doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Good question. Um, I don't know. It is, I think I get that thought when its like I've written something and they go, yes, that sort of feels right, but I can't quite put my finger on why that feels right. Okay. Which might be why I can't do that consistently. 'cause I don't understand why it is that that feels right in the first place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How did it go? So I said at the beginning that often people sort of more intuitively understand what a lit review is and then find the discussion difficult. But let's take you back to that when you wrote your introduction chapter. How did you decide what needed to go in there? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: When I was writing my intro, I decided what was gonna go in there because I read a lot. So I would think about like a specific topic that was related to my overall topic or question. I'd read lots and lots of that, and then I'd make lots of notes about what it was I'd read and what felt like it stood out enough that I should write something about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: And I just wrote, I wrote consistently, but I did like a block of reading, then some writing, then a block of reading, then some writing. I just picked out like the main concepts really. So I found that quite straightforward to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how did you decide what order to present that in and how to structure it and stuff? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: I think I went with like what feels like the most important concept that I need to talk about first. So, because mine is a lot about resilience. That was like, I need to talk about that first, because that's like what underpins all of this. And then I thought, okay, so what's the next most important thing? Okay, so outdoor adventure activities, so now I need to write about that. So I think I just sort of went down what are the most important things? And then also thinking about like, what was my rationale for actually choosing to research that topic in the way that I was researching it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So you had some notion of what needed to be in an introduction.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you made some decisions about what order to present in. Because you know, as with anything, there's no right way you chose that. I'll start with this central concept and then do that concept. You could have done that in a different order and it would've been fine too, but you made some decisions about that kind of makes sense. And then once you had a, like a first draft say of your intro, did it mostly stay like that? Did you do dramatic rewrites? Did you restructure? Take me through how that process was. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. I didn't do any like dramatic rewrites. Um, although I did put in like an extra section recently because it just helped to structure my other chapters if like there was certain information that was in the  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Perfect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. So that was like one of the bigger changes. And then it has been sort of restructured because when I read through it more recently, I was like the way that I presented certain theories didn't run sort of chronologically, so then it didn't really make sense. They sort of jumped around. So I moved those about, but I didn't do any like major, oh, I really need to rewrite that section. 'cause it's totally like gobbledy gook </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: so you'd sort of made some decision, I wanna talk about this stuff and then that stuff. But then within the, this stuff, the stuff about resilience, when you then edited it, you thought actually there's a, people on YouTube can see me gesturing wildly with my hands. But you can see, you sort of like, oh, actually it would make sense to talk about this resilience theory before I talk about that one. So move those around. Okay. Tell me how the discussion feels different to that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: It feels less straightforward. It feels like there aren't specific concepts that I definitely need to discuss. Even though that is, is probably not true, but that's what it feels like. It's like it, it's much less specific in that I can't just go Right. Well it is this, this is really important to my research, this concept. This is really important to my research. Write about those. Um, and also, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, can't you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Probably, but I think that's part of my issue maybe, is like trying to pick out what those important concepts are. Because I feel like I'm getting lost in the fact that there's lots of them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why does it feel like there's more concepts in the discussion than in the introduction? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, because throughout my thesis have been like building up theory, and now these theories feel very complex. And have lots of different elements to them. And so then it feels like I have to unpick all of those, but that feels like an impossible task to do in a limited amount of words and time. So it feels like what I'm trying to do is like pick out the key concepts, but then I'm like, but then I'm missing all this other stuff, which is also really relevant. Why isn't that as important as this thing over here? Then I like perhaps trying to include absolutely everything, and then there's things outside of my theories as well that I'm like, oh, I should be talking about that. It feels like, because it feels like that's a big important part of it, but I, there's no space for that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So are you trying to combine, you say you are developing theories and stuff. Are you trying to combine those theories into some sort of unifying framework or are they distinct from each other, sort of covering different elements of this?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Uh, a bit of both. So I've got like 13 theories that are like very specific. And then I'm hoping to combine all of those into one sort of three framework. There's a bit more usable really for practitioners. But all those individual theories are also important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Have you developed that framework yet? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: I've developed a version of that keeps changing every five minutes based on whatever idea I've had about what my discussions should look like that day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And is your discussion where you're presenting your unified framework? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So. What makes the unified framework keep moving? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: My ideas about how much I should include and what is useful to include, and then when I think I've got a handle on that, I then think about the type of methodology I'm using and that I should be focusing on this other thing that's not actually in there anymore because I thought it wasn't maybe that useful for people. So it kind of moves around depending on what perspective I'm looking at it from, I guess. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. Okay. So the reason just for everyone listening, the reason I'm kind of, burrowing in on this is I think you've actually got two different tasks here. I think you've got the task of deciding your unified framework. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you've got the task of writing your discussion. And I think part of the problem is you're trying to do them both at once. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I don't think that's necessarily a problem in the sense of, you know, some of the drafting of the discussion might help shape your thoughts about the framework. But at some point the framework needs to be solidified so that you can finish the discussion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. And I do wonder whether, part of the problem that I have with this at the minute is that it feels like a big, like a massive part of my thesis and that I don't want to just. If I settle on an idea and go, yes, that's, that's what I'm using, then I want that to be like, right, for want of a better word. I know there'll be no right or wrong, really, but I want that. I like, I want to be really happy with that and certain that like that's how I want it to be. And I think maybe because it feels so important and so big, it's like I can't settle on it because. Maybe looking for like this perfection that isn't ever going to materialize. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because what would a right and perfect theory look like? How would you know it's right and perfect? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, I dunno, to be honest, and I, I think, yeah, well, I, I am aware that that doesn't really exist. Um. So it's probably a bit, um, pointless sort of trying to look for that. I guess what I'm hoping for I think is like just a feeling of, 'cause I'm quite intuitive about stuff and I can kind of go, yeah, that's, that feels right. And I just feel like I don't have that with this at all. I just constantly going, no, it can't be yet done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What do you think makes it hard to declare it done? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, maybe like a fear of getting it wrong and it not just not being what I want it to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And why would that be bad? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Uh, because at the end of the day, I have to defend it. And if in like a few months time, I'm like, yeah, no, I don't think that's actually right anymore. Then I guess I'm maybe worried about having to defend something that I no longer believe to be true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, is that what you would do in the Viva? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Uh, that's what I feel like I had to do. Whether I would actually do that, I'm not really sure. Um, 'cause I haven't really thought about what I would do if that happened. I think, 'cause I've been so focused on not letting that happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and what does defending it mean to you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Oh, um, what does defending it mean to me? Like, being able to say why I think that is the case and the evidence that I've got to back that up. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The only thing we have to tweak there slightly is just the tense. So defending this in your Viva is explaining why you did it the way you did it. That has no resemblance to whether you still think that is the best way to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is why I chose to do it the way it's presented in front of you. And then to some extent you get to see how the conversation goes. Right? Because if they start saying, well actually, why didn't you combine those ones together and have that as a separate element? And at that point you can go, you know what? I've been thinking the same thing since I wrote it. I actually think it might make more sense. That is something I'd love to hear more what you're thinking, you know, and have a conversation about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because you can make changes after your viva, right? That's, yeah. That's how this stuff works. You get corrections. Now, I'm not saying you necessarily like launch into, by the way, I think everything I wrote is wrong. I've changed my mind. But you can still explain why you did it the way you did it. Yeah. Wait and see what they say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it like that. Yeah, because I guess I, I, ideas change all the time, don't they? And as long as you can explain why you did what you did at the point that they've read it at.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Then I guess, yeah, that's maybe what the discussion bit is about and yeah, I never really, I think, 'cause I, I acknowledge that I'm gonna have corrections. 'Cause like I hear that pretty much everybody has corrections, so that's like, yeah, there's, things are gonna change in it, but I think i've very much been thinking along the lines of, well, it has to be as close to perfect as I can get it by the time I submit it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, it has to be defensible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. And then, yeah, not really thinking that actually it did change my mind about something and that then came out in the viva, then I can change it and that would be fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I actually think, I think this is really interesting one, because for a lot of people, their kind of main propositions, I guess, are made in the results chapters, right? And they share their findings in the results chapters, and then in the discussion chapter, they're really kind of contextualizing that to other literature, explaining what it means and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Whereas actually there's an element to which for you, your discussion is a little bit resulty in the sense that you are presenting this framework. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that does make it a slightly different thing. And I think part of the issue here is I think you're not distinguishing that that's slightly different than your average, you know, if you've done a big qualitative study. Here's all my themes and whatever. Here's this da, da, da. And then you, you're not presenting a new framework. You're just talking about what this means for outdoor education in the future or whatever. Yeah. Then it's a little different. So I have a question that might help clarify some of this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So once you've presented this framework in your discussion, what would be the next steps for either you as a researcher or for people who've read your work in the future, who want to build on your work in the future, to take that framework and do things with it? What would be the next things that people might want to do with a theoretical framework? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, applying it to interventions. Which I sort of did in one of my other, well, I did do in one of my other chapters, before I like refined the theories. But yeah. So there'd be, it would be, yeah, applying that to interventions, and perhaps on a, a larger scale than what I've already done within my thesis.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, so they'd be testing it essentially. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think that is also really important because the next steps of changing a framework or adopting a framework, depending on what happens, is to test it in some sort of intervention way or in some other way, and then to decide from there whether it stands up to that next test or whether it needs modifying or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is that fair? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely fair. Yeah. It also makes me think of something that I've not actually considered is that because I've taken a realist approach, a like from a realist perspective, no theory is ever like perfect there. It is gonna be fallible and it constantly should be being revised. So kind of missing the point by trying to do something that's like a perfect theory 'cause that doesn't exist and isn't supposed to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm. How does that feel? Noticing that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Uh, kind of freeing 'cause it's like, I do what I can do at this point with the knowledge that I've got now and actually the point is that it would be yeah, tested and refined further anyway. Or tested and adopted depending on what happened. So yeah, it feels, yeah, freeing, I think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that means you could potentially change things as part of your corrections if it comes up in the viva or the defense as it's known elsewhere in the world , but it also means that you've got the option to write this up as a moment in time, essentially, that at this point, without more data, without this being used in a different context or tested in some other way, here's a pretty good representation of what I think this theory is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. That's actually really helpful. Um, 'cause it's just thinking about it in that slightly different way, isn't it? This is what I think right now, but yeah, there's limitations to that. I had already thought about the limitations and kind of put that, but then not really, I don't know, viewing the work really through that lens. I think maybe I was like, when it is a limitation 'cause it felt like I should, instead of understanding like that actually is a limitation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Hmm. I was talking to some, in fact, it might even have been when I was recording another podcast this week, somebody I was coaching this week anyway. We were talking about how it can sometimes be really freeing and inspiring to remember that the end of your thesis is the beginning of somebody else's. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Hmm. Yeah, I like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Somebody else will read your thesis or will read the papers that come from your thesis and we'll go, oh, that's really interesting. But I can see a gap. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that gap's where I'm gonna write my PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm gonna take this and apply it in children, or I'm gonna take this and apply it in dance instead of outdoor ed or whatever. 'Cause that's what we've done, right? You've read people's research, you've found it fascinating. You've spotted stuff they haven't done, that in no way undermines the work that they did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. It's different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And now you build on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought about it like that before. That's a, a really nice way to think about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So let's go back to a couple of practicalities. As far as you are aware, what bits need to be in your thesis. So in your introduction, it sounds as though you kind of went with, um, sort of concepts like, you know, I need resilience, I need outdoor ed, da da da. Yeah. In the discussion what sort of, almost what jobs need doing. I need a block that does this job. I need a block that does that job. Let's have a brainstorm about what that is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. I need a block. I'll start easy. That summarizes what I've done so far and like the main, the main outputs of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Good. So we need a relatively brief summary of the main outputs. Perfect. What else? What other blocks do we need? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, for me, I need a block about how these refined versions of the theories came to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Because I haven't covered that elsewhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we need a block about how they came to be. What else? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: A block about what they are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. A block presenting the framework essentially. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I am proposing this framework for these reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. What else? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: And then it gets trickier because I think then I'm not really sure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Think about other people. So if it's hard to think about for yours, let's put yours to one side. You said that sometimes you procrastinate by looking at other people's chapters. That's great. Love it. What blocks do other people put in their discussions? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: I think what struck me about other people's discussions is they're all so different. So it's really hard to say, what they had in the, I guess, there's always something about the like, um, like bigger theories that underpin what they've found. Like essentially why might I have found what I've found based on the theory. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So something that recontextualizes it back into the literature, whether that's back into the theory, whether it's back into other empirical data. Have you ever seen the, the funnel? that describes. this describes both articles and thesises. Those of you on a podcast listening to this audio, I'm gonna try and explain what I'm drawing. If you're on video, you can see the picture. So essentially, if you imagine like a bow tie on its side, like a funnel with a narrow bit in the middle, and then a funnel back out again. A research article or a thesis should roughly be shaped like this. We start nice and wide, so I'm gonna guess your introduction starts. Something about why lack of resilience is a problem, and blah, blah, what issues it causes for mental health, things like that. Then it probably goes into something about how outdoor ed has been demonstrated as a environment in which resilience can be found. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we're getting a little bit more narrow 'cause we're not just talking about resilience, we're talking about resilience and outdoor ed. Then probably go through some theories of resilience or theories of how it, you know, evidence that it can be changed in outdoor ed, da da da. And then you get all the way down at the end of your introduction. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And obviously with a full thesis, this is a bit more complex than I'm doing here, but in an article, usually you then have a final paragraph that says something like, therefore the current study will blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? And that's the end of this first bit of the funnel. And then your research is this very narrow bit in between the what I did and what I find is the very specific to you, very narrow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then in your discussion you usually start with the current study found, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like you said, bit of a summary and then it starts getting wider again. It starts recontextualizing it back out into the world. Okay. And then there's a couple of chunks in here, which I'll talk about in a second that you definitely need, and then by the end, you finish with some sort of conclusion that brings it back out to its widest thing. Probably relates back to where you started the introduction. That just sort of zooms right back out again and says therefore this theoretical framework has the potential to improve the way that we build resilience in young women with this benefit or whatever. Yeah. So we start wide. We come on narrow, narrow and narrow. And narrow and narrow. We do our thing, we build it back out again, and there we are. And the nice thing, if you can imagine two of those sat on top of each other, this bottom of your funnel becomes the top of somebody else's funnel and they start coming back in again for their piece of research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so we definitely want stuff summarizing. We definitely for you like presenting the theory and how it fits with other theories, how it kind of helps explain things we've seen in the literature. Da, da, da. Can you think of any other chunks that need to go any discussion? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Uh, yeah. Strengths and limitations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: A hundred percent. Yep. So we're gonna have a strengths and limitations bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, um, recommendations and future research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Future research. Beautiful. And then we're gonna finish. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Simple as that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I want you to notice, and when you listen to this podcast, you'll be able to go back and listen to this for yourself. And it was certainly true in the email that you sent me. I want you to notice how much you were telling yourself. I've got no idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've got no clue. It's a mystery. I could even pull up. I won't bully you. Let's see. Here we go. Here's the email. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm flailing around in the dark, wondering, spewing out thousands of words and wondering what my point even is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, it sounds about right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But it's not true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: No, it's not true </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: because you've just told me all the bits that a discussion needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The trouble is, I'm sure it feels like that. I'm not undermining the fact that inside here it feels like you're flailing around in the dark. A hundred percent get that, but it's really important you don't tell yourself that's true. Because it might feel like you are spinning outta control, but you know what chunks this needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. I do apparently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And when we tell ourselves we don't, it becomes this impossible. I just can't. It's like, have you ever seen the videos online where there's like a little kid and he looks like he's drowning? He's like flailing and flailing. And panicking and panicking, and then the mum goes. Put your feet down. He's, oh, I can't swim. Put your feet down. Can't swim. I can't swim. And then he puts his feet down and he stands up and the water's up to about his chest. He's like, put your feet down. You're fine. And that's not to say his panics not real. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But it's a little bit like that now, I think that you're, I can't do it. I can't do it. I even know what's involved. I have no idea. I'm just flailing around. It's like, put your feet down for a second. Just put your feet on the floor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, some of the bits that this needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, yeah. And I think I just keep telling myself that same story, don't I? Of like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm confused. I dunno what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm writing something so I must have some inkling of what's supposed to be going in. Yeah. And also, yeah, I've been able to say what sort of sections need to go in it, so I do. Yeah. I must have some idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now, when you think about this 20,000 words or whatever that you've written. And you think about, if we think about those sections that you just came up with as buckets. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Do you have a feel either off the top of your head or if you went and looked at it for which bits would get thrown into which bucket? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Like I'd have to go back and read parts of it to understand where they fit, but, um, for the most part, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And do you feel like there are some buckets that you've written loads for that's a bit of a mess, and some buckets that you haven't written for? Or do you feel like you'd have bits in all of them, or, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: uh, I think there's definitely like ones that I'd have quite a lot in um, and ones that would be quite sparse. Or maybe not sparse, but like just very descriptive. Which I know just isn't, yeah. It means just isn't finished, basically. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So I think that's a useful exercise to do is to almost give yourself Word documents that are your buckets. Start chucking them out in to the different bits. The other thing I want to really, we'll come back to this thing about decisions in a second, but the other thing I want you and everyone listening to be really clear on is writing is many different things and it has many different purposes, and I think often PhD students get this mixed up. Because usually we think of writing as a way of generating the end product. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Writing is how we are creating the thesis that we hand in, which is absolutely true. You have to do that bit of writing, but writing is also a way of thinking. And a way of understanding what's in your brain, understanding what you don't understand very well. Testing ways of saying things, testing ideas to see if they make sense when you write them down. And that's a beautiful thing. That's a really good way of thinking. But what we often end up doing, and I wonder whether this is what you are doing, you can tell me, is we end up, we are doing that, really we're using writing to think, but we are beating ourselves up that it doesn't look like an end product. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. I think I, because I do do a lot of like writing to think intentionally, so I've got lots of other documents of just like process notes essentially. Um, and then I think. I just think that the other document that has the title discussion chapter </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Is supposed to look like whatever a discussion chapter is supposed to look like. And when it doesn't, I'm like, ah, that means I don't dunno what I'm doing. Yeah. But yeah, perhaps I am just doing more of the thinking just on a document with a different name. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think so. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So how do you go from, at what point do you transition and how, from writing as thinking to creating a piece of writing as an end product.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, think about like what makes me then open up a document to name it, like whatever chapter, instead of just like processing it. It would be, usually it would be having some idea of what it is I want to say, and understanding what the structure of that needs to look like to get that message across. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: I think what might have happened with my discussion chapter is like getting a bit impatient and just going, yes, I'll figure that out as I go along, but then being confused about why I haven't already figured it out before I've started, if that makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Now I don't know that it's necessarily impatience, and we'll talk about that in a sec, but I think that a lack of clarity as to whether you are writing the discussion that you will hand in or whether you are still writing to understand the points you want to make. Yeah, I think you've told yourself, you are writing the discussion as an end product. But because you haven't yet decided exactly what your point is or what the structure should be, you are actually writing as thinking, which is absolutely fine. There's no problems with that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Other than you're expecting it to somehow end up as a discussion that you can hand in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: When that's not what you are doing, you're just thinking on a piece of paper. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that's exactly what's happened. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So. In order to get, you said, in order to start writing as an actual product? You want to know the points you're trying to make and remember, that doesn't have to be the point you're trying to make for the entire discussion, but for each of those sections we're talking about, you need to know the point you're trying to make and a first attempt at a structure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We're obviously gonna restructure things if we want to as we go through, but a first attempt at a structure. What makes it difficult to go from your kind of writing as thinking thoughts on a piece of paper stuff to deciding what you're gonna say and having an approximation of a structure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: I think having lots of ideas and not being able to discern which ones feel like they hold the most weight. Um, because then it's like, I'm just trying to make too many points. So then I don't make any of them in any particular depth or very well, I just, they're just loads of ideas. Um, and then the structure, I think, again, like if I understood what I was trying to say a bit better, I'd then be able to structure it fine, because I'd be like, well, this is this idea and this is this idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: But because it's like just all these ideas and I don't really know which ones should hold more weight than others. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The structure problems comes from the other bit a hundred percent. This is exactly the same as anybody who like me believed that the solution to being able to do everything was to find the right planner and jam it all in when actually the problem was you're putting in too many things, or the people out there who think that the key to making your house less cluttered is to go and buy new plastic boxes, to put things in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's the same thing, if you all got too many ideas, there is no structure that's gonna make all of those ideas come together and make sense.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what makes it hard to pick one or to pick a key idea that you want to focus on or a key framework? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Um, I think, again, it's like what we were saying earlier on about trying to decide upon when is my overall framework done? Um, it's just, yeah, not wanting to make a decision because not being totally convinced that any of them are a hundred percent right, but that's 'cause that doesn't exist. And so then I'm like reluctant to get rid of anything. 'cause that might be the one that turns out to be correct. For want of a better word. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. This is, and we, we talk about this in our membership a lot with my clients. This is not a don't know problem. This is an I haven't decided problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There is no knowing. There is no. I'm confused. I'm not sure which it should be. This is a, I haven't decided what this framework looks like yet. yeah, and there's lots of reasons for that, right? It feel, especially at the end of a PhD, it feels like a really big deal to like put the capital letters on your theoretical framework and say, yep, this is, this is the framework I'm putting out into the world. I'm hanging my hat on that. It feels like a massive deal. So I don't wanna like undermine that that feels scary. But this isn't that. You don't know. You're just avoiding the emotions that might come with picking one of the versions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that extends out to like deciding what points I want to make within the rest of my discussion. 'Cause it's like I, yeah, I don't wanna make a decision about it rather than, it is not like I've got not got any ideas. I've got 20,000 words worth of ideas. Yes, but I just can't decide which ones I want to stick with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You are choosing not to decide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: not can't. You're perfectly capable of deciding. If I said, I've got a million pounds in a box for you over here, if you can email me a version of your theoretical framework in the next half an hour. Yeah, I reckon you'd pick. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Oh yeah </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: you are more than capable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: I absolutely would. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You are more than capable of picking. You just haven't chosen that you are going to yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Mm yeah. I think that is very true </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and now with small things, it's easy to go. Just pick. It's fine. It doesn't matter. You can make either work. It's fine. With something like this though, where you know you wanna have your best shot at this, what I would really encourage you to do is go, okay. I haven't made a decision about this yet. What process do I want to go through in order to decide? So it's like if you were buying a car, okay, that can be really overwhelming, right? There's so many options. It's a stressful decision, it's a lot of money, blah, blah, blah. You say, okay, my process is. I'm gonna go to these three garages. I'm gonna narrow it down to price range this, features that, whatever else, color, who knows? Um, and then I'll narrow it down to four cars. And on the basis of that, I'm gonna do this. And my priority, when push comes to shove is gonna be price, say. Okay. That's not necessarily a right way of doing it. Everyone would have a different version of that, but that's what I want you to think about for your framework, and it's something you can discuss with your supervisor is what options have I got? Like realistically, how many different ways could this framework look?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I have no idea whether there's like 40 ways this could look or whether actually you are picking between two or three nuanced versions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What are my options and what process do I need to go through in order to pick? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because then you decide, okay, and then I pick, and then I look after the emotions I've got about that decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: because you will have emotions. You will have these, or what if I pick the wrong thing, or I really like that bit, that was really good. Or whatever, you will. But the truth is there's a whole load of emotions as you've learned around not making decisions too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And they feel rubbish. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. You don't get anything done either. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This can sound like a strange question. Are you going to hand in your thesis? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah? A hundred percent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you are gonna make this decision at some point?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah, I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because you are going to hand it in, and even if you know one option is that you only vaguely make a decision and so you hand in something vague and that is your decision. Or you are gonna pick one version of this a bit more concretely, and that's what hand in Yeah. You are gonna choose this, so you get to pick when you're gonna choose this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. It is what's that process, isn't it? To go through, to pick stuff? And I've had to pick lots of things along the way. So I obviously have ways of doing that. I'm trying to think what my ways of doing that have been because I, yeah, I must have done that. I think what I did right at the very beginning, I had to like pick between, basically my, like my initial theories and ideas that I had about why things work, and I had like probably about a hundred different ones and I had the same thing there of like, how do I narrow that down to being just like, I don't know, less than 10 and I remember going through a process of printing everything off. Cutting them all up and sitting on the floor at my mom and dad's house when I was looking after the cat, and just like organizing them into like different piles and then deciding what I thought about them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: And I don't know how I would do something similar here. And I don't really know how I then decided between the piles, but there must have been some way of doing that. But I'm wondering if I could do a similar sort of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Whether there's some mechanical way of actually, you know, almost drawing. I've got this version of a framework. I've got that version, I've got that version and drawing as many versions as you've got. Yeah, because it's a bit like, you know when you're clearing out your wardrobe or something, right? You are like, oh, but I do wear that sometimes I do quite like it, so yeah, I'll keep it or whatever. But then when you go to your wardrobe to put something on, I bet there are things that with all the gray sweatshirts, I usually pick this one or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: you get to do that. Even with theoretical frameworks and things, it's like between those two, this one just makes more sense to me because X, Y, Z. Okay, cool. Well what about this one up against that one? Well, actually Yeah, I kind of like that one a bit more, and then you think, are there ways I can combine what I like of both of those into some sort of other version, but so, so to holding each, you know, two, rather than being like, how do I pick out of these 10 versions? Picking two? Which make more sense outta these two. That one can go over there. That's the charity shop pile for now, right? Compare this to another one. Which would I pick out of those? Pick two other ones, which, right, and we bring it down to three or four, and then from there we're like, right. What characterizes that one? What characterizes that one? Yeah, and there isn't a right way of picking. You can pick which one fits my data the best, which one fits my philosophical beliefs the best, and which any of those are perfectly legitimate. You just have to be able to explain it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I've been trying to, like, I've not been comparing stuff. I've just been thinking about them in silo. So then it's like, well, they've all got some kind of merit, otherwise I wouldn't have done them in the first place. But yeah, that might actually be really helpful to compare them to each other and then decide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: And I wonder if that is what I did right back at the beginning when I had my initial ones, is like I looked through them and compared them and thought about which ones fit the best. Rather than just staring at the same ones and going, well, yes, that's true. And then looking at another one going, yeah, that's probably true as well. So yeah, that comparing them might actually be really helpful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So do you feel like you've got some next steps that you can take to kind of tackle this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely need to firm up my ideas about the theory and the framework before I try and like actually put the, because essentially my discussion is discussing the ideas within that. So it's, if my ideas about that, they're all over the place. And of course the ideas on my document are all over the place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I wouldn't do any more discussion work until you've fixed on a framework. Because even the limitations, and some of the limitations will be generic because they'll be about the methods that you used and things, but any limitations to do with the interpretation and stuff is gonna depend which framework you're talking about. Future directions will depend which version you're talking about. So, and it sounds as though you've already got a load of text that you can draw on when you're ready to start writing. But yeah, getting that bit really pinned down and knowing that that's a decision. It's not a solution. It's a decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. I think that'll really help to then be able to actually write something. Um, for sure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. You're not in the dark. No. You're not flailing around. You've made complex decisions before. You're gonna make a decision about this one 'cause you are handing it in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. And when I do hand it in, it doesn't have to be, this is perfect and my ideas can't change about it ever 'cause that's the point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: A hundred percent. That's your postdoc work or somebody else's PhD or whatever it might be. Yeah, yeah. Research is the end of one story and the beginning of the next, always. If no one ever did any work to follow up your research, that's pretty boring. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yes. It's a waste of time, isn't it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's the key. We don't, that's the thing is often, especially as PhD students, we want our thesis to be like the final word on a topic like ta-da. Actually, that's the most depressing thing in the world. No one wants to be the final word in a topic. We want to inspire a whole load more people to be like, oh my goodness, that's so interesting. What a fascinating framework. We could use that in this context. I wonder whether that would work just as well in this context or using this measure instead of that measure or whatever. That's why we want people to take it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Becci: Yeah. That's what I want, is I want it to be, yeah, used in the future, not just sat there looking nice. There's no point in that, is there?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Exactly. Amazing. Well thank you so much for agreeing to come on, Becci. I know this is something that lots of the listeners will be struggling with too, or will be even anticipating struggling with if they're not at that stage. So thank you for being so open and honest. And thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I mentioned there'd be a sneaky update at the end of the episode, and that's because a few weeks after I recorded this episode with Becci, I got an email from her just updating me. She said, I'm just getting in touch with a quick update. I've now finished my discussion chapter and sent it to my supervisors for comments. Yippee! I know it is far from perfect and I'm okay with that. I'm just looking forward to hearing what my team think. The coaching really helped me to understand. What was in my way and how I could think about it all a bit differently. So thank you. I've also been shortlisted for PhD Student of the year and got a job since we last spoke, so it is celebrations all round at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is obviously a gorgeous message to receive and it shows how much, just a little bit of coaching, a little bit of thought work can really help you take huge steps forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, massive congratulations, Becci. And hope to see lots of you who are inspired by this on the wait list for the membership soon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 14 Jul 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-45-how-to-write-your-discussion-when-you-dont-know-how-special-coaching-episode-with-becci thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-44-understanding-how-power-affects-student-supervisor-relationships <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today we’re thinking about the relationships we have with our supervisors/advisors. These are one of the most complex and important elements of your PhD experience yet we rarely consider the nature of the relationships. In this episode, we think about how power is distributed in these relationships and how this affects how we each behave. This episode is relevant for PhD students AND supervisors, even if you think you have a great relationship! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> You might also find these episodes on managing your supervisory relationships useful.  </div> <div> <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12225337-18-how-to-have-a-great-relationship-with-your-supervisor" target="_blank"> How to have a great relationship with your supervisor </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/12278385-19-what-to-do-and-think-if-you-have-a-toxic-relationship-with-your-supervisor" target="_blank"> What to do if you have a toxic relationship with your supervisor </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex professor and certified life coach. And if you were listening last week, you will have heard me, slightly before I intended to announce some important stuff about my membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I thought this week what I would do before we get into the main topic, which I'll tell you about in a sec, there's a whole load of new people now listening. I wanted to remind you all about what I'm talking about when I mean the membership. So I provide a whole bunch of stuff completely for free for all of you for the podcast and one workshop a month that you can all attend with no expectations, no strings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's there for the PhD in academic community completely free, so that if you can never afford to buy anything from me, you will always get that input and support. But if you want more intensive support and you're in a position to spend a little bit of money on that, then I have my membership program. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is for PhD students, now masters. I do have some master's students that come along in, you have very similar issues, postdocs. That's fine. I draw the line, if you are an academic who's supervising other PhD students and things like that, then it's not for you. But if you are essentially an early career researcher, it is absolutely for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we run on a quarterly basis. Now, I'm not gonna give you the full rundown. You can look it up on my website, the PhD life coach.com, but we run on a quarterly basis. It's a three month membership, you get access to group coaching, you get access to like mini teachings. You get access to a whole bunch of self-paced materials. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get community, the community organized co-working sessions. I organize a few. It's a wonderful, wonderful place. You are gonna hear more about it over the next few weeks because my next quarter starts at the beginning of August, which means it is going to go on sale at the end of July. So this is going out at the beginning of July. We are gonna open at the end of July. The waiting list is already open. The waiting list has no obligation, but if you're on the waiting list, it makes sure you get sent all the information and it makes sure that you get any of the freebies that I'm gonna give away over the next few weeks. So make sure you sign up on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The bit that I announced earlier last week than I was intending to announce, but there we are. I was excited, was the theme of the quarter. So every quarter we cover stuff to do with the PhD experience. We have open coaching sessions where you can bring anything you're struggling with at the moment, but each quarter also has a distinct flavor to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So quarter one, we looked at building your time and task management systems. Quarter two, we've worked on procrastination focus and motivation. And quarter three, we are gonna be working on academic relationships. How to improve things with your supervisor, how to build the communities that you need, how to network, and kind of get to know people in your discipline. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so we are really getting into the interpersonal this time. Now, if you are listening and going, oh my goodness, the other stuff sounds really good though. I kind of need that too. Even better because when you join in quarter three, you get access to all the materials from quarter one and two, and we can obviously still coach on that stuff too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So make sure you check it out. I'm not gonna be one of those coaches that hides the prices. It costs 149 pounds per quarter, so it's about 50 a month. Okay, that's Great British pounds. Translate it out. It, it does it internationally. So take, translate it out to whatever works for you. If you have questions, make sure you're on my newsletter so that you can ask them. But I wanted to make sure that all of you were up to speed. You'll get loads more details over the next few weeks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The topic of today's call, though, is inspired by that theme and actually comes from some supervisor training that I did a while ago. So I designed a bespoke supervisor training, and one of the things that I was really keen to think about was the nature of power in supervisory relationships and the implications that has for the ways we behave. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's what we're gonna think about today. We're gonna think about where does the power sit in a supervisory relationship? In what ways does the supervisor have power? In what ways does the student have power? And from there, think about how that affects how we work with each other, what we will say, what we won't say, what we believe about the other person and we'll help you draw some lessons there to help you improve that relationship. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's get into it. I think the PhD supervisor student relationship is one of the weirdest relationships that exists. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually had a really good relationship with my supervisor. I had really good super relationship with my students, although they differed from each other quite dramatically. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it's still a very weird relationship because it's sort of hierarchical, right? Your supervisor is more senior to you. Uh, they are supporting you, helping you to learn and develop and build your career and all that good stuff. But on the other hand, they're not your direct boss. They're not intended to tell you exactly what you must do because there's this whole thing of independence and coming up with your own research and all of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you've got this weird thing where the supervisor is senior, but you are expected to take autonomy and make the final decisions about the content. But sometimes your PhD might be attached to an existing project, particularly in the sciences and engineering and things, if it's attached to a grant. When a lot of the content will have been fixed, and other times you've got complete control over it. So you imagine the other extreme might be like a self-funded arts PhD, for example, where you've picked the topic and just found someone who can support you. So that's a very strange balance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You've then got the balance that because PhD students come from all walks of life and all stages of life sometimes. The two are the same age as each other. Sometimes there's an age difference, a dramatic age difference in both directions, right? You could have a relatively new academic, supervising somebody who's come back to do the PhD in their retirement years. You could have a professor who's right towards the end of their career supervising someone that came straight out of their masters. Or you can have people supervising each other who are the same age as each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's then also very blurry lines as to how collegiate collaborative slash friendly you would be with your supervisor. Some people maintain a very kind of, I don't wanna say distant, but like formal relationships. Some people don't see each other that much. Some people only see each other in those supervisory official meetings. Others have a much more collaborative experience all the way through to almost acting like friends or maybe even acting like friends, you know, going to the pub together, going, you know, traveling to conferences together, all those sorts of things. And so that can make it a bit weird and blurry too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Across the podcast for the next few months, and within the membership specifically, we are gonna dive into all of that a lot more and how these different characteristics can really make a difference in that supervisory relationship and how to manage it. But the bit I want to think about today is power. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are thinking here in terms of where does one person hold influence over the other? So let's think first about the supervisor. In what ways do supervisors have power over their students? And I know people listening, you will either be PhD students or supervisors. Sometimes you might even be both supervising undergraduates while also doing your PhD. But put yourself in that position and think what power does the supervisor have over the students? And the answer is generally quite a lot. The supervisor might have power over the physical resources that the student has access to, whether that's laboratory space or archives or money for travel, or any of those sorts of things. You may have access to all of those and be able to control the extent to which the student is able to get to them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are likely to have access to what I'm calling community resources here, so access to other experts, access to opportunities, whether that's publishing or reviewing or grant applications or any of those sorts of things. You also have some softer power, so students often perceive that their supervisor's opinion on their work is like king, is the most important thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If their supervisor thinks they've made enough progress, then they've made enough progress. And if their supervisor doesn't think they've made enough progress, then they haven't. And so supervisors have probably more power than they sometimes realize over the extent to which the student thinks they're making good progress, whether they are a good student or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, students often get their sense of whether their work is of high quality or not from what their supervisor says about it. Now in the membership, we work a lot on learning to evaluate your own work and getting your own kind of sense of reassurance from yourself so you're not so dependent on that external validation, but in reality, a lot of students are dependent on the supervisor reassuring them that what they have done is good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The extent to which the supervisor has power over what is done varies massively, depending on the discipline, the stage of career of the supervisor, and kind of their own personal perspectives. People who have a more kind of functional approach to supervision where the job is to get the student through a project may actually take quite a lot of power over saying, no, no, you should do this study, and then this study, and then this study. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yeah, the nuances are up to the student and the way it's written up, it's up to the student, but the actual direction of the project may well be quite dictated by the supervisor all the way through to others of you who'll be sitting this now. I have no influence over that at all. It's entirely up to them. So that's one that can vary a bit, but it's a place where supervisors can have lots of power in certain situations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Supervisors also potentially have power over their student's future. And I say potentially because I think sometimes students think their supervisors have more power than they actually do. But there is certainly the perception that supervisors have a lot of power over what they're gonna write in your reference in the future, who they'll introduce you to, what they'll kind of push you forwards into. That if your supervisor likes you and if your supervisor thinks you are worthy of opportunities, they potentially have power to put you in places, introduce you to people, give you recommendations that will give you more opportunities in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then finally, the supervisor also has power over all the kind of implicit knowledge that academics tend to know or figure out or assume that often PhD students, particularly PhD students who come from backgrounds where their families and their friends haven't done PhDs before, where they don't necessarily know kind of what's acceptable, what's the norm, what's the way of doing things around here, all that stuff. And supervisors have a lot of power. Again, often not recognized by the supervisor, but the supervisors have a lot of power as to how much of that stuff they actually stop and think about explaining to the student or checking at least that they understand. Can you think of anything that I've forgotten? Do let me know. Those are the kind of areas that I can see where supervisors have considerable power over their students, and so what implications does that have? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, I see the implications that it has with my members all the time, so students who are scared to contact their supervisors at an early stage because they're worried that the supervisor will think that the work's not good enough, and that they'll therefore tell them that they're not good enough and so they won't contact them with early drafts, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They won't risk making mistakes because if they make a mistake and the supervisor sees that it may risk the supervisor's perception of them, which may then shut down future opportunities. May then affect the personal sense of quality of the work. That if the supervisor doesn't think I'm good enough, then I definitely can't think I'm good enough. So it really impacts communication and the ways that people interact with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That perceived power can also really influence what a student says they're willing to do. So often a supervisor will assume that if a student. Agrees to a particular project or agrees to working particular hours or agrees to any of these decisions, then they're agreeing because they agree, right? Otherwise, why would they agree? Where actually often students are agreeing simply to manage that relationship. So a supervisor asks them to help out on another project in the lab. The student says, yes, the supervisor assumes that's 'cause they're happy with it. Whereas in reality, the student didn't feel they had the power to say no to that. They were worried about managing their supervisor's emotions and so they didn't feel that it was actually a free question that they had to say. Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for those of you who are out there going, you know, oh no, but I'm a really nice supervisor. I always tell people that it's okay. They don't have to do it if they don't want to. They don't believe you often. I know I'm making sweepy statements here. There's nuance, but please remember that even if you are the Lovingest Squishiest gorgeous supervisor in the world, you still have power over your students. Your students still perceive the power that you have over them. And for all the time that you say it's okay, you can always be honest with me. They might believe you and they might try that. And if you then respond in the ways you intend and you have good interactions, then that might carry on. But the students still perceives that power. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I want you to be particularly careful with this, where your supervisees, where students are professionals, you know, they're part-time PhD students. They're professionals in another field where they're the same age as you or older as the supervisor, it's really easy to forget that there is even a power differential there. 'Cause as far as it feels, often you're talking to a peer. Those students often perceive the power differential even more markedly than junior students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reason for that is that whilst these part-time students are experts in their professional field, a lot of the time, that often makes them feel particularly novice as academics. Whereas our full-time students, they may feel novice as a student, but that's kind of their norm. That's their reality. The comparison of how confident and how knowledgeable and professional they feel in one context for part-time students really emphasizes how novice and how junior they are in the academic field. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are a part-time student listening to this, I know I have lots of you, so, hi. Um, I want you to know what you think of that. Is that something you recognize in yourself? I want you to really reflect on it. It's something I have seen a lot in the people that I coach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These things also get even more blurred if you have quite a collaborative relationship, you have quite a friendly relationship, perhaps even a social relationship. Again, it can lead to this situation where the supervisor thinks there's not too much hierarchy there. The supervisor thinks it's quite an equitable partnership when in reality, often the PhD students don't perceive it that way. So thinking about how it affects how you interact with each other, how it affects what the student is willing to tell you, and how it encourages the student to sometimes say things that they don't mean, that they consider to be the right answer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are the student, think about how it affects you. How do you behave differently because of the power that you know your supervisor has over you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this episode is mostly about awareness. We are not gonna leap into tons and tons of solutions to this. That's something that we'll talk about in the membership in a lot more detail, but even the awareness on both sides can help even with no other tactics in place. Because once we're aware of this power differential and we're aware of how it's potentially affecting how each of us are behaving, then we can decide whether we are intentionally choosing that. We can ask ourselves question like, is it true they have power over this? Is it true that me saying these things may involve a withdrawal of influence or withdrawal of resources or withdrawal of approval, or whatever it might be. So we get to query whether the assumptions we are making are true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if they are true, we also then get to decide what do we want to do with that information? How do we want to behave? And sometimes it may be that you decide, you know what? Recognizing the power differential, it's accurate. It is. There is a real threat there that I might lose access to some of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you know what? The way I'm behaving is exactly right. Happy days. That's fine. Let's keep going in that direction. But for a lot of you, you will be avoiding academic honesty in the sense of saying what you mean, admitting when you don't know things and things like that as an attempt to kind of manage the power in that relationship, manage the extent to which the supervisor thinks you're good, and I want you to ask yourself whether that's really helping or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I get why you're doing it. The power makes it really, really hard. I want you to consider, in what ways would being honest about your perceptions of the research, being honest about what you don't understand, being honest about your opinions about what you wanna do next might actually improve the relationship rather than take away from it. So be aware of how power manifests here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now we have to remember that there is power going the other direction too. And I think this is something that students are often very not aware of and supervisors are very aware of. And it can impact how all of us engage with each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So ways that students have power over supervisors are things like if the supervisor is invested in your data, for example. So again, I think this is more common in the sciences and engineering where there's more team approach often, um, and where you're more likely to be working on part of a bigger trial. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, but often the supervisor needs the data that you are collecting because they will use it for a future grant application. Okay. Often the supervisor needs the data you're collecting because they need a certain number of publications for whatever assessment they've got coming up. And so they could really do with a PhD student coming through with publications to help them on those missions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not quite the same in arts and humanities where there's more of a tendency towards single author monographs, single author papers. But it's certainly the case across the more sort of science end of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whatever discipline you're in, the supervisor may well be invested in you completing successfully. Often things like promotions and so on are contingent on having PhD students finished. Students not finishing can sometimes be seen as going against the supervisor's record. Now that varies a bit, the extent to which that's true, but there can be a, certainly a perception of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes supervisors get really invested in their students continuing in academia. I have known people who are really, really invested in the future careers of their students. And that sounds lovely and supportive until such as a point that you realize that if you don't take the path that they think you should take, that they withdraw support. And I've seen that happen in a variety of different settings. And so sometimes supervisors are really invested in you progressing in academia that might be so that you stay on in their laboratory so that you can continue to contribute to their work. I see that a lot supervisors who encourage their students to stay because you've just trained them up, right? And they're really useful and your lab runs better because they're there and then they encourage them to stay. Sometimes it can be because supervisors take really seriously the notion of sort of being grandparents and great-grandparents out into the academic world. So your student goes off to some prestigious laboratory and then they have PhD students. And then those PhD students go to a prestigious laboratory and do the same again. And like your influence and your network are out there in the field. There's a lot of supervisors that get a real kick outta that. And sounds great, but if you then don't fit their expectations, that can have a negative impact on both sides. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's think a bit about how that affects how the two of you interact with each other. That the student's got this power, that the supervisor really needs you to do this work and really needs you to complete often. And at the same time, they can't do it for you. At the same time they feel like you have to earn your PhD, but there is some pressure on them as a supervisor to ensure that you do. How does that influence the relationship? One of the ways I've seen is that some supervisors can get a bit controlling. Some supervisors as they start to lose faith or as they start to feel stressed for their own reasons, they start to take more control. They start to get a bit more dictatorial about exactly what needs to happen and things. And sometimes that can be useful, but sometimes that can make the student feel like they're losing control. Right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes it comes across in a more nuanced way that the supervisor is just a bit stressed about it all that the supervisor's just getting a bit time urgent, is getting a bit pressuring, those sorts of things. So they're not like making the decisions or anything, but they're sort of really saying, you know, you've gotta get on with this client, you've gotta get on with this. And the trouble is that certainly in my experience, the problem with the vast majority of PhD students is not that they don't register that time's getting short and that they've got a lot to do, it's that they really, really register that time is short and that they've got a lot to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that is in many ways paralyzing them because of the emotions they're sort coming up in that. So one of the ways that the power that students have gets sort of visualized in a relationship is the supervisor getting really stressed about the things they're outta control of and that negatively affecting the supervisor and their experience, but it also then having this knock on effect and influencing the students too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's when it then becomes reciprocal, right? Because the supervisor starts getting stressed because of the things that they're outta control of, that have influence of over them. So the power the student has, but then because the supervisor gets stressed and the supervisor is the one that's higher in the hierarchy, that has the more power, has the influence over all the things that we've discussed. That stress then gets passed back down to the student, and it can lead to a really high pressure environment where communication is really challenging and it is all coming from these perceptions of power, these perceptions of who holds which power, and then these sort of misguided again, I guess, attempts to manage that power. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As I say, not loads and loads of solutions for you today, but I want you to think about this in relation to your specific supervisory relationships, whichever side of it you are on, and in the newsletter that you can all sign up to get there'll be a couple of reflective questions as usual that will help you work through. Where you think power is sitting at the moment in your relationship and what impact that has? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Awareness with all the things we talk about is the absolute first step towards understanding, interpretation and strategic change. So have a think. Let me know. You can always reply to my newsletters and tell me what you've been thinking. Ask any questions As you'll have heard last week, I do answer listener questions on the podcast from time to time. So get those sent on in. Have a ponder. Where's the power in all your relationships and what impact is it having at the moment? Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 07 Jul 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-44-understanding-how-power-affects-student-supervisor-relationships thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-43-answering-your-questions-balancing-different-commitments-academic-role-models-and-surviving-publish-or-perish-culture <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today I’m answering listener questions! We hear from people who are feeling pulled in different directions for a variety of reasons, a student who feels she lacks academic role models, and another feeling pressured by a publish or perish culture. I give some words of advice and thoughts to consider to help navigate these challenges. Remember – if you have questions you want answered, join my newsletter and send them over and I’ll answer them in a future episode!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> You can hear me answer other listener questions <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15868442-3-05-client-q-a-getting-it-done-when-you-don-t-feel-like-it" target="_blank"> here </a> and <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16003736-3-09-client-q-a-post-deadline-slumps-uncommunicative-supervisors-and-judging-your-own-work" target="_blank"> here </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> As you know, I've covered about a hundred million topics on the PhD Life Cage podcast. Possibly an exaggeration, but I've covered a lot. And often when you are experiencing particular challenges, you are gonna be able to look back at the podcast and find exactly the episode you need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, if you sign up for my newsletter, I'll send you a searchable archive where you can find out exactly what I have covered and find the perfect one for you. But sometimes I will concede, there are times where you have questions that I haven't answered yet, and people on my newsletter also have the opportunity then to tell me that, to email me, say, Vikki, I haven't seen you answer this yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What advice would you give me in this situation? And then I will answer the questions on the podcast. And that is what today's episode is. I've had three listeners send me questions that I think are applicable to so many people, and which I have so much to say about, and we're gonna answer those questions today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So settle in, get ready for three completely different topics, and make sure you're on the newsletter so that you can ask me your questions too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex- professor and certified life coach, and I wanna try and help you make your PhD and academic experience a whole lot calmer and more fun than it feels at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there is no better way to do that than to answer three. Specific questions from some of you lovely listeners. So we are gonna be thinking about task switching, moving between the different bits of your PhD that you need to do. We are gonna be thinking about role models and what happens if you don't have ones around you that you actually wanna emulate and we're gonna be thinking about the publish or parish culture that exists in so many of our academic communities, how we can survive and even thrive within that sort of pressure. So let's get going. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first question came from Marie and she says, I'm realizing I'm at the point of my PhD where I'm struggling with context switching. I know that doing a PhD means keeping multiple things going all at the same time. As there's more to hold, argument and material, the switch between tasks or large pieces of work feels more difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For context, I'm wrapping up my third chapter, thinking through Ideas, questions, data gathering for my fourth, and also writing grant applications to secure additional funds to get me through until submission. I'm trying to factor in rest days or transition periods where I can create intentional pauses, but it doesn't seem to be very effective. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think this is a great question and one that a lot of people will struggle with, particularly towards the end of a PhD, where you are working often on multiple projects at once and thinking about what happens afterwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So where do we start? I would always start from recognizing that the thing you are finding difficult is quite a complex ask of yourself. Often at these stages, what we do is we go, I'm finding this difficult, but I have to do it, so I just need to get on with it. And that's the kind of feedback that we give ourselves, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sort of acknowledging that it's hard to switch, but not seeing any way around that. And so being almost dismissive of those problems going, oh, well, I've just got to do it. I've just gotta suck it up. Other people seem to be able to. And the problem is as usual, that's not that compassionate. And also it takes away all of our problem solving. It takes away that creativity that will enable us to go, okay, what could we do about this? So the first thing to say here is that you are right when you are doing hard cognitive work in the form of writing a discussion for one chapter to then switch over and write a grant application for something else, or to switch over and do your teaching or whatever constraints you've got, that's a difficult thing to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transitions can be tough for the best of times and transitions between two different cognitively demanding tasks is hard. And so if we start from the place of it's difficult, other people find it difficult too. How can we then think, right, how can I make this easier? Now, I do have a whole episode about why transitions can be difficult, so do go check that one out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The three things that I really wanna emphasize here are how can we reduce the need for transitions? How can we make transitions feel easier? And how can we beat ourselves up less for finding it difficult? And to be honest, you can apply those three things to most challenges that you have. How can I do it less often? How can I make it easier? How can I make it less painful, essentially? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how do you make it happen less often if we recognize that we struggle to transition between two different tasks that are sort of cognitively challenging, then when we are doing our weekly planning, especially if you use role-based time blocking, I want you to look at how you can minimize those transitions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, it's not always possible, but often we can decide that I'm going to do this cognitively challenging task on these days, and I'm gonna do this other cognitively challenging task on these other days. And so I'm reducing the amount of times that I'm switching backwards and forwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, you may say that's not possible. 'cause I have meetings, I have commitments on particular days. That means that's not always possible and I accept it is not always possible. But you can, for example, transition. If you decide to focus on one major cognitive task on a Tuesday, say you can then transition into other tasks that need doing, but that aren't as cognitively demanding. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then on the Wednesday you work on the other big cognitive task and then transition into things that aren't as cognitively demanding. So we're reducing our need to actually come outta one thing that's difficult and move straight into something else that's difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to look for any opportunity where you can cluster things like that. Often the problem comes from us telling ourselves that we need to be working on all things simultaneously because all things are important, but often working on all things simultaneously is not the most efficient way of doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really test your assumptions there. Really ask yourself, actually, am I gonna move all of these things this week? Or could I say that this week is discussion week? Plus administrative bits and bobs, and next week is grant application, week plus bits and bobs. Okay, so we're gonna reduce the number of changes we need to make. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now let's think about how we can make some of those transitions easier when we do have to make them. The first way is allowing yourself a bit of time for that transition, and we can try and mark that in an intentional way. So maybe you do have to switch from one cognitively demanding thing from another one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's not expect ourselves to close one document, open the next document and dive straight in. What can you do in between that kind of marks that transition process? Perhaps it's as simple as going, getting a glass of water, getting a cup of tea, whatever it is, coming back to your desk, sitting for a moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you introduce something that's a little bit more of a ritual where you light a particular candle, if that's your vibe, or you play a particular music as almost like the advert break between two different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you are thinking about what that in-between task is I want you to try and think of something that doesn't use your brain. Now I'm talking to myself here as well. 'Cause this is one of my habits that I don't particularly love. I'm not consciously working on at the moment, but I know it's something I do need to work on. Which is these days, there's a real tendency when we are transitioning from one task to another to go on our phones one way or another, whether you are watching tv, whether you're scrolling, whatever it is, there's a real tendency to stop doing one thing, shove your brain full of a load of other things, and then expect yourself to go into something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that actually really cognitively demanding. It might feel as though you're kind of distracting yourself, turning your brain off, whatever. But actually we are just firing more information into our brains. So when you are thinking about what you are gonna do in that break, I want you to think about what is actually good for your clear mind, for your healthy body. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can you introduce something that is calming, fun, energizing. There's a real difference to spending that time having a potter around your garden or wandering off to your kitchen while letting your brain just do its little thing than turning your phones on and going off again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One way of realizing the opinions you have of your own practice is thinking, what would I think if kids were doing this? So as an example, I said, I have a tendency that in between tasks I will scroll on my phone and if the school that my step kids went to policy was that when you finish one lesson, they could scroll on their phones until the next lesson starts. I would not be a happy step mommy. That would not be a school that I would be sending my kids to, but it's what I do to myself. And so asking yourself actually what would I expect kids to do here? I'd expect 'em to get a drink, go to the toilet, go outside, chill out a bit, blow off some steam, whatever it might be, and come back feeling refreshed. How can we instigate that into our lives too? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you try and work in different places on different projects. So that sort of being in the cafe signifies that you're working on the grant application. Being at home, in your office, being at home, on your kitchen table signifies something, a different project. Okay? So think about using your environment to demarcate them out like that a little bit more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way, and I can't remember whether I've done an episode about this before or not, but I've definitely talked about it, is parking on the downhill. So this is make it as easy for yourself to transition back into whatever task it is as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this means finishing a task with a clear instructions as to where you're up to and what you need to do next. So almost thinking about future you when you finish one task so that when you pick it back up, you've got almost like shift handover notes. Okay, so if you imagine somebody else was taking over this task, what information would you need to give them? And what we are doing there is we are reducing the cognitive load of starting the new thing by making it super clear where we're gonna start. I said there were three things. Third one, as usual is don't beat yourself up if you're finding it difficult. If you find yourself in a position where you have to transition more than you'd like, where you've tried to make it easier and you're still finding it difficult, that's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's fine. You're a human being. We can't just switch. Even my computer's not that good at switching straight outta one program into another program all the time. It's okay. We're at capacity. It's all good. Let's just start the next one a little bit slowly. It's all good. Let's have some compassion for ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie, let me know whether that was helpful for everybody else. Let me know how, what you think too and let's move on to the second question. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second question is anonymous. I know their name, but they've asked me not to share it for reasons that I think will become clear when I'm reading out what they said they said. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What do you think about the importance of role models for becoming your own version of an independent researcher, which aligns with how you want to be and how this relates? To motivation during your PhD? I recently realized I was missing a key role model of what a good researcher is to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They then went into some details where they shared that they'd been to another university, experienced working with somebody who was much more aligned with their priorities and are now finding it difficult to go back to their supervisor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They share that they've lost a bit of confidence in their supervisor and they've definitely realized that they don't want to emulate their supervisor in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think this is a great, great question and I think often we assume that we will end up with a supervisor that we aspire to be like, and I think supervisors often assume that students will aspire to be like them, and it's often not the case. There are many, many different ways of being an academic. There are many different ways of organizing your career and of prioritizing and looking after yourself during that time. And sometimes we will find that the supervisors that we end up working for actually end up not to be the role models that we thought they were gonna be and not to have lives that we want to have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So same as with Marie. First thing is don't beat yourself up about this. This is pretty common and certainly doesn't indicate any problem with you pursuing careers in academia or any sort of inherent weakness on either of your part. It is a mismatch in what your supervisor wants from academia and who they want to be in academia and who you want to be and what you want from academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do we do about it? I think the first thing is not to write off your supervisor. We can learn an awful lot from people who are doing academia in a way that we never want to do it. It can help us better understand our priorities. It can help us better understand what we definitely don't want, but there may also be things that we can learn from the way they're doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even if you don't want to be like your supervisor, you don't want their lives, they may still, they probably do have elements that you could use and apply in your own way. So really avoid that kind of black and white thinking of, oh, I've realized they're not a role model, therefore I've got nothing to learn from them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can look at it in a slightly more nuanced way and be like, okay. I don't want those bits and I don't appreciate those characteristics, but they are pretty good at getting grants or you know, raising their profile or whatever it might be. I wonder what I can learn. I wonder what I can adjust, twist shape to my own approach that would also be quite effective. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because when we completely write them off, we to lose that opportunity to learn and twist and adapt the skills that they have to apply in our own way. Now, one of the reasons that's difficult is often if your supervisor doesn't end up to be the role model that you want them to be, that can be super disappointing, right? Super frustrating. And so we've often got all these emotions around it, and often we either respond to that by saying, oh, well, I obviously don't like belong here, I can't do this. Or by like turning it all the way around and casting your supervisor into like super baddie role where we are like, we hate them and we won't have anything to do with them and we'll do the bare minimum and blah, blah, blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there is a place in between where we look after our own emotions. It's okay to be disappointed, it's okay to be frustrated. We get to look after those emotions. And at the same time, deciding how and to what extent we want to engage with and learn from our supervisors. What we then get to do is recognize that our supervisors are only one opportunity to get good role models in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there is a whole world of academics out there who are doing this in a whole variety of ways. And this is where networking is so important. And now any of you who have just gone, Ugh, networking, I get it. Don't worry. And. I wasn't gonna announce this today. This was not part of the plan, but I'm gonna, if that was your immediate gut reaction was like, oh, I know I should do that, but it's awful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hate it. Networking sounds so transactional. It sounds so gross. I'm so bad at it. You need to make sure you're definitely on my newsletter because Hot Off the press quarter three of the PhD Life Coach membership is going to focus on academic relationships, dah dah. It's gonna focus on improving your relationship with your supervisor, improving the community that you have around you, feeling part of a community. Extending your networking reach and doing it in a way that doesn't feel horrible and feels authentic and true to you instead. So if that's something you struggle with, make sure you are at least on my newsletter, if not on my wait list, because this is gonna be the quarter for you anyway. There wasn't gonna be an official announcement today, but turns out it was. So there you go. Surprise. I told my members this week, but I wasn't gonna say it on the podcast. There you go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So networking though is an opportunity to identify and spend time with people who may be doing academia differently. And this doesn't mean going and schmoozing round conferences in a kind of self-promotional way, but it means recognizing that there's a bunch of people in your departments, in your universities, in your discipline, but at other universities who are doing this differently and who you may well be able to be in contact with and to learn from. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So where do we start and how do you learn? I am a big fan of starting with your peers, so people who have different supervisors to you, whether that's within your immediate vicinity or further afield. Spending time talking to them about what their supervisors are like. Okay, how do they behave? What do they prioritize? Are they good role models? Snoop around with the other PhD students, getting to know them and getting to know more about their supervisors. Often if we've got good supervisors, we take it for granted, right? And it's not until other people are asking that you sometimes realize what you have actually got. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That can be a great way of identifying people who have got more of the sorts of qualities that you are looking to emulate and follow in your own life. And from there, once you identify people, you can kind of find out a little bit more about them. What is it? What do they do with their students that makes their students feel welcomed, feel, you know, to succeed whatever it is that you are, you are wanting from them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to sort of explore a little bit, get curious about it, and then at some point you also have the opportunity to reach out to these people. Now am I gonna say that any academic you reach out to is absolutely going to answer you? No. Academics are notoriously behind with their emails, through a combination of just generally being overworked, overwhelmed, and avoiding it just like the best of us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there are many ways that you can reach out to somebody. Attending departmental seminars and having a chat at the drinks afterwards. Approaching somebody at a conference, just asking them questions about their lives and how they got to where they are can be a really nice way of doing it. We are not trying to get anything out of them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not trying to ask them to be your supervisor or ask them to be your mentor or anything like that. We're trying to get to know people to learn more about them and about their priorities and their paths. And when we see it like that, we see it as a sort of exploratory process where we are interested in people and how they do academia. You'll often find that people are very, very interested in having those conversations. People like to reflect on their own careers. Generally speaking. They like people to be interested in what they believe and how they do things. So if you are feeling like your supervisor isn't the role model that you wish they were, let's go find the people that might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My third question came from Anique and she says, I had a question about the publish or perish pressure. I constantly feel this urgency at the back of my mind to do more things and to do them faster. My PhD is by publication, and I basically quantify my progress by how many papers I still have to publish, but it never feels like I'm doing it fast enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And she said, is there an existing episode to address this? And I had to think about it, and I think I touch on it a little bit, but I thought it deserved its own answer. And the first thing to say here, I feel like I start all of these by like validating the the comment, but the first thing to say here is you are right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Academic environments are weird hierarchical places where we try and quantify stuff in ways that may not be helpful to the pursuit of good research and certainly are not helpful to the pursuit of good mental health. So the fact that you feel like this isn't a sign that you don't deserve to be in academia, or that you're not strong enough, or more not resilient enough to be here, academia can just be a bit of a weird place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it is a conversation for another day as to whether it has been purposefully and intentionally created that way in order to exclude people or whether it has kind of evolved that way through competition for resources and a sort of inevitable response to more people wanting to do it than there are spaces that is a conversation for another day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or they send me your views if you want, but either way. Feeling like you're in a very pressured environment where there are certain criteria you need to hit is completely valid. And for some of you, the criteria might be lots of papers. People who are in arts and humanities, it might be the big monograph at the end of your thesis or whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So translate this out to different, whatever the kind of hardcore marker that you see in your field is . However, what you get to do is reassure yourself as usual, that's always one of them. It's normal. This is not a marker of you. Second thing to ask yourself, is it true that you should be moving faster? Because sometimes we are under this pressure and we are not where we want to be, but we shouldn't be there yet anyway. So if you are partway through your PhD and you know, the expectation is for you to produce X number of papers, how many should you have produced by now? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm putting inverted commas around should as usual. Sometimes we actually are on track, but we're sort of stressing that we are not, and often that's because we are anticipating feeling better once we hit that goal. Let me explain more what I mean. If we're in a situation where we are meant to be producing papers and we know that, and we are moving along that path, we are doing the things we need to do, but we haven't yet reached that point where we can say, I have enough papers, but we are not meant to have reached that point yet 'cause we haven't finished our PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to ask yourself, how am I expecting myself to feel once I have enough? Whatever that means. Papers at the end of my PhD. Am I expecting that that will make me confident. Am I expecting that that will make me feel calm? Am I expecting that? That will make me feel secure if you are looking to the achievement of those goals to give yourself emotions Then you are going to feel stressed for the rest of your academic career. I'm really sorry. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because those things are very unlikely to give you lasting emotions. We don't get lasting emotions from changing in circumstances, and this has been shown in loads of different research. It's been shown in research about academia, but it's also been research in things like lottery winners. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You think that winning the lottery is gonna make you happy forever, but in reality it makes you happy for a little while and then people usually go back to roughly their baseline level of happiness. Their environment may have changed, but their actual emotions stay remarkably consistent. Now what this means is we get to ask ourselves, firstly, if I expect that I will feel confident, calm, and secure, when I reach my target, how can I induce those emotions in myself now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can I induce those emotions in myself on the way? And you might said, well, I don't need to. I just need to get there. And then I will. But once you get there, I promise, other goals are gonna come up. Then you're gonna want your secure academic job, then you're gonna want your first grant, then you're gonna want your first PhD student to have finished. Then you're gonna want your first promotion, B blah, blah, blah, blah. And all the time you'll be telling yourself you'll feel better once you reach that next milestone. We need to identify what those emotions are gonna be that we think we're gonna get when we achieve that goal, when we've published enough and we need to think about how we can induce them now. And the way we induce them now is the thoughts we tell ourselves, is the beliefs that we instill in ourselves is the way that we speak to ourselves, okay? Publishing papers is not gonna make the pressure go away, I promise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing you can do is set your own markers of success. If you dislike the markers of success that are routinely used in the environment around you, yes, you absolutely need to jump through their hoops potentially in order to finish PhD, secure jobs, all those things, but you get to decide what your markers of success are and that can be a whole variety of things. That can be around enjoying your work. That can be around what time you finish on a Friday, that can be around doing meaningful work that's changing people's lives, you, that can be around doing work that other people think is interesting and that you can share more widely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to pick your own markers of success and focus on those. So you're in an environment that only in your mind respects, publishing as the marker of success. But you can pick other ones too, and we can focus on and celebrate our ability to hit those. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing is you also get to put your own boundaries around this too. You get to decide, okay, I'm in an environment that values this. I value these other things. I'm interested in that, but really these are the things I value. This is how hard I am willing to work. This is the hours I'm willing to put in to reach the things that I believe are success markers, jump through their hoops to whatever extent I can, and this is how much I'm willing to put in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If it takes more than that, I'm not willing to do it, and the consequences will be what the consequences are. You get to decide what those boundaries are because if you burn yourself out as a PhD student, hating the publish or parish culture, but forcing yourself to try and adhere to it. Your reward is going to be going into an academic environment where exactly the same is true, and then you get to do it again, and that's not fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this is not in any way saying therefore you're not cut out for a career in academia. No, a hundred percent no. What you get to do instead is you get to decide. I at the moment, would like a career in academia as long as I can try and focus on these things as well as jumping through your hoops, and I can do it within this amount of effort. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you get to succeed as far as you can. I have seen people succeed all the way up to professor with that mindset, with the, this is how much I'm willing to give. If it's enough, it's enough. If it's not, I'll do other things or I will choose to walk away, whatever that might be. But you get to decide those markers of success, decide those boundaries. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can feel really hard. It gets easier as you become more senior. It's really hard as a PhD student to put that to one side. I absolutely get that. And it's completely normal for you to feel pressured. But let's talk to ourselves in a way that already helps us feel more confident, already helps us feel calm, already helps us feel more secure. And then we work at the pace we're working to the within the boundaries that we set for ourselves, and we do the best we can. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you don't know how to do that, if you are struggling with how to even speak to yourself to induce those emotions, to take the pressure off, then do make sure you're on my newsletter. Over the next month, I am gonna be starting to tell people more about the membership 'cause we open at the end of July. I'll be telling you more about how I support clients and the transformations that I'm already seeing in the students that are going through that process. So if you're listening to this going, sounds nice, but dunno how I'd ever do that. Make sure you're listening so that you can hear more about the membership in due course. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you all so much for listening. I really hope that you found that useful. People on my newsletter, and if you're not on my newsletter, why not? People on my newsletter send me more questions, I'm gonna do another one of these in five, six weeks time. I'd love to be accumulating more questions for it, so drop 'em to me and I'll answer 'em for you. In the meantime, if you have other ones, you're not sure whether I've done a podcast on it before, make sure you check the PhD Life coach archive. Make sure that you search generically. So I've had some questions from people saying, oh, I don't think you've talked about how to do a lit review. I find it really overwhelming. If that's you, I want you to look for overwhelming. Rather than for lit review. I'll occasionally do episodes where I talk about a specific activity like writing or reading, but usually I will be talking about the kind of thoughts and feelings that underpin that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So search for too much to do, search for overwhelm, search for procrastinating, all those sorts of things, and you'll find a ton of episodes. Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 30 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-43-answering-your-questions-balancing-different-commitments-academic-role-models-and-surviving-publish-or-perish-culture thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-42-what-to-do-if-you-are-considering-leaving-your-phd-a-special-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Today you get to hear a real coaching session with a listener, Ruth, who is considering not finishing her PhD. We talk through the reasons and I take her through a process to help her make a decision that works for her. This is a great episode for you if you ever doubt your own abilities to finish your PhD or if you have any big decisions to make.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And for the first time in quite a while, this is going to be one of my coaching episodes where I get a real life listener to come and talk about something they're finding challenging at the moment. And so I'm super excited to be joined by Ruth today. Hi, Ruth. Thank you for coming on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Thank you for having me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No problem. So Ruth contacted me. I did a bit of a shout out. Those of you who aren't on my newsletter, you need to be. 'cause every now and again I do a shout out asking for volunteers and Ruth replied to that with a challenge that, to be honest, I hear more often than you might think. And so I thought it would be a really good fit for the podcast. And so that's why we're here today. So maybe we start Ruth with you telling people a little bit about who you are and what challenge you came to me with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. So, i've been doing my PhD for on and off for about 10 years. And I'm now at a point where I'm utterly terrified of it and I'm not quite sure if I wanna carry on or not. That is the problem I wrote to you with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, yes. And that's why I said it's a problem that unfortunately I hear too often. This, this challenge of, you know, it's not what I thought it was gonna be. I'm having these really big emotions about it and I dunno what to go from there. So let's start by just getting a bit of backstory. So you say you've been doing it 10 years on and off. Yeah. You don't have to go into lots and lots of detail, but just gimme a little bit of a backstory as to how we got where we are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Sure. So, I think I started actually in 2016, so it's not quite 10 years. I was working in the education sector at the time. I was in a full-time role. So I think the, you know, mistake number one was probably, you know, trying to work full-time in quite a stressful job with the PhD. My two children were quite young at that point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: That's how it got started. So the PhD's in education, so it sort of fitted in that sense. I took some leave of absences in that time and as I'm sure you can imagine over such a, quite a long period of time, I've have had some supervisory changes, which have all been fine in terms of the supervisors and their support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: But every time you have a supervisor change, it was almost like taking another step back, you know, this sort of another six months added, having to rebuild those relationships. And then I got to a point where I needed to leave the education sector. I was working in further education and it's quite a, a stressful and an intense sector to work in, as I'm sure lots of sectors are. So I took a bit of a break, started doing some other jobs, so that I could just be a bit home at the more, a bit more and theoretically give me a bit more time to work on my PhD. I did all right at that for a couple of years and then I basically did my data collection, which was interviews, got to the end of that, and that's when this struggle hit. I am running perilously close towards my end date. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So you've got all your data and you are part through your analysis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is anything written?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I've got a draft lit review that will need reviewing. Of course. I've got half an introduction. I've got the methodology chapter, and then I think that's it in terms of the structure itself. Yeah. I've got tons of other stuff that probably won't ever make it in, but I've got, you know, there's quite a body of work there, if that makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And then it would be a results, analysis chapter. A discussion, conclusion. A little mini conclusion. Yeah. And that would be the, the structure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: That would be it, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, cool. It's always just useful to get a kind of handle on exactly where we're at with things. Yeah. Now tell me more about what you are thinking about your PhD at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So it's a really, if I take this subject and the research question I've got, it's actually really important to me. It's a question that it has always been important to me, throughout my career in education but also, so what I've done is I've collected life histories um, and actually the whole process of, making those connections with the people that were willing to give me their time and their stories that's probably my biggest driver now to completing it because they've given me this, you know, gift, I suppose and I don't want to just abandon that, that feels really, I'm not sure the word is dishonest, but that feels, I don't know, there's a bit of integrity there that I have in myself that I would like to take that forward with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what's making that feel difficult at the moment? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I don't know whether it's because I've stepped out of education but also working independently in quite a remote place in the country, it's quite isolating. There's not much networking. I'm distant from my university, and I feel quite stupid sometimes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Like I've lost those sparks that you get from conversations from being around other people that are doing this sort of thing. So I feel very alone in it, and I think that means that I rely really, really heavily on good interactions within supervisory meetings. Yeah. And the minute my confidence gets knocked, then I'm like, oh, I'm just really stupid and my, I actually can't do this. I actually can't do it. I don't have the capacity to do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And how does that feel telling yourself that ? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Awful? It feels awful. It feels like I'm really heart wrenchingly sad, really sad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Let's drill into it a little bit. Okay. Okay. If you can sit with the sad at the moment. Yeah, yeah. What do you think you mean when you say you don't think you can do it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I wonder if I'm clever enough. I get hijacked by big things. So like, you know, this is, I'll be working on the data analysis and then suddenly I think, oh, but what if somebody asks me this, you know, in the Viva or whatever. And then I'll be like, oh, I don't know. And I haven't read enough and I'm not gonna have time to read enough and I'm gonna look really silly. And they're gonna say, oh, wow. What are you doing all of this time? And then I'll think, oh, I can't do it, then I can't do it. Um, so yeah, I, I get easily hijacked by things that, you know, are quite far down the line, I suppose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And I have a worry and anxiety about being told that I'm wrong, or I should have done it this, or I should have done it. And then I think, well, why am I doing it? Oh, no! I've created these scenarios in my head. I understand that. Um, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So why, and this might sound like a strange one, but go with me. Okay. Why does it feel like a problem to be told that you are wrong or that you could have done something differently? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: That is a good question. There's definitely something about imposter syndrome in there and that fear of being caught out. I remember that definitely when I was working in education,, I kept getting promoted and there was always that, oh no, they're gonna find me out this time. They're gonna find me out this time. And I think that, um, you know, when you've had a poor experience with the delivery of feedback, and then that makes you not want to get feedback. There is a bit of that as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And without going into the details of how it was delivered or anything like that, how did that feel for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay, so I've had a couple of experiences where that's happened and I think I cried for about a month after one of them. Um, and that was a verbal sort of feedback thing. There was another incident which was delivered via email and it was an interesting one because the feedback within the email was, um, awful. It was dreadful. It made me feel about this, this big. Um, but then when I read through the comments within the body of work, they weren't actually that bad. So it, I was like, I can't marry this up because had I received the document, I would've been able to take that very constructively and worked with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: But having it topped with a very, I guess, patronizing type email, really threw me. I don't need people saying, oh no, you're doing a really good job all the time. I'm not saying that I can't take, I can take constructive criticism. As well as a PhD student, I'm a writer and writers get rejection all the time. Right? So I can live with that and I can work with that, but in this case it really, really bothers me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Right. I want us to get a little bit more specific 'cause this something I see with my clients in the membership all the time is that we criticize ourselves for really big things. I am not clever enough to do a PhD. I'm not smart enough to be here. I can't do it. Whatever it is. Yeah. And one of the things I always encourage people to do, and I'd like to support you to do now, is to actually try and narrow that down a little bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Because a PhD is made up of a whole bunch of different activities, a whole bunch of different skills and stuff like that. And I think it's useful just to be a little bit more specific about what we're criticizing ourselves for. Okay. So tell me a bit more, which bits of this do you think you are not good enough at? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. I think the thing that I don't think I'm gonna be good at is around the discussion. So if I flip that question on its head a little bit, the thing that I have been good at and really enjoyed was the development of the research questions. Really getting down to what it is that I was doing and then finding the methodology that best fit that. And then doing that so that all was brilliant. I'm even okay with the data analysis. I like that and I can enjoy that, but the deeper I got into that, the more I started thinking, this is all great, but I'm very concerned now about how I write this up as a discussion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: That is a very different skill, isn't it? And that, that bit, that bit frightens me. I got frightened during the lit review in the sense that I was worried constantly that I was missing something and therefore continually trying to read more and make it perfect and perfect and perfect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And I think that that experience, I'm sort of pulling into the discussion in advance and thinking, I'm not going to be able to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. How does it feel getting a bit more specific about it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Better, better, better. Because it becomes less nebulous, doesn't it? . And if, I guess it's, you know, if you can pick bits off and just go, okay, actually maybe it's not the whole PhD, maybe it's just this bit of it. That's makes it a bit more tangible and something you can hold.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And let's get specific on the other part because, so at the moment we've narrowed it down that actually, you know, you had a bit of some struggles with your lit review. Mostly the kind of, sounds to me, reasonably normal kind of perfectionism that people have when they're writing that sort of thing for the first time. You loved formulating the question, you loved picking your design, you designed it, you carried it out. So there's a huge chunk of this that you actually really enjoyed and felt that you were pretty good at.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so now we've got to more specific about which bit of the PhD is the discussion that feels really challenging. Now I wanna get more specific about you. So, rather than saying I am not good enough to write a discussion, what specifically are you concerned that you can't do for that discussion? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I think I guess the easiest way to explain this would be to be writing the discussion and maybe even the conclusion and thinking that you've added something to the body of literature only for, to then discover that actually everybody already knew it. There's definitely that, and that I will, perhaps because I'm not immersed in that world anymore, that I will miss something really, really obvious and therefore by avoiding it, I won't miss it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we're most concerned that you'll miss something  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that that'll mean something bad if you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So does that mean you think you can write a discussion, it just might miss something? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I'm concerned I will write it wrong, that I won't understand how it should be written and therefore write it wrong. That probably sounds really silly, doesn't it? Given that you can, and I have read, you know, other people's PhD thesis in, you know, not just in this area, but in lots of different areas, just to get a, you know, a flavor for, you know, structure and language, et cetera. But I, I am concerned about that. I'm afraid of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What would wrong mean though? Because again, we are back to using very general phrases. What does wrong mean? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I guess, if I imagine a scenario where I send a chunk of work to my supervisors to have a look at, for them to come back and go. No, no, this is not how you do it. And that sounds really daft when I say it out loud, because actually, if you're only a few pages in then actually knowing that at that point, it's quite helpful. It's really interesting because like when I, when I say that to you, that sounds a really silly thing because I'm not gonna get it right first time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, I'm not even sure what right means in this context.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. So really, really wrong. Like, if they were saying, this is not a PhD. What are you doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But this is what's really, really useful for anybody who is generically criticizing themselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Is the more specific we get. Yeah. Either we hit on something that's solvable. Yeah. Like it's learnable or we realize there's not much substance to this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because if what you are really worried about is that you end up writing a discussion that is just in no way the shape of a discussion should have. Bear in mind, that could be a whole variety of things, right? Depending on the discipline, depending on the approach you take and whatever, then you get to go, well, how would that happen? Because remember, we are not talking about first drafts. We're not talking about, 'cause if you hand in a few thousand words and your supervisors say, this is no idea what you've been doing, Ruth, this is rubbish , then that don't feel good. Right? But that's not the end of this line. That's not a pass fail issue. That's a, okay, I need to do this again in a different way with some more information from them. But if we are talking about, I'm not capable of doing this, as in the version you submit gets that response from your examiners, then we get to go, really, are we really believing that you are gonna write a discussion? Somehow get it past your supervisors and submit it that your examiner is gonna go, this just isn't even a discussion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, yeah. I can see that. I can, I can see that. That's an unlikely scenario to get to, isn't it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so what, then we get to backpedal a little bit. We say, okay, that's probably unlikely. Okay. I don't want you to call it silly 'cause this stuff all comes from somewhere and it is, it feels so, so true and so, so dangerous. I get that. But we get to just backpedal a little bit. So it's like, okay, what am I actually worried they might say? What is it a little bit more plausible that they might critique me for? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Hmm. Yeah, because all I can, all that goes on in my head when you say that is that they'll go, you are wrong, you are wrong, you've got this all wrong. But then you'll say, well, what does wrong mean? And I guess I'm worried that what, that they will prob that they could say, if we don't think you're actually up to this,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: but up to what?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Finishing,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: but, but which bit? Because a viva is not a test of whether you are good enough to have a PhD. A Viva is a defense of a piece of work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I, I do understand that, like on paper, but I do feel, I do get a bit hijacked by the thought that actually, even though that's the process, that that's secretly what people might be doing,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I can't say it never is. Right? I have looked after people in the past. I have coached people who have had viva experiences that I don't think are appropriate. Okay. So I'm not gonna say that that never happens, but it happens way less than people fear It will happen. And it's almost always resolvable, even when that happens. A thesis has to be sufficient work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Can be defended in a viva. And what happens when we start getting more specific is we start going, okay, well what are they gonna pick holes in in my discussion? Maybe they'll say they don't agree with the argument I'm making based on my data.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Maybe they'll say, I don't give sufficient areas for future work. Maybe they'll suggest that I don't acknowledge a key limitation of my work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I am worried that they will say, but you've completely ignored the work of Joe Blogs in 2021 or something. Yeah. That's the sort of like, you know, detail that I worry about. That they'll just be like, you know, where have you been? You know, all this stuff's been happening. I am worried about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How do we deal with that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I don't know. I don't know. because my approach to that particular concern in the past has been to then basically start trying to rewrite my l review over and over and over again to, and that, that doesn't work because that just sends me back into my little loop of doom. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So the people who were listening on the podcast, you will not have seen me shaking my head. If you're on YouTube, you'll have seen me. No, we don't. We deal with that by saying, yeah. There might be stuff I've missed. I have done systematic, whether it's actually an official systematic review or I have just been systematic in how I've looked at things. I've selected the literature that I wanna include in my thesis. Is there stuff I could have included? Probably. Does it mean my thesis is wrong? No. If the examiners feel strongly about it, I'll add it in my corrections.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Right. Okay. That does sound a much better approach.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now, obviously, I'm not saying, any supervisors listening. I'm not saying, oh, just do a crappy lit review. No one cares, but if you have genuinely put due diligence into your lit review, you've done your best. You know, there's infinite literature out there. We all have to put boundaries around what theoretical frameworks we're gonna talk about, what past literature we're gonna talk about, da, da, da. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Right. You can check you've made it clear where those boundaries are. I'm including these sorts of studies, but not those sorts of studies. Yeah. I've taken this theoretical approach or this methodological approach because of A, B, C. Yeah. Okay. You can be clear around why you've done that. Yeah. And then there people are allowed to debate it. Yes. That's literally the point of research.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So at the time of recording last week's podcast, with Dr. Ilana Horwitz, who wrote the Entrepreneurial Scholar, and one of the things she talks about in there is that a thesis isn't the end of a conversation, it's the beginning of one. That theses and research articles are put out there to start conversations and some of those conversations will be, I wonder why Ruth didn't include the whatever method. Yeah. And that's okay. Someone can use that method. You will be someone else's gap. Okay, Ruth did this but never did that. Therefore I'm gonna do that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. That's helpful. Very helpful. Very helpful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm leaving space for somebody else to, to write their PhD in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I like that. That's nice. That's a really lovely way of framing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. It's what we are doing. Right? We look at other people's research and go, oh, a limitation of the Vikki et al study is that she never did X, and that seems important to me, so let's go try.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Doing it. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We're not saying that they're rubbish and they should never have got a PhD because they didn't do this thing. No, we're saying, oh, look at us finding a gap. Aren't we clever?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I like that a lot. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now I know we haven't actually got on to talking about whether you should finish this or not and I think we should get to that. The reason I wanted to do this stuff first is because sometimes we have a whole bunch of stories that are clouding that decision in the first place. Yeah. And it sounds as though you have your fair share of those. Right. It sounds as though there's a whole bunch of stuff in terms of some of the interactions you've had, which we won't go into but stuff around some very, very general criticisms that you're giving yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That once we start sort of scratching at them a little bit are perhaps not quite as robust criticisms of yourself as they could be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the reason that's useful is because as we decide, you could believe all the things I just said and decide not to finish your PhD.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that is absolutely fine too. But what we wanna be trying to do is make any decision about whether you are gonna do this from a place where you are essentially thinking you could be fine either way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I could choose to do my PhD and I can believe that I could be fine while doing it. I don't have to burn myself out further to do it. I don't have to beat myself up. This doesn't have to be this awful torture. I can believe that I'm capable of doing the next bit and that I'll figure out the bit after that and we'll keep doing that until the thing's done and handed in. Or I believe I can be fine putting this to bed, saying I'm not doing it. Feeling whatever emotions I feel about that, but not making it mean loads of things about myself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Yeah. So let's go to that side now. Okay. How would it feel to decide not to do your PhD? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I think there would be a very short term relief. But I would probably, I don't wanna jump to the word regret, but I would wonder, I probably for the quite a long time about whether I'd just done that out of fear. It. It does make me sad to think of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm-hmm. But that's okay. Sad is okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Sad is a really pure emotion. It would be slightly odd for you to decide not to do something that you decided 10 years ago you wanted to do. Yeah. And you've put all this work. It would be slightly odd not to be sad about that. We don't have to avoid sad.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: No. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Sad feels rubbish. But it's because you care about it. It's fine. Yeah. We can look after you through sad if needs be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The bit about regret though is optional.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And this is why understanding your process of decision making is so important because if you can make sure that you are making decisions for reasons that you love. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Then anytime the regretful thoughts come up in future, you remind us, I made this decision for reasons I love.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I stand by the version of me that made that decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Tell me what you're thinking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. I am thinking, because there's, when I have considered that option, there's, my immediate thought was, yeah, but how would I explain that to the people that gave me their time as you know, participants. How would I explain that? What would my answer be? And honestly, at the moment, my honest answer to them would have to be, well, I just got really overwhelmed and afraid of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And that doesn't feel like a good reason. That doesn't. If you feel, you feel overwhelmed and you know, you, you take a break and see if you feel better in a, you know, a month or so. Right. You don't just give it up because it keeps you awake at night </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: don't you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I don't know. That just feels, somebody asked me the other day, I live in a small town. And quite innocently they said, why are you doing it? Are you doing it for your ego? No, they, they weren't being like, you know, funny with me. I really like them, but it was such a good question and I was like, I don't think so because I'm not in that sort of place anymore where, you know, you are sort of bumping into people at conferences. But the equally where I was going with that is there is a part of my ego that doesn't wanna let go of it because, you know, ego's still important. You know, I'm not saying like, ooh, you know,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: but what would it mean about you if you didn't do it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I was a quitter. Okay. Quitter gave up because it got hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. For people not on YouTube. You can't see the face that Ruth is pulling right now. Whatcha thinking about the fact that you just said that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Uh, I've just started laughing, I think, but I'm not sure if I'm laughing hysterically or not. I don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because that's optional too? Telling yourself you're a quitter and the quitting things is a bad thing is completely optional too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: There's one thing that , so basically when I left my job, right, that was a massive decision. That was a massive, huge decision because it was a, you know, it was a good salary, it was a good position, but I gave time to that decision and I was so confident that it was the right thing, and because of that, I don't regret it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So I think that's what you're talking a little bit about. Yeah. If you have confidence in that decision, then actually the, you know, the fact that I gave up a really good position and a really good salary, et cetera, and I'm really happy with that. And I've embraced this, you know, slightly strange new life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And I've loved it and grown from it. I, despite the months that I've been thinking about this decision, I don't have that confidence and I almost want that feeling again before I make that decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why did you have the confidence in that one, do you think? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I almost don't know because on paper it was a really bad one. Like, you know, I had some really funny looks from that one. Not from my immediate family or anything like that, but you know, from people within that circuit. I think because I, when we were talking about it, and when I came sort of right close to that decision, everything just started to feel right. Everything just started to go, okay, okay. And that, and that, and the decision making process itself brought peace. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: But before I sort of, you know, made that decision and, you know, handed in my notice, I was already feeling better and I have not got that this time. There was something in the whole process last time that felt right. Whereas this time, I keep coming back to that word that it would be quitting. It would be, you know, I know there's the whole thing about, you know, grit and, you know, you carry on but for this one, it just, it's not there. I, I think I'd probably hide in shame a little bit. I feel really ashamed.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's no wonder it's making it a hard decision. No. If one of the options in some ways is tempting and in other ways is shrouded in a load of shame, it's not a surprise. It feels like a really hard decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: No. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I want you to think about ways, and this is not me persuading you to quit your PhD. I genuinely believe you can be absolutely fine either way. Yeah. And I think that is the best starting point for a decision like this. I want you to think about how could it be a great decision to not continue? How would that mean wonderful things about you instead of bad things about you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I will be really honest at this like, like point in time I cannot think of a single thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That I am someone who prioritizes her mental health. I, yes, I'm someone who has other options that they can reengage with that are just as meaningful. I'm someone who knows they don't have to finish something just because they started it 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. I'm someone who can make difficult decisions. I'm someone who can look after myself when I'm sad because it didn't go the way I wanted it to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm someone who trusts that I can be Okay anyway. I am someone and you can, it sounds as though this is true, so I'm gonna make some assumptions. I'm someone who's surrounded by people who will support me regardless of what I decide.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, that is true. That is true. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think that's a bunch of it is things that it could mean about you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, I, I take those, it would never have come up  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's something I wanted to do once and it didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out and that's a bummer.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm someone who knows when to cut their losses. I. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what I would then encourage you to do is then think about the other side, the continuing to do it. But not to think about it with anything that undermines those reasons , because it would be very easy to create a narrative. I'm someone who always finishes what they start. I'm someone who has grit and resilience, da, da, da, all that stuff. But that undermines the other stuff. Yeah. We want both sides to feel true and both sides to feel. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So on that side we might have things like, I'm someone who can work through things one step at a time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm someone who can look after themselves when they find something difficult.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That sort of thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Because if over here we like hold up as amazing, the I'm someone who can finish things, then it makes this side a bit sticky.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I can, I see that and I can see how easy it would just to just do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The other thing I wanna check in before we finish is I think there are ways you could think of honoring the work of the people who contributed to your studies either way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Do you? Because I couldn't, I couldn't think of any because I just thought that, you know, everything that they contributed to and everything I've got is all, you know, obviously it's super wrapped up in, you know, protected by the appropriate processes at the university. So I always just assumed that once that book got closed, if you like, then it would just be gone, deleted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, you'd need to check with your university. Yeah. But as the pi you can write up for publication one assumes if you wanted to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Without submitting it for your thesis. I don't see why. Okay. It would be important to check that there's no regulations to prevent that happening. You'd probably need your supervisor's consent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. Okay. That's good to know. That's good to think about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There's stuff around informal feedback to participants.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Stuff around, look, this is the situation. These are the reasons I've made the decisions that I'm making. However, I have done preliminary analysis. These are the sorts of things that are coming out. I've written you a bit of a report that kind of summarizes what I did and what I found so that you can see the sorts of things that came out of it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: As a kind of non-published, but just for you so you can see that, you know, some love and care and thought did go into this. Yeah. And I think there's some interesting things here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay. That's really important to me. So yeah, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: we can present at a conference and then never write it up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You've shared it publicly. People are aware work has been done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can write a book chapter, there's, there's many, many routes. You can just explain to them the situation and be okay with that too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That is really important for me to think about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because those are sort of what I would call like sticky thoughts. Because when you're trying to make a decision, if you've got a sticky thought in your head, like, I would be letting down my participants. Particularly something where it's really important to you. It's an important part of your sort of sense of self that you are not letting them down. Whatever that would mean.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Then that sort of sticky thought is important to resolve before you try and make the decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 'Cause otherwise it just sits really heavy on the side of, I've gotta finish this thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now taking that sticky one away doesn't mean you have to not finish or you have to finish. It means neither, but it just cleans it up a little bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yep.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And so I think for me, the two thoughts I want you to really clean up before you make any decisions are that this would mean something bad for my participants and this would mean something bad about me. Because neither of those things are true and they're kinda unfair, sticky thoughts. Once you can, you know, we're never gonna make them completely go away, but once you can sort of process those a bit, decide that those are not necessarily just strictly true thoughts. And there's different ways of you being okay and it meaning lots of positive things about you and it not necessarily meaning that you've let them down in any meaningful way. Once we can kind of tidy that up a bit, then we can get to what do I actually just want to do? Yeah. Because you allowed to just pick what you want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Are you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You could just pick for no other reason than it's what you want to do. Okay. Why didn't you finish your PhD? Didn't want to in the end. Why did you finish your PhD when it looked like it was being super hard? 'cause I wanted to. Either's fine and it doesn't have to have more explanation than that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Yeah. And there's gonna be some self-coaching on either side. Yeah. 'cause if you choose to carry on, there's gonna be a load of self-coaching around supporting yourself while you do things that are not just magically not gonna feel hard anymore. No. There's gonna be a bunch of coaching on that side and there's gonna be a bunch of self-coaching on the site if you decide not to. Yeah. 'cause whilst you can believe and tell yourself that you're not gonna beat yourself up for it, you're not gonna have regrets,. Those things are gonna come up 'cause our brains are fishy like that. So there's gonna be coaching, like self coaching on yourself either.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How are you feeling? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um, I was gonna I feel much better. I feel much better, um, because that the whole, I think it's just been, yeah, I'm probably just gonna have to like go and lie in a dark room for a minute.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. It's a lot to take in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: It is a lot to take in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's the joy for doing it for the podcast is you get to listen to it again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I know. Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah. The joy for everybody listening to on the podcast is that they haven't seen all of the ridiculous faces I've been making through  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: While they could go to YouTube and check them out there, but quite seriously though. Yes, there'll be so many people listening who are empathizing with this, who have either had these doubts or having these doubts, are making these decisions now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think just hearing somebody else talk them through, hearing where they've got options, I think will, will help a lot of people. So thank you so much for being so, so open and honest about it all. It's important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I, I am so pleased that you have picked me to come and talk about it because I think there is, you know, there will be people out there like me. I know there are, and it's, it's scary and it's. You know, it's, you don't really wanna admit it. And I get particularly not to supervisors, so it's, you know, that's not, you know, something you really wanna do. Is it? So actually, yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope that it encourages other people to be brave.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Whatever that means. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm sure you have inspired them. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 23 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-42-what-to-do-if-you-are-considering-leaving-your-phd-a-special-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-41-thriving-with-autism-in-academia-advice-for-students-and-universities <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode, I’m joined by Jess Dineen, who is both a PhD student and a neurodivergent consultant, speaker, coach, and founder of NeuroNatives. We discuss the strengths and challenges of being in academia with autism, how autistic people can support and advocate for themselves, and how individuals and universities can better support neurodivergent people. Whether you are autistic yourself, or you want to be more inclusive and supportive of your autistic colleagues, Jess shares both lived experiences and evidence based strategies that will help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> Connect with Jess on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessdineen/?originalSubdomain=uk" target="_blank"> LinkedIn </a> and find out more about her business <a href="https://www.neuro-natives.com/" target="_blank"> Neuronatives </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week I have another special guest with me. This week I am joined by Jess Dineen, who is the CEO and founder of Neuronatives. So, hi Jess. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Hi Vikki. Great to be here. Great to be on the podcast today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't we start off as usual people, just tell people a little bit about who you are and what Neuronatives even is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Sure. So, Neuronatives is a consultancy training company to raise awareness, and make workplaces more neuro inclusive. The whole idea of the business is very much to back what we're saying with science. So really using journal articles, research papers to support what we're talking about. And also backing it with lived experience as well. So I myself late diagnosed autistic and A DHD , and so a lot of what I talk about is based on my lived experience and also kind of client's experience as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And what do you aim to do with the organization?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: The aim eventually is to run tailored consultancy. So starting off, you know, right at the top, kind of strategy, getting workplace, companies being more neuroinclusive. So thinking about their long-term vision, their hiring policies, you know, everything from recruitment to retention to then how you are managing your team. Um, thinking about your workplace policies, and then down to individual manager training. So how to get the most out of your employees and support them. 'cause the stats are there, you know, the more inclusive your workplace is, the more productive your workplace is, and the higher retention rates it's gonna be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So that's the aim. And also alongside that we hope to offer more coaching as well. We're quite a small business and we're right at the beginning of the journey but taking very much a tailored approach and not just framework, not a tick box exercise, to make real change for neurodivergent individuals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure. Yeah. And why does that feel so important for you right now?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I think being late diagnosed myself and the amount of. Kind of effort that I had to go to advocate for myself. And even at the start of the journey, getting diagnosis, getting the forms done but then also in the workplace what I needed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: When I asked for adjustments, you know, to go from working five days in the office to a few days in the office, I cried 'cause I was acknowledging that I needed that support and that that was okay. I don't want other people to have to take all that time to figure that stuff out. I want to be able to it already be in place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I think also the amount of stress employees have who are neurodivergent around, you know, advocating themselves, having these conversations, knowing where to start. It should already be happening at recruitment or even hiring stage, um, these conversations as to how to work with me or, you know, what best practice looks like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So neurodivergent individuals are often already tired just by living life. So to have to advocate for themselves and then advocate for themselves in work, is just another layer of, of complexity and stress, especially if you are autistic. From my personal experience, the kind of social nuances and, how you perform or how you're masking at work is another barrier I guess. So I'm trying to remove barriers, I guess is my, is my, long and short of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And as you know, but just for the listeners, we are gonna mostly focus on autism today. So I know you have expertise across both autism and A DHD, but we've had an episode with Dr. Alex Conner on before. So we've talked about A DHD quite a bit and because of my own proclivities, it tends to come up quite regularly throughout the episodes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And, but I wanted to really get somebody in who has expertise in, in autism specifically. Sure. Yeah. Obviously everything you talk about will apply to both and don't feel like you can't talk about ADHD stuff, but I'm really excited to have somebody with specific expertise and experience in autism, to talk about it. Yeah. So maybe let's start there actually, for people who are less familiar. What actually is autism? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So autism. So it depends which lens we look through. So you might look through the medical model. So if you go to the DSM, so the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, a word I hate is very much called a neurodevelopmental condition. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So usually diagnosed in childhood, hence neurodevelopmental during the developmental period. Um, and it's where, um, so this is all kind of the clinical terms, not necessarily reflecting my opinion, how it should be viewed. But where someone might have challenges, significant challenges in social interaction, communication, and that could be also difficulties and communication skills, social behaviors that significantly impair daily functioning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And they do vary from one person to the next, so they might have kind of special interests or all sorts of different things. There's different areas in which you can be diagnosed, but often it looks and presents differently between males and females, and a lot of women are being diagnosed later due to a kind of broadening of the criteria, but also more visibility of what it looks like in women. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: The word kind of deficit disorder is something that I do not agree with. I'm very much against the medical model , but as if you wanted to look for kind of a diagnosis that, that is what it, you would find in the kind of clinical literature. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how would you prefer to define it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I definitely would prefer to define it as kind of differences in communication styles, differences in social interactions and behaviors. I wouldn't say I am deficit. I would just think I'm maybe more, for me personally, more direct, more assertive. I hate small talk. I do it because I know that that's what I'm supposed to do, but I don't like it. I think it's also remiss not to say that everyone is unique. So all autistic individuals are different. So you might find someone like myself who, you know, reasonably social and you know, can have a conversation and make eye contact, but it does time me out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So I guess, older, older kind of literature would say, I'm high functioning and then the older literature might also say someone's low functioning if they're not able to do those things. I think it's, I'm just functioning. You don't see me on the days where I'm not talking and I'm burnt out and I don't leave my bed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So I think I definitely have challenges. But I would say there are more differences in communication styles and some people love my approach and love my style. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And I know you work across a whole range of different companies and organizations, but thinking specifically about academia, I know you are doing a PhD yourself. Yeah. What challenges do you see autistic people having when doing PhDs and in academia more generally? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I'm actually in my second year of doing a PhD now, so I think I've managed to see a bit of what I've experienced and then others around me and those I've worked with and I think the kind of number one challenge is communication, and expectations. I think in academia we have all sorts of tools. We have email, we have teams or Zoom, you know, whichever the university uses . And I think it's really good at the beginning to start off with, you know, what communication style does your supervisor like? Is it an email, is it teams message or a teams meeting? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Is it a face-to-face meeting? And what are the expectations? I think challenges that I've come across is what are the expectations in terms of communication? What is their role? And some supervisors may be very clear and some may not be. And so I've had to learn the hard way as to what is expected of me and what methods work for my supervisors. But I think also in academia, there's quite a lot of unwritten rules and unwritten kind of structure and hierarchy that is not necessarily apparent to autistic individuals, especially, you know, someone like myself. It's very easy to make those mistakes. So I think it's being aware of those and if you're able to ask someone in the team or if you're able to get that awareness that's really important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So that's the one. I think second is again, expectations, but more in a kind of deadlines, you know, what's expected of you by when, and agreements as to what that looks like. Sudden changes or sudden like, you know, asked to do a presentation or something really unexpectedly or things like that are very uncomfortable, very, very stressful for those in my experience who have autism. So knowing what the semester looks like, knowing, you know, if you are on a scholarship, what you're teaching, having advanced notice of when you're teaching it, what content you're teaching, not getting it, you know, like three days beforehand. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I was really interested in you talking about the sort of unwritten rules. Yeah. And I think some of the stuff around how seriously to take particular comments I've seen , people with autism struggle with in academia mm-hmm. Where supervisors make a sort of slightly throwaway comment about, oh, it might be good to add that analysis or whatever. Yes, yes. Um, and to be honest, it's confusing for all students when that happens. I agree. I agree. But if you particularly struggle with sort of the unwritten side of things as it were, yeah then figuring out, does that mean I should do it? Was that an idea? Was that an order, was that a suggestion? What, what did they mean by that? I've certainly seen people come unstuck with that sort of thing where, and you can tell me whether this is something that's accurate or just sort of what I've seen with my clients, but I see that, that my clients with autism tend to fall on the side of taking it as an actual instruction and definitely doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. That's a really great point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Rather than a Did they mean that, I dunno. Kind of, yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I think the one thing that I've learned from that is thinking about having a summary of what was discussed in the meeting and what are the action points. So then you can kind of nail down like what you know. The supervisor said this, did they actually mean that? 'cause they have to sign that form and get it back to the senior team, whatever. So a challenge would be, like you said, is taking what they're saying is gospel or literally, then doing a lot of work. And actually that wasn't needed or what wasn't the case. , I remember back when I did my master's, me and my supervisor, and we had to publish the paper actually but she'd asked me to go and look at some journals that might be suitable. So I went away and did a table, the impact factor, the name of the journal, the submission diff, like how it all worked, the, maybe the referencing style. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I think she just meant a cursory glance. But I had gone and done an Excel table and when we had our next meeting, I was like, this is the table what you asked for. And she was like, oh, and she didn't mean that. And so it was just quite amusing 'cause I was like, okay, like I really need to kind of double check with her and, you know, she does that with me now, is double check what we've agreed to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. I guess the other one that I've seen a little bit is, and again, I've seen this with people who don't have autism too, but where people get quite fixed on this is how I want to do this study. Mm. And then I think it's an interesting balance between how you sort of, um, what's the word? How you sort of respect and honor the fact that it's their PhD and that this is, this is what they want to do. And sort of understand the fact that there might be less cognitive flexibility in terms of looking at other options and seeing that different ways could work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Versus your kind of supervisory responsibility For sure. Sort of advice. Yeah. That might work. I'm not sure, but it's high risk or it's not angled at the journal I thought we were going for. Or I wonder if you me, whether that's something you've experienced or seen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yes, yes. I think, task switching is challenging for both, you know, those with autism who might have mono tropic interest, where they're focusing on one thing at a time or where those who have ADHD kind of, this is what I wanna do, I'm not, so what I'm doing right now and this is my hyper focus, don't you dare shift my attention. And so I think. For sure. I think that has definitely come, come up with me and clients where you've set up, but this is my intention, this is the gap in the research. This is where I'm going and this is what I'm doing and I'm gonna answer this question. But then whether it's miscommunication or new things come to light where there's a change needed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I've recently gone through one where I've gone from doing a systematic review to now, including many more studies in my systematic review. So from 18 to now 41, to then being like, oh, let's, let's do a meta analysis, which will create much, you know, richer research, rich insights. However, it's kind of, for me personally, it's been really hard 'cause I dug everything, you know, dug deep and, and kind of really went down and got all the information and spent almost a year on the systematic review to then be like, actually this isn't right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: This, we need to change. And I think. It's really difficult. And I think that's the first thing is I would for any, you know, anyone who's listening, like it's as a student or whether you're a supervisor who's looking to help their supervisee is thinking about acknowledging that it's difficult and acknowledging that change is hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And it is down to the, the PhD student at the end of the day, like, this is their choice and their PhD. However, you have a supervisor for a reason, right? You have a supervisor who has experience, who has guidance and can help you , hopefully to success, you know, to, to completing your doctorate. So that's something that is, has been important for me to remember is I don't know what I'm doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: The supervisor might not either, but it's really important to, to remember that as how challenging it is you want to create your best work. And if that is the best work, then that's important to go on and do. And that's something with clients, it's, it's having that conversation of. Yes, it's difficult and let's, let's hash it out and let's get through it and talk about it but what outcome do you want to have? And where do you want to be and how do you get there? And, and don't get me wrong, that kind of wrestling and that, you know, changing topic and changing direction can bring up all sorts of emotions, anger, fear, frustration , all sorts , lots of procrastination 'cause I don't wanna start with new task, new topic. Um, yeah. And, and kind of strategies that I've kind of gone with is to say, okay, let's look at this kind of big ugly mess and how do we break it down? Like what are the tasks, you know? Okay. First we'll read about meta-analysis. Look at the couple of different kinds of meta-analysis. Think about the different, you know, whether it's random effects or fixed effects, for example, and this is when you're going granular, but, and then breaking down, like, okay, so let's look at all the studies. What kind of analysis did they do? But like breaking it down into steps. And I think that's something that both, I, I guess someone who has a ADHD and autism for myself, I need to break things down into chunks, otherwise it feels massive and I can't get anywhere. So something that has helped me working with clients to say, okay, with your supervisor, if you can get a check-in point, even if it's 15 minutes, every two weeks, have some goals and these breakdown steps and check in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And that way you don't have to wait till the, you know, monthly or bimonthly supervisor meeting where you haven't got to where you said you'd get because you're so overwhelmed. So it's realizing that I guess one size doesn't fit all when you're supervising. For the students who are neurodivergent, they will need different things. Um, but on the flip side, your students may be bounds and leaps ahead with the right guidance because they're like, oh yeah, no, I'm know what I'm doing now. Like, I'm, I'm focused and I'm interested and, you know, I can get a loads more done than perhaps, you know, a neurotypical student might do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I think it's really important to remember that you are, as an autistic individual, you may have strengths that are, you know, way above and beyond, you know, a neurotypical person. There is such a thing as that call, a spiky profile that you may have come across, where you know your executive function, you know your different skills, whether it's organization, memory, time management, you may have, you know, uh, drops, you know, where it's maybe not so good but then huge peaks where your skills outnumber, you know, the neurotypicals on your team. So be very much looking like a, a spiky profile. Um. And, there's quite a few occupational psychologists who do a lot of work in that area around neurodiversity as well, that I recommend looking into Almuth McDowall and Nancy Doyle, and many more names, but they focus a lot on kind of strengths-based coaching. What are the person's strengths? What are they really good at? Some clients it might be attention to detail, so really researching to the nth degree on one area and knowing all about it and being able to tell, you know, the supervisor or teach a topic, whether it's a class, all about that specific area and bring so much passion to the topic because they're so interested in it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: But then also you are coming at something with a different angle, a different perspective, because your brain looks different. There are studies that show the brain looks different under an FMRI scan. So the different parts of the brain are, I don't wanna say different again, but look visibly different. And so remembering that your brain works differently and often your perspective is different, is a huge strength. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So another strength that I've come across with clients I work with, but also within myself is often those with autism, have experienced an awful lot of difficulties, in which case they often have a deep level of empathy and understanding, and can really relate to a lot of people in many different ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And these are just the things off the top of my head from my experience and my work. But, you can find lots of different strengths of all the different neurodivergent types, on national Institute of Care guidelines or whether you wanna look at the NHS but then there's an also lot of research papers that talk about the strengths of neurodivergent employees. For example, dyslexia the British Dyslexia Association has masses on the strengths of both dyspraxia and dyslexia. but yeah, I could go on about those all day. But if it's so important when you are working with students or supervisor, your supervisees to think about yes, the challenges, what are their strengths? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: How can I encourage them and empower them to not feel, oh, just because I have a, a hidden disability, or I'm neuro divergent that I'm behind or I'm worse off than everyone else, which is not the case. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So important and I love, I think that notion of the spiky profile and thinking about both at the same time is really useful because I've certainly seen with supervisors, and remember, and we'll talk about this later, listeners, you know, supervisors might have autism too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is not just about PhD students having autism, but certainly if you are a neurotypical supervisor and you have a neurodivergent student, sometimes it can be really confusing, right? Because you're like, Jess is brilliant, she knows her stuff so well. She's so on top of everything. I don't understand why she's having a freakout about talking at a research group meeting or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: She knows this stuff back to front, inside out. I can't shut her up about it in meetings. This makes no sense. I don't get it. And so I think really recognize, because if you don't understand that, it can be so confusing to understand why someone's having such strong emotions about something. Yeah. That you know they're perfectly capable of 'cause they're so good at that other  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Mm. Absolutely. And I think that's the kind of misconception of, especially from my experience, women who are late diagnosis, that they've learn to mask and they've learn to manage all of this. And it gets to a point of burnout and significantly impaired, daily functioning where women just can't, basically can't manage anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I think that's really important is having that curiosity and that open communication to say, these are my strengths and these are the areas that I find difficult and this is what happens. And I think having a psychologically safe environment, even though it's an overused term, but somewhere where you can say, Hey, this is really difficult, or this is causing me a lot of anxiety. And being real and honest I think super important to be able to acknowledge it and hit get it out in the open and move on. Because I think the supervisory role isn't always an easy one 'cause you're both, you know, an academic and you're pushing the student further ahead, but then you're also acting in some sort of pastoral capacity, whether you have officially given that term or not, but you are meeting the student, you know, most regularly compared to anyone else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So you will see that kind of ups and downs. So, it's really important to have that kind of open conversation and that also then takes awareness of both the supervisor and the PhD student. I think that would be my recommendation is reflecting a lot and thinking about what you want to share, but, and explaining why. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: 'Cause I think the supervisor's not there to fix everything 'cause it's very much a independent journey, but they want you to do your best. So you're trying to helping them understand how you can get there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I've done a few episodes recently where we've talked about mental health, we've talked about doing challenging research. We've talked about doing PhD with chronic illness and other disabilities and that sort of thing. And in all of them I try and find this balance between what can you do as an individual so you've got something that's kind of a bit empowering, that I can grasp hold of this and change my own situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Whilst also at the same time recognizing that you are not responsible for the environment, that universities have a duty of care to support students with different needs. Yes. So I wanna kind of talk with you about both of those. So let's start with the individual students. So if there's a people listening, which I know they a hundred percent are, so people in my audience who have autism themselves, both students and academics, what can they be doing that can improve their own situations? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah, that is a really great question. I think first and foremost, acknowledging that you are neurodivergent and you are not neurotypical and getting rid of neurotypical expectations of yourself, knowing that you will not necessarily work nine till five. You will not sit down at your desk, nine till five. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: You may do, but you most likely won't. And so it's not acknowledging that, you know, some days you may have, you know, this kind of idea of a spoon theory where, you know, your maximum number of spoons might be five and some days it might just be one spoon. And this is really difficult to do. But acknowledging today, I have one spoon, so I'm gonna do one little bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: If I have five spoons, I'm gonna crack on and maybe do a lot more. So first of all, neurotypical expectations. Get rid of them. Secondly, I would be very careful about your environment. What is draining and what is, you know, not draining is probably the better way of saying it. So if you're studying or if you kind of force yourself to work in an area that is really draining, whether it's sensitivity to noise, to light, kind of comfort, you know, the chair you're sitting on your workspace, you know, be really careful about like where you put yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: 'Cause as, as an autistic female myself, I'm very sensitive to light, to noise, to my surroundings. I can't work if people are in the area and that they might be watching me work and they might not be, I don't do well in a shared office, in a shared environment. I don't get anything done 'cause I'm too worried about like, oh, how, how does my face appear? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Do I look friendly? Do I look grumpy? Am I like fiddling with my feet? 'cause I'm trying to concentrate, you know, that's not socially acceptable. So finding an area where you can be comfortable, I think is that you are in charge of that. Whether that is, you know, in the floor of the library or whether that's a home in your bedroom or whether that's your kitchen table, that's something that, a practical nature is useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: One other thing you can do is, and I know it can be tricky, but applying for disabled students allowance. So if you are diagnosed, you can then use that, and get support, whether that's physical support. So in terms of, you know, clearly laptop or kind of software that can help you, it might be you're able to access coaching, or you're able to have, you know, a new desk and chair that's more comfortable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And that works on an annual basis, so you're able to get that each year as a student. And if you are a supervisor listening, you should be able to get access to work. So your access to work through the government enables you to, the government's hope is to stay and work and to keep you employed. Go check it out 'cause it is really useful and it also works for those who are self-employed as well and you're able to get access to that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, and again, and obviously just for listeners listening, this is kind of UK centric in the specific </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yes. Apologies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: All good. But just to clarify that for my many listeners who are not in the UK Yeah, most places will have similar versions of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. So that would be, get someone to help you to sort that out if it's difficult for you to do. So I think in the last one is probably being kind to yourself. 'cause I kind of mentioned at the beginning, I think especially if you have a late diagnosis or you are entering, you're just starting academia again, it's watching what you say to yourself in your head and which is very much easier said than done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Um, but often it's thinking about, you know, the shoulds I should have, could have, you know, and you talk to yourself the most. So it's trying to be kind and, and look at what you have managed to achieve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Having goals each week on things that you can try and meet, um, realistic goals are really helpful when you have days that you are not achieving or you are not completing something and due to maybe your energy levels. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: The last one would be just keeping an eye on yourself and looking after yourself. So it's easier said than done of course, but eating well, trying to get as much sleep, rest, exercise as the usual. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I took myself out for a short walk earlier today 'cause I was stressed out and overwhelmed and that really helped getting out in the sunshine, seeing, seeing some nature. Yeah, I'm not great at it, but trying to put in these routines, um, it does help as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. Here's something that I've always found difficult in both when I was supervising, but also now with with clients sometimes as well. How do you find the balance between accepting things are the way they are and there, there are some things that you are never going to change and mm-hmm versus the things that with support and development, you could learn to do, if you see what I mean. I know we never, I'm not talking like we're gonna develop a way autism and we wouldn't want to, that's not what I mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But like I see some students who have autism being quite like, I can't do any of those things. Yeah. I have autism. I can't do them. And I see others being a bit more like, okay, if you want me to do a presentation, I'm gonna need this, this, and this in order to make that possible and I need some padding either side of it to allow me to decompress and blah, blah, blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Where do you find, especially, you know, maybe I'm just thinking about it as a supervisor again, but where do you find that balance between encouraging somebody to consider ways they could be supported to try something versus not pushing them to do something that's not what their brain yeah. is set up for, or whatever? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. I think it's a tricky one. My initial answer would be it really depends on the individual and it depends on whether it's a matter of confidence and, you know, believing in themselves or whether they will most likely have a meltdown or a shutdown down as a result of that experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: You've got to be very careful understanding the difference, I think. And it might be that they are able to build up small steps so that they then avoid a shutdown or avoid a meltdown, or it may be that that's not possible. And I guess it depends on the individual and what their goals are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I think, you know, as students come to you for coaching, it's like what are their goals and finding realistic goals and where they want to get to and what those small steps in between look like as kind of wins. And in terms of accepting, there may be some things that they may always get really tired in social environments that may never change, but it's can we minimize which social environments they go to? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Can they join lectures online? Can they get the support in terms of maybe more counseling from the university to talk through things or kind of like you said, like what buffering and what padding can be put in to help them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Or it may be that might not be something that they'll ever grow in and that might stay. Just like someone who's maybe nonverbal, may never be verbal, may always, use for example Makaton or another sign language to express what they're saying. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So it's very unique to the individual. It's not a hard and fast rule. I think it's as a supervisor, as as a coach, it's thinking about, I guess what is the goal for them? Where do they want to get to and how, what, maybe working together, what are achievable steps to get there? Because only they will know themselves and what they're capable and what they're really just saying. No, I can't do it, but actually they can. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and that's the difficult bit, isn't it? I think sometimes, especially if you're late diagnosed and you've spent time telling yourself you should be different and things, I think sometimes the person doesn't necessarily know which it is either. 'Cause I can see it happening both ways round, right? Mm-hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That, especially somebody late diagnosed being like, no, no, I can, I can learn how to do this. I can handle this, da, da da. 'cause they don't wanna accept that they can't. Yeah. Yeah. But then on the other hand, people being quite fixed at, no, I definitely can't when actually it's sometimes, not always. Yeah. Sometimes the lack of confidence that you talked about. Yeah. Actually with the good support they could. And so I think that makes it kind of extra complicated 'cause it's not like the person with autism has this absolutely clear perspective Of exactly where their boundary sits with that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: True. Yeah. That's true. I'm afraid, I don't have the hard and fast rule with that. It is a unique and engaging on the person, how much you can push them and encourage them. And you're very much saying it from a place of, I think you have this capacity, can we try it together? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And they might say no. Or they might say, actually no, Vikki, I'm gonna take a shot. Let's, let's try this or like four sessions later, they might say, actually Vikki, I realized I said no to this, but actually I think I might try it. And it might just be building that trust with you to find that they might try that again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I really like this sort of figuring it out together, having that kind of, whether it's a supervisory relationship or coaching relationship or wherever this sort of help, let's figure this out. Let's think about what that would look like, what might make that possible. One of the qualities, so I talk about being your own best boss quite a lot, and one of the qualities that we talk about a lot in that is curiosity alongside compassion. Curiosity, coming from a compassionate perspective, but being like, oh, I wonder if this would help, or I wonder if we'd be better off just saying, we are not doing those things for a while. For sure. Yeah. Or having that kind of thing of let's figure things out. Let's be open and honest and see what we can do here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. I think you quite right. It, it's a relationship, you know, it's a professional relationship, but it's still a relationship and it's one way you can kind of explore things and think, okay, what is possible? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: You know, what, what happens if we try this? What, you know, hypothetically, what would that look like or what would come up or maybe where have you done this before? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we sort of started there talking not only about what people can do for themselves, but also how supervisors can support students with autism. Yeah. Um, let's, let's build on that a little bit more so how can anybody who is neurotypical in the university environment so this, whether you're a student or a supervisor, how can they support and make the most of working with people with autism.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. That's really great. And I think even the fact that the supervisors are asking, you know, how can I make the most of this? How can I empower or support my supervisee is the first step you really want. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: But I think what I would kind of initially say is, you know, if the university has any sort of neurodiversity awareness training, go to them, you know, learn, I think is the key thing is to learn, you know, what might it might look like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And then secondly, acknowledging that each person's experience and diagnosis looks different or, or you know, that how they are neurodivergent looks different. So I'm autistic, but you know, you might meet somebody else who's also autistic and we may come across differently. And I think in the reason I'm saying is that it's important for a supervisor to think about, maybe starting like a How to work with me document. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And that might look like, you know, preferred communication styles. So again, talking back to what we said before, like shall we have an email chain or shall we have an email with a summary and then we have a teams meeting and maybe we have videos off or videos on. They have may be transcription if transcription's allowed to kind of record what's being said or allowing note takers into the meeting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So it's that kind of thing would be included in the how to Work with me document and then setting clear expectations as to this is how often we'll meet, this is what we're gonna be covering. This is my remit of what, you know, I don't want, maybe either doesn't want to talk about anything personal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: They might not want to be asked, you know, what they got up to the weekend. That's okay. So those kind of I guess rules of engagement is the maybe a nice way of putting it. And then also being prepared to continually reflect on what's working and what's not working as well and trying to create a space where that can happen. And all this is best practice and, you know, in an ideal world, and it's understanding that supervisors are usually squashed into their other lecturer duties and head of whatever they're doing. So it's trying to create something that's simple and effective rather than an extra burden of time and energy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think it's really important to recognize that the environment in which people are supervising is, is not always easy. But I also think that. You know, this stuff should make everyone's life easier. In fact, so much of what you said today just really strikes me as just universal good practice, right? Yes. And I know that's kind of the principles of universal design and all that, that most of the things that are set out for people with disabilities or neuro divergences, um, will, it will benefit anybody. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One that we haven't really talked about that I think is quite useful is thinking about sort of giving space for somebody to have an initial reaction. 'Cause one of the things, especially, we were talking about changing stuff mm-hmm Before, yeah. One of the things that I've noticed, both in supervision and in coaching, is that sometimes somebody with autism will have quite a strong initial reaction to a change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. But that if you, as the person who's either suggested the change or that supervising that situation or whatever, can manage your own emotions about their reaction. And stay kind of calm and present. Then often with some time, and the amount of time can vary hugely. Right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Whether they need to go away and come back tomorrow, or whether it's a five minute, have glass of water and go stretch your legs or whatever. But learning to manage your own emotions in that moment and not feel apologetic or defensive or all of those things, and just kind of giving it space for a second. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think can then really allow that person to have their legitimate reaction. But then also afterwards to choose what their actual response is.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah. And I think that that then comes back to the how to Work with me document as to if there are changes. Because, you know, in an ideal world, PhDs go to plan. Everything follows, you know, step one, step two, step three. Best chapters are written up, done. But you know, nine times out of 10, that's not the case. Whether the data collect was incorrect or whether, you know, the systematic review turned into systematic review and a meta analysis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: But I think it's then saying, okay, if changes are made, how would you like 'them communicated? Yeah. Would you prefer 'them over an email and then we'll discuss in a meeting? Or would you prefer me to bring up in a meeting at the end? And then you can go and we can discuss it. And again, we're not gonna be able to cover every eventuality in a how to work with me document, but acknowledging that part of being autistic is you may not cope with change or you may not manage that in a neurotypical way. Just as if you are excited about something, you may impulsively say something that's great or you may say something that wasn't very helpful and you need to apologize. I think it's acknowledging that, that that impulsivity is part of an ADHD diagnosis. And that it's not someone just being rude or, you know, having lack of self-control 'cause it's a legitimate executive function. Like it's, it's something that's not, it doesn't go so great always. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Um. I think it's, uh, those things are important to consider.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And that's where I think, so I do supervisor training, not specifically on this area. That's way beyond my scope of practice, but general supervisor training. And one of the things that we talk about a lot in that is not projecting your own reasoning for behaviors onto other people's behavior. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 'Because often if somebody is late for a deadline, say if the supervisor's, somebody who take deadlines very seriously, they assume that means Jess isn't taking this seriously. Or whereas we know that regardless where you've got, ADHD, autism, or nothing at all, sometimes you miss deadlines even when you are taking it very seriously. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And similarly, I think, you know, like with the impulsive thing, sometimes somebody who's very neurotypical, quite reserved. All those things might, well, I would only say that if I was being really rude and disliked the person. And so one of the things we spend quite a bit of time thinking about is how you can almost have that kind of flexibility to recognize that there's a likely, especially if you know that they've got diagnoses, there's likely to be a bunch of reasons why they just said the thing that that came out grumpy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah, sure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it's hard, right? It is. Even if you're neurotypical, you're tired and you're busy and all those things, it's hard to always do that. But even if you can do it in retrospect Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Where afterwards you're like, yeah, that might have been impulse rather than anything else or whatever. I think it would really help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I think, you know, as, as I said, I'm doing a PhD and I'm still learning and I'm still, you know, getting things wrong and, and, you know, apologizing or, you know, saying things and being like, should anyone, is anyone bothered by that? Like, I don't know. Should I send an email? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Should I send a teams message? Am I overthinking it? And this is where it's, it's great if you have, you know, a couple of supervisors and perhaps they all have maybe different roles or different strengths. You know, that some might be more pastoral and some might be more academic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And maybe you have the opportunity to sense check with maybe the pastoral type supervisor, you know, how did that go? What do you think? And, you know, this is all an ideal world, but, it can be quite nice when the team is a bit more blended and even if, you know, someone might not be necessarily that pastoral focused, it might have someone else in the team that can support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And yeah, it also, that added layer of complexity is if perhaps, your supervisory team, someone is neurodivergent and maybe very different, you know, in how you work. Um. So, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Or very similar, right? And this happens personality wise as well as neuro divergent wise, is there's, there's obvious challenges if you've got someone who's neurotypical and somebody who's got autism, for example, they may have misunderstandings. But I do think there is also, I have been personally in situations, not with PhD students, but with like undergrads and that sort of thing where I, there's me and my enthusiastic non-diagnosed ADHD self and they've actually got ADHD and every meeting, it's just like, we could do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So many ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And if you haven't got awareness around that, and similarly, you could have two people who are autistic that are just absolutely fixed on this is how we are doing this, this do, do, do, do. And then something comes along and no one's got the kind of capacity to be flexible about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I think. It's not always when you're different. I think there's danger in similarities too sometimes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I think your supervisor training, it sounds really important because I think a lot of, from my understanding, a lot of supervisors, and this is just my experience, I don't think they have a lot of training and I don't think that's provided. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So it's very much they have to figure out as they go along. And, you know, they want their PhD student to finish within the allotted frame of time and they want them to meet the goals. There's a lot of pressure on them to help the student get there. So I think it's not the easiest role for them either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And I think often the student doesn't, if they've not been around the university set, they may not know that or appreciate that. So it's another thing to bear in mind and say, this supervisor may only have, you know, five hours a month to actually support you if that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: In my experience, most supervisory training focuses on procedures, right? It's like, what forms do you need to fill in, when, what requirements of you, what's the minimum rules of engagement, right? The you have to meet once a month and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And some universities do provide others, as I say, I, I provide much more detailed supervision, which really gets into how your thoughts and emotions influence the way you supervise and how expectations of supervision can be so different between different people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Not just with neurodivergences but also with people who come from different countries who have different experiences with their own supervisor previously as to what they expect a supervisor would provide. Um, yeah, I think it's a huge issue and I think it's something that invite universities should really be investing a lot more in than they do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is, I'm, I can only speak for the clients that I've had and the clients I'm working with, but then also for myself, you know, I'm, you know, a heterosexual white woman, I don't have that kind of intersectional lens. I'm not able to talk from that. And I think that's something that is, is also huge in understanding, you know, and listening to autistic voices from an intersectional lens, whether that be, you know, gender identity or whether that is race. And that's something that I'm painfully aware of when I do my training is, you know, there's only so much published research as well from those different intersectional lenses. So, that's really important to think about and consider, um, as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And probably I assume variations in diagnoses rates as well. I mean, you mentioned gender differences in diagnosis, but I would be amazed if there weren't differences in diagnosis rates amongst different ethnicities and races. There are with most things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. Mainly also due to stigma and understanding, and how it looks maybe as well. We're so far behind in that sense. And that I mean, they've only just decided that you can be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I think it was like 2012 that, that was possible. And then to have a combined diagnosis. Just there's so much progress still yet to be done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And we obviously wanna, we wanna avoid, 'cause I do think there is a tendency for people who have a kind of passing interest in this stuff to sort of notionally diagnose the people around. And I don't think that's helpful either. No. I'm a big believer that if you self identify as having any of these things, then I'm down 'cause you know Yeah. You, if you identify, you know, you Yeah. You know yourself. There's a lot of barriers to getting officially diagnosed, but for sure different to diagnosing someone else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. But one of the questions that I encourage people to think about is how would I behave if I knew they were autistic, for example. And asking yourself, are there ways you can just do that now anyway? I would give them really clear instructions after a meeting and I would make sure I pre warned them if there was something coming up that might be surprising. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You could just do that for everybody without ever mentioning the A word. Yeah. You know? Oh, definitely Never telling them your suspicions, but instead of just assuming that they're stubborn or whatever. Just do those things and  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah. And I had that with a client the other week was, I had people coming up to me after the training I did all during one of the breaks, and their question was, you know, what do I do if they're not diagnosed or I suspect they are, how, what do I do? And I'm like if you are managing someone, you will understand what the strengths and challenges are of all your employees and who you're working with, and then you will help them play to those strengths and support them in their challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So how to work with me guide and I keep talking about it, but it is just a what works for that person and it doesn't matter if they have a diagnosis or not because from a practical, everyday working style, not necessarily from a legal standing, but it is, it's so important to treat someone as individual. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And if you're not doing that already, start doing it because your team will all work differently regardless of whether they neurodivergent or not. So it's, you get to know your team and like you said, if, if you think that they may be that, that, that way ask and just say, don't say, are you autistic? Say, how does that work for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Like, do you enjoy that kind of setup? Does this space work for you? Just from a curiosity, decent human being perspective. It's not always rocket science then I think people can be really worried that, you know, they have to give someone a diagnosis before they can start asking questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: But it's how you ask the question and it's what kind of questions you're asking in terms of, you know, I noticed that you were quite quiet in the last meeting, you know? I want to make sure all employees voices are heard. You know, if you've got any thoughts, feel free to send me an email with them. And you're not singling someone out in terms of you think they're autistic, but you are, you are just kind of asking them, how did that go? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So you've started touching on this already, but what can people do at a sort of institution level to make things more inclusivefor people with neuro divergencies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Yeah, so I think a lot of organizations already have like an equality policy, so a DEI policy. And in those policies they include disability, but they don't explicitly talk about hidden disability. So neurodiversity, , to start with having a visible neurodiversity policy on the website, on their job, saying we support, you know, an inclusive and neuro inclusive environment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Doing training on how to be inclusive in recruitment, how to, support managers, you know, to train them as to how to work with neuro divergent employees. What would be wonderful would be mapping the workplace of all the, you know, campus. You know, what, what areas are quiet, you know, designated space. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Just like often have a prayer space. You know, are there quiet spaces for neurodivergent employees or students? The canteens are an absolute nightmare for me. The lighting is a nightmare for me personally. For many people that I speak to, they can't stand, just the space, they're very sensitive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: It's very draining. For many people I work with, they often have like a watch, like a Garmin or something, and their body, they have a body battery or some sort of thing where if they're on campus, it goes from maybe 90 down to five. And it's all of those things that are intangible that, that really affect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: So having some sort of sensory map as to say these are the areas that are high traffic, these are the areas that are quiet. Even if it's color coded would be useful and allocating space. What else? Uh, training everyone from, you know, people at reception, you know, there's a lot of sunflower lanyards floating about on campuses now, which is great, but what does that actually mean? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: How can you support employees or students, down to maybe the catering teams to, the academic staff that support staff to the librarians, helping everyone understand what that might look like, and do regular ones and mandatory. I think a lot of this kind of stuff, unfortunately, is optional. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: But you have, you know, one in five or one in four are neuro divergent, you know, the stats are there. The NHS England and, and NICE guidelines is there, you know, , whether they realize they they're neurodivergent or not, or whether they're disclosing the neurodivergent or not, they need support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: I think it's from, you know, if you talk about the life cycle of an employee starting right, recruitment and kind of advertising, you know, using clear, simple language in the job description, not having, you know, must be a self-starter and must be, you know, all these kind of lingo that might not necessarily be relevant to the job role just copied and pasted on from a previous job role. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And that that will discourage people from applying all the way through to, okay, now you're managing someone. You've never managed someone who's neurodivergent before, what's available to a, the manager and to b the employee? And how can you support them? Can you encourage 'em to apply for access to work? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: What is that? Help the employee understand . Start having a conversation as to what reasonable adjustments can we make? That should have also been discussed in that kind of initial period as to what kind of things might they need? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: And that's a conversation with HR. The first step is awareness and training. And then after that it's digging deep into kind of strategy and policy to really integrate it across the organization. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It really resonates with my episode a few weeks ago where I was talking to Kyrstina Francois about doing PhD with physical disabilities and illnesses. And one of the things that she was really talking about is how it's exhausting and often very difficult to have to suggest your own accommodations because especially ...so she has illnesses and conditions that have come on over the last year or two. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's not something she's always lived with or anything like that. And they're like, what do you need? And she's like, I don't know, what can I have? And that strikes me as quite similar to some of the stuff you are saying here, that having almost packages of if you are running a conference you need to do these things for your neurodivergent members. If you are running a module, you need to do these things. If you've got a PhD student, these are the options that you could put out like say for them to choose what might be useful or whatever.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Mm, for sure. And I think what works for some neurodivergent students might not work for others. So for example, if you're dyslexic, using dyslexic fonts or installing a Chrome extension, that makes everything into a dyslexic font as readable. You know, using apps that can make your screen a yellow color and providing high contrast helps you to see better and read better, but all of these things, it's, it's, it's providing that kind of, the training and documentation to, to help, you know, supervisors and, and lecturers and, and also students know that that exists, you know, a lot of this stuff is free. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Inclusive teaching is a huge area that I looked at when I did my fellowship to the Higher Education Acacemy, you know, how can we be more accessible and inclusive. And I think Covid was a, you know, although a horrible experience, it meant that a lot of lectures had to be done online and a lot of things were recorded. And I did my masters during that time, and that was brilliant for me because as someone with ADHD, I was able to get up and walk around and move about whilst listening. I was able to pause things, go back over things. I think it's, knowing that different approaches work for different students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Now, if people have been interested, engaged, inspired, all of those good things by the stuff you've said today, as I'm sure they will be, where can people follow you and find out more? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Sure. So, I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so you can first head over there and drop me a message or you can follow our company page. We also have a website, neuro natives.com , feel free to contact us there, with any inquiries, whether you want, coaching, whether you want, training and awareness sessions, or whether you want something more tailored, we can do whatever you need. I'm afraid I don't have Instagram, don't have Facebook too distracting , so you'll find me on LinkedIn, and also our website.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, perfect. And I will put links to your LinkedIn in the show notes and to your website. Thank you Jess, so much for today. That is super, super important and it was, yeah, wonderful having you here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jess: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk through all of these things and I hope it's been useful for the audience and yeah, it's lovely chatting to you as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thank you everyone for listening. I'll see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 16 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-41-thriving-with-autism-in-academia-advice-for-students-and-universities thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-40-how-to-read-academic-papers-more-quickly <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> One of the most common comments I hear from PhD students is that reading always takes longer than they expect. In this episode, I share four elements that you need to take into account when deciding how much time you are going to give an article, book or other piece of writing. By being more intentional in considering these elements, you can be much more accurate in how long each piece will take to read and often read it in less time. This is crucial for anyone at any stage of their research career – not only will it help you to manage workflow and hit deadlines, it will also improve your understanding of the literature.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> This week's topic really came out of a coaching session in my membership. So in the membership, students have the opportunity to come to what we call open coaching, which is where they can bring anything that they're finding challenging at all, and I will coach them on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I had a student come who was struggling to know how long it took to read a paper. Okay, and this is something that comes up all the time, and so I thought, you know what? We'd had such a useful discussion about it there in the session that I thought it'd be a great opportunity to share with all of you listeners as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you are planning out what reading you need to do, I want you to think about how you decide how long it'll take to read an article. And in most cases, one of the things I get told more than anything else is I'm really bad at judging how long it takes. And there's a few underpinning beliefs with that statement that I think it's really worth us questioning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So "I don't know how long it will take to read this paper" really has the underlying belief that there is a set amount of time that it will take and that you have very little control over it. And I wanna remind you that neither of those things are true. There isn't a fixed amount of time that it takes to read any particular paper, and you have a huge amount of control over how long it takes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I'm gonna do in this episode is explain to you how people usually do it and why I think you'd benefit from doing it in a different way. And the specific suggestions I would make that are gonna massively speed up or at a more kind of complex level, make you much more in control of how long it takes to read a paper. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> 'cause this also isn't just about speeding up, right? This is about spending time on the right things. So we're gonna make it faster, we're gonna make it more predictable, which it's gonna make it so much easier for you to organize your time and to get stuff done. So let's get started. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I am Dr. Vicki Wright, the PhD Life Coach. I'm an ex professor and certified life coach, and I help PhD students and researchers to overcome overwhelm and imposter syndrome so that we can actually get our work done and enjoy the process. We are gonna dig in to how we can take more control over how long it takes to read a paper. And for those of you who are in the more kind of arts and humanities where you're studying from books and archives and all that stuff, this can get extrapolated out to any length of document that you are talking about. So when I say article, just insert whatever word is appropriate for your discipline. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I want you to spend a moment just thinking, how do I currently estimate how long something will take? Do I estimate or do I just start reading? Do I decide this is the thing I need to read? Let's go or do you actually try and estimate? A lot of people don't even try and estimate. They start reading. They have two versions of an article. They either haven't read it or they have read it, they don't read it, or they do read it. And that's kind of two binary options. Hint. In this episode today, we're gonna think about how there's a lot of inbetweens there as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So they either just get reading or they take a rough guess on how long it should, whatever should means take, based usually on two things. I want you to see if these are the same two things for you. What I see with my clients, the two things that usually get taken into account is how long is the article or book? How complex is the article or book? If it's long and complex, we're gonna take a long time to read it. If it's short and simple, we'll take less time to read it. And it sort of feels as though that's intuitively true, right? That has face validity. It kind of makes sense that if something is long and complicated, it's gonna take us a long time to read it. And if it's simple and short, it's gonna take us a short amount of time to read it. I think this is where we're falling down. This is where we're wasting time. This is where we are making it really hard for ourselves to judge how long things take. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm gonna share with you four other things that I think we need to think about in order not to work out how long it will take to read this article. But in order to decide how long we are giving this article, okay, I want you to notice the difference in how I described that. On one hand, is this quite passive, sort of, I wonder how long it will take as though there's some truth out there, which is how long it takes. And over here is how long I have decided to give to this article. These are very different. It is much more empowering to think about how much time am I giving to this article than how long will it arbitrarily take? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now in order to decide though, you need to be taking into account the length of the article and the complexity of the article. Definitely. But I'm gonna share with you four other things that I think you need to also take into account so that you really know what options you've got, and you can then make decisions from there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Once you understand those options, you'll often be able to read an article much, much more quickly than you are at the moment. And if it takes as long or even longer than it currently does with my approach, you will know exactly why and you will have chosen that rather than it just ending up taking a long time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason that most people think that they're the most important variables is because what most people do when they're reading an article is they start at the beginning and they read all the bits until they get to the end. And they go more quickly through the bits that are simple that they understand and they go more slowly through the bits that are more complex, that need to be taken in more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And therefore, if that's the approach, if that is your definition of reading something, then yes, absolutely. The length and complexity of it will be the main variables that predict the amount of time it takes. And usually what happens is the length of it shouldn't catch a by surprise 'cause hopefully we can see how long it is. Although with electronic versions, that's not always as clear. Um, but the complexity sometimes catches us out. There's more of it that's more complex than we thought. Therefore, we go slower. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the twist that I want you to make in your thinking that will then open up all these tools that I'm going to share with you is that we don't need to read, in fact, we shouldn't be reading by picking up an article, starting at the beginning, going to the end, and that's it read every time. What we should be doing instead is making a conscious decision about why we are reading that article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So as well as length and complexity, the first of the four things that I want you to take into account is purpose. We need to be thinking about the purpose of us as an individual reading that article at this time point. Okay? And the at this time point is important as well. And I'll get to that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things I get my members to do in our coworking sessions, if they're reading, if that's the task they've turned up to do, is to actually write a sentence before they start reading the article. Write a sentence or two sentences about what it is they're specifically intending to get outta this article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Why that article? What do they want from it? Because think about it, right when you read an article. Sometimes it's because that topic is absolutely central to what you are doing in your thesis and you need to know everything about it. Other times you read it because you are gonna be using a similar method to that person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, they were investigating something completely different, but they did the same data analysis strategy that you are going to use. Other times you are looking for something to back up a kind of passing point that you are making in your general introduction. So, as an example, many of you know I used to be an exercise scientist. So kinesiologist, those of you in North America. And so let's think of that as an example. If I'm reading for a exercise intervention that I'm doing to look at the effects of exercise on some biomarker, then some articles will have done exercise interventions on that same biomarker using similar, similar methods to me, and I'm gonna wanna know that paper inside out, back to front, every detail of it. When did they do their measurements? Exactly? How did they measure that biomarker? Absolutely everything. Especially the method and results particularly, I wanna know in absolute depth. However, when I'm writing this up, I'm gonna need a paragraph at the beginning of the introduction. That's going to be something like the generic physical inactivity is associated with a number of adverse our health outcomes, including type two diabetes, reference, obesity, reference, cardiovascular disease reference, and whatever else, right? Reference. And I just need references to fill those in. I'm also potentially gonna read papers where they measured that biomarker, but not in the context of exercise or they did the same exercise intervention as me, but with different markers. Now. I need to reference all of those things. I need a reference for my exercise intervention. I need a reference for how I measured the biomarker. I need a reference for how I analyze the data. I need references for all of this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I need reading for all of this stuff, understanding but how I read each of those articles is gonna be completely different depending on why I'm reading it, which purpose it's having. Now, even if we backtrack in time, maybe I don't know yet exactly what my study's doing, then the purpose is to get a feel for the types of exercise interventions that have been done in relation to this biomarker, or to get a feel for what biomarkers have been shown to be modulated by this intervention, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So sometimes it's not as simple as I need to know this specific thing, but my specific reason for reading it might be to familiarize myself with what else has been done in this specific bit of the literature. So our first job always is to know why we are reading it. A valid reason is not background. If you find yourself going, oh, I'm reading it for background. I'm reading it. 'cause I don't know enough, I'm reading it. 'cause I don't understand enough yet. I need a broader understanding. That's too vague. We don't want that. I want you to get as specific as possible. Why is this the article that made it onto your desk, onto your screen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Why is this the article that's on the to-do list for today? I'm reading this article because so and so has a strong reputation in this field, and they're working on a similar population that I'm gonna be working on, and I want to understand better how they justify that decision, for example. Get really, really specific about it, because we cannot judge how long it's gonna take to read this article if we don't know that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you may remember, I said at this time point, this is not just about why am I reading this article? It's why am I reading this article at this time point? And the reason I emphasize that is because often what we think when we read something is that we should read it thoroughly enough and make good enough notes that that is our only time reading it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> 'cause that's efficient, right? That's the efficient way to do it. Only read it once, get everything you need from it and then you are won't have to read it again. Won't that be efficient? You'll have this wonderful note system. That's not efficient because the problem is every time you read that article, you should and probably are reading it for different reasons to last time and even more complexly you are reading it with a different brain now because when you read an article when you are final year PhD student, those of you who are there already know this. When you read it as a final year student, you read it in a completely different way and with completely different understanding than when you read it for the first time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are thinking what is the purpose of reading this for me at this time point with what I am currently trying to do. That's what we mean by purpose, and that is gonna really influence how long we are gonna take over this. Because in my example, if I'm reading this so that I can say physical inactivity is associated with type two diabetes incidence, for example, then I am not spending a long time reading that article. This is not a controversial point. There's about a billion articles that I could reference to do it. I want a nice meta-analysis. I want a nice systematic review. Something like that. We have a quick look. Is it published somewhere good? Does it seem to be methodologically sound? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does it make the point? I want it to make. Boom. It'll do no prizes. Forgetting the absolute perfect one. Do I need to read every single aspect of it? Exact. Every single bit? No. I'm just backing up a point at the beginning of my introduction, okay. The purpose is simply to be able to back that point up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If the purpose is to understand the methodology. Do I need to read all their introduction? No. I need to know what they did and what they found, and then I need to read in detail the method. So I'm gonna direct myself to that bit of it, which means that I've now got a much better way of estimating how long this will take. 'cause if I know I need to understand how they designed their exercise intervention. Translate that out into your discipline, then I'm much better able to guess how long it's gonna take me to figure that out. Whereas if I'm trying to read the introduction or the results and all the discussion and everything as well, and dah, dah, dah, who knows how long it will take? 'cause it depends how much I understand the things they did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So purpose is one of the four. That then relates to the second of the four things I want you to take into account. And the second is centrality. And what I mean in this context by centrality is how fundamental is this article to what I'm doing? Now you may say, how do I work that out? All of them are important. It's not true. If I asked you to write an abstract that sums up your whole thesis and that you were allowed to give me three references that inform your thesis, you would be able to narrow that down. It's tricky, but you would find articles that probably are a very similar topic, a very similar methodology, very similar philosophical underpinnings, dah, dah, dah, and that are very central to why you did what you did. In fact, many of them may be, this is what we know so far. Paper A or whatever, but they left this gap. They uncovered this unknown bit, which is what my thesis is now gonna do. Those articles are super central to your thesis. The articles that are central to why you use that particular method. That's a little bit more peripheral because now they only have the method in common, but they might be different topics, or they might just be a methodological paper or whatever. They're slightly less central. The articles that are just sort of backing up introduction points or providing a bit of extra context or whatever. Those are less central. Those who watching me on YouTube will be able to see. I'm making kind of target type circles in front of my face. So we've got the articles that are right at the bullseye, and then we've got the articles that are further out from the center. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to be reading the articles that are more central to our work in much more depth and much more detailed understanding than the ones that are much more peripheral. So is this an article that's central to what I do? In which case I'm probably gonna read it slowly. I'm gonna read it many times for many different purposes, and I'm gonna know every bit of it inside out, versus is it much less central or is it simply serving one point, or is it kind of a nice to have but not crucial in which case I'm gonna read it in less depth and I'm gonna read it more quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the purpose, why are we reading it and the centrality of it both are gonna influence how long we are gonna decide to take on this article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing we are gonna take into account is how familiar we are with the type of work we are reading. Because, and this was one of the things that came up in the coaching session, is that many of you will be working at intersections between disciplines. I was super interdisciplinary, so I was often working at the intersection of psychology, neuroendocrinology, immunology, exercise sciences, kind of a smush between those. So as you can imagine, some papers, if you gimme an exercise intervention where it's got some simple biomarkers, I can read that inside out, back to front, understand every bit of it very, very quickly. Not a problem. I am an exercise scientist at heart. If you give me an article where, instead of how it's still an exercise intervention, but instead of being a simple biomarker, they're doing some complex immunological measurements of some description. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gonna take me a little bit longer if you give me a pure, you know, say, 'cause I often was looking at articles where I was looking at the impact of, I don't know, some particular hormone or whatever in vitro on an immune outcome. So a much more pure neuroendocrine immunology study, then I'm gonna be much less familiar. I'm still all right, you know, but I'm st I'm much less familiar with the techniques being used, with what makes a good study versus a weak study, with what controls there should be, da, da, da. My expectations are much blurrier. And the reason we take this into account is because it is reasonable to expect you to take longer to read something that you are less familiar with the topic area than if you are more familiar with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now we do always have to remember that purpose though, because sometimes when something's less familiar, we expect ourselves to understand every single word of it. And it may be even if it's quite central to what we are doing. If for example, my purpose is not to replicate their methods, then perhaps I do need to understand exactly why they chose those immune markers, exactly why they chose those hormones, exactly why they manipulated it the way they did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I probably don't need to fully understand media that they used and why the incubations were the length they were and why they did that wash routine or whatever it is, right? I probably don't need to understand all of that 'cause I'm not doing that. So even where we are less familiar sometimes what we get to do is decide that, you know what, I'm not big on this stuff. That's not my specialty and it is not that central to what I'm doing. So that bit I can skim or that bit I can pull out the key bits that I need, but I don't need all of the detail. So I want you to notice I'm giving you four things, but they all super sort of overlap and interact with each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we've got the centrality, the knowing the purpose, we've got how familiar we are with the discipline and the kind of the content of this sort of a paper. And then the fourth one is really about our expectations of ourselves because one of the things that became really clear in the coaching session yesterday is that clever people expect themselves to understand everything. And if you are working at the intersections between disciplines. At the beginnings at least, that may not be realistic. So if you are reading, in my case, an immunology paper, a pure immunology paper that is related to what you are doing is outside of your familiarity and you understand the purpose of it because it's gonna relate to the measures you are taking or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also have to tell ourselves what level of understanding am I expecting myself to get on this read? Because like I said, we are gonna be reading these articles if they are central, and if we have a key reason to do so, we are gonna be reading these articles more than one time. And it may be that at this time point, it is not reasonable for you to expect yourself to understand every nuanced element of the article, even if you will need to eventually. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this is a bit different from when you decide, you know what? I don't need to know that nuanced stuff. 'cause it's not central. It's not the purpose why I'm reading it. This is a bit different. This is stuff that you probably will need to understand in detail that probably will be central to your work, but you don't have to get yourself to have that 100% understanding of every detail right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's because it's really hard to understand every nuanced detail of something where you don't have pre-knowledge or pre framework in place. When we're reading stuff from within our disciplines, the reason it's faster is because we intuitively know what the words mean. You know, the technical words, we're familiar with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't have to translate them out. We don't have to think about it, and we've got a whole kind of background of knowledge and understanding on which to hang this new information. Whereas when you are reading something that's outta your discipline or in a discipline that you are sort of just going into or collaborating with, you don't have that framework. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't have that base understanding of what the technical words mean, of where this fits or whatever. And if you try and understand every level of a paper all at once. A, it's super hard, super frustrating, but b, it takes forever because you're trying to hang details on a very wobbly framework. So if you understand, okay, this paper is gonna be central, I understand why I'm reading it at this time point, I'm not very familiar with the topic. Therefore, my expectation for this read is for me to get a superficial understanding of the key main points, for example . That then intersects with our kind of purpose for reading, but we are really saying, you know what? With my current level of familiarity with the current stage I'm at in my PhD, what we're aiming for is a rudimentary understanding and your brain will tell you no, but you need to know it all. No, but what if the examiner asked this? What if you can't back up that? That's okay. We've got time. PhDs are a long journey. We are gonna read this article again, but if on this read through our fundamental purpose and understanding of ourself and our own understanding is that we need to get a sort of overview of the key points. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're making a kind of framework on which to hang the rest of our understanding. That's what we need to focus on this time, and that's where we get to decide, okay, I've got an hour to pull out as much kind of basic understanding as I can. I'm not gonna worry about all these nuanced different definitions. I'm not gonna worry about exactly why they did X, Y, z. I wanna know what did they do? Why did they do it? What did they find, for example? So we're bringing into it a layer of compassion, understanding for ourselves that we can't expect ourselves to understand every single detail on this particular read through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are the four things. So we already identified two length, complexity. But we're gonna take into account how central it is to what you're doing, exactly what your purpose is for reading it, how familiar you are with the topic area already, and how much kind of compassion and understanding you're giving yourself as to what level of understanding you're expecting this time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> From there, we get to decide rather than find out, 'cause this is an active choice, we get to decide how long we are giving to this article. Now the one bit that then adds on top of all of this is your note taking strategy. Because the thing that takes a lot of time often is not just the reading, it's the note taking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when you are note taking, you need to take into account all those things I just said, why am I reading it? How central is it? What do I know already? All that stuff you need to be taking into account when you choose what notes you are taking. Often we think that the purpose of notes is to have a shorter summary of that article for us to refer back to later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is not the purpose of notes. This is why AI note taking will never replace your human brain unless we learn to use it a lot better than we do at the moment. The purpose of your notes is not to have a precised version of the article. The purpose of your notes is twofold. And again, you need to decide which of these you're doing at any one time. One purpose of notes is to focus your attention and help you process your thoughts on paper. This version of notes, you could just bin it after you've read the article. The purpose is not record keeping. The purpose is to help you keep track of what you are thinking about while you are reading that article in order to better understand the article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As an example, I love to draw a flow chart. I love, especially if I'm doing some sort of, it's like an exercise trial or that kind of thing, or even an immunology protocol. Love to draw a little diagram that shows the protocol, the timings, when measures were taken, all that stuff, for example. So one purpose of notes is to just allow you to see your thoughts, to pour them onto the page, to see them, to keep track of what you're reading and to facilitate the reading process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those are valuable even if you never, ever look at them again. The other form of note taking is to keep a record of what you read that is relevant to the point of why you are reading it this time. It is not to provide a summary of the entire paper. It is when you've decided the purpose of why you are reading it, how central it is to what you're doing. Then the bit of notes that you are gonna actually file somewhere and keep, is only going to be related to the reason you are reading it this time. So if we're reading it this time, because you're working on your methodology, you only need to make notes on your methodology. And I can hear you. I can hear you screaming at your phones or whatever you're listening on this game. Yeah. But that's so inefficient because then I'll have to read it again later when I need the other stuff. Yes, you will. Yes you will. And I promise this is still more efficient. The reason this is still more efficient is because you don't know exactly what you'll need next time when you read this again in three months time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you are now trying to second guess what it is you might need in the future, which means you are much more likely to over note, to write far too much. You are also much more likely to be noting in order to keep track of what they're saying. Rather than noting to keep track of what you are thinking about what they're saying, which is what notes should be. Even the notes that you are gonna keep. I want your notes to not just be they did this method, using this for these reasons. I want your notes to be, they did this method in this way for these reasons. I'm a bit concerned about why they didn't have a control for whatever, or whether their exercise intervention was long enough, or, I really liked the way they included two baseline measures or whatever, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the notes you are taking on the specific bit you are reading for a specific reason that you have identified 'cause you are in control of your PhD. You make notes on that, the intersection between their thinking and your thinking, where that overlaps in that gorgeous Venn diagram. That is what we are noting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Not everything. We are noting the bits we need right now that are what you are thinking about what they've done. When you read this again in the future, you are gonna be reading it with a different brain. So your brain circle is gonna be different shape than it was. You are gonna be reading a different bit of it for different reasons. And so the intersection between their thinking, you are thinking it's gonna be somewhere else, it's gonna be a different place. You can't do it now. That's why these dreams people have of what I need to do is just to get a complete, like library of all my reading with all my notes, and then it'll be super easy to write. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, you, you don't, it's not even desirable. It's definitely not possible. It's not even desirable. You need to be reading the things that you need to read, making notes of the thoughts you are having about the stuff that you need to be reading, how it has implications for your work right now. This also is a little bonus for you, is a massively useful way to transition from writing about the work of others in a kind of narrative reporter way versus writing your thoughts about a field in a thought leader, senior academic sort of a way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If your note taking is always the intersection between your brain and their work and never just a faithful replication of their work, then you are always building that habit of asking, what do I think about this? And from there, that helps. Knowing how you are gonna do your notes helps you inform. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How long you're gonna spend on this article, because if you know that what you need is a detailed outline of their methodology, you can have a think about how long that will take for you to write out, for you to pick out, turn into something that you can record. Whereas if you've got to take notes on everything, how long does that take? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Who knows? It also is an added, added bonus. This massively helps with overwhelm because one of the worst things about reading is its ability to spiral in 50 directions. You think you're just reading this article, by the time you've read the whole article with a vague kind of, I need to know it purpose and made all your notes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You've got 40 other references that you need to go and look up now, and you're suddenly like, oh my goodness. If every paper I read gives me 10 new references. I'm, how am I ever gonna get through this? This is just gonna extrapolate wildly, Hey, we don't need to do that. Because if we are reading it for its methodology, we don't need to look at all the different background articles. If we are reading it because it works on similar population to us. We don't need to read all the articles about how they did their analytic strategy. Okay. We read for a purpose for reasons that we have chosen, to a level that we have chosen and take notes in a way that enable us to do the thing we're trying to do at the moment. And from there, it's so much easier to decide how long it takes, and then people will say, okay, yeah, I decide how long it takes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then it takes longer. And my answer sounds so flippant, but hopefully you guys know me well enough to know that I mean it from a good place. Don't. My answer is don't. If you decide you are giving this article an hour, and at the end of the hour you're like, oh, I need more time. Don't. Get it done to the level you are able to get it done in the time you've been given. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What that means is if you gave yourself an hour and you decided what you are doing in it, it means you've started reading it in more detail, at a greater depth, at a level of understanding that you don't have, that you've gone off and looked up their references or whatever it is. You've deviated from your plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Don't. Give yourself the hour and do as much as you can in that hour. You can come back to it another time if you need to. If you need to read it for more depth in a later date. If you need to read it for a different reason at a later date, come back to it. Happy days. But this is how, by taking control of it, identifying exactly what we're doing and deciding how long it takes, that is how we stay on top of our workloads. That is how we actually stick to deadlines. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, some of you, I'm doing a lot of like objection answering here. I can hear your voices in my head. Some of you might say, oh, but that takes out the joy of lit reviewing that, you know, I love to just immerse myself in the literature. Then that's great. We get to decide that. If you decide, actually, what I wanna do is spend an afternoon, two days, a week, a month, who knows? Immersing myself in the literature with the purpose of having fun, chasing rabbit holes and not having to be intentional. Great, do it, but decide that intentionally, because if your purpose is to dive into the literature, enjoy swimming around, enjoy following rabbit holes, then what you can't do is at the end of that period of time, moan about the fact that you haven't got a structured lit review out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Moan about the fact that you haven't "got anywhere". Because that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was the pleasure. The purpose was enjoying following these little trails down through different bits of literature and stuff. So even that. You can still do it. Just choose it as the purpose and therefore focus on enjoying the process 'cause what I see people doing is they tell me I wanna be able to follow the literature. I wanna be able to go down rabbit holes. I really enjoy it. That's why I get to distracted. But they simultaneously beat themselves up for not making enough progress, not being focused, never getting anywhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't get it both ways. You get to decide, am I reading this thing because I'm intentionally trying to develop the method section of my thesis or whatever. Am I reading this thing to generally enjoy swimming around in the literature? Am I reading this thing because I need to learn about this particular approach or this particular argument? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Why am I reading it? Use that to decide exactly how you do it. Taking into account the state your brain's at where, what time it is in your PhD, exactly what you're doing, decide how long it's gonna take, and then spend that long on it. I say that like it's easy, your brain is gonna argue with you. Your brain is gonna say, oh, but I should probably write these bits down. Oh, I should probably take a bit longer. Just know that that's gonna happen. And remember, you don't have to listen to that bit of your brain. You can go, yeah, yeah, I know you think that, but this is what I decided. I decided that I'm reading it for this purpose to this level of depth, for this amount of time and making notes on these things. And that's what we're doing. And I know you've got a bunch of concerns about it, but that's what we're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to try out this week. Let me know how you get on. If you are not already on my newsletter, why not? You get summaries of all of this stuff and you get access to the PhD Life Coach podcast archive, which is a completely searchable resource that has everything I've ever done in the podcast summaries, take home messages, they're categorized. You can control F and find whatever you are struggling with at the moment. So if you're not already on the newsletter, make sure you head over to the websites. Sign on up. I will send you that and every week you'll get a reminder about the podcast and of course my free monthly webinars as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hope to see you all at one of those soon. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 09 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-40-how-to-read-academic-papers-more-quickly thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-39-how-to-get-ahead-when-youre-feeling-behind <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode, best selling author Sophie Hannah shares her “Book Ahead” method for managing multiple projects when you already feel behind. Born in the midst of a particularly busy year of writing, the first iteration of the Book Ahead method not only got the job done, it also changed how Sophie felt about herself, her other projects, and one of her long-standing “bad habits”. If you feel like you’ll be behind forever and want a technique that doesn’t just involve simply working more, then this is the episode for you!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> About <a href="https://sophiehannah.com/" target="_blank"> Sophie Hannah </a> and the <a href="https://dreamauthorcoaching.com/" target="_blank"> Dream Author coaching programme </a> </div> <div> Pre-order Sophie’s new book, No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done  <span> – <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Would-What-Lamberts-Have-Done/dp/1835011586" target="_blank"> UK </a> , <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Would-What-Lamberts-Have-Done/dp/1464265127" target="_blank"> North America </a> ; available at other good bookshops! </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and I am joined by another guest this week, and I am, I always say I'm excited, but I'm particularly excited because this is a good friend of mine as well, and international bestselling author, Sophie Hannah. Welcome.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm very excited to be here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's perfect. So Sophie and I met because we did the same coach training and kind of moved in the same circles for a little while. Sophie has a coaching program for aspiring and current authors called Dream Author. Um, and we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes and well, we were having a conversation right, about how you manage all your different projects 'cause i'll get you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself in a minute, but you're always juggling so many different writing projects and I just find it fascinating and that's where this whole conversation came about, I guess. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah. So, last year I was juggling, I am always trying to do too much. Like way too much. I have this. And it's not a bad thing. I think it's actually a good quality. I have this kind of form of extreme optimism where if I want something to be true, then I just decide it is, and then I do everything I can to make it true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So if there's lots of things I fancy doing, I just think, well, of course I can do all those things. And I don't often have realistic thoughts about what I'm actually capable of. And in many ways this causes problems. It certainly caused me a few problems and a lot of stress when I've committed to, you know, four things at the same time and then I find I can't deliver on time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: But actually there is, I have found, and I've only really realized this quite recently, there is also an advantage to assuming you can do too much and committing to do too much. And the advantage is that even though you do often stress yourself out in the process of trying to sort of handle this massive workload, you also train yourself bit by bit to be able to do more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And this was a big eureka moment for me just a few days ago because I had got to the point where I thought, right, I'm not going to, in future, take on too much. I'll only take on what I can handle. And then I realized that what I can handle easily now is so much more, such a vastly greater amount of things because I've taken on too much in the past. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So then I thought, right, I need a middle ground. I need a middle ground between don't take on more than I can handle and sort of don't take on more than I can handle in a way that means I never grow my capacity to handle more. So that's where I'm at with it now, and where I'm at right now is, I do want to take on too much, but deliberately and calmly and without stress and with a plan to not necessarily make it work entirely, but make it work as well as it can work all while feeling no stress. But this is very much a 2025 development and learning, because in 2024 what was happening was I was taking on too much, Not really seeing any advantage that there could be in doing that and just feeling all the stress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So I had committed to write three books and write and deliver from start to finish, three books between November the seventh, 2023, and January the 30th, 2025. So on the 7th of November 23, I knew that I had to start and finish three books in 15 months. And that felt quite scary to me because also they had to be good </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and we should probably put in context for everybody as well. I mentioned your dream author coaching program. The books is obviously what you are famous for and you know where you've built your career and all of that stuff, but you are also running a huge coaching program. You are also doing retreats, you are also doing talks for a whole variety of different places. It's not even just writing these books, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah. Oh. Oh, not at all. I mean, my coaching program at any given time contains between 1300 and 1500 people typically. So I am the coach for more than a thousand people now. It works a bit like a gym membership in that if everyone came in to use the cross trainer on the same day, the gym would soon encounter problems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Not everyone asked for coaching on the same day. So it's totally manageable, but it's a lot, a lot, a lot of work. So yeah, when I thought I have these three books to write in 15 months. The, the thought in parentheses was as well as all my hours of coaching. So it felt like a lot, and it was a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And what I found was that in 2024, roundabout, no February, late February, 2024, I was not as far ahead as I knew I needed to be in order to meet that deadline. And I started to feel down about it. Depressed. Uh, not depressed. I mean, I'm, I'm quite a jolly person, so I never feel seriously depressed, but just as though there was this weight of stress and almost like having to accept failure on the doing things on time front. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I just kept thinking, I'm behind with this book. I'm behind with this book. And I was taking for granted that because I was behind with that book, which was book one of the three, the first I was gonna write. Because I was behind with that one, I thought, well, obviously I'm then gonna be behind with the next one, and then I'm gonna be about even more behind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So I saw it as a kind of domino effect of behind ness and then I was listening to a session with a life coach, an American life coach called Tiffany Han. I was in her program, which was called the Gentle Productivity Club, which was brilliant, and it was all about how to be productive but also not exhaust yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And she asked a question in this coaching call, which was something along the lines of have a think about what hasn't occurred to you yet. Like what haven't you thought of? What brilliant thing have you not thought of? And maybe you'd never think of it unless you think of it now, I can't remember how she phrased it, but it was just a completely open invitation to kind of say to your own brain, what is it that's not occurring to me? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: That it would just be brilliant if it did occur to me. And what occurred to me as if by magic was the idea that just because I was behind with one book did not mean I had to be behind with any other books and that I could get ahead on the next book while being behind on this book. So I thought, huh, okay, so where are we? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: It's, I think it was March. I had planned to totally finish book one by, let's say end of February. That's right and I had, I had finished it on time, but then it came back with loads and loads of notes and I saw that a massive rewrite was gonna be needed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So listen, before you carry on Sophie listeners, I want you to remember that like big ass author here, getting billions of edits, same as we moan about when they come back from our supervisors and stuff happens to the best of us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And actually, you know, one does want it to happen because, you know, whenever I get my edit notes and then I reread the book, I think, oh cripes, the first draft really was flawed and it's supposed to be flawed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And the edit process is so lovely when you see it as just like, ah, now I get to make it good. First I got to make it just exist. Now I get to make it as brilliant as it can be. So I, I love doing the whole edit process, but I saw that it was gonna take quite a long time, and I had planned to start writing my next book at the beginning of May after a nice break between books. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I thought, no, no, no, that ain't gonna happen because this book is gonna take me probably until the end of May now to do all the edits. And then I thought, okay, but what if I could get ahead on the next book while being behind on this one? What might that look like? And I thought, well, I'm still in March. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: I could start the next book a whole month early and start it while I'm still editing the other one. And so not only would that enable me to practically get a bit ahead on the next book, but it would also completely shift the way I thought about myself and where I was at productivity wise, because suddenly just as if by magic, if I did this, what I came to call the ahead and behind method, I realized that I would not be able plausibly to think of myself as someone who's behind with their work, because I wouldn't be only behind, I would also be ahead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: That would be great. And like being ahead in one way and behind in another way, kind of cancels each other out. And then I could think to myself, well, I'm right on time, really. If I'm ahead, I'm behind. I'm kind of doing okay in terms of deadlines. And unlike almost everything I've tried to implement where normally there's a few teething problems, the minute the second I started trying the ahead and behind approach it just worked at an almost miraculous level. My thoughts and feelings and general kind of vibe in my mind about both books was massively elevated very quickly. Not only did I love getting ahead on the next book, which I will explain how exactly I did that. I loved that process. I was like, here I am. I'm a month ahead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Look at all this brilliant stuff I'm doing so early. Aren't I good? Aren't I diligent? But also enjoying that so much had a knock on effect on the behind book, which no longer felt like quite such a burden because I was like, where every time I sat down with the behind book to work on that I was like, well, look, only this morning, I was really enjoying myself with the ahead book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So do I really wanna give this book the label, the Behind Book and feel bad about it? Why not just think of it as another book I'm writing and try and enjoy it? So it just worked amazingly well, but it only worked well because I found a way to do the Ahead book that was compatible with doing the Behind book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So the Behind Book was my main work of every day, apart from when I was coaching, but you know, when I had my writing time, it was the behind book that I was. Working on writing. And so I was sitting in my usual position with my laptop on my, on a cushion, on my lap, typing away for a certain number of hours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I thought, well, I don't, I can't be doing that with two books at the same time. I just can't. That would feel oppressive and like, uh, I was overloading myself. So I thought, well, okay, how can I do the ahead book in the most different way possible so that it really feels like a different activity in a different part of my day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I can't exactly remember how I came up with it, but it, it felt to me as though, like the answer was just obvious and there, and so what I did was reach for my phone every morning. So the first thing I do every morning is I get my phone, which is charging on the bed side table next to me. I do Wordle, the New York Times game. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: I share my WORDLE scores with my mom and my sister and my son-in-law. And I thought, right instead of them putting my phone down, I will keep it in my hand, open a new notes file and just record myself. 'cause there's a little button you can press if you're in notes, where you just record yourself speaking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I will record myself speaking some words of my ahead book into my phone. And then later on I will look at those notes, type those words up. But that will just be a secretarial task, the writing, the creating is gonna happen in bed before I've even put my glasses on, dictating into my phone, and I'm gonna make it deliberately feel like a fun thing rather than a work thing by choosing an amount of words to aim for every day that feels so easy and doable, that it's just like can't possibly fail. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So for me, the number I chose was 400 words a day. And I tried it out. The first day I went to my notes file, press record, started speaking a bit of the book, a bit of the ahead book. I'd got to 400 words in no time. Once I'd done a couple of, well, maybe three or four chunky paragraphs, I then copied and pasted those words into something called word counter dot net, and I saw that I'd done like 470 words. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: I was like, great. Done. And it just works so brilliantly. And there's so much more to it than that. But basically the way I was able to do it so effectively was to make the ahead book. I actually now call it the Book Ahead Method, and I'm determined to do it now from now on for every book even when I'm not behind on another book. So I'm, I'm just gonna do the book ahead method 'cause I just loved it so much. But the key, when I did have that other book that I was late with, the key was to do the book ahead book just in completely different way. And it just worked brilliantly. I was able to then do everything, feel great about it, lose the stress, and most importantly just not feel at all behind because there was something very important that I was ahead on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love this and I love the one little gap I'm gonna fill in. 'cause I remember it from when you first told me about this is the, where it came from, because I remember you talking to me about a bad habit that we have in common, which is scrolling on your phone when in bed in the mornings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And we had talked before about like, how do I stop doing it? Da, and I remember you saying. I've decided I just like being in bed on my phone and if I'm gonna be in bed on my phone, I might as well do this rather than that. And so I love the way that you were, rather than sort of being like, must be more disciplined, must get up, must go and work at my desk like a proper person or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You're like, I keep doing it. I obviously like it, so i'll stay here and I'll do this. I'll write my new book from here in a voice note. And I love that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah, and I think one of the reasons this method works so well for me was that, as you say, I attached it. So I, I knew I wanted to do something, which was the 400 words a day, and I deliberately attached it to a firmly ingrained habit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So we both know having done our coach training at the Life Coach School, when something is just a firmly ingrained habit, it becomes easy to do, like brushing our teeth or putting our glasses on in the morning. It just happens because we expect it to happen 'cause it's a habit and I knew that. So I thought, okay, this habit that I've always thought should I try to get rid of? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Because lots of people disapprove of picking up your phone first thing in the morning and not getting straight out of bed, but kind of lounging around. You know, all of those things. You can hear lots of people saying why you shouldn't do them. But I just, you know, having observed myself for 52 years, I just do lie around in bed in the morning and reach for my phone and stay on my phone. So I was like, why not really use that fact? And that firmly ingrained habit to produce something absolutely amazing and have fun in a slightly different way. I also knew that if I incorporated the ahead book writing into my kind of stolen, rebellious time of lying around in bed in the morning then it would make the writing feel like part of the fun bit stolen from my working day, not part of the dutiful, doing the work bit. And I knew that for a contrarian like me, who, if you're familiar with Gretchen Rubin's, the Four Tendencies, which I'm sure lots of your listeners will be, she basically divides everyone up into four categories. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Upholders, obligers, questioners and rebels. And every time I do a quiz, I come out as a rebel. So I knew that if I did my, you know, it's, I'm writing the book, I shouldn't be writing at the moment, you know, and I'm writing it when I'm lying in bed, when I should have got up. I knew that would add to my enjoyment and motivation, and it really worked. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And it also means that it didn't steal time from the other book, right? Because I'm sort of trying to hear what I think the listeners might be thinking and stuff, and one of the things I can imagine is them saying, yeah, but surely you got more behind on the book you are behind on if you are giving time to this book. Yeah. And I think this idea of stealing time that you weren't using for other work is, is hugely important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah, that is such a good point. So at no point, not even on a single day, did any time that would otherwise been spent on the Behind book get stolen? All of my ahead book writing happened when I definitely would not have been writing my behind book anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So lying in bed, I mean, typically before I did the book ahead Method, I'd spend half an hour to an hour lying in bed just looking on Rightmove, Instagram, Facebook, X and BlueSky. Um, at least 20 minutes looking at things people had written that I thought was silly and getting cross about those things in an enjoyable way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I was like, okay, so I can do that for five minutes and spend 15 minutes writing a bit of my ahead book and then I started to branch out. So sometimes I would do my ahead words, uh, when I was walking the dog, or you know, if I was in the hot tub near where I live in Cornwall, there's a hotel with a hot tub that I like to sit about in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And sometimes I would just have my phone. I'm such a rebel. I take my phone into hot tubs and my mom outrageous. My mom can't bear it. She's like, whatcha you doing? It might fall in. I'm like, but it fallen and so far it does not fall in. And I would just record my book ahead, words in my phone in the hot tub, and then I get to stare out at the nice view. And you know, so I, but I always made sure it came from time. That wasn't time that belonged to the Behind book.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you've touched on this already, but the other thing that kind of really stuck out to me is the impact of changing your self-concept with all of this stuff as well. Because again, often I think in academia, we think about work in quite a, sort of a boxed way, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That I've only got the, I've got these hours to get stuff done, and if I'm doing other things then I'm not. But it sounds as though even within those hours that you are working on the behind book, you were working more effectively and more enjoyably because of the mindset shift. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Completely because the overall picture and story was no longer a negative one. It wasn't the case that I was behind on Book one and therefore behind on Book two. And no doubt, by the time I got to book three, I'd be even, I'd be so behind, I might as well be, you know, in another time zone. That was no longer the case. The minute I started doing the ahead method and it worked. I was like, I'm, I'm ahead as much as I'm behind, which effectively means. Take all things into consideration. I'm pretty much on time, perfectly on time. What could be better, you know? And, and I just, yeah, it, it changed everything, but it wasn't a kind of hard one. You know, if I make an effort, maybe I can feel, it was like instant. The minute I started, everything just changed completely and even I started not to care or worry or stress if the behind book even got a bit more behind. I was like, yeah, that's fine. That's meant to be the behind. Who cares when that's finished? It'll get finished at some point. But the most important thing is that on my ahead book, I'm way ahead and, and the whole process actually it really did kind of come true. 'Cause what happened was. By the time I finished and handed in the Behind book, I had about 55,000 words of the ahead book. I then read through those 55,000 words 'cause I thought, right, what do I do now? Does do I carry on with my ahead method now that there's no other book taking up my main working day? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And I thought, well, no. Now I should make this the book I'm writing. I read the 55,000 words and they weren't really. I couldn't have just like said, right there are the first 55,000 words, I'll just write the rest. Because they were fragments and scenes, they weren't stitched together at all. I'll say a bit more about that in a minute 'cause that is quite important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: But even so, having read them through, I thought, I know this book so well. I know what it's about. I know what all the main things are. I know the characters so well. So I kind of started from scratch writing a first draft of the book, but it didn't feel like a first draft. It really felt like a final draft because all the invention had been happening as I wrote the 55,000 words. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So to turn that into a coherent book was way less work and effort, and that was a surprise, like when I read through the 55,000 words and thought. Oh, this is not really a book. Like this isn't even three quarters of a book that I just finish off now. This is a load of amazing material that has to be turned into a coherent book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And at that point I was like, ah, this is gonna take eons. And it just didn't, it all just fell into place because so much of what was important was there already, and I, I just knew the thing inside out and because I'd had that experience of writing it in such a fun way, turning it into the proper book felt like fun as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And just editing it then felt like, felt like the whole process felt like really good fun. Now, this is where I need to tell you a really important bit of the book ahead method. So, because you want to make it feel like fun and not like your main work that's occupying most of your working day. What you don't wanna do in the book ahead method is allow any perfectionist thinking to creep in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: You don't wanna think, right how, how best to start this scene. No. The minute you start thinking what's the best way to start? Or you know, what's the best opening for chapter one already you are into serious work thinking. So I just decided that what I was gonna do was that at the beginning of every book ahead writing session, I was gonna think to myself, okay, what is something that definitely has to be in there? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: No matter what else happens. So in the case of my ahead book, which is called No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done, it's about a family that does the unthinkable, an ordinary family that does the unthinkable. And I deliberately don't say what the unthinkable is 'cause I want people to read it and find out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: But I knew. There were certain things that had to be in there. There was, for example, an argument about resemblances that a mom and a son had to have. So I thought, right, there's just no way, no way on earth that book is not gonna contain the resemblances discussion because it's an important clue. So I thought, right, start there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So I literally started in the middle of a scene, and it's a mum and son arguing about this, based heavily on an argument that my family actually had where I said, Hey, who does? We were watching a movie and I said, Hey everyone, who does she remind you of? And my son said, no one. I was like, no, no, she does. She does. Look. Look at her. Who does she remind you of? He said, she doesn't remind me of anyone. Mum. I know who you are thinking of. It's so and so. I was like, wait, if you know, I'm thinking of so and so. That has to mean she reminds you of so and so as well. He was like, no, it doesn't, she doesn't remind me of anyone, but I just knew she, it turned into the most absurd argument and that argument had to be in the book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So I just started with that argument and then the next day I was like, okay, what else definitely has to be in there. Well, there has to be the bit about the song that the mum sings to the dog. They've got a pet dog who is very important in the story. He's like a member of the family, and he has a day song and a night song that his mom, his human mom sings to him. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: They both have to be in there. So every day it was like, okay, what else is super important and has to be in there. So what I ended up with when I read those 55,000 words was just loads of small bits with no edges, as it were, just centres of scenes almost. But they were all the most important scenes that I ended up with because every morning I think, what's the next most important thing that's definitely going in? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So actually it's like just a brilliant way, as it turns out, I didn't know it was going to be, I was like, okay, well this'll have to do, but it turned out for me anyway, to be a brilliant way of getting all the essentials down there. And kind of pushing my perfectionist tendency out of the way going, no, no, you don't get to be fussy about grammar and how are we starting this chapter? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: You just get to move aside and we're just going to the heart of something that really matters for the book, and we're just writing from there without any care in the world, and it just really worked. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, because I think there's something about that lack of a sort of linear approach that also presumably made it feel more different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Than what you were doing in your other book too, because I can imagine if it was like, read what the 500 words I wrote yesterday and write the next 500 words, then it becomes a bit more like, Ooh, what does need to come next?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah. It was so, not only was it completely different from the behind book approach, it was also completely different from anything I've ever done before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And from the kind of person I am, I, I had to just say to myself, there's only one way this is gonna work. And this is if you do, if you approach this in a way that someone like you would just never approach anything. But that was very liberating. Mm. Right. I'm gonna forget, I'm, you know, miss, I am literally Mrs. Linear approach. You know, you can't get more linear than me. Most of the time I'm the kind of person who goes, right, well, before we go to the supermarket, we've got to plan our route and we've got to make our shopping list. You know, I like to get organized, get ahead of myself. And I just thought if I try that with this. I'm just gonna kill it stone dead, because my brain will be like, wait, we've already got all these linear responsibilities over here with this book. That had to feel completely different and fun and more like playing wordle. Like, oh, a fun thing I do in the morning, you know? Let's see. What words appear today? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How would you, so I've got some ideas for this, but I'm interested in your perspective. So this is a PhD. Podcast as you know. We may well have listeners that write fiction that are like, oh my God, this is amazing, but I wanna translate it through into the sort of work that PhD students and academics are likely to be doing as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Absolutely. And I, and I can do that because my father was an academic, my husband was an academic for many years. My son-in-law has just finished university, so I'm very, very familiar. I've got loads of close friends who are academics, so I, so yeah. Ask me about how it really, so how  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: would you envisage if, if people listening are like, okay, right. I'm behind. I, you know, my thesis is due at the end of the year. Um, I am meant to have handed in a draft of the first two chapters. Um, how would I even consider getting ahead on chapter three because it's, you know, I need my references and I need my data. And it's structured. It's not outta my head the way fiction is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah. Well, I think from an academic point of view, there's loads of ways you could actually use this. So you could use it in relation to chapter three. If you are behind on chapter one or chapters one and two, but you could also, you know, let's say you are doing a PhD on, um, you know, the philosophy of freedom from versus freedom to which is a big moral philosophy question and that's what your PhD is on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: But you happen to know that your next brilliant academic work is gonna be on, um, should a dog be allowed to be Prime Minister, let's say. Yeah. There are philosophers who argue all kinds of strange and extreme. I, I know of a politics, a former politics professor who genuinely, seriously believes that six year olds should be given the vote. He argues this in all seriousness and I was inspired by this to decide that dogs should absolutely be allowed to be prime minister because let's face it, what could unite the country more effective? You couldn't, no one could disagree with the dog's policies 'cause dogs aren't able to have policies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: I mean, fantastic on so many levels. Anyway, let's say that's your next philosophical work that you are planning. You could start doing the ahead method in relation to that. You are like, okay, what might I want my introduction to say and what are my key arguments that I'd want to put forward? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So whichever feels most useful or inspiring to you, you could do the ahead method with, you could even say, okay, I might only be on chapter one or two of my PhD right now, but one day I am gonna win the Nobel Prize for my academic writing and the book that will seal the deal, my great master work that everyone will read for centuries to come is gonna be on this topic and I'm gonna start doing the ahead method with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So it's whatever feels like it works for you. Now, I'm guessing with a PhD student, You might worry about being behind on chapters three and four more than you'd worry about your great masterwork. So you should choose the thing which, if you got ahead in relation to it, would most effectively offset the feeling of behind in relation to whatever you're behind on, if that makes sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So it's probably more likely to be chapters three and four. But who knows? It's just whatever works, whatever. Whatever changes things so that you think and feel differently about where you are in relation to the work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. The example that jumped into my head is, usually people write the introduction to their thesis and the general discussion of their thesis last, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They have either they write up as a series of papers or they have a more traditional kind of lit review, methodology, and then a series of results, chapters or whatever. I. And one of the things that struck me was that those sections, yes you have to do separate reading for them to some extent, but often those sections are about contextualizing the work that you've done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They're about interpreting the work that you've done. And I could definitely see a situation where your kind of current role is writing up one of the results chapters of your thesis. Yeah. But that you started brain dumping bits of text that you might use in your general introduction or your general discussion because like you say, you don't know the exact results you are going to find, but you know you need a section about the limitations of your studies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, you need a section about possible future directions. You know, you need a section about where your work fits in the context of other people's work. And while some of those things might need you to go away and figure out the actual details of them later, the kind of notional ideas of stuff you need to say often is in your head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you can, as you say, put aside that perfectionism, being able to say like, you know, I'd need here to refer to the paper by somebody or other whose name I've forgotten, but that's okay. It's the one where they did this. And then keep talking. So as long as you can kind of put aside that perfectionism of actually knowing the exact details. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 'cause as you say, that's secretarial, that can be added later. Yeah. Um, I think you could get hugely ahead of those chapters.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah. Yeah. And your ahead writing could be a series of notes and just things to remember. Or it could be, you know, if you think of a particular line you really want to say that, that brilliantly encapsulates an argument you want to make. It can be that as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I think doing this, even if your main body of work at the moment is reading, getting ahead of the writing I think is useful. I mean, I'm a big proponent of writing when you're reading anyway, but having that kind of thing that if the majority of your time at the moment is reviewing the literature, having that time where you wake up in the morning and you just. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Write stuff verbally about the, what you recall reading yesterday and why it was relevant and why you think it might not be relevant and those sorts of things. I can imagine it also being a really good way to process your thoughts about the stuff that you're reading at the same time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah, completely. But I mean, there's so many ways it can work and, and just, we haven't covered this yet, which I think is important in another way, which is just thinking, It's not just this anymore. 'cause I think when you've got a novel that you're working on or a PhD that you're working on, it can start to feel like an oppressive thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Looming over you. That just blocks out everything else. The minute you start doing something else, creative or intellectual that you care about, then that looming scary thing suddenly becomes not the only thing. And it has to kind of take its place in an overall picture that contains other things you're working on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And that is so powerful just in and of itself because it's like, oh, what about this over here? You are not the only thing in my life, PhD or novel. And it's very empowering.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely, and I think you can also make it feel more like what you imagined PhD might be like too, because I think often people come to their PhDs, especially people that come to their PhDs not straight after their masters. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They've made kind of a conscious decision to come back to it. It's a topic they love. They sometimes have a slightly romanticized view of what that's gonna be look like, right? Or, you know, I'm gonna be doing this intellectual work and waning around thinking high thoughts and dah, dah, dah. And suddenly their supervisors are saying, can you gimme a Gantt chart? And you're like, what? That wasn't what I envisaged. And I feel like you could create some of that, that sense of it being what you envisaged.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: If your main work project at any given time is say, a Gantt chart, then you can use your ahead writing time to do the kind of writing or PhD work that you looked forward to doing, but just in relation to a different bit of your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and that's where I want everyone to be really clear. We are not saying that this has to invo involve voice notes in bed in the morning. 'cause I can hear some people going, you know, oh, but I, my brain doesn't wake up or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that it's really distinct from how you normally work. So for some of you, so I have a good friend, who will say writes books, and he loves writing longhand in a beautiful notebook. And so it might be that maybe your real PhD work, you're in there, you're doing your data, you're typing away on your laptop and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But in the ahead part you've got a beautiful notebook and a fountain pen, and you only do it in slightly glamorous looking hotel foyers, but once a week you go off and do that or whatever. Right.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Yeah, and I, I massively would love to write something in a beautiful notebook. Uh, I, I take all my notes in a beautiful notebook, but that Yeah, precisely. That's the kind of thing you are ahead method of writing can be whatever you want it to be. There's loads of people who would absolutely hate why around in bed talking into their phone. I mean, like, some people would be like, no, I've woken up. I want to get up and have a shower. It's attaching it to what works for you that matters and making sure it's different from your main task of work at that time and more fun feeling. More, more sort of easy and light feeling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: You then get to witness yourself doing work on your PhD and having fun. Or I get to witness myself writing a novel and having fun. That reminds me by proving to me that actually writing novels can be fun. So then I look at the other novel I'm writing, I go, well, what if you could be fun? You haven't been for a while, but like, what if you could be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: And it all just has a knock on effect where you end up having much less stress and much more fun.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: If you try the ahead method and you love it, you can then do it even when you are not behind on something else, and that is what I decided to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: I love the ahead method so much. I thought, well, why not just write all my books this way? Why not just write. I'd like to go down from 400 words a day to 300 to make it even lighter and easier feeling. But I am seriously planning to write my next book at the rate of 300 words a day, all via the book ahead method, even though I won't be behind on anything else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: So that's why I changed it from ahead and behind to, yeah, I giving names and titles to things. So originally when I introduced this in my Dream Author coaching program, I called it Ahead and Behind. But then when I decided I was gonna do it anyway, even if I wasn't behind, then I changed it to the Book Ahead Method and I am gonna do it even when I'm not behind on other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Love. Amazing. Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on. It is super useful. Tell people a little bit more about what you're up to at the moment and what books they should be looking out for.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sophie: Well, I am finishing my next Poirot novel. So one of the things I write is the new series of Hercule Poirot novels at the request of Agatha Christie's family. And I'm just putting the finishing touches to the latest one of those and preparing to launch the book I've mentioned already, which is called, it's a very long title. No one would do what the Lamberts have done, which I call Lamberts for short. And then I'm apart from that, I'm coaching and doing lots of swimming, which I always do. And planning the next stages of the dream or for coaching program, which is about to develop in various ways.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Can't wait to hear about that. We will put links to Dream Author and to where you can find out more about Sophie and her writing generally in the chat. Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening and I'll see everyone next week. Take care. Bye-bye. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-39-how-to-get-ahead-when-youre-feeling-behind thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-38-nine-things-phd-students-need-to-tell-themselves-more-often <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Most PhD students and academics spend a lot of time telling themselves they’re not doing enough, they’re behind or they’re not good enough. Even if you truly believe that’s true, constantly having those comments in your head makes everything feel more difficult. When I talk with clients about intentionally choosing other thoughts, they often struggle to come up with thoughts that might help more AND that still feel true. In this episode, I give you nine examples that you can pick up and play with today! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/15410619-2-44-what-to-do-when-you-get-contradictory-advice" target="_blank"> What to do when you get contradictory advice </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/13808206-2-6-how-to-coach-yourself-and-why-you-should" target="_blank"> How to coach yourself (and why you should) </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.buzzsprout.com/1992545/episodes/16580787-3-23-why-what-you-do-matters-and-when-it-doesn-t" target="_blank"> Why what you do matters (and when it doesn’t) </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> I want you to imagine I've got some magical tool where I'm able to look inside your head and see what thoughts you say to yourself most often. What would I see? Think about the last time you were sat at your desk or wondering about your research. What thoughts would I see in your head? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If my members are anything to go by, it's probably things like, I'm not good enough to do this. I dunno what I'm doing. Other people are so much further ahead than me. This is too confusing. Those sorts of things. Do you recognize that in yourself as well? If so, you are in the right place. Don't worry, this is completely normal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> PhDs and academia do something to our brains that mean that we just develop this habit of speaking to ourselves like that. And one of the things that I often work on in coaching is how we can choose other thoughts. Now I wanna reassure you, this is not gonna be toxic positivity. This is not gonna be, everything's great and I can do everything and I'm the best, I can do anything I set my mind to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not doing that, okay? But what we are gonna do is identify some really specific thoughts that might help you more than the ones that you're focusing on at the moment. Now when I say this in coaching in my membership classes and stuff, people are often like, yeah, but what thoughts? I don't even know what would help at this point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's what this episode's about. I'm gonna share with you nine thoughts that I think will help you to enjoy your research more and to get more done than you are at the moment. Let's make your brain a more pleasant place to hang out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex professor and certified life coach, and I'm here to help make your PhD and academic journey feel just a little bit more fun. So this week we are gonna be thinking about nine things that you can say to yourself more often. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the first thing I wanna really clarify here is it's really important you only choose thoughts to emphasize your head that you at least cognitively believe. Let me explain what I mean by that. Often people say to me, I know that's true, but like in the inside, in my heart, I don't always believe it. That's fine. If you feel like that about the thoughts, no worries. We will practice thinking them, we will practice believing them. It almost doesn't matter too much if deep down they don't quite feel true yet because that's what the practice is for. However, if I say any where you think, you know, I just don't actually believe that, that's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't have to think those ones. This isn't an exercise in making you believe things you don't already believe. This is an exercise in helping you give at least as much space to the useful things you believe as you do to the unhelpful things you believe. We all have a whole variety of thoughts in our head that often contradict each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's why our heads are such complex and joyous places to be. And what we seem to do is somehow think that we should spend lots of time, or that it's inevitable we spend lots of time thinking the thoughts that we believe that make us feel rubbish. And put very little effort into thinking the thoughts that we also already believe, but that we just don't think about so often. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm gonna emphasize nine that I think are really useful, that I have seen help the clients in my membership over the years. But I also want you to identify some of your own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have other thoughts that help you and that make you feel good and make you feel empowered, happy days. In fact, I'd love to hear about them. If you're on my newsletter, you can just hit reply to any of the newsletters. Let me know what thoughts you are going for, or if you follow me on Instagram at the PhD life coach DM me there. Let me know what thoughts work for you. Now, if you are gonna make up your own, at the end of this episode, I'm gonna give you a few tips as to how to make sure there is helpful as you think they'll be. So make sure you listen to all then. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first one is always so important when we talk about it in our classes, and that is that your thesis needs to be defensible. It does not need to be perfect. There is no absolute definition of correct. It needs to be defensible. Now, those of you who are academics, the same is true about the methods of any paper you write for publication. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It needs to be defensible. Defensible either to the examiners of a Viva or defensible to the reviewers of an article or defensible to your grant body who you're applying to, whoever the kind of assessing body is. There's no right answer. Often we tie ourselves up in knots thinking there's a correct version of this, that if only we can identify the correct argument or the correct analysis, everything will be okay and we'll know, we'll be certain. It's not true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Put 40 academics in a room and they will very rarely agree with each other. There is no right version. Your work needs to be defensible. Does it mean there's not some other cool way you could have done it? Of course not. There's a hundred different ways you could do any study. You just need to be able to defend why you chose the way you did it, why you made the arguments you made. And show that you understand the implications of those choices. That's what you need to do. It doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be fit for purpose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Somehow thinking about it like that, this just has to be defensible. It needs to be fit for purpose releases just a little bit of that pressure we put on ourselves and enables us to move into, can I justify why we did it this way? Yeah, totally. Let's go. Let's do that convincingly rather than panic about whether we chose the right way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing I want you to tell yourself more often is that you've done difficult things before and you can figure this out. Often when we're in the midst of like a really hard, difficult thing, we just think there's no way out. This is the one, this is the one I can't do. This is the one I have no way of getting past. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you felt like that before. And the joy for me working with PhD students is, I know that's true. I know for 100% that's true, or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. Either you've got an excellent academic track record or you've got a really cool and interesting background in some other industry that's enabled you to come in and do a PhD. There's various routes to PhDs, as we all know, but all of them involve achievement in your past life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things I've noticed with my clients is that we're really good at forgetting that achievement. We're really good at writing it off, either not thinking about it or attributing it to luck or attributing it to the support we got back then, or whatever it was. You have done difficult things before and you're gonna figure out a way to do the thing you are doing at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, one thing I will say, this is where my membership comes in useful is. Some of you will have developed unhealthy ways to get difficult things done. Some of you might be looking back and going, yeah, I've done difficult things before, but I did them in unsustainable ways. I did them through beating myself up, working stupid hours, neglecting my health, all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if that's you, you really need this podcast and you need to jump on my waiting list for the membership next time because that's a fair point. If you are looking back and going, you know what? I did do difficult things, but not in a way that I wanna do them anymore. That's where you need some support to work through that, and that's something I work through with the clients all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But even in that situation, reminding yourself that you are someone who is capable of feeling this feeling of confusion and moving through it to achieve the task can help you in this moment to think about how you wanna address this particular problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third one, and this is one that has been my mantra for probably the last six or seven years since I kind of thought of it and came across it, and this is the notion is anything gets done one step at a time. As many of you who've been listening for a while now, I have a brain that likes to shoot off in 47 directions at once and expect somehow to be able to do all of them at the same time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now. I'm getting better at that, but it is still my natural tendency, and so I probably use this phrase. 5, 6, 7 times a day, at least, one thing at a time. In fact, it's the latest piece of advice that my very expensive coach has given me, which is slightly ironic that I'm paying a lot of somebody, a lot of money to tell me things that I do usually tell myself. When it comes to my business, one thing at a time. I can develop different elements of my business one step at a time. You will do your research one step at a time. If you hear your brain going, and then I need to do this, and then I need to do that, and then I need to do that. I want you to pause, breathe for a second, and remind yourself one step at a time. What's now's job? What's the one thing that would be most useful if I moved it on? Now, what's one thing? Everyone does this one step at a time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, I'm gonna give you a sneaky one bonus bit here just based on something that we discussed in a group coaching session yesterday. So one of my clients was talking about, she was starting some data collection in the laboratory, and then she had a couple of papers that were also on the go. More of a review paper and more of a database paper. And she'd been advised that it might be useful to put one of them to the side, and she felt like that was a failure. She felt like that was sort of her not being able to handle more than one thing and she felt like she might would find it difficult to come back to that later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, we talked about some of the benefits of doing things one thing at a time, or fewer things at a time. And we talked about how actually if you're gonna put something to one side, you can say, you know what? That's not now. So she decided that one of these papers could go to one side. We talked about things like, what do you actually call that? You know, do you call that dropping it? Do you call it abandoning it or do you call it putting it on the side for now until I can give it my full attention, for example, just the way we describe it makes a difference. And if we're putting it to one side, intentionally, we're popping it out there on the shelf. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also do that in a structured and useful way. So we talked about what could she do with the data, with the current state of the manuscript to make sure that it's super easy to come back to later. So when we remind ourselves that we can and have to do this one step at a time, we can also think, okay, these other things that I'm deciding are not now things. How can I put them to one side mindfully so I don't feel like they've been abandoned, and so that I know that I've structured them so they're easy to come back to later. That makes this all feel a lot easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thought number four that I want you to cultivate is one that members have asked for. Oh, no. We'll come. We'll say that in the next one. Thought number four that I want you to cultivate is for when you are telling yourself that you don't know something. I don't know how to do this. I don't know what to write. I dunno what order to do this in. I don't know what analysis to use. I want you to remind yourself this isn't a don't know problem. This is a, I haven't decided yet problem. Okay. The difference, and I've talked about this a couple of times on episodes recently, so check those out. But the difference is if you don't know something, it means there is a factual truth out there for you to go and find. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this might be, I don't know how to run structural equation modeling or whatever. Okay. There's gonna be decisions in that too, right? But you might not know the technicalities of even how to start that. That's fine. I accept that's a don't know problem. That's a go and find a book. Go and find an expert. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Look up how to do it problem. But the vast majority of these things when it's, I dunno what auditor to present this in, I don't know which analysis to pick. I don't know which argument to make. These are decisions. 'cause this relates back to that first point, that there's no perfect way to do a PhD or to do your research. There's no right answer here. It's not that you don't know the correct answer, it's that you haven't decided. And if you frame it like that, suddenly the power is back with you. Because if you realize that the only thing standing between you and moving forward is making a decision, then you can start asking yourself, how do I support myself to make a decision? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What options have I got? How can I make it easier for me to make this choice? What advice do I want to seek in order to make this choice? But ultimately, it's your decision. Okay, that can feel scary. I get that. It can feel scary, but ultimately it's empowering 'cause it is not this kind of vague cloud that you don't know. It's something you get to pick and you are capable of picking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now this fifth one is gonna feel like a funny one and I'm gonna explain it 'cause it came straight out of a coaching session and that is lazy, useless people get PhDs. Okay. Lazy, useless people get PhDs. Now, I wanna clarify things before you all come at me. I am not saying that PhD students and academics are lazy or useless. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Any of them. I am not saying you have to be lazy or useless to get a PhD or a research career. What I am saying instead is that most people who've done a PhD, are doing a PhD, have at least at some points, if not often, told themselves they're lazy and useless. Okay. When you've had one of those days where you just can't get into it, you're procrastinating wildly, you're beating yourself up about all the stuff you should have done and you're looking at everybody else just carrying on and getting their work done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Side note, they're probably not, but anyway, do, do, do. They're working away and you are just not all of us have told ourselves we are lazy and useless. The joy of having been in this sort of career as long as I have is that I have seen all those people who call themselves lazy and useless, go on and get their PhDs, go on and have the careers that they wanna have. Lazy, useless people get PhDs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I will extend that to say people who believe that they are lazy and useless, get PhDs. Now. I am not gonna endorse you continuing to tell yourself that you're lazy and useless, okay? Not gonna allow it. You are banned. But if you have those thoughts, you can still get a PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number six is about feedback. Now, whatever stage of your academic career you are at getting feedback can be really challenging. Maybe it's from your supervisor on a first draft. Maybe it's from dreaded reviewer two, maybe it's from your grant agency's feedback on your application. Getting feedback can be tough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this thought has two components to it. The first is that it is okay to be upset by feedback. There's something in this kind of, I don't know, like positive culture thing that you sometimes see online that we should just go, oh, all feedback is information and this is fine. It will help me grow. And it's like, that is true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. I stand by that. But we're humans. We are not robots. We are emotionally invested most of the time in the things that we're doing. It is completely normal and completely okay to be upset if the feedback is not where you thought it was gonna be. Okay. It is nothing wrong with you. It doesn't mean you have to fundamentally like change the way your brain works, become a different person. There is nothing inherently wrong. Emotions just give us information. There is nothing wrong with getting upset. In fact, allowing ourselves space to experience those emotions, allowing ourselves a little gap to be like, yeah, I'm just upset about this. I don't need to reframe it yet. I'm just upset. 'cause I thought this was in pretty good shape and now there's a billion tons of work to do on it. That's okay. Not expecting yourself to get the feedback and go, okay, I'll work methodically through each comment at time. No, go and have a sulk about it. That's fine. No big deal. What we are gonna do though is we are not gonna make it mean a million things about us. 'cause that's where we go wrong. We get upset about it and then we extrapolate it out to mean that we don't deserve to be here and all that stuff. We're not doing that. The second part of this though, is that I want you to remember that feedback is information and you get to decide how you are going to use it. So it's okay you have an emotional response to it. All good, no problems, but you also get to decide how you're gonna use it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For some of you, this is gonna be about prioritizing. I have members who are right in the last few stages, you know, last month or two of their PhDs, and they're having to decide which things they have time to change, which things they have time to action. Which are things that are just gonna have to ride and we'll see how it goes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is completely normal to have to prioritize that, that other times this is about getting contradictory advice. You know, most of us who've been in academia for a while will have received reviews from journals where reviewer one says, oh, you should include much more about x. And reviewer too says, oh, you should include much less about X. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you're like. And if you see that as annoying and contradictory, it gets incredibly frustrating. Whereas if you see that as, oh, that is information. That could tell me different things, right? So that could give me the information that, you know what I'm probably hitting this about, right? If some people want a bit more, some people want about a bit less, that's probably about right. Or it could be telling you that you know what, you're not hitting either. That people either want much more or they want less, and we need to make a decision as to which is better for the paper. And only we get to decide that, right? We get to take that feedback, we get to combine it with the information we have in our heads. Go back to the intentions that we had for this article and make a decision from there. So feedback is information. You are allowed to get upset about it, but you get to decide what you do with that information. I actually have a podcast episode about handling contradictory feedback if that's something that you struggle with. So do go check that out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thought seven is that what you do matters. And in fact, this is so true I did a whole episode about it recently. What you do matters no matter how. Esoteric and random your topic feels what you do matters. Pur, pursuing information for the good of the world or for the just joy of knowing new things is important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What you do matters. You are making a contribution, and it is okay if it doesn't always feel like that. Every stage of your academic career. There'll be times when you feel like what you're doing isn't making a difference, but I want you to remind yourself. Especially in the current climate, in academic world where everything can feel like a struggle sometimes, the work you are doing is important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Intellectual curiosity and exploration is important for the world, the population, the future, the past, everything. You are doing something that matters. You are making your contribution to it, and it matters. You matter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number eight is one that often comes about later on in the PhD journey. And again, I've talked with clients about this this week, and that is that moment where you are returning to chapters you wrote early on in your PhD with the intention of sort of finessing them, improving them, ready to be actually submitted with the rest of your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what often happens is you read them and you're like. Oh my goodness. I thought these were in a better state than that. I thought these were nearly finished and actually they're a bit rough. And that can be really disheartening because what is common is for people to focus on the fact that, A, they've got lots of work to do, and B, that if their work's not as good as they thought, then they must not be very good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those are the things that are most common that I see come up all the time, and they miss something really important. What they miss is the fact that you can identify flaws in your previous work means one thing. It means that you are now better than you were back then. It means you are more expert with more nuanced understanding and better skills than you were when you wrote that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Looking back at old work and thinking, oh, I could do that better now is nothing but a celebration. That is a beautiful thing. That is you visibly seeing your learning and development in front of you on a page. I want you, instead of going, oh, I got so much work to do on this now to go, I know how to make this better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm now better than when I wrote this. Let's go. Let's bring this up to my current standards of knowledge. This is an exciting thing. It is not a sign you wasted time writing it. Writing it was how you got as good as you are now, but the fact you can see that it's not perfect, that's a wonderful thing. Let's make it better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the ninth one, I'm gonna get feisty. The ninth one is one that, to be honest, is the area of coaching that I struggle with most because one of the things with coaching is you are supposed to stay at least semi neutral about the circumstances that somebody's telling you about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're not meant to like jump in the pool and get involved and sort of be like, oh my goodness, this is terrible, or whatever. Number nine is it is okay to expect feedback from your supervisor even if they're busy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was a supervisor. For a really long time. I get it. I trained other supervisors. I worked with hundreds of collaborators, and I get it. Supervisors are crazy busy. They have so much on, they are so overwhelmed, they're so overburdened. If you are listening, I see you. I get it. I was there for a really, really long time, and if any of you supervisors listening are starting to feel guilty, I wanna contextualize what I mean by delays here, because I saw collaborators all the time. My colleagues feeling really bad 'cause it had been a couple of weeks, three weeks that they hadn't given feedback on an article and feeling really, really guilty about it. That's not what I'm talking about here. Students, if you expect to get it back within a few days routinely, you are probably underestimating the workload of your supervisors. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However the number of times I work with clients where they say, and obviously I've only got the client side of it, who knows what the other side is, but where they say that they submitted something four months ago, six months ago, last summer, whatever it is, and they haven't heard back. And when they chase, the supervisor says they'll get to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm sorry. It's just not okay. I'm gonna go right out there and say it controversial. I don't care. That's not okay. You are not doing your job as a supervisor. Your supervisor is not serving your needs if they are taking months and months and months to get you feedback. Okay, now. Don't get me wrong, you need to be in careful communication with your supervisors so that you can try and time the feedback that you need for appropriate moments so that you know it doesn't coincide with them prepping for a big conference or right in the middle of their marking period or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So giving some warning as to when it's coming. Great. Agreeing some boundaries around how long you're gonna take over getting feedback back. Great. In fact, I think I might do a future episode about feedback because there's, I think a lot we could all do better to make the whole feedback process a lot more efficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you are just not getting feedback, that's not okay, and it's okay to be cross about that. We'll talk in a second what you can do about it, but I think a lot of supervisors think that students are often a bit entitled as to what they want. In my experience, it's the opposite. I hear clients all the time justifying why their supervisors are just far too busy to give them feedback and it's okay. 'Cause they are, you know, they're really important in their field and they've got a real lot on, and I knew that when I agreed to work with them. And, you know, it's, it's okay. And I'm like, it's not okay. It's not. That isn't good enough. You need feedback. Even if it's quick and dirty feedback, even if it's, this is roughly on the right lines, that's not, try this next, let's go feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If that's your situation, I want you to talk to an academic, some other academic in your unit to figure out what is normal in your discipline and what is okay and what's not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The trouble is universities don't always have good systems for dealing with supervisors who don't do this stuff. Often it's a known thing that particular academics are rubbish at giving feedback, and somehow no one can do anything about it. But you don't have to think it's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  If you're a supervisor listening, my biggest tip for you is be honest with your students. If you've missed the boat and you are feeling really guilty about the fact that you haven't given feedback for a while, just speak to them. I'm really sorry. I should have got this back to you sooner. I haven't, which is the most useful part for me to move forward now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And stop asking for polished drafts before you give feedback. I was ranting about this on Instagram this week. If you saw it, I apologize, repeating myself, but stop asking for polished drafts. I'm gonna talk more in the feedback episode about why it's a terrible idea, but it's essentially like decorating a house before you've actually checked whether somebody likes the layout of the house. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Don't do it. It's a waste of everybody's time. Give quick and dirty feedback. Allow somebody to move on with a bit more information. And students if you are getting neglected by your supervisor, you deserve better and it's okay to say so. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you are one of the unusual students that's sending a manuscript for comments on a Friday and getting pissy that you're not getting it back on Monday morning, take a little look in the mirror. Let's not do that. We have to accept that everybody's working in a really pressurized environment at the moment, and there will be times when your supervisor drops the ball. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're not the people I'm talking to. I'm talking about the people who just routinely don't reply. Who routinely say, I'll get to it. I'll get to it, I'll get to it, and never get to it. Those are the people I'm talking to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there is nine things that I want you to keep telling yourself much more often than all the other unhelpful things that you are telling yourselves. Let me know which one's your favorite. If you're on my newsletter, just reply to that. If you're not, why not get signed up? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One things that people on my newsletter are going to get, and this is brand new at time of recording, is a gorgeous Google Sheet summary of every podcast I've ever done. The key points from it and the links to where you can find it so that you can use Control F and search, find whatever topics you're interested and find me wittering on about it. So it's like your ultimate archive of all things PhD life coach. So make sure you're on the newsletter so you don't miss out on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I promised at the beginning that if you were gonna come up with thoughts of your own, that I would give you a few pointers. First one, I'm gonna ban the word just from it. So if the thing that you are saying to yourself is, I just need to get on with it, I want you to take a second look and see if there's a different way of saying it. The reason for that is that saying just makes it feel like something's easy and it's not true. Okay. When we are saying, I just need to stop procrastinating, there's no just about it. Stopping procrastinating is a tough thing to do. So, be cautious around that. I want you to make sure that you are not secretly insulting yourself in your attempt to motivate yourself. So if you are sort of saying, get off your bums, stop being so lazy and get it done. Let's not speak to ourselves like that, not routinely, not if we're trying to change the way we speak to ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, every now and again as a kind of, if you're doing it from a lighthearted, affectionate place, not so bad. But if you are trying to break a habit of beating yourself up all the time, let's not do it by insulting you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want the things do you choose to be around, how capable you are, how achievable this is, why this matters, why you are the person to do it, and that it's okay to have emotions, but we don't have to make it mean a whole load of stuff about us and our futures. Your research is really important. Let's tell ourselves these things more often and actually enjoy getting it done. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 26 May 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-38-nine-things-phd-students-need-to-tell-themselves-more-often thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-37-why-academics-need-to-think-like-entrepreneurs <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode, I welcome Dr Ilana Horwitz, author of the new book, The Entrepreneurial Scholar. Being entrepreneurial isn’t just about starting a business — it’s about thinking creatively, seizing opportunities, and applying academic skills in innovative ways. We explore how PhD students and academics can develop an entrepreneurial mindset and connect with people outside their field to unlock new possibilities. Plus, we talk about how academic careers can be enriched by embracing flexibility and finding new ways to contribute to society, whether through collaboration, commercialization, or interdisciplinary projects. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> Find out more about Dr Ilana Horwitz <a href="https://www.ilanahorwitz.com/" target="_blank"> here </a> . </div> <div> <a href="https://www.entrepreneurialscholar.org/" target="_blank"> The Entrepreneurial Scholar website (Ilana’s book) </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I am really excited to introduce academic and author Professor Ilana Horwitz, who is an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. So welcome, Ilana. It's so wonderful to have you here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Thank you so much for having me, Vikki. No problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we are here to talk about your new book, which at the time of us recording this now is not quite out and I believe you are expecting an exciting parcel today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Indeed. I think I'm gonna get a box of books that, uh, when I, when my first book came out, actually, that was probably one of the most exciting moments. You open up that book, it's like giving birth to a child and I'm so excited for that feeling again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So good. Make sure you record it. Get your, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: oh, I do plan on it </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: record your unboxing video. Perfect. But by the time you guys are listening to this, it will be out, it is called The Entrepreneurial Scholar and I've just been binge reading it and I've learned so much already. So let's start, before we dive into the book, tell people a little bit more about you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Great. So as you mentioned, I work at Tulane University, which is New Orleans, Louisiana, and I'm a professor of Jewish studies and sociology. But my training is actually from a school of education. I went to the Stanford Graduate School of Education and my PhD is in sociology of Education and also I'm a sociologist of religion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: So my work is really at that intersection and I write a lot about the role mostly in the United States about how religious upbringing and social class and gender and race and ethnicity influence people along the life course, particularly in their educational trajectories.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So fascinating. And we ended up having a bit of a chat before this. I got very distracted looking at your first book, which I'll get you to give us the title of in a second on that topic, which just looks fascinating. So I may need to get you back at some point to talk about that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Sure. So my first book is called God Grades and Graduation- Religion's, surprising Impact on Academic Success. And it was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. And that book actually came out of my dissertation. And it is a book primarily about how being religious in the United States is associated with academic outcomes, both at the K 12 level and then in higher education. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's so cool. I'm so glad I asked that because I obviously didn't know it came out of your dissertation. I think for doctoral students, hearing that the work they do doesn't have to just sit in a thesis somewhere and never get read again. That, you know, people do convert and get it out there so that people are reading. I think that's really exciting and fits with this notion of being an entrepreneurial scholar, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah, absolutely. When I actually, we'll probably talk about this, but I had no intention to become an academic. Uh, and when I did decide to stay in academia, I really made a commitment to myself that everything that I wrote was going to make it into the public in some way, shape, or form. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: I really was resistant to the idea that my work would just like sit behind a paywall and collect dust on bookshelves. And so every time I do, I write anything academic, I also write a lot of public opinion pieces about it or engage in public scholarship. And so yeah, the book is one of the ways in which I sort of executed on that commitment to doing work that reaches beyond the ivory tower. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. That leads perfectly into how did you end up writing a book? You said obviously have that sort of mindset that you want to get out and make a difference and have an impact in the world as well as your, within your academic work itself. So how did you end up writing a book about entrepreneurship in scholarly world? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Vikki, it was the most unexpected book imaginable. I really had no intention to write this book. It really happened by accident, and it actually kind of happened in a way that I think what entrepreneurship teaches us. And that is, it came out of a moment of failure and of a moment of public scholarship. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: So here's what happened. At the end of my doctoral program, I was already, beyond having to take classes. I was in my sixth year, but I decided to audit a class taught by Sam Wineburg. He's a historian of education, but he's also very committed to public scholarship. And he was teaching a class about how to do publicly engaged work and not surprising the final assignment for the class was to write an op-ed. So most students in the class decided to write about their research, and at that point I was really spending a lot of time kind of reflecting on my own PhD journey, which was very unusual. I came from a background in the business world and working at some startups and then in research and evaluation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I didn't start my PhD until I was 30 and I just took a very different approach to it. And I noticed that although I was very stressed out and I didn't have a job and I was sort of experiencing a lot of crises in the way that my classmates were also experiencing, there was something about the nature of academia that I loved in a way that my colleagues found really debilitating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And so I decided to reflect on this in this op-ed. So I submitted it to Sam, and Sam, um, was really encouraging and he was like, this kind of has two threads. You need to pick one or the other and go with it. And I picked a thread and basically like it failed. I won't go into sort of the details of, you know, what I was arguing in that first version, but I submitted it to several public outlets and it failed sort of repeatedly over the course of a few months. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And it was really discouraging and eventually, and I gave up on it to be honest. And then Sam, who I stayed in touch with after I graduated, he was like, you have to put it out there. Like there was really good stuff in there. Don't give up on it. And so for two years, Vikki, I sat on this op-ed, uh, and I, and it was on my to-do list and every, you know, week or so, it would move to do next todo list and I would never do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And it was the summer of 2021 and I was actually just about to start my position at Tulane. It was like middle of June and I was starting in two weeks and, 'cause I had a postdoc between, finishing my PhD and starting at Tulane and I was about to go home and then I was like, you know what, Ilana, you have childcare right now, you have like an hour. Why don't you take out that op-ed and see what you can do with it? And so I like finally found it in my files online and I read it and I went back to one of the original vision, like the direction that I didn't take. And, and I just sent it off. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: I sent it to Inside Higher Ed where I already had published something and they replied right away and they said, this is great. We'll take it. Wow. And the title of that piece was called why PhD Students Should Think Like Entrepreneurs. And it came out a few weeks later and I got a few emails, you know, from professors. I got some emails from directors of graduate programs, from some from therapists. And then I got the most unexpected email and it came from an editor at Princeton University Press. Peter and Peter said. I just read your op-ed, this is great. Do you wanna write a book on this topic? And I was like, are you for real? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Are you, are you sure? I was like a nobody, I mean, I had like not started my position. My first book hadn't come out. I hadn't been in the New York Times yet. Like nothing that has happened to me since had happened at that moment. But he said, we have been looking for someone to write a book like this, but no one has that kind of background in entrepreneurship and the business world to have the credibility to write it. So we think you're the right person. And that is how this book came to be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And what I love most about it is you started by saying that it was kind of luck and those sorts of things. And I just love how there were so many bits of that story that if you had responded differently to them, you wouldn't have ended up where you were. So that final piece, the fact that that guy was looking for that and he know, read your piece that bit. Might be luck, but all the way from what you chose to write about the fact that you tried to submit it. The fact that you coped with that failure, you, the fact that you kept in touch with the professor, that you were memorable enough that the professor reminded you that you really should think about this stuff. You went again there. All that resilience and everything. There's so much that led up to this happening and I just think that's such a useful story of how people create their own luck.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and I actually start the book with that story because I think it's an perfect illustration of a key point that I make in the book, and that is to be, to think entrepreneurially. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: You need to ask yourself, who am I? What do I know and who do I know? And the lesson that I learned in that op-ed is when I tried to write it the first time when I picked a thread, I was writing from a sort of place of something I didn't know a lot about. I was so writing it for a K 12 teacher audience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And when people read it, they were like, it's clear that you've never taught in a K 12 setting. And that's true. I had never been a full-time K 12 teacher. And when I revised it, I really leaned into my own experience working in entrepreneurial settings and in the business world. And that is when it was able to shine because I was speaking from something that I had experience in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And you're right, the fact that I kept in touch with Sam and the fact that I reached out to Inside Higher Ed to publish it where I already knew somebody. Like I leveraged a lot of my own skills and connections, and that is a really big piece of entrepreneurial thinking. And ultimately, like with entrepreneurial thinking, you put stuff out to, into the world and you don't know what's gonna be come of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I think this op-ed is the best illustration of that. Like, I had no idea that this would ever, I didn't plan for this. And that's I think how some of the best things happen.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. So you've touched on this a little bit already, but just for people who haven't thought about , in this context, what do you mean by entrepreneurial? Because often I think when people think about this, they're thinking about startups, they're thinking about side hustles, all that stuff. How are you applying that to academia?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: My definition of entrepreneurial thinking is as follows. It is the ability to generate an idea. So instead of a product, right, you're generating an idea that is the product that scholars put out into the world. It is the ability to generate ideas with very limited resources while navigating an environment of high uncertainty. And that is really the way entrepreneurs go about their work. I think there's this idea that, oh, entrepreneurship, people wanna make money and so they come up with a product. But oftentimes, what ends up happening is someone sees that there's a solution to a problem, and then it becomes an entrepreneurial venture. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I wanna be really clear that when I say and use the term entrepreneurship, I am not talking about trying to monetize our ideas. And I'm not talking about any sort of like academic capitalism because I think that's where I think people get hung up on the word. And I make a distinction in the book about sort of good business practices, which are often around management, but entrepreneurialism isn't about good management, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: That's about efficiency and having good systems in place and that stuff is important. But entrepreneurial thinking is really about, I'll say it again, being able to generate something new like an idea with very limited resources while navigating an environment of high uncertainty.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So good. And I was particularly excited to see your background 'cause one of the things that I see amongst my PhD student and even academic clients is this belief that entrepreneurialism in its sort of more traditional sense is the kind of realm of the engineers and the scientists and things. And often my humanities and social science and arts students a bit like the world doesn't care what I'm doing. I'm doing this little niche thing, nobody cares. I think it's interesting, but that's not always enough to keep me going on a gray Monday afternoon like it is here and to have somebody who comes from the sort of academic background that you come from talking about entrepreneurialism, I thought was just a really, was a really eye-opening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And obviously, you say in the book that the people you speak to go across a range of disciplines, but they skew that way because they're the people that you are in your community's. I wonder if you explain a little more about, about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah, so this book is based not only on my own experience, but also interviews with about 45 people from a range of backgrounds and institutions, so I would say the vast majority are still in academia, but they were people who I got to, when I put out calls and I said, who do you think of as entrepreneurial in their work? And so some of these people got nominated and some of them are people who I also think of as being entrepreneurial, although they themselves wouldn't necessarily have used that word. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And then I also talked to some people who either left academia to pursue some sort of entrepreneurial venture or never were in academia, but are entrepreneurs in other ways, because I wanted to really try to understand some of those mindsets and dispositions that help them do their work but certainly my own background having worked in a couple of startups and then in the business world, and my own lived experience. I immigrated to the United States and my parents were very entrepreneurial , that also helped me inform, uh, this book.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love it. And honestly just for the, I mean the stuff that you put in it is amazing, but then having all of those interesting people giving their little pearls, I found myself just writing down, look up so-and-so, look up so-and-so look up So andSo as I was reading, 'cause there were so many bits. I did also spot friend of the podcast, Alison Miller, who has been on talking about academic writing before. So I was like, oh, I know her.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah. That's exciting. That's always lot of fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I wanna know how this goes down with academics. When you tell academics that they should be more entrepreneurial or that they might benefit, let's avoid the word should, they might benefit from being more entrepreneurial. How is that generally received? Are they excited or does it feel like another thing they've gotta be good at or Yeah, what do people think? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah, it's a little too soon to tell 'cause the book hasn't come out. So I don't actually know what kind of reactions it's going to yield. When I did the op-ed you know, I think most people at first don't recognize that they think in entrepreneurial ways and so if they're willing to sort of like go past the idea of, oh, entrepreneurship is icky, entrepreneurship is about making money, entrepreneurship is about, sort of Silicon Valley and all the things we might hate about it, if they're willing to look past it and really, uh, reflect on what I mean by it, they can see how they can embrace that in their own work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I think one of the key things that I want people to take away from this book is that I want people to reclaim their sense of autonomy and see themselves as having more agency in their work. I know you talk about the idea of being your own boss, and I talk a lot about that too because one of the things that I noticed is like people lose a lot of their sense of agency while they're doctoral students. And I can understand why that happens, right? You come in and you're basically working with your advisor and all these other brilliant people and you're at the bottom of the totem pole and you feel like you have nothing to offer 'cause everybody else has already come up with an next great idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: But there's something about academia, you know, that beats that agency out of you and that excitement out of you and makes you feel completely at the whim of the system. And the system of graduate education is not working particularly well, at least here in the United States. And there's a lot of challenges with it. But like we can't keep bemoaning the system. We gotta work with what we already have. And so I'm trying to get people to reclaim their sense of agency in a system that's broken. And I think if they're willing to hear that, that can feel really empowering.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Definitely. My clients are often torn between wanting to be independent and being told they need to be independent but at the same time feeling as though there's a right answer that their advisor or supervisor wants to get them to. And so they find it often very difficult and quite scary to put their ideas out there. And so I think creating an environment where that's exactly what they're doing and what they're intended to be doing is amazing. I loved there was a section you had with, um, Sophie von, am I saying that right? Um. I was a professor of education who was talking about seeing all the things you do as a graduate student or as an academic, as a re, as a opportunity to learn rather than as just another thing to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I'm gonna write this in order to learn how to do that, and I'm gonna go to that conference in order to learn this stuff. Rather than that kind of tick box exercise that often people are like, oh, I need one of them to pass. I need one of them to graduate. I need that for my cv. I really like that idea of grabbing autonomy over your career and your learning and grabbing those opportunities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah, absolutely. One of the key things that I try to convey in the book, and this was something I didn't understand going into the PhD program to be honest, there was a lot that I didn't understand about the whole enterprise. I didn't have any family members who had gotten doctorates and I was a little clueless, but one of the most sort of illuminating moments, and I talk a lot about this in throughout the book and including in the introduction, is that during my orientation when I got to Stanford, one of the speakers, Eamonn Callan, who's a philosopher of education, he said, your job is no longer to be a consumer of information. It is now your job to be a producer of knowledge. And I think for me, that very simple advice changed my entire relationship with academia and the educational enterprise because it was true, Mike, my whole life, I'd been asked to be really good at consuming information and regurgitating back what I learned. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I actually, to be honest, was never particularly good at that. And I was not really that intellectually curious. I did all the stuff that you're supposed to do through high school and in college, but it was always about like checking the boxes. And actually after college I said I never wanna like be in an academic setting ever again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: It's very ironic that I ended up as a professor, but when I started my doctorate and I realized like, oh, I am no longer actually being evaluated on my ability to regurgitate information. In fact, no one is ever gonna look up my grades again. And now everything that I do is for the purpose of my own curiosity and figuring out the answer to a problem or a puzzle that I have, and I get to determine what that problem or puzzle is, how I wanna solve it, when I wanna work on it, and how I wanna put it out there in the world. And I think that was so liberating for me to view myself in that way. I mean, like, I get to play detective all day long, that's my job. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And then I get to write about it and tell people what I learned. It's super liberating. But I think you need to really, uh, sort of see yourself as agentic in that process and not do things like just check the boxes. In fact, if I had just checked the boxes, I would've never taken that class on public scholarship and I wouldn't have taken a bunch of, I audited so many classes, I was like, I'm at this university and I just get to do this for free. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Like, why not? So I really took advantage. I took classes in improv and in public speaking and things that weren't directly related, but have helped me in so many ways. But you gotta take agency over the journey.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've written, remember one of the bits you noted that you found that really liberating, but that many of the people around you found it quite scary. So if listeners are thinking, you know, oh yeah, but that sounds exciting, but that sounds terrifying too. What would you say to them?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: I think the reason it's terrifying is like, let's think about the person who often ends up in a PhD program. There are people who have been so good at school their entire life, like they've really , figured out how to do what in sociology of education, the three Rs of the hidden curriculum of schooling, the rules, the routines, and the regulation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And they've done it so well and they're like experts in schooling. Those are the people who end up in PhD programs quite often, right? That they're so good at it, that they're like, oh, I should go pro. And actually being a pro at schooling doesn't translate well in academia necessarily because you have to have a lot more agency in the process than you had before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And you have to be willing to chart your own path, to network with other people to ask for help. And another thing, this asking for help piece is really difficult because if you're a person who's been like a pro student and have like figured it out and gotten to the top of the game, it's really hard to ask for help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And it's also really hard to feel like you aren't the expert anymore, right? That you aren't the best in the room. Now there's all these other people who are better at sort of school than you are. They know more than you and it's very humbling. And it's also debilitating. And so I think for a lot of people sort of losing that structure of schooling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I think in the US because we have these couple of years of coursework and we have the comps or some version of that, there are these couple of years where there is a script. And then the script gets taken away. And that is the moment when I think things fall apart for a lot of people and for me, because I never really liked the script of school, script of schooling I was like, this is awesome. I was just like in a playground.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I empathize with that a lot. My mom has a running joke that I've been telling people what they should do since I was a child and that it gets less obnoxious as I actually know stuff. But as a child it was pretty awful when I was telling everyone what to do, now slightly better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um. So, but what, what do they do? I'm gonna push you back though on Yeah. What do they do? Those, those, so if listeners to this are going, I think that's me. I think I'm a people pleaser. I'm someone who's, I learned how to tick the boxes, how to prepare for exams, how to, you know, hit all the mark schemes and everything. And now I don't know, what if that's me, what do I do? How do I develop these entrepreneurial skills that you talk about?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yeah. So one thing I think is really important is to view scholarship as a community sport. And I think in the humanities, particularly, this is challenging because a lot of humanities folks do very independent work. They do solo authored monographs. Whereas in the social sciences, at least in sociology, I can co-author a lot of things. And so if you are listening and you're like, oh, well I can't sort of collaborate with people in my actual scholarship, you can actually collaborate with people in things that aren't necessarily your writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: So thinking of scholarship as a community sport means really thinking like ex maximally about who was in your network and trying to grow that network. So I'll give you an example. Like when I got to Stanford, I have an amazing advisor, and I was really grateful for all of his guidance and feedback along the way, but you know, there were things that he was really fantastic at and knew a lot about and could give me direction in a lot of things. But then there were things that he was more limited in. And so I never viewed him as sort of like the sole person who was helping me. And I developed a network of both mentors and collaborators who have been really pivotal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And so one of those people, for example, was Professor Lee Schulman, who just recently passed away, but he had been at Stanford for a long time. He was an emeritus professor, but he came to campus on a regular basis and I happened to meet him, actually through synagogue, and I was really interested in his work and he was very invested in the doctoral students at Stanford who were interested in the intersection of education and Jewish studies because it was something he was personally interested in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And he was like, you know, I'm happy to meet with you. And most people would be like, oh, that's so nice that he said that. I'm not actually gonna take him up on that. And I totally took him up on that. You're like, I'm, I was like, here. I'm like, and we started having coffee. He loved when people would come to his office and he had this espresso machine and he would make, you know, me a cute little coffee and we would sit and really like my dissertation idea and the data that I have all came out as a result of one of the meetings that I had. What happened was we were just chatting and he would tell me a lot of stories and he happened to mention that he was going to a meeting at a local foundation to talk about some research. And I said, wow, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at that meeting. And he was like, oh, lemme see what I can do. And two days later, you know, he emails me and he's like, I got you a seat at the table. Come  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: amazing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And so I show up and it's this amazing room of scholars and some funders. And one of the people who I ended up meeting was this guy at Notre Dame, professor Chris Smith, who was talking about this data set called the National Study of Youth and Religion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: I had never heard about this data set and he mentioned, he was like, oh, he's like, we did this big study, we followed a nationally representative sample of teens in the United States for a 10 year period. And we have this over sample of Jews. And we hired, um, as sort of someone to do something with those data. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And nothing ca really came of it. So if anyone in the room knows of any doctoral students who need a good underutilized data set, they should reach out to me. And I was like, uh, hello me. And so right away I reach out to Chris and I was like, I really would love to have that data. And this, this fundamentally changed the entire trajectory of my PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: I then got access to those data. They were incredibly willing to share it. And I ended up doing a dissertation that I hadn't even sort of thought about, all because I put out a lot of ideas and sort of questions out into the world, and a lot of like, relationships out into the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And one of the things about being entrepreneurial is like, you never know what's gonna stick and what it's gonna yield. And I think one of my biggest pieces of advice for people is like, you can think of yourself as like, you're, you're in charge of making dinner tonight, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And so you might pull out a recipe and say like, here's X, Y, Z ingredients and I'm going to make this particular recipe. And some of us view our research in that way. I'm gonna follow x, y, Z steps and I'm gonna get to something. And I view it differently. I view research as a, a much more sort of uncertain enterprise. And so I'll say, oh, I need to make dinner tonight. Here's X, Y, Z ingredients in my pantry. Let's see what I can make out of this. And I actually don't know what the final product is gonna be. And I encourage people to sort of think of the work that they're doing as having this uncertainty and leaning into that uncertainty because there are sort of surprises that come along in that process that yield really, really, um, unexpected and often great things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And if we plan too much and then there's failure or something goes awry, we kind of fall apart. But if you know that there's gonna be failure, like, and you know, there things are gonna fall apart, and then you can sort of work with the surprises that come along the way, you're probably gonna be more successful because you'll have less of a crisis when things do fall apart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and that was one of my the favorite parts of my book actually. So for the listeners, the book's kind of divided into four big chunks, isn't it? I think of different kind of qualities and one of the areas was navigating uncertainty. And it's something that I really see my clients struggle with a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The kind of, I don't want to waste time doing things that don't work out. There's this real sort of false sense of efficiency that if you know what you need to read in advance, then you know how long it's going to take. You'll be able to work your way through that. If you know what you are writing, you'll only read the things you need to read in order to write that. And I really en enjoyed that section, how it sort of turned on its head, that actually uncertainty is what's gonna lead us to something interesting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Right. Um, absolutely. And I think another thing listeners can ask themselves is, is to navigate this uncertainty, you need to really ask yourself, okay, who am I? What do I know and who do I know? And what I mean by that is like sometimes. We have, um, we can lean into sort of skills that we have and look to other people to help us with skills we don't have. So let me give you an example. When I ask myself, like, okay, well who am I? What do I know and who do I know? Let me focus on the, what do I know? So for example, I am a mixed methods researcher. I do both quantitative and qualitative analysis. I can work with big surveys, data sets, as well as with qualitative interviews. But I am not the best quantitative social scientist out there by far. I can certainly understand all this stuff. I can do a lot of the basics, but it's not it's not something that is my strongest suit. And so I collaborate with people for whom that is their strong suit. And as a result, I'm able to put out publications and put out ideas into the world that I couldn't have generated myself. And it would take me, I'm like pretty strategic in thinking about like, well, it would take me x amount of time to figure this out on my own and maybe that's a good use of my time right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Or maybe I collaborate with such and such person who really has a strength in that. And then together, right, we can put out something into the world that's faster and better than either one of us could do alone. Right. 'cause you also have to think about like, who do I know, who are the people who might have this area of expertise? Um, I'll give one other example of sort of how to think about that question of like, who am I? What do I know and who do I know? You might, have an idea that you wanna put out into the world. And I talk a lot in the book about the importance of putting our ideas out there early and often, and not waiting until like we're into it six years and then feel so good about it that we feel like we can share. And I know that is advice that some people disagree with because I think the earlier you put ideas out there, the more feedback you can get from people and it helps you clarify in your own mind what's interesting and what's not , but eventually, let's say you wanna share it, and let's say you're a doctoral student right now, and you're like, well, I'm not gonna get into, you know, the Guardian or the New York Times or whatever publication, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And that's totally legit. Like you probably won't, but maybe you could get into your local newspaper or maybe your graduate school can cover your research. So it's helpful to think about like, okay, well who do I know sort of within my domain, who might be interested in putting this research out? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Maybe they put it out on their blog or like early on when I was in grad school, I was talking with someone at the sort of Stanford communications office and I was telling them about my research and they were like, oh, that sounds so interesting. Like, we'd love to write something about it. And that was actually like the first piece of media coverage I ever got. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And you have to be willing to be a little bit wrong and to put yourself out there, like you have to know that if you put something out there, you have to be willing to have people critique it and engage with your ideas. And you have to be willing to say like, oh, actually I was a little bit wrong on that. Because no scholarship is perfect and sort of being, being willing to change your ideas is a very important part of this mindset.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think one of the things we often talk about with my clients is what you make particular things that happen to you mean about you. And one of the things that I loved in the book was you talked about how if your intention is to look smart, then you are gonna delay putting stuff out there. You're gonna delay until you are absolutely sure, you are definitely right. But if your goal is to move an idea forward and find out interesting things, then if someone's got a reason your idea's bad, let's find it out now and move on and change it and tweak it and get it to something that's actually gonna work rather than this kind of trying to protect your sense of self, I guess your, the sense of your own ability,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: right? You have to sort of figure out what is the, the moment at which you feel like your idea is solid enough and you have enough evidence to back up your idea that you can put it out there. Like, I certainly wouldn't suggest doing this, you know, in the very nascent stages. At the very nascent stages, you should be work shopping your idea within circles within your institution, who you really trust and with people you really trust. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: But once you have enough out there, it may not be a perfect story. And only you can sort of figure out for yourself whether it's ready to go out in the world. But there's this children's book, I don't know if you guys have it in the uk. It's called Like, what do You Do With An Idea? It's the same author who wrote, what do you Do With a Problem? It's this great children's book where basically like this little kid, this is the one that's, what do you do with an idea? He has an idea and at first it's like really, really small, but it's like he feels this like emotion about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Like he's excited about it, but he's also a little nervous about it. He doesn't know if he should share his idea with other people because he doesn't wanna get critiqued or he doesn't want other people to say it's bad. And over time, this book, this idea kind of grows and he's nurturing it and he feeds it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: The book says, and he plays with it. And I love this sort of analogy, this idea of like feeding your idea and playing with your idea. Because eventually the character in that book puts is, that feels good enough about their, that they've nurtured their ideas so much that they're ready and confident enough to put it out in the world and know that they're gonna be willing to withstand the critique that it might, or the reactions that it might yield. Um, but yeah, you have to nurture your idea. You have to play with your idea. You have to sort of marinate on your idea. And, um, and I think with that then there's, this comes this moment which you're like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to put this out into the world in some maybe even very small way. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I'm not sure whether this episode will have come out by the time yours comes out. I think it will. I talked recently with Tony Stubblebine who is the CEO of Medium, and he was talking about academics writing for Medium , and that blogging site being an outlet for these sorts of things. So if you are interested in this, listeners, then make sure you check out that episode too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I would say that the process of writing is actually really important. Mm-hmm. Because even if you're like, well, no one's gonna read it, it's fine. It's okay if nobody reads it because you have gone through the exercise of actually articulating your ideas in a way that is accessible to a public audience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And that is one of the key skills like. One of the things that I learned from Sam Wineburg, one of the first exercises he had us do in that public writing class, he said, write a letter to a family friend or a family member , who's not an expert in your field, but you know, has a sort of a, a college degree, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And explain your idea and your research to them. And it was remarkable how difficult this was for people to not use the academic jargon to sort of start from a place where everybody can understand what you're doing and so just the like actual simple act of explaining something can be incredibly clarifying in your own mind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, absolutely. So going back a few years now, but when I was still an academic, there's a scheme in the UK run by the British Association, which is for academics to be media fellows. So you spend a month or six weeks working with a media organization as a science journalist. Mm-hmm. So you full on leave behind your university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I went to Dublin in Ireland, to work for the Irish Times for a month as a, as a science journalist, writing on everything. So a few bits to do with my topic, but mostly everything else I was writing ridiculous amounts. And that that skill of being able to take something complex that until you spoke to that scientist you didn't even know anything about, and now you've gotta turn it into something that's digestible and interesting for readers of a newspaper is fascinating. I was taking so many notes when I read this book, the one one bit that was in the disseminating your ideas section that was just so fascinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You are gonna be able to correct me on pronunciation again. But David Labaree, I believe was his name. Uhhuh. Yeah. He was talking about how, now I'm actually gonna quote this 'cause I loved it so much. One way to keep your neurotic self-doubt under control is to bear in mind an important guiding principle for good writing. You are under no obligation to provide a perfectly uncontestable story. And then I believe he went on to say, the confidence to write isn't the same thing as the confidence that your analysis is completely rock solid. And I just. I thought that was so freeing. 'cause so many of the people that I work with are desperately trying to make sure that everything they write is completely unrefutable so that their supervisors don't criticize them, so their examiners don't criticize 'em, so that the academic world at large don't, and I thought that notion that it needs to be defensible, but doesn't have to be irrefutable, I thought was just so freeing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, uh, David Labaree is one of my mentors and certainly my own mentality is very much shaped by his attitude. And, look, there's so much self doubt, and it's really hard to take that advice, I encourage people to find really small ways of being able to do that. And when I say like, you never know what, what you put out and what it's gonna yield in the world, like, here's another example of something that was totally unexpected that happened to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: I had been running a multi-year study at Stanford about, um, looking at students who identify as racial, ethnic, and religious, uh, minority students. And at some point I felt like I had enough data. We weren't finished with data collection, but I felt like I had enough data to make an argument, about the way in which an elite university, might be contributing to religious polarization in this country. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I wrote this op-ed and I, it's, I think it's an inside higher ed. I think it's called, like how universities contribute to religious polarization or something like that. And I put it out there, it got published, and then I ended up being asked to be a speaker for the Heterodox Academy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And then a foundation contacted me and asked me to review a bunch of like, grants. Like all sorts of stuff ended up coming out of this and the thing about thinking entrepreneurially is like, you, you just don't know what something is gonna yield. And I think that there's an excitement to that, that I hope people can embrace. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Now I have a, the flip side of that to ask though, because there will be some people listening for whom this all sounds exciting and interesting, but a little bit terrifying. A little bit like they, we've talked about them a little bit, but I also know partly 'cause I was one, but partly because I've supervised them, partly because I work with some now, there are the students who want to do everything and so this is like music their ears, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They wanna write for this and write for that and be involved in all the, you know, have the side hustles that you talk about in one of the sections, have all of that stuff. How do you strike the balance between what is the kind of, I'm gonna say right amount, obviously there's no, yeah. What is an appropriate amount of throwing stuff out there versus taking on too much? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 'cause I've certainly had students in the past where they were doing so many other things, I was a little bit in the background kind of going, um, you you have got a thesis. Yeah, we a thesis there. We should do that too. So how do you help people to kind of find, if they're at the kind of, I don't wanna say too entrepreneurial, but if they're at that end of things, how do you help people find that balance? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: That's a really great question, and you're right, a very valid point that sometimes it's easy to go off in so many directions. And I remember when I was writing op-ed, some of my, um, friends were like, oh my God, you've spent like 20 hours on this. Is this really good use of your time? And at first I was like, yes, this is a good use of my time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I think I got to a point, I don't remember how many hours I had sort of poured into it, but I could tell in my mind that like it needed a break. So you do have to be really strategic about how you use your time and it's hard to give very specific guidance on it, but you have to be able to calibrate like when the stuff that you're doing is actually advancing your networks and advancing your scholarship and advancing sort of your teaching. Like is it advancing your work or are you stuck and sort of spinning your wheels? And maybe it just needs a pause, and maybe you come back to it. Like, I think a thing to know is, you can always come back to something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Um, but like, I'll give you an example. Okay. I, of how I, I thought about sort of how do I strategically go about things when I was a doctoral student so that I wasn't spreading myself too thin, but I also was gaining different kinds of experience. So, , at one point I was probably in like my fourth or fifth year, uh, and I realized that I didn't really have any teaching experience because it, the way my doctoral program was structured was that we got funding, but it was to do a research assistantship, not a teaching assistantship. And I was like trying to get ready to go on the job market and I had no teaching background, which was ironic 'cause I went to a school of education and I learned by going to some workshop that like you have to be an instructor of record for it to be taken seriously, especially at more teaching focused and liberal arts universities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I was like, okay, got it. How do I make that happen? The first thing I did was like, I became a TA but that didn't feel satisfactory to me 'cause I wasn't their instructor of record. So then I was kind of like talking with people about this and I didn't really know what to do about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And then one day I got an email from a classmate of mine who had gone to church and struck up a conversation with a department chair at a local community college in a sociology department. And he was, he asked her, he was like, do you know anybody who could teach a sociology class? And she was like, oh, say that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And she thought me. And so she emails me, she's like, do you have any interest in teaching a sociology class at the community college down the street? And I was like, oh my gosh, this could be a way to get that teaching experience that I want. But I also, first of all, when I told a couple of faculty members that I was thinking about this, they were like that's a terrible idea. Whatever you do, do not do that because it will take you away from the actual research that you are supposed to be doing. And so I sat with that information and then I also knew it was gonna be a lot of time. And so ultimately what I decided to do was like I was gonna teach this class despite what my, some of my advisors were saying, and the reason I wanted to do it was not just like so I could have this teaching experience, but because I wanted to be able to actually practice saying out loud the concepts of sociology that I was writing about and learning about because I knew it would help cement them and sort of clarify them in my own head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And also I was, training as a sociologist of education and the kinds of students who actually go to this community college are precisely the kinds of students who I write about, right? They're first gen, low income students who are often like parents and working multiple jobs. And I was like, if I really wanna write about this population, I should actually interact with them because most of them are not hanging out on the Stanford campus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: But the way in which I thought about doing it strategically was like. I found a colleague who wanted to also get the same kind of experience and we basically came up with the idea that we were gonna pitch to the community college and we were gonna split the class. Meaning that I would teach half of it and she would teach half of it and we would split the pay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: But that way we both became the professors of record and we only had half of the work. And so, and in that way, and also a lot of that teaching that I did was at night. Um, and so at night I wasn't gonna be working on my research anyway 'cause I had kids and that like wasn't how I was gonna spend my nights. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And so luckily my, you know, my husband was willing to take on the extra childcare, um, for me to be able to do this. And it was a great decision. I learned a ton in the process. One of them became my letter writers for when I went on the job market, which was really helpful. And so there was this strategic thinking about like, mm-hmm, okay, you have to think about the cost benefit analysis, right? Like, how much am I time am I putting into this? What am, what is, what is it detracting from? What could I get out of it? How might I be able to think creatively about how to minimize the work, or make the work strategic? And that's the kind of thinking I would encourage for your listeners as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I love that. And I love how if you are clear about why you're doing something and what you're trying to get out of it, you can then make those decisions in that strategic way. Because like I could imagine students who, if their supervisors say, no, you shouldn't do this, going, okay, you are right. I'll stick to researching. But I can equally imagine people who say, well, I want to, so I'm going to, but then do it, do the whole thing, do it as fast as possible because I mustn't spend too much time on this. Do it in a kind of stressed way because my supervisor doesn't think I should be doing this really. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I just need to get it done and dah, dah, dah, and then not get out of it any of the things that you talk about, like the, the benefits of doing these things. So I loved the way you were really clear on you partly wanted it so that you had that thing on your cv. I'm instructor of record, but also so that you were developing those skills as well, but also recognizing you didn't need the whole thing in order to do either of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I think being really clear on why you are doing it and what your, what skills, not what outcomes necessarily. 'cause we don't always know the outcomes, but what skills you're trying to get out of it can really help you to plan that strategically.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Right, absolutely. And um, first of all, also I got paid to do that, which was also very helpful for me at the time , but it is true, and I've seen this happen a lot, where people spread themselves too thin and then they don't get their, their actual research done. So my biggest piece of advice, is like the motivation to write comes from feeling like you have something important to say. And if you don't feel like you have something important to say, you're never gonna get that research finished ever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: It doesn't matter how many p Pomodoro writers, uh, timers you set and how early you wake up, like there's a lot of the technical skills that you really need in place, but you also fundamentally, and this is like an existential problem, you need to think that what you have to say is important. And so when you're thinking about like, well, how do I sort of do all these things while also maintaining my research? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Like, you need to think that your research is really important and all those other things are helping you, but you gotta stay focused on the research as well. Um, but I, there's also a point at which, like, if you spend several hours on your research a day, there's a point at which there's diminishing point of returns and it's better for you to do something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: So like I remember, one of the best things I ever did was like, there was a happy hour happening when I was a grad student and I wasn't gonna go because I was like, I should sit in my office and fi, you know, it was five o'clock. I was like, I should sit and try to like bang out another hour of data analysis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And then I was like, you know what? There's free food upstairs. I should just go. And, you know what happened at that meeting? I ended up meeting another faculty member who I had never met. There was no strategic intention there at all. It just was like happening. I happened to tell her about my research and I said I was on the job market and that I was having a hard time. It was like a very friendly conversation. And then about six months later, I, it was graduation and I didn't have a job. Like I had no job lined up when I was graduating. I had cobbled together because I'm a pretty entrepreneurial, a consulting gig and some other, and I finagled away to like, stay on Stanford's campus enrolled as a student, but I did not have like a postdoc or a faculty position. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And, after I, you know, did my walk across the stage and then it was like the, the CE celebration, she comes up to me, her name was Denise Pope, and she said, Hey, Ilana, she's like. Do I recall that you're still looking for a job? And I was like, yes. And she's like, oh. She's like, I think I just found you a postdoc on campus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And I was like, you're kidding. And lo and behold, um, the Stanford Center on Longevity was looking for a postdoc of somebody who studied education and did work across the life course. And three days later, Vikki, I had a very amazing postdoc that basically like fell into my lap because I took that time to go to this happy hour to talk to other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: And like in retrospect, thank God I didn't spend that extra hour doing my data analysis. So there are times when, and it's, again, it's hard to predict which things will have payoff and which ones won't. But you just like have to put yourself and your ideas and everything out into the world and see what happens. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that and what an amazing place to finish. I would say thank you so much for coming on, Ilana. I really appreciate it. I'm so inspired. I've got all my notes. There are various things that I want to look up to read that you reference and things in the book that, so I've got so much outta this book, so if people are interested, as I'm sure they will be, remind people of the name of the book, where they can find it, where they can find out more about you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: Absolutely. So the name of the book is The Entrepreneurial Scholar, and the subtitle is A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond. It's intentional that this book is not just about people who are trying to stay in academia, but are recognizing the reality that most people, given the job market right now, aren't gonna stay in academia and it's published by Princeton University Press in their Skills for Scholars series. And this is a really great series. If your listeners don't know about it, this is a series of books that are really related to kind of like professional development. And they're very short. They're like 40 to 50,000 words. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: You could read them in a couple of hours. And there's great books about creating a syllabus and writing a book proposal and leaving academia and sort of the hidden curriculum of graduate school. So I really encourage people to look at all those books in that series. Skills for Scholars. And if you wanna learn more about me, you can go to my website. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ilana: It's www.Ilanahorowitz.com. My last name has just one "O", so it's Ilana I-L-A-N-A-H-O-R-W-I-T z.com. Or you can just Google Ilana Horowitz Tulane. And I will share a coupon code with you for this book, um, so that your listeners can get, I think it's 30% off and feel free to reach out to me anytime. I love to hear from listeners. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much. And listeners, keep a ear out 'cause it is possible I might be interviewing some of the other authors from this series as well. I'm super excited. It's an amazing series. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 19 May 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-37-why-academics-need-to-think-like-entrepreneurs thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-36-why-you-shouldnt-always-do-your-best <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> If you are bored of being told “just do your best” and not knowing what that means, then this is the episode for you. We are gonna talk today about why you shouldn't be trying to do your best all the time, what the problems are if you do try and do your best all the time, and most importantly, what you should do instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-12-why-perfect-plans-fail-embracing-imperfection-in-academic-planning" target="_blank"> Why perfect plans fail </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-05-client-q-a-getting-it-done-when-you-dont-feel-like-it" target="_blank"> Client Q&amp;A – getting it done when you don’t feel like it </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> If you have been told, don't worry. Just do your best. It'll be okay as long as you do your best and you feel like you have been absolutely trying to do your best, and it is absolutely not feeling like it's okay. Then you are in absolutely the right place. We are gonna talk today about why you shouldn't be trying to do your best all the time, what the problems are if you do try and do your best all the time, and most importantly, what you should do instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, your coach here for any PhD students or academics who want this all to feel a little bit easier and a little bit more fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a real virtuousness around doing your best. You know, ever since we were kids, don't worry how you get on in the test. Just do your best. What does that mean? I don't know what that means, but if you did your best, then people will be kind to you. You can be kind to yourself, except somehow it just doesn't work like that, right? We end up with these weird definitions of what doing your best even means and means we get praised for getting high marks when we didn't try that hard or we get praised for working really hard and burning ourselves out in a way that's not particularly helpful. And I want us to question this. I want us to ban the phrase, just do your best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no, just about it. Just implies it's easy. Whereas our best should be like challenging. And if we don't know what it means, then it's a pointless thing to say. Delete it. Delete it from your brain. And today I'm gonna explain exactly why that is and what we're gonna think instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first thing, and probably the most important is it's completely undefinable. ,What do we even mean by doing your best? Is it do the best work you could ever do, given unlimited resources, unlimited time, all the support in the world? Is that best? How are we gonna be doing that all the time? Is it best within the constraints of this specific context? How do we know what that is? How are we even choosing what we mean by our best? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What does our best mean if we're unwell? Are we using the same definition of best as we were when we were well? Or are we gonna define a new version of best? What if we're doing a new task that we haven't done before? What does our best look like? The first problem with doing our best as a goal, as a kind of reassurance is it's a completely moving target, and therefore we never know if we've done it, and we never know what we're aiming for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That leads to the second problem. The second problem is that if we never know what our best was, if we don't have a clear definition of that, then afterwards if we didn't get the result we wanted, let's say, you know, we submitted to a journal and it got paper got rejected, or something like that. How do I know we did our best? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It leaves so much space to come back afterwards and be like, oh, maybe I didn't do my best. Maybe I should have pushed a bit harder. Maybe I should have started earlier. Maybe I should have spoken more to people. Maybe I could have done a bestier version of best because it's so vague, it's so ill-defined, we don't know if we've done it, and therefore it's impossible to reassure ourselves from that perspective. It reminds me a little bit of doing VO two max test. So if you're not a sports scientist like me, you might not know what that is, but they're these maximal tests where you get put on a bike or a treadmill or something and it gets incrementally harder and harder and you have to keep up with it until you physically can't anymore and they're measuring your oxygen uptake and all this kind of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We do these in sports science degrees, they do them to test athletes and stuff. So we used to have to participate in them in the lab, and they always say, you just gotta go for as long as you can go. And afterwards, the awful thing with a VOT max test is it feels horrific. You feel like you're gonna vomit while you're doing it, and then within two minutes of recovering, you get your breath back, and you're like, oh, I reckon I could have done another 30 seconds every single time, even though you thought you were doing your best. When you come out of it, the other side, you're like, yeah, maybe I could have pushed a little harder. Maybe I could have just stretched out a little more at the end there. And the same is true with your task. If we don't have a clear definition of what our best even means, then afterwards we can still always beat ourselves up for not having done enough of our best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third downside that I wanna raise with you is that always believing you need to do your best makes it really hard to experiment with things that you don't know. Okay? I'm gonna give you another sporting analogy. I used to do gymnastics, and I remember one girl, a lovely girl that I used to train with when I was at university. She would only do moves that she could do. Always, and she was already doing them beautifully. So it wasn't even like she was perfecting them. But she would only do moves that she could do. And it was because she felt stupid if she didn't moves that she couldn't do. And it's like fair play. You're an adult doing gymnastics. You can do whatever you wanna do. Right? But she didn't make anywhere near as much progress as everybody else because she wanted to be able to do her best in a move. And that for her meant doing the moves she's best at. Whereas I'm over there crashing out of everything, right, and learning all these new things, and none of them were as beautiful as hers, but I was throwing myself in enthusiastically and trying different things out because I wasn't worried about doing my best. I was there to learn to do cool stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we tell ourselves we have to do our best, we avoid things that make us feel like we're not at our best while doing them. We don't take risks about how to do something in case it turns out that that wasn't the best way to do it. Always wanting to do your best is an incredibly conservative way of expressing yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It sounds dead ambitious, right? It sounds like, oh, I'm doing my best. I'm so good. But it often keeps you within your comfort zone so that you can always be comfortable that you are doing your best. And I, ironically, that means often we are not stretching ourselves into things that we can't yet do, but that we can learn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth one is even worse. The fourth one is that trying to do our best can send us into paralyzing perfectionism where we don't do anything at all. All of us have had that issue where we've got a paper to write or a presentation to give, and we simply can't start it because we're so convinced it has to be really good. I will feel better tomorrow. I'll start when I've done more reading. I'll start when I know exactly what I'm doing. I'll start when I'm clear on my story. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Telling yourself you have to your best on everything can take you to a place where you literally can't even start at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth one is that weirdly, sometimes telling yourself to do your best can actually lead to mediocrity, because if you've got quite a fixed idea of what you are capable of and what your best looks like, then sometimes you won't push yourself past that because your goal is just to do your best and you think that this is your best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are times when actually setting yourself a more specific goal. There's a bunch of research done about this in like factories and productivity and all that kind of jazz that if you give people a specific goal to aim for, they end up doing better than if you just tell them to do their best. So we kind of have different extremes here, right? That sometimes telling yourself to do your best, if you are a very perfectionist person, you're a very ambitious person, you have high expectations, can lead to burnout and paralyzing perfectionism. And other times telling yourself to do your best, if you're somebody that's doesn't necessarily think that you're brilliant at things, sometimes telling yourself to just do your best. Actually keeps you trapped at a level that you could exceed with a little bit of support and a more ambitious target. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number six is it's completely implausible to do your best all the time. Even top athletes. Think of the sports people that you admire the most. They are not at their best all the time. They train to peak at competitions. They do not expect to be running world record times or to be at the absolute top of their game all the time. They have off seasons. They have on seasons. Within their on seasons, there are some things they're doing to the best of their ability, and there are other things that they're not doing at all. It is completely implausible to expect yourself to be at your best all day, every day for your entire PhD and academic career. It's just not realistic. No one. Does it So you are holding yourself to something that is just completely unachievable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even if you set yourself, this is gonna be the best year ever, which I also think it's slightly problematic if we don't define it better. But let's say you do best year ever, it still doesn't mean you have to be at your best every single day. Best is not meant to be a steady state. Best is meant to be something that happens intermittently when you need it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you are finding today's session useful, but you are driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me. After you've finished go's, my website, pH life coach.com, sign up for my newsletter. We all know that. We listen to podcasts and we think, oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter's designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions, and you'll get one action that you can take immediately to start implementing the things we've talked about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's faces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My seventh reason is maybe controversial, but I stand by it and I think you should too, which is that not all tasks deserve your best. Okay. If you are somebody who is like eager to please, always worried that you're not quite good enough, that people are gonna realize you don't deserve to be there and all that kind of jazz. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might be trying to do your best at every single task you have. You might be trying to do your best research and doing your best writing, and being the best teacher, and being the best administrator, and being the most helpful colleague and being all these other things. And probably in your private life, you're also trying to be the best partner and the best parent and the best friend and the fittest person and the whatever else, right? Some tasks do not require you to be at your best. It is gonna be great for your health if sometimes you exercise when you are not going to be at your best, but you have a little walk anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are other things that simply don't deserve your best. There are no prizes for fixing the fonts in a form that somebody has sent you. They don't deserve your best. They deserve to be filled in and returned. One thing that my members keep asking me for merchandise, they want t-shirts, they want stickers, they want all sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one thing that I think we should get on a t-shirt is fit for purpose. You do not have to do your best at everything. You just have to do it in a way that is fit for purpose. Your PhD needs to be fit for purpose. Its purpose is to get you through the Viva and get you a qualification. It needs to be fit for purpose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you can do other things too, where you get some publications, happy days, but it needs to be fit for purpose. Completing some pointless form about some course you went on or whatever needs to be fit for purpose, needs to be completed, needs to be handed in. That's all. It doesn't need to be beautiful. Doesn't need to be extensive. Certainly doesn't need the formatting. Fixed needs to be fit for purpose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Need to give a presentation needs to be fit for purpose. Not all tasks deserve your best. Not all tasks need your best. We get to save our best for the stuff that really matters. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The eighth one is similar to that, but not all elements of any task deserve your best. So let's take that presentation example. It needs to be fit for purpose. So you need to decide, why am I doing this presentation? What's the point of it? Remember, there's different points, right? Sometimes presentation might be about sharing preliminary data to get feedback from people. Sometimes a presentation might be about sharing your final results with end users who might use it. Sometimes the presentation might be to get a job, okay? You need different things depending on what the purpose is. It needs to be fit for purpose, and within that different elements of it need your best, more or less. So if you are sharing preliminary results in order to get initial feedback, does it need to be your best analysis ever? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No. It needs to be sufficient analysis to enable people to comment on it. Does it need to be the most beautiful slides ever? No. In fact, it's probably better if it's not the most beautiful slides ever. 'cause that's not the purpose of what you're doing. You are pulling together something that you can clearly share data with others so that they can comment on it. It doesn't need color coding, it doesn't need Google images, it doesn't need animations. It needs to be fit for purpose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, we, going back to forms. If you've got like progress review forms to fill in or something, some elements of that deserve whatever best efforts might mean, but deserve effort, right? Actually sharing what you've been doing, making a good case for why you've made sufficient progress. Great. Let's put our efforts into that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does it matter if this is the most elegant language ever? Does it matter if you repeat the same word three times in a paragraph? Does it matter if the bullet points are all the same? No. Those things don't matter. So even within tasks where the overall task matters, some of the details don't matter. They don't deserve your best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number nine is we have to remember that some bests are mutually exclusive. Let's take the example if you're interdisciplinary . I was right at the intersection between psychology, neuroendocrinology, and immunology, right? And so I knew stuff across all of those disciplines. Was I giving my best to psychology the way if I was a psychologist, oh, was I giving my best to immunology the way if I was an immunologist? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, the things were mutually exclusive. There was only so much time I had, so much effort I had and expecting to be able to give my best to all of these elements was just not realistic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you've got responsibilities at home, then some fixed definition of what doing your best as a researcher means may be in contradiction to what your best as being a parent is. Expecting yourself to do your best in all domains of your life, in all tasks within a domain is completely unrealistic because sometimes these things are in direct contradiction to each other. You can't do your best at being the most focused academic there ever is and be the most available academic there ever was. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The 10th reason is it's not even necessary to do your best at every element of it. To have an academic career, to succeed in an academic career. I've never met anybody who can do their best in all elements of their career. And most of the time, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, most of the time, your seniors, the people that wanna promote you, the people that wanna support you, will be encouraging you to focus a little more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are someone who tries to do your best across the board and burns yourself out because of it, you'll almost always receive the advice to focus more, to accept which things you're doing less well so that you can excel in some of them. And I found that really hard. I really wanted to be a balanced academic, as I called it, and I think you can do that to some extent, but it doesn't look like doing your best at absolutely everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what does it look like? What does it look like to be somebody who wants to succeed, who wants to show up as a version of themselves that they like, but who accepts that maybe this narrative of do your best, do your best is not helpful. Well. The most important element for me is to define what we actually mean by doing our best? What are the constraints we've got around that at the moment, and how much is this particular task worth? If we can get super specific about what doing our best looks like, it's a lot easier goal to actually aim for and hit, and it's much easier to know afterwards that you actually did do what you had defined as your best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one way that I like to think about this is doing my best is putting in the amount of effort that this task is worth within the constraints of my other priorities. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. It's putting in the amount of effort that I think this task is worth within the constraints of my other priorities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is very different than expecting a hundred percent from yourself across the board. If I don't think the task's important, then the amount of effort I'm gonna put into it is gonna be less, and I'm not gonna tell myself that I didn't do my best because my best was the amount of effort that task is worth, and I gave it as much as it's worth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Within the constraints of other priorities, I will put in my best to my business, for example, but not at the expense of my sleep, not at the expense of time with my family, not at the expense of not exercising. So I get to decide and you get to decide what are the constraints and what's the amount of effort that this thing is worth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And interestingly, this can also really help you to progress tasks because actually if you are telling yourself I have to do my best, I have to do my best. It's really easy to procrastinate 'cause if you feel like you're not on perfect form right now and you are not gonna do your best, then it's easy to convince yourself that what you should do is come back later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? When I can do this at my best. 'cause it's really important I do my best. Whereas if you have defined doing my best at this project as I'm gonna do 10 hours work on this over the next two weeks, and it's gonna have to get done. That's how much time it's worth. That's how much time I'm willing to give it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then suddenly that becomes much more focused and instead of, I just need to do my best on it, you need to figure out, no, what am I gonna spend these 10 hours doing? What is the best way to spend those 10 hours? How can I get it from here to there within those 10 hours? Not how long will it take, but how am I gonna progress it as far as I can within the time I'm willing to give it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Suddenly you approach it much differently. You don't need to be at your best now. You need to do the work that you said it needed in order to be done, that you said it deserved, that you said you were willing to give it, given your other priorities and constraints. And that, my friends, is how we do our best at life as a whole, rather than telling ourselves we have to be our best all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We give tasks the amount of effort that they're worth within the constraints that we have, so that overall things aggregate out as the best version of the life we can have within the constraints we have at the moment. We have done our best on average. We have done our best, given our circumstances, we have done our best within the context of what we are willing to give and what these tasks need and deserve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lemme know what you think. What do you get caught up on when you tell yourself you've gotta do your best? Where does it maybe help you? Where does it not help you? Let me know what you think of today's episode. If you are not already on my newsletter, please do join. That's how you get to message me. Join the newsletter. You can reply to any of my messages, um, and tell me what you think. Tell me how you are gonna implement these ideas in your life. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 12 May 2025 04:00:01 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-36-why-you-shouldnt-always-do-your-best thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-35-how-phd-students-can-network-smarter-avoid-career-panic-with-dr-david-mendes-from-beyond-the-thesis <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Struggling to figure out your career path after your PhD? In this episode, David Mendes—host of the Beyond the Thesis podcast—shares expert tips on using networking to map out your job market early. Learn how to have strategic career conversations, explore industry roles, and avoid last-minute decision panic. This conversation offers practical steps PhD students can take to better understand their options and plan with confidence. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://papaphd.com/" target="_blank"> Beyond the Thesis with Papa PhD (David’s podcast) </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmendesdasilva/" target="_blank"> Connect with David on LinkedIn </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.skool.com/papaphd/about" target="_blank"> David’s Skool.com link </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and I have a guest with me again this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I am really excited to welcome David Mendes, who is better known to many of you, probably as Papa PhD and the host of Beyond Your Thesis podcast. So welcome, David, it is so fun to have you here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Well, thanks for having me. It's really a pleasure to be talking with you today, across the pond.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, yes, absolutely. Always having to get my brain around time zones, which is not my strength, but we figured it out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: We figured it out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So today we're gonna be thinking about how to make career decisions, and particularly thinking about how networking can be a really useful way to make decisions about what you wanna do, not just something to be done at the last minute, but before we get going about that, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about you, how you got into what you're doing and what else you do other than your podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Yeah. I've been doing Beyond The Thesis, which at the beginning was just called Papa PhD, started in 2019. Just before Covid. Just before the pandemic. So this project of sharing people's career journeys after the PhD came up nine years after my defense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I defended in 2010, I did a PhD in cell biology and what happened in 2010 was that I wasn't ready, I wasn't ready to, you know, project myself professionally into anything that wasn't being in the lab and continuing to do cell biology. I, I wasn't ready, I hadn't had any particular training on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I didn't know people, let's say in industry or in any other domains that weren't academia. And, and so this means that, you know, for that six months to a year after defending, uh, I was, you know, floundering, I was trying to leverage my like personal and family network, which was actually how I got my first like contracts, just after my PhD and eventually trying to to understand where people in the institute that I was were going, that was not academia. And then reaching out to them and doing that kind of organic networking. But it was all done in a sense of urgency. I wouldn't say panic, but some people may panic because, you know, they might be like me far away from their family, even their continent of origin. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And they found out or they understood that they don't want to stay in academia and to continue that path, but they need to keep paying the bills. And so it's legitimate to be kind of panicking in a certain way. In any case, I ended up finding my path into a domain, which is medical writing. So through finding out where people who were in my institute were going, I ended up being able to find my first position there. But, what happened in the years after between 2010 and 2019 was that, uh, I started getting invitations to career panels. And so the thing that started happening was all the obstacles and all the difficulties that I thought, you know, in my little personal bubble belonged to me and, and were my responsibility or my fault, I was seeing that each year I was going to these career panels and young graduate students who were almost finishing, were sharing the same feelings that I had had at the end of my PhD. And that was kind of an aha moment for me that, oh, this was not just me. It's, there's kind of this systemic phenomenon where people are getting to the end of their graduate studies journey and are feeling lost, they lose their footing and they start having this doubt of, did I do the right thing or was it a strategic error on my part and now I kind of made myself an overqualified and maladapted person in the job market.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So jump to 2019. What happened that here was that for different reasons, I started on my own to have my own, like medical writing and medical translation clients. So that, plus the fact that I, and it's, it's these serendipities, you know, on Facebook there was this, uh, article saying why you should start your podcast in 2019. And I had some gear, and that kind of alignment of, I have some time, I have this sense of, of mission of wanting to reduce the number of young, brilliant people who feel bad about their choice maybe of, of following an academic path. I think it's, it's unfair that that's how they feel after all these years of dedication to this journey. I'd love to, to find a way to inspire them, to co comfort them in their choices and also to comfort them that there's cool stuff out there for them after their degree. That was just kind of the right alignment of planets to get me started and to think, oh, you know, I know like a handful of people who were in my institute when I was doing my PhD, and they're not in academia and they're having fun, being entrepreneurs, being science communicators, being in industry. And I'll reach out to them and see if they're interested in sharing their stories. And they were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And so that, that was how the whole concept of Papa PhD was born and then, well now we are almost reaching six years. Right. So it's, it's kind, there's a snowball effect. Of course. First I started with the people I knew and now I'm, you know, I'm interviewing people that are much farther away from kind of my close circle of people I know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So why do you think people find it so hard to figure out where else they could go?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Well, there's different aspects to it. One aspect is that the PhD is a very demanding endeavor that, the tendency is that it'll take most of your time, most of your bandwidth, you know, most of your brain for all those years. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So if there isn't some, um, you know, either mandatory curriculum, let's say, that pushes you during your PhD journey to do some courses on networking or to have, uh, internships in government or in industry, well, the PhD will absorb all of your energy, all of your time. And you'll stay in this tunnel vision because naturally, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of an, an ecology thing, right? If, if there's no competition for that space in your brain and in your life, the PhD is gonna take all of that space. That's the first reason I'd say. Does that resonate with you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I love that the visual of thinking of it as an ecology where things sort of expand to fill it, is such a good way of thinking about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I wonder whether there's also things about the sort of expectations and the kind of emotions around deciding that this route that lots of people who did, who started a PhD thought might be their route isn't now. I wonder if you could sort of speak to that a little. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Yeah, so from all the people that I've interviewed, one of the main aspects that comes out is that it's only as you get into a PhD, into, you know, first year, second year, et cetera, and that you spend all those hours with your supervisor, that you actually see what being the head of a lab is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And often you come into the experience, you know, you, you are, you're brought into a PhD and what you bring with you is kind of this um, romanticized, let's say image of the scientist that is probably based on some fifties, sixties era or even seventies reality. But, but which today does not exist anymore, of you have, a scientific question you are really passionate about, you'll be given a space in university to kind of dig into that and bring young people with you to also dig into that. But then no one talks to you about all the admin, all the boards you need to be on, all the grant writing. And so all of that kind of is revealed to you once you're in it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And I think. I'd say the, the, that's a big chunk, maybe it's the largest proportion would be that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. And that's without, I mean, you've already alluded to this, in your own story, but that's even without the kind of geography impact, you know, people often don't realize quite what level of sort of geographical relocation is often, I mean, I'm speaking to someone who stayed at the same place, so I'm not one to speak on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But for lots of people at the moment, regular relocations are gonna be part of that journey and things. I think often it's that side as well that people don't even necessarily know is what's coming.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That's it. The other aspect is the competition. I know that in life sciences where I was, you know, the competition for funds, for grants, et cetera, even like between labs, it's something you also don't know about. And not everyone appreciates living with that pressure. And a reality today, at best, one in five of the people in a PhD cohort will be able to get a tenure track position. So this means that the other four actually we're going to have to scramble to find other ways to stay adjacent or in academia. And I think that translates into pressure on the graduate students and they feel it during graduate school, but then, uh, even if they, they start on the first postdoc, second postdoc, there's people who end up realizing then after one, two postdocs that, okay, I've pushed this far and there's a wall that I can't break through, and then people need to reorient after. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So, with such dedication and so much, you know, blood, sweat, and tears, trying their best to break through to that thing that in the end ends up being, you know, out of reach.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And I think that if somehow, there was some, I'd like to say mandatory, but at, at least easily accessible career training during the journey starting in graduate school, then the day you need to pivot, you wouldn't need to feel that bad about it because somehow you say, okay, this didn't pan out, but hey, I have in my network, I know people in industry, I can easily negotiate myself my, my path, my journey towards something else. And, and I feel that a, a lot of people end up having these negative feelings towards academia, and feelings of regret towards the choices they've made on that side. And I think it's unfair. I think choosing to work towards augmenting the community's knowledge is something the society needs and it shouldn't be something that people feel regret about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That's my mission. It's to kind of normalize the fact that the post PhD journey is not a one track thing. And also to tell people that not following the historic canonical path is not failure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That's my main, like my main mission with Papa PhD and with beyond the thesis.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, yeah, so, so true. And you mentioned that we're gonna touch on that network thing in a second, but the other thing I wanted to just add was when you were talking about people starting to regret their choices, starting to resent academia and stuff, it really struck me what a difficult mindset that is to then be looking for jobs as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 'cause you know, it feels rubbish to be questioning your choices and thinking, should I have done something different five years ago and to be getting angry at academia that things aren't the way they should be and that all feels unpleasant.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I think there's a big element to which that also then makes it really hard to look for other options in a way that's exciting and inspired and all that stuff. Yeah. If you are starting from this, this place where you know you've made a mistake somehow, and that's where I think the stuff that you are doing is so, so, so important to help people to kind of almost put to one side that resentment and regret and be like, no, no. Act. There's, there's a ton out there. There's so many things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And when you're thinking like that, you're so much more likely to find them and engage with them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Yeah. Thank you and I totally agree. One third aspect that I'd want to add is and I kind of identify with this a little bit, is also so to, to do with why it's difficult at the end. I myself know that one of the reasons I decided to keep on going with my academic studies was, one, my curiosity about science, but also I, at different stages where, you know, oh, do I go to masters or do I go to the PhD or do I go get a job? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I was seeing what people my age and, and, and my colleagues who were going straight to the job market was were doing and I didn't identify with that. And somehow, if that's one of the reasons or one of the motives that brought you to keep on studying was, I don't see myself, I don't, uh, identify myself with people doing this or that job going straight to industry, going straight to sales or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I'm gonna keep studying and try to become an academic. The other difficulty is then once you see that actually being an academic is not what I thought, and now I actually need to look back at what I kind of rejected in a certain way at the beginning. And so that's also emotionally it's difficult because I have to actually go back on my word and actually look at these places in industry that I had rejected at a certain point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: But you need to think that you're not gonna go into it with the same background. Now bring all those years of like deep thinking, uh, you know, of, of managing and, and taking this very long project to its conclusion, uh, of communicating science, of digesting science, of treating data. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: One of the messages that I wanna bring and, why it's important to talk with people out there that have journeys that are inspiring to you is because they can show you kind of the path of how now with this background that you have, you can go back into the space which you didn't identify too much with five years ago, but now there's another way you can bring value to that space. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And that's the ray of hope is and the inspiration is, and that's what I try to bring with the, the, the beyond the thesis conversations.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And we've mentioned networking a couple of times, and it's always a word that people kind of react to in various emotional ways. In fact, as you know, we've had Dr. Jen Polk before talking about networking. So in this context, what are you meaning by networking?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: What I want people to start considering is not putting on a suit and going to an event and sharing, you know, a contact card and saying, hi, I'm da da da, I'm looking for a job. That's not it. What I want to share is that because as scientists, as PhDs, we have this tendency of I'm gonna go it alone. I can do the research all on my own. I'm going to go through the data and find, you know, what is it I want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I want to posit that this is a natural but a wrong reflex to have. Because the jobs in the job market is a very complex thing and just by using your normal, you know, research and data crunching abilities and capabilities that you developed through all these years, you are going to be missing different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And one of the things you're gonna be missing is, you know, does this job or does this employer that on paper is, you know, checking all the marks there. This makes sense, but does it really align with my values? Is it really somewhere where I will flourish? Is it somewhere where, where I'll have fulfillment and pleasure in what I do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And you can't get that just with the data that's out there. When you go into a networking event or into a networking interaction with someone in an informational interview, please don't go into it thinking, is this person going to get me a job? I want you to take it as an exploratory exercise, but also a social exercise. Of course, you know, you need to find people who are inspiring to you and who genuinely you're curious about their journey. And this conversation with this person will help you kind of, uh, imagine if you have, you know, a color by numbers map of the job market, that's all blank. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: This person's gonna help you put some color in different places and help you build an actual map of, oh, okay. So the culture in this domain is like this, I like it, or very important, I don't like it. And, and, 'cause these are two very important outcomes of networking in this context is understanding where I would love to work and why, or where I would hate to work and why. And sometimes you go in thinking, oh, this is, you know, perfect for me. And then you talk with someone who works at this or that company, or in this or that space, and you understand, huh, actually this wasn't what it looked like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And actually, now that I've had this conversation, I know that I don't need to put effort there because somehow it doesn't align. So it's more, it's really, you know, creating, yes, creating social capital, knowing people in the space. But it's really, it's very much a kind of a job market cartography exercise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: It's because for all the solo research you do, nothing is gonna give you as much rich information about a, a position or about an employer than talking with someone who works or worked there because of how much in a 20 minute conversation can be exchanged between two people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Plus, if you really choose people who you admire for some reason or who intrigue you for some reason, you will also be creating relationships that you can then nurture forever and, and that eventually will be become part of your, what I call your village and who eventually will think of you if they see a job posting come by and say, oh, you know what, David actually could be a great person for this. I'll, I'll reach out to him. If you go to someone with that, I need a job from you, uh, uh, kind of feeling and, and tone. It feels transactional, it feels, you know, it doesn't align with the kind of concept that I'm trying to, to share. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, absolutely. You made me think of a conversation I had over the weekend, which is a slightly flippant example of the importance of a village. But a very good friend of mine who did her PhD about the same time as mine, um, has a friend who also did a PhD and is now very high up in the world of sports drinks and that sort of thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And her son is a competitive, like under 18 international sports person here in the uk and was having an argument with his mom about whether he should be taking creatine and doing protein shakes and all of this stuff 'cause he was adamant, he definitely should be, he 60 and she was not convinced. So she's just like. I'll find out. And so she contacted her friend who's like super high up in R&amp;D in this world was like, should it be taking it? No, I win this argument. Not until you're older.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: There you go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So even just silly things like that, she's like, that's why you need to know people who do interesting things, 'cause sometimes it'll help you win an argument with your teenager.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That's it. And, and yeah. No, I, it's a great example. Even when you are during graduate school, if you're able to, this means that by the time you get your degree, you have this kind of safety net of people who are in different spaces, who have different stories to share, who can be sounding boards for you, for your decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: There's this concept of a board of directors, right? If you are able to build a board directors for yourself of people whom you don't expect anything of, in terms of like getting a job or anything, but with whom you've developed an interest for them, but there's a relationship that's been created that's authentic , that's non-transactional. It's, it's going to allow you in moments of difficulty, which of course there are, there are, 'cause by definition, PhD, there will be difficult difficulties there. You'll have other voices, you know, that. Accept your own in your head, which often is gonna be potentially negative. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: You'll be able to have some other people chiming in and, and kind of pushing you forward, but also helping you have a wider horizon of thinking, well, if this doesn't pan out, I know that there's other things that can, and when it gets panicky is when you really have that single objective and that starts getting difficult and then you think, oh my God, I'm failing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And that's what I don't want. I don't want people going through that after all that effort, after all that dedication.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And a metaphor you used earlier just really opened something up for me that this idea of thinking of it as a map where you are trying to fill in information on different aspects of this kind of possible career map because people like me, you know, my background, none of my parents went to university. I say none. I have stepparents and things. None of my parents went to university. They're all sort of either go into a business and work your way up or start a business kind of people. And so I had that world and then I went to university and I found my academic world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But it's only when I was thinking of it in terms of that map, like you were talking about, that I realized that in my career, you know, I made my understanding of what it was like to work in academia, super vivid. I was surrounded by people that were doing that. And I knew lots of people from my family who were doing like job, you know, and some quite good professional jobs and that don't get me wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But jobs and I can't, other than people I did my PhD with, I can't remember really knowing people who had a PhD. Weren't in academia. Mm-hmm. We have one neighbor who worked in academia and other than that, I can't think of anyone that was in that thing. And so just thinking about it now, I had huge blank patches where it's like, this is stuff you do if you don't have a PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And this is the thing you do if you, when you do have a PhD. And I love this idea of just trying to sort of fill in some of those gaps because otherwise the vividness that you have around academia, because you are in it every day for either good or bad. I think this is brilliant for people who love academia and think they want to stay in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I half wonder, had I, during my PhD in postdoc had more exposure to more of this, whether I would've been quite as convinced to stay in academia because whilst I thought it was an amazing idea, who knows what other amazing stuff I would've found.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I find it super interesting that, that you say that, which is this also works for people who want to stay in academia. And that's something that, that I also try to drone on, which is, even if your current objective is to stay in academia, if you go to a conference and someone inspires you, even if they're not in your domain, take the opportunity to talk with them and ask them how are you able to, let's say, develop such an interdisciplinary career and how do you make this or that work at your university or in your institute? What, you know, what did mentors tell you that really helped you? And because there's no better approximation to your future, be it in 2, 3, 5 years than someone who's there now. So talk to these people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I love that one. The thing I used to be, obviously while I was an academic, I was a personal tutor and so we'd be talking to students about what are your career plan, you know, whether it was undergrad or PhD students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so often they'd still be like, yeah, yeah, I should talk to some people. Some people, once I figured out what I wanna do, I'll talk to some people. Um, I would constantly be like, how about we talk to some people to help you figure out what you wanna do? And that No, no, no. I just need to, I just need to decide. And once I've decided, I'll speak to people working in that industry. So how do you respond to, I just got increasingly exasperated with them, which didn't work. How do you respond to somebody who says, yeah, yeah, that's great. Once I've decided I want to be a medical writer, I'll talk to David.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Mm-hmm. I totally can see how that was a very frequent, answer from people. First finding out this one thing that you wanna do is going to be a very difficult endeavor for different reasons. The first reason is you are here now at, let's say, year two of your PhD. And of course, in Europe, PhD is usually the last three years. And, but here in North America it could be four or five, six. So you can say that and then go home. And in, when you leave, you know, when you finish your PhD, the job market, the landscape will have changed a bunch. So if this is your mindset, you may be in, you know, in this like pedaling to find something that is unfindable because the terrain is changing. And you know, at the beginning of your PhD, let's say, being a data scientist is something that looks really great, but then five years later, it's not anymore. And so the, the, my answer to to this would be, you are not going to find this kind of eldorado. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: You're not, you're not going to find this just out of your effort right now. And the second thing is, in this search of yours where you think you're gonna find this one gold nugget, you're gonna often be digging, and then you'll find a bunch of coal, and then you'll find just a, you know, basalt. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And so you can also lose a bunch of time not finding the right thing or finding, you know, things that are not a match for you. So the best, my best advice to you because, again, one-on-one communication with another human is a shortcut to getting much denser information and much, much more real information, is start talking today. And be curious. So don't, don't have this like one track mind of, I wanna find the thing sample. And this will give you two great sets of information. I have the bucket of likes and I have the bucket of dislikes. And this is great because eventually when then you need to really look for a position, you have this bucket of things that you can already put to the side and not spend any energy on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That would be my advice. I, and again, I, you know, when they're young like that and they have this way of thinking, maybe this wouldn't make them change their way of thinking. But I, I think that would be the way I would approach it  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: definitely. So. Let's get specific. People listening who are sort of thinking, either they're not sure they want an academic career, or they're not sure they'll be able to have an academic career 'cause of the competitiveness where would you suggest they start? How do they find these people? What do they ask them?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Okay. First give them a sense that they're right, you know, and say, start where you think you want to go. So let's say that you're thinking, I don't know, in my domain it would be I want to be a medical science liaison. So what you need to do now is to go on LinkedIn, and that's the platform I'd say is the one to go. Even if you're an academic now, everyone's there now and everyone who's interested in, in actually discussing careers and even hiring, et cetera. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: But you go on LinkedIn, maybe go geographically around you. So there's filters you can use there. So find people in this geographical area who are medical science liaisons. If possible, they even are alumni from the place that you are, which gives you a kind of a bridge to say, Hey, I'm now studying the same program that you are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And I, I saw you're a medical science liaison. I've, it feels to me that it's something that I like to do in the future. Could we meet and talk for 20 minutes? And that's the first step and then, what I was saying is you're trying to build a map. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So go in with questions, go in with questions that you've prepared, go in with curiosity, and then let the person tell their story based on the questions that, that you, that you prepared. They'll probably have questions for you, so be ready to, to answer that too. But then ask the type of questions that will allow you to have this kind of pinball effect, which is, so who inspired you when you were at the end of the career? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Yeah. Who was a mentor? Have one or two questions that, and you can even ask who would you recommend I talk next? Because I really want to understand, what's in the cards for me in the future. So always try to make it organically a snowball effect that start small, but that then you can, there's always a follow up step for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And this will do two things. It'll help you kind of grow this network, but also it can, it'll kind of put it on your agenda, what the next step is. Yeah because. Like we were saying, the PhD, the tendencies, it'll take all of your time, it'll take your whole agenda. So if there's no pressure there, like positive pressure to create space for something else, it won't be there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So come in genuinely curious about understanding, you know, why the person gravitated towards that position. If you've thought of your values, let's say you value hybrid work to ask questions about that, et cetera, and then let's it, the outcome could be, oh, this actually confirms what I thought about being a medical science liaison, or, okay, I had some wrong ideas about what it is. And actually, after talking with this person, which was gracious enough to spend this time with me, I now know that I don't need to put more energy on this and so now I need to turn my radar somewhere else and restart the exercise.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And that, that is a win too, right? Like you said, that is a win too, that actually, you know, having an interview where you walk away going, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Is a massive win. 'cause it stops you wasting time over there too, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Precisely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One of the things that struck me while you were talking was, it might be interesting to ask people, were there other careers that you considered before you ended up in this one? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That would be a good question to  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: see if they've got ideas like that. Especially, you know, if it's something a little bit adjacent to what they're doing, because I think sometimes we have quite a limited, you know, we have those kids' books where it's like, what do you wanna be? I'm gonna be a teacher or a doctor or a football fireman, and those are our options kind of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think sometimes we just don't even know what jobs are out there. And I wonder whether sometimes by going for one that we know exists and asking them what they discounted, you might actually find some things that you didn't even know were there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Totally true. And often, and again, I'm, and I'm thinking of like farmers and you know, companies that are related to what I did during my PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Often, uh, these people will have colleagues who are PhDs and even within their organization and who are doing different things, you know. Asking the person, oh, by the way, do you have colleagues who are also like PhDs and who are doing different things?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's so interesting 'cause I think sort of getting to not only ask about the job itself, but asking about what they love and hate about it and what's important to them. So I come from a sports science background and all of our students, undergrad anyway, think they're gonna work in elite sport. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's their kind of, that's their kind of goal. A PhD level, it's much less so. But some of them do go on into that environment. And I remember talking with some of them that had gone off to do that sort of thing, working with Olympic athletes and stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And asking them about their priorities and how they enjoyed it and stuff. And just listening to it like. This is fascinating and I don't care. So it's like, for you, this is amazing. I will watch the sports, I will cheer you on. I will be ecstatic if this all is good for you. But the idea of going to work every day where my goal is to make sure we shave one second off their performance because, you know, silver is the first loser and all of that stuff, I just don't get it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I I, it, it doesn't, it rocks their world. And they would talk about all this stuff, so passionately and I was just like, yeah, I dunno. I'd quite like silver. Silver was quite nice. That's good too. Yeah. I just wouldn't be that fussed. And so I think just getting that idea of what is it that you love about this job and then being able to be like, oh no, that's not important to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because sometimes people are like, you know, oh, I really get to travel all the time. I'm only at home a week a month. It's incredible. I get to see all these different places. And then for other people it's like, no, that sounds great for you, not me, for you. Exactly. Um, I, yeah, I think that's so interesting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Definitely. Definitely. But, I think in this exercise of, of building, this village and having these conversations, what's important I think, is to understand that this diversity exists and that there's space for it, in the job market. Because one of the things that I remember I felt is this fear of, oh, oh, okay. Gosh, I had one chance and I, I kind of blew it in a certain way. And now that, you know, I, I have this fear that I am this weird shaped puzzle piece that's not gonna fit anywhere. But there's so much out there, uh, that, that, like you said, if you have this approach of the kids' books of you're a fireman, you're an astronaut. Mm-hmm. You're this or that. It's really not like that. But the only way to understand and to know that actually there's this place that maybe I'm not an exact fit, but I'm pretty good fit, is by talking with people and by understanding that often things that it feels like it's very square. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And especially if you look at job postings, it looks like you need to be like this. Like, and then you talk with the hiring manager and actually they really want to know other things about you. And again, I don't think there's a better way than talking with someone who has been there or who's there now, and that can really kind of, um, recalibrate your expectation of what the experience is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And in terms of when to do this. Mm-hmm. It sounds like you are talking about pretty much throughout your PhD experience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I ideally, yeah. And you may, you may even, you know, be better placed to actually, you know, tell me about your experience. But I feel that first year students are very much in this, uh, how do you say? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: I just have like puppy love, uh, coming as an expression, but you know, in this beginning of a relationship, you know, like wide-eyed, oh, I just got into my program. I'm a PhD student now. So I think it's probably very challenging or more challenging to expect that first year students are going to, uh, to be putting some time looking at more than their academic, this thing that they just got onto and then you can, you can weigh in on that given that your experience, experience with students. But I think, you know, once that kind of honeymoon phase of I got into my PhD program and you announce it on your socials. I'd say at six months, uh, if you can start seeing, okay, where do graduates of my program. Where are they located now on the job market? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And maybe you are really focused on academia and you can do that and see where are they in academia and start talking with them. I think that's important, but I think it's also as important to see, and those who are not in academia, where are they, what are they doing? And to do it just out of, yes, curiosity, but also it's kind of as an a kind of self preservation instinct of, I'm now in this honeymoon period, but someone's telling me that in three years you're gonna be ejected out of this reality, and you have this degree and then you're gonna have to figure things out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So yeah, I'm in the middle of my first year or beginning of my second year. Part of what I'm doing now is preparing myself to be, to be a professional. So I want to be ready for any outcome. So I'm going to kind of create this cushion of knowledge, but also ideally this network of people. And I'll start and, say, let's say once a month, I try to reach out to someone.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That just, that already would be a great thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I, I, I definitely take your point that like people are not necessarily thinking about afterwards early on. And for me, I think what then becomes important is to think of the other benefits of why you're doing this too. Yeah. Because these sorts of reach outs are amazing for working out what you might do afterwards, but they could have other benefits too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've seen people who have had chance conversations with people in different industries who've found parallels between their research and something they hadn't even imagined before, things like that. Mm-hmm. Well, they've just met really interesting people and I think if we can also maybe take almost a little bit of the seriousness out of it that this is an amazing way to set yourself up for your career, but it's actually a real privilege just to have some interesting, you know, it's a cheap excuse to talk to some cool people, right? So, one things I love about having a podcast is I get to contact random people like you who are really impressive and interesting and be like, oh, can we talk? We'll record it. People will listen. Um, so I think there is an element to which it, it could be seen just as a, let's just talk to people, you know, tell them what you do, find out more about what they do. Be super interesting even if you never do anything in that direction.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: That's totally true. And actually, I'm, I'm remembering one of the episodes now, I'm, I'm not remembering the name, but I was talking with someone who, who went for their PhD in England and the person would ha would go have lunch with the philosophy people and then, and, and this is you staying in the academic thing, in the academic bubble. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: But it really, it even, and I don't remember the exact example, but I remember the, them telling me, actually there were projects that were born out of that because I was having lunch with a philosopher and I was discussing my physics thing and, and then there was some kind of bridges between the two and there was a project born out of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: So just even widening a little bit of who you are interacting with day to day at university can already bring some, like cross pollination and, and widen the, the view of what you do. So for sure,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: definitely. Well, thank you so much. It is been amazing talking with you. I'm sure lots of my listeners are already familiar with your podcast, but for anybody who isn't, tell them where they can find you and how they can find out more about what you do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Sure. So the podcast is Beyond the Thesis with Papa PhD. You can find it on all podcasting platforms, there's a French version too. You can find me and reach out on LinkedIn. David Mendes, you should find me. The other way to, to talk to me directly is to go to, the community I've just created on this platform called School where I have some like zoom coffee time, like weekly, coffee time sessions there. So it's SKOO l.com/papa PhD. And, uh, i, it's a place where I try to have like direct, one-on-one or group, but, but direct contact with the community. there's also Papa PhD on YouTube if you, if you like to see the video versions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: Thank you, Vikki. It's been a pleasure talking with you and I think it goes to show how just the power of conversation, you know, in our lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> David: And I think it's another moment for me just to help people out there who may be introverts like I am. Of course, now I've been doing this podcast for a while, and my introversion, I was able to kind of build some muscle around it. But, you know, of course conserve your energies if you're an introvert, but do consider the power of having conversations with new people. It's huge. It can really help you a lot and especially it can help you break some like cycles of negativity or some cycles of negative self-talk that, that you might be in because it'll bring in someone else's view into the conversation. So yeah, if that's the only thing that you take from today that, you know, having, having more conversations with new people, I'll be happy for that outcome. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm sure everyone will take lots. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 05 May 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-35-how-phd-students-can-network-smarter-avoid-career-panic-with-dr-david-mendes-from-beyond-the-thesis thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-34-why-making-halfassed-decisions-is-making-your-phd-harder <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> We don’t usually think of a PhD as a decision making process but it really is. We decide what research we do, how we do it, how we report it, and we make hundreds of decisions a day about what order we will do work in, what opportunities we will take up and refuse, and who we should ask for support. In this episode, I share the problems that happen we only vaguely, half-heartedly make decisions – and as usual, let you know what we need to do instead.  <span>   </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and today I'm gonna talk about a problem you might not even know you have. You might think that you are good at making decisions. Others of you will think you are bad at making decisions, but only when it comes to like the big important things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm here to tell you that making half-assed decisions, like kind of, oh, I sort of wanna do this, I think type decisions is holding you back in so many areas of your life. I'm gonna share with you why that is and what we get to do about it and why everything's gonna be so much easier when you do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now if you're listening to this live, so this is coming out on the 28th of April, 2025. If you're listening to this live, then I have another reason why making full decisions that you believe in and that you stand by is gonna be really important, and that is because the PhD Life Coach membership is open for new members between the 28th of April and the 2nd of May i E. It's open now. And in this episode I'm gonna talk about why I want you to make a full and proper decision that you are either in or you are not. And I'll explain why as we go through.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first of all, I'm gonna tell you a story to illustrate what I'm saying here. As I record this, it's been the Easter holidays in a runup to a launch for me, and that meant that I had to make some decisions in advance about when I was working and when I wasn't. Now those of you who follow me on Instagram will have seen, I did a reel about this, but essentially one of the things that I really encourage people to do is to make definite, intentional decisions about when they're gonna work and when they're not gonna work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A halfassed decision in this context would be, I'll do some work over the weekend if I feel like it, or I might need to work this weekend, we'll see how it goes, and those sorts of statements might sound really kind of responsive and compassionate and flexible and fluid and all these attractive things, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But in reality, we know that what most of us will do is we'll say that to ourselves. We'll spend the weekend going, oh, I should work, but I can't really be bothered. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I'll just do this now. And then we end up not enjoying the time we got off and not doing the bits of work that we intend. And so what I really encourage people to do is make an intentional decision. That's an actual decision, not a kind of vague halfassed decision about "do I actually need and or want, want to work this weekend?" And if so, specifically on what? Specifically, what do I want to work on? Specifically why? Specifically when? And plan that out, and what happened? I did that, right, in advance of the holidays. I knew I had my stepdaughter here. I knew there was gonna be this temptation to decide not to work after all. And then I would feel afterwards. I'd feel annoyed with myself, or I know there'd be a temptation to kind of work more than I intended, and then I'd regret not spending more time with my family. So I made an intentional decision about what I was gonna do, and I did it and it was amazing. I had a gorgeous weekend. I did the things I needed to do. I had tons of fun. It was lovely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this isn't all a, aren't I amazing? You should be like me thing, because I had exactly the same situation with something else over Easter. And I only realized when I was planning this podcast that I did not make intentional decisions. I made half-assed decisions, and that was around Easter eggs and chocolate and all of that good stuff that comes along with Easter celebrations. And I realized that I had made a halfass decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My husband and I are both on a mission to not be more middle aged than we need to be and to have bodies that are functioning well as we're getting older and all of that stuff. And so we've been trying to be mindful of what we're eating, right? And so we'd made a sort of vague, I am gonna say vague decision that we were gonna try and plan our meals more, we were gonna try and snack less, that was fine. But what we didn't do was make a definitive decision about what that meant over Easter. And so when there's then a half-assed decision, a decision that's like, oh, we should probably eat a bit more healthily. That's a half-assed decision. We then argued with it over Easter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We decided, oh, but it's Easter. We can have this. Oh, but my stepdaughter's with us, we can have it after all. Oh, we're out for the day and we haven't planned anything, so let's get a hot dog. We argued with that decision because it was a halfassed decision. It was a sort of decision. It was a maybe decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it meant that we finished the Easter weekend going, Hmm. It was a lovely weekend, but we didn't actually need to eat all the things that we ate in order to make it a lovely weekend. It was a lovely weekend anyway, and so we're kind of frustrated that we didn't stick to what we said, but this is one of those occasions where I'm not blaming implementer me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This was not that I had a definitive decision and I chose to go against it. I left myself with a floppy decision. This was a strategic problem. This was a boss me problem. I did not make a definitive decision about what my eating plans were over Easter.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, how does this translate into PhDs? You may think you don't have that many decisions to make, but you have a gazillion decisions to make. You have to decide what to read, what studies you're gonna do, exactly how you're gonna do them, what methods you're gonna use, how you're gonna analyze them. Whether this data point is an outlier or not an outlier, whether you are gonna write it like this or write that, work on this first or work on that first. Say yes to your supervisor. Say no to your supervisor. Billions of decisions. And lots of them you are probably making in a kind of half-ass way. Oh, on Tuesday I'm gonna try and work on my writing. Half-ass decision. On Thursday, I'll do some reading and see where I get to halfassed decision. Okay? What we need to do is we need to be much more definitive about our decision making. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you decide that Tuesday morning you are working for two hours, I want you to make that a definitive decision because when we make it a definitive decision, it does two things. One, it makes it way harder to argue with. Now, some of you will be thinking, I still argue with it. That's okay. We'll talk about that in a second, but when it's a definitive, I am absolutely doing this in that slot. When it's a definitive decision, it's harder to argue with. Secondly, when we make a definitive decision and we're actually definitely gonna do this thing, then we spend a little bit of time thinking, okay, what does that look like? So if we're like, I am definitely gonna do some writing in that time slot, then we might spend some time hopefully thinking, right, exactly what am I writing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can I make that easier for myself? How can I make sure I've got my supervisor's comments by them? How can I make sure I've got the resources I need by them? How can I make sure I've got a bullet pointed list of what I need to cover? If it's a definitive decision, that's definitely gonna happen, we're way more likely to set ourselves up for success with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, relating it back to the eating thing, if I'd made a definitive decision that I was going to continue in my quest to eat like somebody who's going to age well, I may have made decisions to take a healthier snack into town with me so that I didn't end up buying a hot dog or to make more mindful decisions about what's snacks I bought into the house, for example.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You support yourself when you know it's something you're definitely going to do, that you've made a definite decision about. You support yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that you do when you make a definitive decision, or I'm gonna encourage you to do if you don't do already, is you then have your back about it. Now, if you haven't listened to my episode about how to make effective decisions, I think it's called How to Make Decisions that You Love, that's what it's called. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I want to go and check it out. But a key component of that decision making is that once you've made the decision, you make it a decision you love. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead of being like, oh, I wish I was reading today, instead of writing, you say, I am so glad that I'm getting this writing done. In fact, I had a gorgeous message from one of my members who's actually leaving the membership this quarter for the best possible reason. She's leaving because she has pretty much finished her thesis. She's really confident with getting ready for the Viva, and she knows she can do her changes, so she's leaving for like the best reasons ever. One of the things she said, she sent me a lovely email to thank me for my support, and one of the things that she said in that email was that she really spends a lot of time reminding herself how glad she is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She's getting this written. She made a decision. There was a point at which she wasn't sure that she was gonna finish. She made a decision she was going to, and one of the things we talked about was having your back in that decision. If you decide you're going to do it, we reinforce that that was the right decision all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> so that we don't spend time going, oh, I did decide this, but I wish maybe that, no, I made this decision and it was the best decision. It was made for good reasons, and this is why we're doing it. Now, this also fits into when you are reading and writing. So often my clients say to me, I don't know how to structure this. I don't know what I need to be reading. And they frame it as a don't know question, as a lack of knowledge question when in reality, most of the time it's a lack of decision making. It's not that you don't know how to structure it, it's that you haven't decided how to structure it. And if you can figure out that this is a decision, that you get to pick how you structure it, then suddenly you can support yourself to do that. It's like, okay, I need to make a definitive decision about how to structure this, and how would I do that? Well, I might look at the different options I've got. I might experiment with the different options. I might compare them. I might choose what my priorities are for this piece of work. See how that informs the decision that I make. Okay. When we frame it as a decision, we then think about what that process needs to be in order to make that decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And remember, with all decisions, there's a time limit on it too. So you might decide, I'm gonna decide on the structure of this chapter from now until the point I send it to my supervisor for feedback. If after that, they give me different feedback, or if after that I decide that I think it could be structured another way. Great, no problem. But I'm gonna do my best to make this work between now and then so we can time limit these things as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That way when you are writing, you are not kind of going, oh, I sort of thought I'd structure it this way, but now I'm not sure it works. So I might change it around and do it that way. And then wonder why you get to the end of the week and you haven't got anything done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By being more definitive in our decision making processes and in then making the decision, it enables us to take action so much easier. Otherwise you become like, have you seen those Instagram videos where they put the dog in the middle and then the dad runs one way and the mom runs the other way and then the dog, it is like to see who the dog prefers. Right? But often the dog just sits in the middle going. And doesn't go anywhere at all. That's what we do when we don't make decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're sitting in the middle going, oh, maybe that way, maybe that way. I dunno. And we don't move. Whereas when we make a decision, we can run in one direction and then if that gives us our best possibility of actually making a choice and actually getting somewhere.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, how does this all relate to the membership? You might think that I'm gonna use this time to tell you all the reasons why you should join the membership. And to be fair, there are many, many reasons that you should join the membership and I want you all to go to my website, PhD life coach.com, and click on the membership, have a look at what we offer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not here to tell you that you should join. I'm here to tell you that you should make a decision, a definitive decision for the next quarter, because that's how long it is until you can get in again. I want you to either definitively decide that you are joining the membership, in which case, go do it now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like as you hear this, we're only open till Friday. I don't want you to miss it. Jump straight in and join. Or I want you to definitively decide that you are not joining this quarter and that you are gonna make that work. So not just definitively deciding that you're not, definitively deciding that you are gonna not join, and you're gonna have a really good quarter where you support yourself without the support of the PhD Life Coach membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, what this means is it makes it much less likely that you'll kind of dither, not make a decision, and then next week be like, oh, I kind of wish I had, that would've been really good, dah, dah. We don't want that. Equally, I don't want you to kind of join, but kind of be like, but I don't really have time and it probably won't work, and da da, and then not come to anything. I wonder why it didn't have any effect. Okay? I want you to decide, and if you decide, I want you to make the most of it, that doesn't mean come to everything. You don't have to come to everything to make the most of it. You need to come to key things at moments you need it and get the support that you need to make a difference. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to decide that doing this is gonna be the best decision ever. And if you decide not to, I want you to decide that that was the best decision ever. I'm so glad I chose not to do the membership this quarter. I'm so glad I decided to figure this stuff out myself. Make it the right decision. I. I think that's the harder decision, right? I think it's harder to figure this stuff out on your own, but make it the right decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've had to make this decision recently, so until now I did my original post-training, all that stuff, and obviously I've got tons of experience in academia, but I'd never had any business coaching at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it wasn't something that I felt like I needed, but more recently, as the membership's growing, my business is growing, I thought that actually it would be really useful. And if I was gonna do it, it was this one coach. She just got me. I follow everything she does on social media. She's brilliant, love her, and she offers quite an expensive business coaching mastermind thing, uh, like I can't even tell you how many times more expensive than the membership, like super expensive and. I really thought it could be useful, but I was also really like, oh my God, that's so much money. And what if I don't make most of it, and what if I don't earn that money back and dah, dah, dah? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I had a little thing and then I thought, you know what? Listen to yourself, Vikki. Do the things that you tell your clients to do. Let's make a definitive decision. And so I looked at it and I thought about what would be my reasons for joining? And I thought about what would be my reasons to not join? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I thought about which decision would I prefer to regret, which I think is a lovely question to always ask yourself. And I asked myself, if I went all in on my decision, what would that look like? And I thought, you know what? If I go all in and I buy into this mastermind and I go all in on it, and I decide to make it the best decision ever, this could absolutely transform my business. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This could change my experience of running this business. It could expand the membership, help me reach more PhD students. It could be absolutely amazing. And I decided, you know what? I would prefer to go all in, try and make this the best experience ever. And if it doesn't end up exactly what I thought it would be, I am willing to regret spending the money and putting that in because I don't think it'll happen. And I'd rather regret doing something than regret not doing something. And so I decided to jump in and not gonna lie so far been amazing, loving it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to have a think, what decisions do you need to make at the moment, especially tiny decisions about how you're gonna frame an argument, what you are gonna do today, how you're gonna analyze your data, all of those things, and think how much different would it be if I made a definitive decision for a explicit period of time and went all in on that decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Trust me, avoiding half assed decisions, making definitive decisions is the way to make spectacular progress, move you forward faster, get you more information, and from there if you need to pivot, then you pivot. But you pivot with loads more information, loads more progress, loads more experience. It's all about making definitive decisions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope you found this useful. If you haven't checked out the membership already, make sure you go to my website and have a look. It is gonna be focusing on procrastination and focus, getting stuff done, prioritization, task management, all that good stuff that all of us need, it's gonna be super exciting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It runs three months. Make sure you check it out. Make a decision that you love. Thank you everyone for listening, and I see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 28 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-34-why-making-halfassed-decisions-is-making-your-phd-harder thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-33-how-to-make-your-week-more-effective <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> If you start your weeks strong but usually end disappointed, then this episode is for you! I’m going to be sharing how everything improved for me when I separated “boss me” from “implementer me” and used that idea to understand why I felt so frustrated at the end of the week. I’ll identify the most common issues so you can see which resonate most with you and give you some specific ideas to try out this week!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> Sign up for the webinar on 23rd April 2025 <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.mykajabi.com/community-coaching-call-apr-2025" target="_blank"> here </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I've got a question for you. How do you usually feel on Friday afternoons or whatever day of the week you typically stop work? I spent years and years, not gonna lie, probably 20 years finishing the week, mostly feeling somewhere between exhausted and disappointed. That I'd somehow been running around all week doing loads of things, yet not finishing any of the things or many of the things, certainly not all of the things that I intended to do, and not really able to see why. Because at the start of the week, it had been a cunning plan. It had definitely been a cunning plan, and then somehow by the end of the week, it hadn't happened.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And ugh, I used to be baffled, frustrated, disappointed. I used to just walk away. It would be Friday afternoon, Friday evening, and it'd be like, you know what? Laptop shut. Didn't shut down any files. Didn't close down. My emails didn't turn off my computer. What's that shut my laptop leave? Because I was just cross and annoyed. This makes it sound like I hated my academic career. I had a lovely time, but that Friday afternoon feeling of, ah, I've done it again. I've still not done all these things, was just, it was a thing. Okay. And I also have to emphasize, and I've told those of you who listened before, I've heard this before and stuff I have to emphasize, I was doing well through all of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I finished my PhD really quickly. I got an academic job quickly. I was succeeding in all possible metrics. I was succeeding, yet I still finished weeks like that. And people used to say to me, you know, oh, you just need to plan what you're gonna do, tick off what you've done, and then review your week on a Friday. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'd be like, oh, shut up. Leave me alone. That sounds terrible or completely unfeasible, if not terrible. And now I find myself in this place where I'm telling you all that we need to make realistic plans, follow through on them, and then review our weeks. Except I am gonna do it from a perspective of someone who knows that it's not that simple. From the perspective of someone who gets it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what we're gonna talk about today is a way of thinking about this that I have touched on in the podcast before, but we're gonna go into it at a level of detail that we haven't done before. And in fact, I'm giving you a sneaky preview into some of the materials that are in my Be Your Own Best Boss program, which as you might remember, is free to all of my members. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the two things I want to introduce you to or remind you of are these notions of boss you and implementer you. Boss you is the version of you who makes decisions, who plans, who prioritizes, who makes sure you've got the resources and the support that you need. And then implementer you is the version of you that actually does what they're told. Which has never been my strong point in life, people will agree. They're the version of you that has to actually do the work. And most people don't divide it out like that. So most people kind of try and plan a bit and then they do some stuff and then they decide they don't like it doing it like that. So they decide to do it a different way. And it kind of switch backwards and forwards between, am I doing it, am I deciding? I don't know. Am I changing my mind? Should I do that? Maybe I won't. And flick backwards and forwards between Boss You and Implementer You. And that's how you end up having weeks where you kind of decide sort of at the beginning of the week what you think you wanna get done, and then some stuff happens during the week where you change plans and do something different and decide you don't feel like it, decide that was a terrible idea, and then you end up somewhere completely different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What also happens when we don't understand these two distinct roles is it makes it really hard to figure out what's going wrong. So when students come into my membership and I'm talking with them about what they're finding challenging at the moment, often they don't know why they're not achieving their goals or why they're achieving their goals, but they still feel rubbish and behind and overwhelmed. They don't know how to figure out even what the problem is, and that makes getting support really hard. Right? Do you need to go to a time management course or do you need to go to an imposter syndrome course, or do you need to go to counseling, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't know. All you know is this isn't working for you right now. And so one of the things we do in the membership is try to really pin down exactly what's going on. And the first step is understanding these two different roles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, when I first started figuring this out for myself, I suddenly realized that my follow through, my implementer, she wasn't brilliant. She definitely procrastinated, but when she got going on something, she was pretty good and she got it done and she mostly hit deadlines, certainly for important things, not for administration quite so much, but for proper things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Absolutely hit deadlines and. I realized that I was actually being quite unfair to implementer me, ending my weeks, telling myself I was useless, telling myself I hadn't done enough, when actually I've been working damn hard all week and I was being quite unfair to implementer. Now I ain't saying that was perfect and we'll talk about the ways the implementer can go wrong in a minute, but what I wasn't doing was really scrutinizing boss me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because my problem was that boss me was so enthusiastic and so ambitious and so over committed. And so determined she absolutely could do everything. Not because people told her she should, because most people told her she was trying to do too much. Not because of people pleasing or anything like that, but just because I find the world a very interesting and exciting place and I want to do all of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for many years I was fully convinced that I could, and that the main way to make that work was just to commit to it and figure it out. And then I was wondering why my weeks were finishing in chaos and not having achieved everything. I used to start planning, like I used to try and do time blocking and stuff, and I'd start planning when I was gonna do things, and then I'd realized some things didn't seem to fit and at that point I did not question, how many things I was trying to fit in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I instead decided time blocking, was stupid, stopped doing it, dove in, got some stuff done, and ended the week disappointed. You might not be quite as extreme as that. Others of you will be nodding along and going, oh my God, she's inside my head. Okay, whichever. When we can see the difference between boss who chooses what's the biggest priority at the moment, who chooses and identifies what phase of your PhD or your research career you are in at the moment and and makes decisions accordingly. And then the implementer, you who actually does the tasks. When we understand that, then we can better understand ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to imagine. It's the end of the week and you are doing your Friday review. Now, if you don't do a Friday review, don't worry. I'm still getting in the habit. I'm still making it work, but if you're listening to this live, so if you are listening to this on either the 21st or the 22nd of April, 2025, you can come to my free webinar where we are gonna be designing personalized weekly review sessions exactly for you. Not complicated stupid ones that productivity gurus tell you you have to do that take you longer than the rest of your work. Quick, straightforward ones that actually help. So if that's you, make sure that you check out my website and sign up for that. You'll be able to find the links in the transcript here if you can't find 'em anywhere else.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But imagine you are in a weekly review, even if you don't do one. Let's imagine you do and you ask yourself. How has boss you got on this week? Not just how have you gone, how has boss you got on? How has the prioritization gone? How has the planning gone? Did you design a week that actually ended up feeling good? If you did time blocking or any sort of organizational structures, did you plan something that either did or should have felt good. Did you plan about the right amount of work? Did you plan way too much? Did you scatter yourself around? Did you forget key commitments? Did you not allow for things going a bit wrong as they inevitably will in a week? Have a think about how you would review past you. Think about last week. How would you review the boss you last week?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I want you to spend some time reviewing implementer you. This was the version of you that was meant to follow the plan and do the work. Did you do the things you said you were gonna do at the specific times? Did you follow through on tasks even if you didn't particularly feel like them? How would you review that side of you? And remember, as with any sort of performance review with a boss or something like that, we wanna remember to compliment ourselves too. So I want you to remember to think what did boss you do well? What did implementer you do well? As well as what they could have done better? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now these two things obviously interact with each other, okay? These are not two separate things. Just as you and your supervisor interact and make each other's lives harder or easier, boss you and implementer you interact as well. So I want you now to imagine you put boss you and implementer you in a room. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And I want you to make sure they have a loving, compassionate, and supportive sort of a relationship. They're gonna be good to each other, but they are gonna be honest and pragmatic. What would boss you say to implement to, you would boss, you say, you know what, dude, I'm so sorry I set you up for a fail there 'cause that was, that was just a shit show of a to-do list. Or would they say, mate. I planned a pretty good week for you. Manageable amount of stuff and you didn't do it and that's kind of frustrating. And vice versa, what would implement to you say to boss you would, they say, what are you doing? You, you gave me some instructions, like write something and I don't even know where to start. I dunno what I'm meant to be writing. I dunno what stage it's meant to be at, what quality it's meant to be. Or are they gonna say, you know what, thank you. Because when I sat down to do my analysis on Friday, I knew exactly what I needed to do. 'cause you gave me all the right stuff and that made everything way easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What are they gonna say to each other? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now. Because implementer us and boss us interact so much, you are almost certainly gonna have room for improvement on both sides. And that's the joy of a longer term membership, right? Is that we have time to work on all this stuff. Minimum membership is three months. People join for at least a quarter, and they love to say in longer than that if they can and that enables us to look at both. But as a podcast listener, as somebody who wants a quick win right now, what one of the best things you can do is decide, which is a bigger issue for you. And you need to be really honest here, because I was absolutely convinced it was my implementation that was the problem when it really wasn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was boss me. So if you are bit of a perfectionist, uh, bit of a people pleaser, bit of a high achiever, all those things that many PhD students are. I want you to seriously consider the possibility that it's boss you that needs a little bit more support. If it is what I do in the Be Your Own Best Boss program, which all the members get, is I go through a whole series of different sort of lessons that Boss you can learn that will help them to be a more effective boss to you. I'm just gonna share one or two with you guys today. I. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One is a notion of targets or averages and understanding the difference between targets and averages. I want you to imagine that you are intending to work for day, I'm gonna say of proper actual work, okay, insert whatever number works for you, but let's say six of actual focused work, and that's your target and you want to average six hours a day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to notice that if that is both your daily target and your desired average, then you only need a little bit to go wrong and you're not gonna meet your weekly goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you aim to do six hours work a day, and your goal is at the end of the week that you will have done five days of six hours work, then as soon as you have a day that stuff happens, your computer crashes and you have to get it sorted out, or you're not feeling great or whatever it is, then you're not meeting your weekly goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We have to have a difference between our daily target and the average* we're aiming for the week so that it allows for those sorts of things to happen. So if you wanna average six hours a day, you need to be aiming to work seven. Let's say you can insert your own numbers. Again, I'm not here to dictate hours for you, but let's say you aim to have seven per day on the understanding that probably at some point this week that's gonna go a bit wrong and you can still hit your target of 30 hours accrued this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the joy of course, is if you do seven on Monday and you do seven on Tuesday and things are looking good, you might be able to end up giving yourself Friday off 'cause you've already hit your 30 hours. Who knows? But if you keep that as the same thing that your daily target and your desired average, or exactly the same number, you'll never, very rarely at least hit your goals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or I mean, you'll end up in the worst situation, which is where you only did four on one day 'cause something happened on five another day because you didn't feel that great and dah, dah, dah, and suddenly it's Friday and you need to do 16 hours in order to be on target. And that's just no fun and not a great idea for anybody. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So. If you are a good boss, separate out what are daily targets, what are averages you're aiming for to give yourself a good chance of being able to hit your goals. If your goals require 100% compliance, they're stupid goals. And I say that with so much love and respect because I still have to fight myself back from making these goals for myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I'm right here in the trenches with you. You have to allow space for things not to be perfect for you, not to be perfect, and still to hit your overarching goals for the week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That leads to my second tip for bosses, which is we also need to decide how we manage slippages. What I mean by a slippage is where a task's taking longer than you anticipated or you're not kind of up to the number of hours you said you'd work or the work count you said you'd do, or however you are operationalizing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We have to decide what do we do? Does that mean we work harder tomorrow? Does that mean we change the plan? Does that mean we add more hours? We need strategies and we need to pre decide them so that when we're in that moment, we don't act like really indulgent to ourselves or super critical either. Now, in the be your own best boss course. I have like eight tips for this, right? But one that I think is really useful is instead of asking yourself, do I have time to get x done now that my schedule slipped is to ask yourself how well can I get X done in the time I have available? And I think I've used this analogy before, but I want you to imagine that like someone whose opinion you care about is coming to your house and you've got 10 minutes to clear it up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are gonna get it clear enough, right? You're gonna get the junk out the way. You're gonna wipe down the side. You're gonna just make it look vaguely habitable rather than like delaying them coming for hours so you can do a proper spring clean or just deciding that. You can't be bothered and it's fine. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big believer in just letting people in your house wherever stay is in, but you get my analogy right? And the same is true with work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you realize that things on Monday and Tuesday have taken longer than you anticipated they would, you get to decide that for the rest of the week, you are gonna see how far you can get the piece of work. In the time you have available, rather than saying, I'm gonna give it loads more time, or I'm gonna sack it off 'cause I can't reach it this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing boss can do to really help with that is give implementers some guidance about what that looks like. So if you are making a presentation, what that means is I want you to get the titles and the text on the slides. I do not want you to put any pictures in. I do not want you to change the color scheme. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  This can be black and white if it has to be, but we are getting the content in there, for example. Okay, so boss, you can manage slippages by not only giving some kind of constrained instructions, but also giving some indication about how to go about doing that. So that's a couple of tips. If you think it's boss, you, that's the problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, some of the things we are gonna work on in the membership are really delving into that in more detail because. None of you are stupid. If you are planning too much into your weeks, you are trying to do too much. There's a reason for that, right? And some of that reason might be in your personal beliefs, in your backgrounds. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It might be in the environment that you are in. It might be the way you are thinking about stuff. And if we can better understand it. Like for me, it really was this kind of ridiculous sense of enthusiasm and, uh, that I should be able to do all this stuff 'cause I work fast. I should be able to do everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That really helped me because it made me realize that, you know what, I'm doing all this because I think I want to, but I don't want this life. I don't want it to feel like this. So I then had to decide what I wanted more. Did I want to try to do everything? Or did I want a life that felt a bit better than that and that was what I chose in the end. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For others of you, the reason you're saying yes to everything, the reason you're taking on too much is because you're worried about what your supervisor's gonna say or whatever. If we can get to the depths of why you are doing this, as we do with my clients, then you are much better placed to pick strategies that will work for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, you might be going, Boss Me makes great plans. Boss, me, specific, realistic. I just don't then do it when I want to. The first thing I'd say, in keeping with my general beliefs about the workplace too, is are you sure? Are you sure it's not Boss You's fault? Because sometimes implementer you is rebelling against a plan. Implementer you is saying, I'm not even sure I want to do this. This is only on my list. 'cause someone said I had to, or they're saying, I don't think I know how to do this and you haven't told me that bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or they're saying. I am tired and you haven't left me any breaks, so if you think it's implementer you go back to the beginning and double check it's not boss you, but if it really, really, really is implementer you, I have a tip for that too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now this is gonna be the entire huge focus of quarter two of the PhD Life Coach membership, which runs from May. So people can join at the end of April. It runs May, June, and July. We are gonna be focusing on procrastination and focus and distractions and how we can actually do the things we intend to do. So if you struggle with implementer you, then the membership is exactly where you need to be. I'm gonna give you one that you can start using now though. This is the notion of intrinsic proximal rewards. I can't remember if I've spoken about this on the podcast again, lemme know if I have, but it doesn't hurt to hear it again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What this means is thinking very carefully about how you motivate yourself to do a particular task. Often what we do is we motivate ourselves either by thinking about getting it over with, and so we are really framing it as an in inherently negative task that we're doing, or we motivate ourselves by what we're gonna get once we've got it done, how proud we'll be when it's finished, what reward we're gonna give ourselves when it's over. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what those things do is they shift our motivation to either avoiding the task as much as possible or to sort of more extrinsic forms of reward. So stuff that's not inherent to the task itself, but that you'll give yourself when it's done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I want us to do instead is think of much more intrinsic motivation. So the reasons why this task is important to us, the reasons that we could actually enjoy doing elements of this task. Now, not everything's gonna be fun and interesting, but often the things we're avoiding are literally the things we signed up to do in our PhDs, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reading and the writing and the analysis. These are the things we allegedly liked, which is why we decided to do a PhD except we've turned them into these big emotional volcanoes. If we can remind ourselves that this is an opportunity to spend time doing this thing, I like, we can really try and remind ourselves and heighten that sense of intrinsic motivation associated with the task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The proximal bit though is about making it something that happens pretty quickly. So this is not about how good it will feel when it's done. How glad you'll be to have your PhD in the future, any of that stuff, that's all far too distal to be motivating. The proximal stuff is the why it's good here and now. Why if I do this for an hour, I'm gonna feel good during that hour and at the end of the hour. Okay, so if you are struggling with implementation, focus on intrinsic proximal rewards. Why am I doing this? Why do I care about it? What do I actually enjoy about doing this task? And really focus in on experiencing those positive things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can generate motivation there in the moment, even if it isn't coming to us in a flood of natural motivation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now if you are thinking, okay, this stuff sounds good, but I have got so much to learn, perfect. I've got you. We're gonna carry on covering this stuff in the podcast, but if you want the more in-depth personalized, actually speaking to somebody about the things that are specific to you stuff you need the membership. Jump on my website. Click on the membership. There'll be a button. If you're listening to this live ish, it starts next week. The cart opens on the 28th of April. If you get in at the beginning, you get access to some stuff that people getting in at the end don't get, so keep an eye out for that. Jump in if you are listening to this randomly in like September, 2026. There's still a wait list open for the next quarter coming up, so sign up anyway this membership isn't going anywhere.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So separate boss you, separate implementer you, review them separately so that you can really understand what you're doing well and what you're doing, not so well in the two different roles. And that is where we plan from. That is where you have the absolute capacity to make things feel a whole lot easier than they do right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're listening live, make sure you signed up for the weekly review webinar. Even if you can't come live, you will get all the handouts and everything afterwards. It's gonna be super, super useful. We're gonna make sure that we really understand how our weeks have gone, what we have achieved, and what we wanna do differently next week. Make sure you're signed up. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 21 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-33-how-to-make-your-week-more-effective thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-32-how-to-work-out-why-you-procrastinate-and-what-to-do-about-it <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Pretty much every PhD student struggles with procrastination yet the advice is often very generic. In this episode, I talk about a theoretical framework that helps us better understand why each of us, as individuals, procrastinate so that we can make more tailored plans to support ourselves. I also explain why it’s totally understandable that you procrastinate and why we know it’s a modifiable behaviour – i.e. you can change! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> You can find the link to the Svartdal and Lokke paper <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1019261/full" target="_blank"> here </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Have you ever found yourself procrastinating and then realizing that you are really behind because you're procrastinating, and then asking yourself, ah, why? Why do I keep doing this? I know it doesn't help. I know I'm gonna have to do the work eventually. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm making it so much harder for myself, yet I can't stop doing it. If you find yourself thinking those things, you are so completely normal. And today I'm gonna help you figure out exactly why it is totally understandable that you do this and how you can better understand your specific reasons so that you can then figure out how to address it, and at the end, I'm gonna tell you ways that I can support you in addressing it in the future too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're new to the podcast, I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, the host of the PhD Life Coach. I'm an ex- professor and now certified coach working with PhD students and academics, and notably running the PhD life coach membership where we talk about procrastination all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today's episode's been sort of inspired by a couple of things. This quarter in the membership, we've really been focused on setting up systems. We've been thinking about time management and task management, and how you start your days and finish your days, start your weeks, review your weeks, all this good stuff, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's been amazing. The students got tons out of it, but one of the things that has become really clear is that sometimes even when you have the best systems in place, we still sometimes procrastinate. I do! I'm not up to date with everything that I'm intending to do right now. It is completely normal, and so we end up talking about procrastination and overcoming it a lot already, and that it was from there that I decided that next quarter in the membership, which starts at the end of April. So in a few weeks time, if you're listening to this live, we are gonna be focusing on procrastination, distraction, and getting stuff done. So this episode's partly inspired by this being a real focus of the membership at the moment, but it's also inspired by a recent research article from a couple of years ago, that I came across recently and thought took a really interesting approach to analyzing and under standing procrastination. I'm gonna link the full title in the, uh, show notes, but essentially it's by Svartdal and Lokke. They are Norwegian researchers. It's published in Frontiers in Psychology, and they are looking at what they call the a, b, C of academic procrastination, and they conduct what they call a functional analysis, and there's many elements of this that I found really useful. I am gonna add some of my own stuff in, which is entirely based on anecdotal evidence and not the systematic research that they've done, but I still think it's useful. So I'm gonna share with you some of the stuff they talked about, some of my insights and by the end of this episode, I want you to have a much betterunderstanding of why you procrastinate and what is individual to you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I've talked about procrastination before. Those of you who have been here for a long time, those of you who have binged my episodes, thank you, I love you, will know that I've done eight ways that you're secretly procrastinating or how to stop procrastinating parts one and two, and I talk about some of this stuff in those episodes, but what I haven't really talked about is the individual differences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That all of you will have similar patterns as to why you're procrastinating, but your exact reasons are different and the better we can understand that stuff in a compassionate and curious way as usual, the better we can understand that the better we can target the support specifically for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first argument that this paper makes that I love is that you are not an idiot for procrastinating. They don't phrase it exactly like that, but that's my translation of what they say. You are not an idiot for procrastination. Often procrastination feels like a completely illogical thing to do. We know that it's not helpful. We know it doesn't move us towards our goals yet we keep on doing it. Sometimes that feeling of it being illogical can make it so much worse. Partly because it makes us wanna beat ourselves up about it, and partly because it makes it really hard to address. If you don't understand why you are doing it, how on earth do you try and change it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's where we usually try and change it, either with a new system, so everyone wants to know exactly how I set up my task management systems, et cetera, et cetera. Or we try and fix it by kind of beating ourselves into it, like, I need more discipline. Must make myself do it. And neither of these things work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no system that's gonna fix this for you. I can give you recommendations of principles of things that'll help, but it's not the system's fault. Okay? And similarly, no one ever beat themselves into sustainable behavior change. It's just not how it works. Okay?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what this paper argues instead is that procrastination is an adaptive response to challenging circumstances. What that means is it has benefits associated with it. Now, those benefits are very immediate benefits, and we'll talk about exactly what sorts of benefits. In the long run, you get real disadvantages, but in the short term, you get real advantages. And that's the basis on which they decided to do this functional analysis, this understanding that this is a functional behavior, and if we know it's a functional behavior, we can work out what are the benefits we get from it. IE, why do we do it? But we can also recognize that it's therefore learned. That by doing it, getting positive outcomes in the short term, at least we reinforce that behavior of per procrastination, and that helps explain why we keep doing it. And the gorgeous thing is that if we know that something's functional and therefore we know how to address it, we know it is learned, then we also know that it has the potential to be modified. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if you've ever told yourself, I am just someone who procrastinates, I am a procrastinator, it can feel like you've got no control over that. It's just who you are, especially if you've got things like A DHD, which inevitably make procrastination more common and more challenging, it can be really easy to be like, well, there's literally nothing I can ever do about this. I just have to put up with it. But if we can recognize the functions that these behaviors are having, recognize that it can still be modified, then with support, we can change the ways we are procrastinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do they mean by a functional analysis? Now, I'm not gonna try and give you a full rundown of the entire paper. It wouldn't do them justice, and I'm not an expert in their methodologies by any stretch. But essentially they looked at what are the antecedents of procrastination. IE what are the things that happen before procrastination happen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That kind of prompt procrastination. What are the behaviors that we see with procrastination, and then what are the consequences of those behavior? And they're particularly focused on the immediate consequences. Okay. Antecedents behavior consequences. Now, those of you who know me well, who've been listening for a while, know that I have a beautiful black Labrador who's laying next to me, farting outrageously while I record. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and this is very much like dog training, right? We try to, at the moment, the antecedent of seeing another dog, means that Marley exhibits behavior of barking, unfortunately, and the consequence for him is that we usually move away from that dog, which is exactly what he wants, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can see  there that sort of effect of there's the antecedent, there's the behavior, and then there's the consequence. Okay? For him, barking is a functional behavior because it leads to what he wants, which is to get the hell away from that dog. And the same is true with you guys.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what we're gonna think about today is what are the antecedents of procrastination? What are the behaviors that we see and what are the consequences? And importantly, what are the individual differences that you guys might be experiencing that enables you to figure out a more kind of tailored to you reason that you are procrastinating?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's do antecedents First. The antecedents that they identified from the literature were three main categories. The first is situational temptation. So this is where, frankly, there's something you'd rather do. So this is where maybe your phone is next to you and you find yourself scrolling online. This is where a friend comes and chats, and that's more fun than doing the work you're intending to. That's where even looking out the window and enjoying the view rather than doing your work. Okay, so there's situational temptations. If you've listened to my podcast about managing distraction, where I talk about the push and the pull, this is really the kind of pull towards something that's fun. Situational temptations pull you towards them because they feel rewarding in some way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next category they came up with was Task aversiveness. This is what I was referring to as the push, the things that make the task something that you don't want to do. Maybe it feels like a lot of effort. It feels difficult. You don't think you're good enough, you don't know where to start. You're confused, you're unsure, all those things, okay? That's task aversiveness, and that pushes you away from doing the task that you intended to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third antecedent that they identified is one that we haven't talked a lot about in the context of procrastination and distraction and things before, and that is lack of energy. So many of you will have noticed that if you've slept well, you are rested, you are much better able to get on with your tasks, but that when you are tired, fatigued lacking focus. It's a real struggle and you procrastinate more that has been really evidenced in the literature. It's going to increase the extent to which you want the situational temptations. It's gonna make the kind of going and doing something warm and cozy, much more tempting, and it's gonna make the task feel harder. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now this I hadn't really thought about before, but it really reminded me of some research an old colleague of mine used to do. So there was a colleague that I worked with back in Birmingham called Frank Eves, who was really interested in stair climbing, how we get people to climb more stairs as a sort of environmental manipulation to increase physical activity. And one of the really interesting things that he did was he got people to stand at the bottom of a set of stairs. He got them to try and guess the steepness of the stairs, and he had a variety of different ways that he did that. But essentially he was trying to get them to say, did they see it as steep or not steep or anything in between? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he found that people who were heavier themselves, people who were older, people who reported being tired, people who were carrying heavy bags, perceived the stairs as steeper than people who didn't. Now, they weren't being asked to climb up it. They weren't saying, do you wanna go up there? They were just asked to perceive it and they were encouraged to be as accurate as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what that shows, I think it really supports this notion that when we've got less energy, or more effort is perceived to be needed, the task looks worse. Okay, so that's the other antecedent here. So we've got situational temptations, we've got task aversiveness, and we've got a lack of energy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you all to have a ponder on which of those is most common for you. Is it usually that you're distracted by something fun, even when you don't particularly hate the thing that you're intending to do? Is it that it's really driven by the fact that you have so many negative emotions to do with your PhD or whatever it is that you're trying to do? Or is it that you are regularly lacking the sort of energy to be able to actually do things that are more effortful?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now they identified these three things. They identified these three things, but then they also argued that there were other factors that interacted with this, and I think we will recognize some of these. One is the temporal distance of the goal. So one of the issues with PhD is a lot of your goals are really, really distal, right? They're a little way away. And what the research shows is that the further away your goal is, the more likely you are to procrastinate. You haven't got that kind of urgency effect that you get when the deadline is looming. It feels like you've got lots of time, and that temporal distance can make you more likely to procrastinate even with the same level of temptation, aversiveness, and energy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing they looked at, which I thought was really interesting, was they looked at interactions with personality traits. So those of you familiar with psychology will know the big five, kind of the big five psychological constructs that we can all rank ourselves on. And they found that some of these actually relate to which forms of procrastination are more tempting. So those of you who are higher on extroversion, you enjoy the external stimulation and you get energy from that, you are more likely to be tempted by situational factors than people who are lower in extroversion. So think whether that relates to you. If you are someone who considers yourself extroverted, are you more likely to get tempted by talking to your friends, by going online, by watching tv, and so on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They also found that people who are higher in neuroticism, so a tendency to sort of be anxious, worry and ruminate, were more likely to be avoiding the task itself. They were more likely to find it aversive, something that they were worrying about and to not like those emotions and to ,therefore avoid doing the task on that basis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So again, if you are somebody who would consider yourself to be higher in neuroticism, I want you to think about whether it's the aversiveness of the task that is driving you away more than the distractions of other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other factor that's not part of the big five. But the other factor was impulsiveness and people that are much more impulsive, ADHDers I'm looking at you here too, were much more likely to into situational temptations. So it wasn't so much that they were particularly averse to the task they were intending to do, but they were really impulsive about, oh, I want to do that and go off to do the situational distractions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other big five item that they mentioned is conscientiousness. And I'm gonna tell you what they found and then at the end when I tell you my, like additions, I'll tell you the bit that I actually changed based on no data whatsoever, but my own personal opinion. Go with it. Um, they found that people who were conscientious had lower levels of procrastination across the board. So lower susceptibility to situational temptations, more ability to do tasks that were aversive and less likely that low energy would prevent them from doing their tasks. So those are the antecedents and the ways that different individual factors can interact with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hopefully, you are already starting to get some understanding of your own individual tendencies, and I'll just let you know now. I have my wait list open for the PhD life coach membership, and everybody who is on the wait list got on last Friday, got a diagnostic tool to help them better understand exactly why they procrastinate, which of these factors is most important to help them then build a more personalized plan for addressing procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you are not already on the wait list. That's okay. I'm gonna send this to anybody who joins between now and the launch, the wait list doesn't obligate you to do anything. It doesn't mean you've got to join. It just means that you are gonna get the information about membership and you will get a variety of freebies on the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you wanna join, I'll put the link in the show notes, but basically go to my website, the PhD life coach.com/membership and you'll find it there. It's the top this button that says the membership at the top. You'll find it you're clever people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the A of this functional analysis. The B is behaviors, and I don't think we need to spend too much time on this. It's not rocket science, but essentially they found that some of the behaviors we saw were things like delays in completing tasks, so actually not hitting deadlines and things like that. Procrastination led to things like delays in starting tasks. So this is all those of you who put it off, put it off, put it off, and then actually get it done at the last minute. Okay. Looking at you, there's delays in starting, and then there's also procrastination where we're avoiding sustained effort at a particular thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So any of you who avoid things that are less novel and interesting, that require just ongoing consistent action, that is also a different form of procrastination. So again, I want you to think which of those things is most you. Do you actually procrastinate past the point where it needs to be completed? Are you late handing lots of things in? Are you someone who delays starting but gets there in the end? I find myself in that category mostly, or are you somebody, I think I fall in this category too. Um, are you somebody that doesn't like sustained continued action or finds it difficult to continue to pursue something that just requires sort of consistent effort? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So moving on then to the consequence, we get two different types of consequence. The first is what's called negative reinforcement. This is where when you take this behavior, you no longer have to experience the bad thing. So if you are somebody who avoids taking on a task, because it feels like it's gonna be really difficult or loads of effort or those sorts of things, then you are gonna experience negative reinforcement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are gonna have negative feelings when you think about, or you do the task, and so you stop doing it and those negative feelings are removed so you get immediate relief. You are no longer in that short moment, you are no longer experiencing those negative emotions. And just like Marley barking, that reinforces the behavior. The dog has gone away. He no longer has to look at the dog. He's a happy boy. He is rewarded by not having those negative feelings anymore.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second one is kind of the flip side is positive reinforcement and this is often gonna be those of you who are sort of susceptible to situational temptations is where you were feeling rubbish because you were thinking about this piece of work, but you are now feeling happy because you are watching Netflix or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And that's where you get positive reinforcement that this new task has come in and you now feel better. It's all about emotion alleviation. Okay, but which way round it is. Are you relieving it solely by removing the negative thing, or are you relieving it by swapping it for a positive thing? Again, can help us to make strategies to address this in the future. I think I'm a positive reinforcement girl. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now what they go on to discuss is some of the ways that we can intervene in this, and they don't go into lots of detail about this. This is stuff that I'm gonna be addressing throughout the membership in quarter two, which runs from beginning of May through May, June, July. Um, but they basically clump them into emotional regulation skills and situational modifications. so this is either learning to regulate our emotions in the sense of not generating such negative thoughts about the work we need to do, reducing the positive thoughts around the other stuff, but also around emotion tolerance. How do we allow ourselves to experience negative emotions and do the task anyway? And that's something that we work on in the membership all the time. And then the other element of is situational manipulation. If the main challenge is around distractions, we can do quite a lot by changing the way we set up where we work and how we work. Which of those are likely to be more useful for you will depend on what you've learned about yourself from the rest of this analysis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are mostly driven by avoiding task aversiveness, you maybe need more of the emotional regulation. If you are mostly driven by situational temptations, you probably, in my opinion, need both. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is why those of you who maybe have high levels of anxiety, find your hard work difficult and think that that's a bad thing, worry that you're not good enough. Putting your phone in another room doesn't fix it, because if your driving force for procrastination is not wanting to experience those negative emotions, your phone being somewhere else is not gonna fix it for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Whereas if you are somebody who, the temptation of your phone is a far greater driving factor than avoiding the work, that sort of basic situational modification is much more likely to be effective.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I said at the beginning that I was gonna add in some completely unscientific, but in my opinion, extremely useful extras to this. And that's where we've got to now. So the first one is, I think the point about conscientiousness is different in PhD students. So what they were saying was that people who are high in conscientiousness, so that kind of desire to do the right thing, were much less prone to procrastination and I think across most employment situations, and indeed undergraduate degrees, maybe even masters. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's probably true. And that's because in my opinion, at those levels, there is a manageable amount of work. It might feel like a lot, right? But it's finite, it's defined, it's quite well, you know, instructed all of those things. And so somebody who is conscientious can get it all done. What I have seen a lot with my clients and my past students in where when I was still supervising is that at PhD level conscientiousness can become completely unrealistic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I often see is conscientious people who are used to being able to do it all. They're used to be able to tick all the boxes, you know, and by working hard, they just get it done kind of thing. Realize that at PhD there is no getting it done. There is no finish line where you've been conscientious enough and that can lead to procrastination. That sudden change to your sense of self where you're like, oh my goodness, being able to do all this is who I am. I can't do all this. That level of negative emotion can really increase procrastination in my experience. So I if you are someone who identifies as being very conscientious. You are always trying to do the right thing, try and get things done. I want you to think about how that affects your procrastination.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second one, and I touched on this in my episode called eight Ways You're Secretly Procrastinating. So if you haven't listened to that, go check it out is that this paper focused a lot on pleasure as the distracting emotion. That you go and do something enjoyable. You chatter with a friend, you go online, whatever it is. In my experience, probably, particularly with conscientious people, it's not just about pleasure that distracts you. In my experience, it is tasks that make you feel organized, tasks that make you feel useful, that make you feel recognized, where you can see your progress. This is talking to any of you who clean to procrastinate, who help other people to procrastinate, those sorts of tasks too. so if you are thinking, I do procrastinate, but I don't procrastinate by scrolling or eating or whatever, I just spend more time than I intended on my emails or helping other people or whatever. I want you to think, are you seeking the emotions associated with those other tasks? Feeling purposeful, feeling valued, all that good stuff, because I don't think this is just about pleasure.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing that I don't think they touch on is the shame people experience when they experience procrastination. So they had that A, B, C, the antecedents, the behavior, the consequence, that immediate consequence. And then there's this implied consequence of not completing the task, which it seemed, I don't wanna put words in their mouth 'cause they didn't say this explicitly, but it seemed was mostly focused on the kind of pragmatic things of being rushed, not finishing a task, missing deadlines, all that sort of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think there is also, and we know there is also an emotional consequence of procrastinating, if we allow ourselves to tell ourselves that we're terrible people, we're bad, we're lazy, we're useless if we procrastinate. And what I think that does is it contributes into the antecedents. So for me it becomes this spiral where you've had this immediate relief by procrastinating, which is positively or negatively reinforcing, whether it's the removal of the aversive thing or whether it's the giving you of the pleasurable thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But then after that. If you allow yourself to judge yourself, you then plunge into a really aversive set of emotions where you are feeling shame, embarrassment, frustration, annoyance, all that stuff. And I think that then also gets linked with the tasks. So I think it heightens that task aversiveness. So I think there's two places this gets reinforced. It gets reinforced because you are having a pleasurable, or at least a neutral experience by procrastinating immediately. And then after that you are really increasing the task aversion, which then makes the temptations much more tempting. It makes the task aversion much more something you want to avoid. It is also exhausting. So it probably also that spiral that staying awake at night thinking you haven't done the right thing also probably adds to the lack of energy part as well. So I think that bit adds to, creates this much more steep rollercoaster. And the reason I emphasize that is because for me, that's the first bit we address. Everyone who comes to me, everyone who joins the membership wants me to like wave a magic wand and stop you procrastinating. I truly believe the first step is to get to a stage where you still procrastinate, but you don't hate yourself for doing it. Because if you can get to a stage where you don't hate yourself for doing it and you're like, oh, well that's what everybody does, it's okay. I'll get back on. So much easier to start the task again. 'cause you haven't suddenly made it way more aversive by wrapping a load of shame and embarrassment and frustration around it, it's just not as big a deal. Much easier to find solutions. So we really work in that space as well as in the actual behavior change space. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fourth and final point is for all of you who sit down intending to write, for example, as your kind of intended task, end up doing something else that was not writing, but was potentially useful. All those of you who call it like procrastivity and all that kind of stuff. Doing procrastination tasks that are actually something that needed doing, like clearing your inbox or whatever and then saying, okay, yeah, it's okay though because it, that stuff did need doing okay. This is almost the opposite of the shaming. So some of you will go to, I'm terrible, I didn't do what I intended, da, da, da. Others will go, well, I didn't do what I intended, but you know what? It did need doing, and at least I was productive. And it's done now. And actually, you know what? I'll take that. And I don't wanna make you shame yourselves, but I also don't want you to let yourselves get away with that either, because I actually think it's really dangerous. When we intend to do one thing and we end up doing something else, but that that thing is in some way worthy or useful or whatever. You can really reinforce the procrastination behavior because you are actually praising yourself for it. You can make it way more okay in the future, that if something feels difficult or uncomfortable, you don't fancy it at the moment, oh, well do something different. I. Okay. I think it reinforces the pattern and I think you need to be really careful of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, that's not to say some of you will remember, I did an episode a while back with Alison Miller of the Academic Writers Space, and she talked about working with the you that turns up. I am not saying that you shouldn't sometimes mindfully and intentionally change your intentions for a session. So let's say. You had intended to write this morning and you slept really badly last night. You haven't had your comments back from your supervisor, you thought you were gonna have, and you go, you know what? I am not in the head space for this. This is not a useful thing. I could maybe make a little bit of progress, but actually I think I'll be better off waiting. Instead I'm gonna do this other useful thing. That's not procrastination, that's strategic delay. As long as you there in the moment, like, and like approve of your decision to change it. And you then stand by that in the future. That's strategic delay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If, however, you kind of don't really make that decision, but you just go, oh, I'm just gonna check my emails to warm up a bit, give my brain in gear, and then oopsies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Two hours later, I've still been doing my emails and I haven't written anything. That's procrastination. Even if you did useful stuff and by rewarding yourself for it and telling yourself it was okay, you make it much more likely you'll do it again in the future. so again, that's something that we work on in the membership is how you can tell the difference between making a strategic decision to change your intentions versus just procrastinating by doing something else that seems vaguely useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So hopefully by listening to today, you have a much better idea about why you specifically procrastinate, what that procrastination specifically looks like for you, and what immediate benefits you get from doing it. If you want that deeper analysis of it, you want to really understand, make sure you're on my wait list and you'll get the freebie that will support you to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the membership next quarter, we are gonna be working on this in much more detail, so with this insight, you will be perfectly placed to really change this behavior going forward and be able to achieve the goals that you want. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have any questions about the membership, you can always message me through the website or DM me on Instagram. I'm at the PhD life coach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I will give brief shout outs about the membership in all of the Monday newsletters for anyone who's on the newsletter. But if you want the more detailed stuff and all the freebies gotta be on the wait list. Uh, the membership opens on Monday the 28th of April, and the new quarter starts at the beginning of May. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you join on the Monday though then you'll be in for an extra week, and so you'll have access to all the sessions and workshops that week too, so you get a little added bonus if you join early. Wait list members might even get an opportunity to join a little earlier. Just saying thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 14 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-32-how-to-work-out-why-you-procrastinate-and-what-to-do-about-it thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-31-protecting-your-mental-health-during-your-phd-with-dr-marissa-edwards <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> This week I’m joined by Dr Marissa Edwards, one of the editors of the Research Handbook of Academic Mental Health. We chat about why higher education can be a uniquely stressful environment, why some researchers may have particular challenges, and how we can look after ourselves while we navigate our academic careers.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> You can find out more about Dr Marissa Edwards <a href="https://business.uq.edu.au/profile/608/marissa-edwards" target="_blank"> here </a> and connect with her on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marissa-edwards-4a717a44/" target="_blank"> LinkedIn </a> </div> <div> Her book is the <a href="https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/research-handbook-of-academic-mental-health-9781803925073.html?srsltid=AfmBOoo0aS6kFJjL-l4R8_HrFsnxIwAxwy1RCD4akzDPqerIdbJj7RSU" target="_blank"> Research Handbook of Academic Mental Health </a> . </div> <div> We also mentioned Dr Zoe Ayres’ book <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-14194-2" target="_blank"> Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD </a> .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> If you found this episode useful, you might also like these:  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-22-are-you-in-an-emotional-overdraft-with-special-guest-author-andy-brown" target="_blank"> Are you in an emotional overdraft?  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-17-overcoming-overwork-and-overwhelm-in-the-final-months-of-your-phd-a-special-coaching-episode" target="_blank"> Overcoming overwhelm and overwork in your PhD </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-15-creating-positive-academic-environments-insights-from-sports-psychology-with-dr-andrew-dewar" target="_blank"> Creating positive academic environments – insights from sport psychology </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Dr. Marissa Edwards. Marissa is the author of The Research Handbook of Academic Mental Health, and that is what we're going to be talking about today. So welcome Marissa.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Thank you so much for having me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No problem. It is my absolute pleasure on such an important topic when you've done so much really, really interesting work in it. So let's start out, what drew you to actually focusing on academic mental health and writing this book?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Well, there's a couple of reasons. My background is in organizational psychology. My honors degree is in psychological science. I don't know if many people know that about me, but my, yeah, my, my training is in psychology and I completed my PhD where I am employed at the moment in the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, in sunny, very currently very humid Brisbane, Australia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Uh, and yeah, psychology was always something that. I was interested in. I enjoyed studying clinical psychology at undergraduate level, but I really became interested and quite passionate about organizational psychology firstly in my honors year. And then, yeah, completed my PhD in the business school and most of my supervisory team, they were trained in organizational psychology. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I'm not sure whether they were technically organizational psychologists because you have to complete very rigorous training to call yourself one. I'm not one, I wanna make that clear. But my grounding is in understanding how people work, how people function in organizations, what are the factors that influence people's wellbeing at work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: My PhD thesis in particular looked at the factors that predict employee voice and silence in organizations. So I have a pretty strong background in research, qualitative methods, quantitative methods, and understanding the social context of organizations. So I guess my own background was helpful in approaching this topic, but I think like most people, there's some personal experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Okay. So as a PhD student, I found it a very challenging time. I think like many students, I also observed people around me really struggling. The early career stage, I didn't do a postdoc, but I was successful in gaining a tenure track position after being on a series of casual or adjunct contracts for a really long time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: That was unbelievably stressful. So I guess I had this background. I was interested in how organizations can support employee wellbeing, but also how factors in organizations can really harm mental health as well. And that was something that really came out in my PhD research, talking to people who had experienced bullying and sexual harassment at work, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So I think there was personal experience, observation, my own educational ground, but then I've also being really conscious of the research that has been emerging about the academic mental health crisis as it's been termed in organizations. And we've seen research dating back to the 1980s demonstrating that academia is a stressful work environment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And we've seen a really steady stream of research over the last several decades showing that people are suffering. There are certainly some people who enjoy their jobs in academia. I always feel like when I do these podcasts, I just present all of this research that's awful and it's all doom and gloom. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So I should really say in this interview that there are certainly some parts of academia that are wonderful. We wouldn't be here without it. There's also a lot of evidence that people are struggling. People are suffering with poor mental health, and there are also many people who have a diagnosed mental illness and the work environment in academia, in many cases it actually exacerbates that and universities are not doing enough to protect and promote mental health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Um, yeah, I see this all the time. So with my clients, I work with PhD students and academics, as you know, and everything you are saying absolutely resonates with my experience, including that there's big elements that they love, right? Because if they didn't, there's a really easy solution. You go and do something else, it's fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so actually in some ways, the bits you love are part of what keeps you in this, in this challenging environment, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yes, absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think I do think they can be part of the solution as well, which is perhaps something we'll chat about later. But, let's start, let's just get some terms straightened out for the audience as well, because I feel like mental health is something that people sort of use to describe lots of different things. So you use the term academic mental health. What do you exactly mean by that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Great question, and we talk about this in the opening chapter of the Research Handbook of Academic Mental Health. We wanted to, I guess, start with some definitions and there's a couple of them that are mentioned there, but are a common one is a definition of mental health as a state of mental wellbeing that allows people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well, and work well, and contribute to their community. Now, there is some debate around that. Um, you know, are you not mentally well? Do you not have mental health if you aren't working and contributing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So there's no perfect definition, but I guess it's acknowledging that that mental health as a construct is really complex. There's also the dual continuum approach, which we talk about in the book as well, and this acknowledgement that mental health exists on a continuum and that mental health is very distinct from mental illness. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And often you hear people saying, well, we, we want to, uh, protect people from mental health at work. And that's, it's not really correct. Um, we wanna protect people from perhaps developing mental illness. It's very different. We wanna protect and promote and support mental health. And this dual continuum approach also recognizes that mental health is on this continuum and it ranges from languishing and really struggling with mental health to what we would call thriving or flourishing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And it also acknowledges that you can have a mental illness, but still be able to cope with life and still be able to contribute well and perform well. This is what I always say to my students. I teach a very large first year course and I say organizations are full of people who do have poor mental health at times. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: We all have poor mental health at times. We have great mental health at times. There are also people with diagnosed mental illnesses who are able to contribute well and who are able to have profound, important relationships and contribute to society with appropriate support. So it's a really complex construct. And those are only two kind of definitions that are out there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that sort of languishing to flourishing really kind of resonates with me. I guess to me there's also an element of sort of the stability of that. One of the things I've noticed since now, I didn't leave academia because of the environment I left for lots of different reasons that I wanted to do something different, but one of the things I've noticed is the stability of my mental health now is much. So I'm in a much more consistently flourishing state than I was, and I loved academia. I was one of the people that I largely flourished. Things largely worked well for me. It was, you know, in the big scheme of things, I was very, very lucky. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um. But the sort of the difference. People on YouTube can see me waving my hand up and down, which I'm aware doesn't work very well on a podcast. But the difference between the flourishing days and the languishing days were huge in academia. You know, the start of a new term where you're gonna do this and you're gonna do that and da da da. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then for people listening, we're actually recording this just before Christmas and that would always be a bit of a languishing time where it's just like, oh, there were so many things I was gonna finish and I haven't. And that kind of instability of it was, was hugely challenging.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yes. The peaks and the valleys, right? Yes. I think that's, that's a great way that, that you've described it and I think that all academics will relate to that. There are certain pressure points and difficult times during a term or during a semester and you kind of get to the end and it's almost like you're stumbling toward the finish line and, and all of your energy is just focused on trying to get there and maintain your sanity at the same time and get everything done and make sure that the students' work is marked and yeah, lots of competing priorities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you've mentioned your research handbook of academic mental health. I'm gonna show, I have an e-version. So here's my, that's what it looks like for anybody who is interested. I will link in the show notes as well, but I was really interested in the structure of the book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You divided it into these two sections where there's a kind of solutions focus in the second half, which was kind of what I expected there to be in a book of this nature. But the whole first half is this sort of narratives and stories, and that was fascinating, but I'm interested in your logic behind doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Another excellent question. My co-editors and I, Angela Martin, Neil Ashkenazi and Lauren Cox, we spent a lot of time trying to work out the structure. We had 30 chapters and believe me, there were meetings where we tried rearranging them and we tried thinking, oh, how, how could these chapters fit together and, and what are the core themes across them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And it, I think that when you've got 30 chapters, it is a real challenge trying to work out how will you section the book. And I think we settled on this because it just seemed like this was the most logical and coherent way of organizing the content. I think at one point we did try and divide it into early career and mid-career and late career narratives as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: But we found that there were some that didn't quite fit neatly into one box. So I think we looked at what's the content of the chapters and what's the most logical way of organizing what we have. And we were really lucky that we received many submissions in which authors talked about their experiences as PhD students, or PhD researchers or candidates, whatever your preferred term is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And we did try and organize it as such. We started with PhD narratives and we moved into early career, then we kind of expanded to, to academia as a whole. Um, 'cause there were some that just didn't really fit into the boxes. But we really wanted to say in the first part, what are the issues, what are some of the major, I guess, problems or concerns in academia today? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And then in the second half, well we've presented the challenges and you've heard some of the individual stories and then how can we go about addressing this? What are some of the interventions that have been proposed? What are some ideas about how we might promote mentally healthy workplaces within universities? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: What can we do? So I guess we didn't want to just reiterate what [00:13:00] we already know, which is that universities are by and large not mentally healthy workplaces. And I think that we wanted then to say, how can this be addressed? We didn't just wanna end with, we have a huge problem here. We wanted to offer some solutions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I think what it's worth, I think it works really well because I think there's something around... as you say, you could have just had a quick introduction. We all know there's a problem, this is the evidence, there's a problem, let's crack into solutions. But I think having that human element where you are hearing specific stories from specific individuals, just really kind of, I guess, centers their experience and kind of brings it to life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You know, you're sitting there listening to how OCD affects people experience working in academia for example. And it just gives you one little vivid picture of somebody's experience, which I think then really helps to, to set up the the motivation and the importance and all of those things of, of the solutions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um. I say think, I think, I think most people will see themselves in at least one of the narratives as well. And I think there's something special about going, oh, that's, you know, that's kind of like me. Oh my goodness. Yes. I get it and that I think as a reader is really powerful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, we were incredibly lucky to receive some amazing submissions for this book. I also wanna acknowledge that it doesn't address everything. When we were writing the introduction and writing the conclusion, you know, we were really conscious that we would've liked to have seen more submissions from academics of minority backgrounds. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: For example, we would've loved to have maybe some more research into undergraduate student mental health. Although, as we say PhD student and early career, academic mental health have not really been addressed as much as undergraduate student mental health. You can see studies of undergraduate students going back into the, the 1980s and 1990s, whereas comparatively, there hasn't been as much research into doctoral students until fairly recently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: There was a major, I think 2014 study that that really prompted a lot of research and I guess, on one hand, we would've liked to have had more discussion of undergraduate student mental health, but at the same time, we also had 30 chapters. And the book would never have been finished had we kept accepting submissions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So I think we make quite clear that it is starting point and really also also builds on the work that's been done already. Obviously, I think it's hopefully a starting point in that it's a really comprehensive collection of research and personal narratives and hopefully it will inspire more research and future. That's what we wanna see.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And again, I think for undergraduates, the academic staff are their psychological environment in many, many ways. And so once you don't address undergrads specifically. And I do a lot of this in terms of supervisors and their PhD students, right? Yes. I don't think we can notably improve PhD student mental health without improving supervisor mental health because whilst PhD students have all their own theories as to why supervisors behave particular ways, in my view, 99% of supervisors want to do a great job with their PhD students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They're just usually a bit too stressed, overwhelmed, busy, et cetera, to turn up as their best selves all the time. So I think when you start with that part of it, you change the undergrad climate without even covering them in the book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So were there any of the narratives that particularly surprised you or touched you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: There were,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I know that's like picking your favorite child, but I'll put the caveat in for you that obviously, I'm sure you love all of them, but were there any that were particularly striking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yeah, thinking specifically about the narratives, we had a chapter that was written by three autistic, doctoral researchers, which was just brilliant. They were just so open and honest and, and really talked about the fact that masking is something that, that they have to do given the work environment and given the culture of academia and the real struggle that they live through, having to mask the behaviors and mask a really important part of their identity. There was also, uh, I guess if I'm thinking about maybe things I didn't know as much about. There was a chapter about the struggles of an international PhD student and really the difficulties that this student faced with supervisors who had a very, I guess, a different idea of what a thesis should look like and a different kind of understanding of expectations around PhD student performance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I think I don't, in retrospect, I don't think that I really appreciated how challenging it is for a doctoral student to begin with, but to go to a foreign country and to study and to have all of that, all those additional challenges, that whole extra layer on top of just completing a PhD, that really opened my eyes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: We also had one about an older woman who completed her doctorate in the middle of the pandemic. Just all of these extra challenges that people face that you don't really think about until you hear their stories. That was really important. And then we had, I think you mentioned there was another chapter, an author talked about her experience of being in academia and living with obsessive compulsive behaviors and anxiety and depression. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And just the fact that you are working in this hyper competitive long hours culture and, and you are also trying to live with a mental illness. And it really made me think that, you know, these people are incredibly strong. And I don't wanna use the word inspiring because, you know, I have a chronic autoimmune condition and I don't really like being held up as an example of someone who's inspiring. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: But I think that, you know, people who are struggling with poor mental health or mental ill health, or even a mental illness, a lot of them are getting out of bed, going to work each day or looking after their family, or both. And it's so, there's just so much energy and for many, it really is a daily struggle. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And I think that university leaders need to look at the work environment in universities today and look at the factors that contribute to poor mental health and really say, you know, we have not only a legal obligation, but a moral obligation to do something about this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> With interjection. If you are finding today's session useful, but you are driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me. After you've finished go's, my website, pH life coach.com, sign up for my newsletter. We all know that. We listen to podcasts and we think, oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter's designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions, and you'll get one action that you can take immediately to start implementing the things we've talked about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's faces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One of the chapters, of course, in the narratives was written by you and your colleague, Dr. Zoe Ayres. Wonder if you could just share a little bit about that chapter.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yeah, of course. Yeah. This was just, it was a joy to write with Zoe. She and I founded the Voices of Academia blog in 2020 and we never really expected it would last as long as it has. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: But we wanted, I guess to, to give a bit of insight into our advocacy journeys and also talk about, you know, a bit about the background of the blog. We've done a couple of written blogs about it, but we wanted to I guess share our own lived experiences beyond what we've shared already. And we talked about our experiences as PhD candidates and then as in Zoe's case, doing a postdoc, myself as an early career academic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And we found that, you know, even though she's in the UK I'm here in Australia, we are in very different disciplines. She's in the sciences, I'm in business in management and organizational behavior. Our experiences were quite similar. You know, we struggled, and I think this is important, you know, to recognize this, that struggling is normal, unfortunately, really struggling is unfortunately becoming normal in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Like most people will have some experience of struggling either with stress, burnout, poor mental health or a diagnosed mental health condition. And Zoe and I wanted to really be open about our experiences and I think hopefully in doing so, other people will feel less alone. Um, and, and to recognize that we have managed to, I guess, forge our own path. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Zoe is now working in industry, really wonderful, amazing person and a really highly successful advocate for mental health in academic settings. And yeah, it was quite a cathartic experience. And, and I guess we wanted to talk a little bit about the blog as well, and, and share that Advocacy is hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: A lot of what we did when we were starting out, we didn't know what we were doing. Like, we were like, oh, let's, let's create a blog. Let's get a WordPress account. Let's see what kind of traction this gets on [00:24:00] social media. We didn't even know if we would have authors who were willing to share their stories, much less readers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And with the support of a lot of people, we've, we've managed to keep it going for several years now. So it was, it was nice being able to share that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. And recognize the effort and time, uh, I don't wanna say sort of load, but you know, the advocacy is something that's additional and it's often taken on by people who are already disadvantaged in some ways. And I think, you know, I really enjoy that part of your chapter where you sort of recognize that, that, you know, that is a big thing and it's something that takes away from other things and something that if you are gonna get involved with this stuff, you have to figure out how you're looking after yourself and what your boundaries are around that. And I thought that was really that powerful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something that we tried to reiterate the [00:25:00] importance of having boundaries around your advocacy work. And often Zoe and I, when we are editing the blog, we are work that is, you know, highly emotional. People are talking about their experiences with depression, anxiety, PTSD, um, serious incidents of harassment and bullying and discrimination, and recognizing that there is really a mental load that comes with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: There's a lot of emotional labor as well, being able to go to work and also in Zoe's case, look after her beautiful new baby and have family and partner and everything around you. And also do that work and recognizing that as an advocate you have to look after your own mental health as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I can't remember whether it's gonna come out before or after this one. So listeners, you're either gonna have to check in the archives or look forwards, who knows? But essentially I've recorded an episode with Dr. Tina Skinner and Sarah Warbis talking about how you can look after yourself and how universities should be looking after you when you are doing psychologically challenging research. And that's specifically about the research, but they do also talk about when you are doing work around advocacy and impact and all those things as well. So keep an eye out for that one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now, before I move on to the next question, I also wanna mention listeners might be recognizing the name, Zoe Ayres, I'm holding up now the managing your Mental Health during your PhD book that I believe came out a year, 18 months ago, probably now. Something like that. A Survival Guide, highly recommend. I will link to all these things in the show notes as well, but keep an eye out for that too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now in the beginning of your book, you obviously wrote the introduction part, and you talk about the latest research that's happening in this area. What are some of the most important findings that have happened in research in this area recently? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yeah, so that first chapter was, I'm just thinking back this time last year, I was writing it and you know how you think, I'm just gonna review, you know, the last 30, 40 years of research. That'll be pretty easy, right? I had an amazing research assistant who helped me. I think it showed me as an author that we have a really clear history of studies into mental health and wellbeing in universities. And there was a very recent study I wanted to mention done here in Australia. And I think that I'd love to see this replicated overseas because we know that the cultural differences, for example, between the US and the UK and Australia and New Zealand, Asian countries, they're very different. And in turn, the pressures on students and academics are also different in some of those places as well. But here in Australia, just to highlight this study, this was, it's an ongoing, incredible, piece of research done. It's called the Australian University Staff Work Digital Stress and Wellbeing Survey and done by an incredible team at the University of South Australia's Psychosocial Safety Climate Global Observatory. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And it's a longitudinal study. And at the moment they've, they released some data and it's based on, data from 2020 to 2023. So mid sort of, or early pandemic data as well is captured in that. And this survey, if university managers are not aware of this, these results yet, they should go and read them right now because this was a survey of academic staff and professional staff across Australia conducted over a long period of time, and it really showed that people in universities are struggling and the work environment is contributing to poor mental health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Just to give you some of the top level findings, 67% of university staff are at high to very high risk on the psychosocial safety climate scale, indicating they're at high risk of mental injury resulting from their workplace. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: 44% were experiencing high to very high levels of psychological distress, and this was associated with physical symptoms, mental health symptoms. 75% said that they experienced high work pressures, and I thought this was really interesting, also, 57% of staff disagreed or strongly disagreed that senior management considers employees psychological health to be as important as productivity. They're disagreeing with that statement.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So if I were a manager in a university, I would be very worried looking. At those numbers and my background is in quant quantitative research. I recognize that statistics don't tell the whole story, but you can go and look at qualitative studies of employees experiences as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: There is a big, big problem in universities today, and as I said, this was just from Australia, but we see a lot of research also coming out of the uk. Gail Kinman has just done incredible work looking at stress and burnout, and she's one of our contributors, looking at core wellbeing in UK universities. And this is not just isolated to one country, it's universities in many places around the world, people really struggling with stress and poor mental health.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I wish I could say I was shocked by those numbers, but based on my own experience of academia and the things I hear from clients and so on, and obviously I now get a skewed example because they're people that have come for coaching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But when I was back working with people all over the world, really, I, yeah, I recognize those numbers. It's like, it's terrifying to see them in sort of cold, hard numbers like that, but it's, yeah, it's. It's exactly what  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: the reality.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I think a lot of people will resonate with that. I think it's interesting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Another episode that I've got either coming out or coming out soon, I can't remember is with somebody called Andy Brown who wrote the emotional overdraft, which was originally for people who are entrepreneurs and about how some businesses only stand up because they are going into an emotional overdraft of the founders. And that if you kind of stopped compensating with that, then the business wouldn't be functional.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that's one of the problems with universities, this is why I asked them to come on the podcast, is I genuinely believe we know, we all know that a lot of universities are in financial trouble at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I genuinely believe that part of the problem here isn't that senior managers don't know that people are stressed and overloaded. It's that they know that organization doesn't work unless everybody is overloaded because they've been using everybody's emotional overdraft. If you wanna know more about what that term, you, you find that episode as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But they've been using that emotional overdraft this whole time, and it's hard to know how to run all the business in the university when so much of it has been delivered by people going over and above their kind of standard work hours, their standard amount of effort and physical and mental health that they should be putting in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yes, I totally agree. This, as we say in the book, this kind of change is not gonna happen overnight. I mean, universities have been overworking their staff in many cases, underpaying their staff as well. You just have to look at some of the wage theft cases here in Australia. Casual staff being consistently underpaid for the work that they're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Universities have been operating as a business for a really long time, and I'm not sure about the situation in the uk, but here in Australia, we've had decades or inadequate funding from government as well. And people are exhausted, people are stressed, people are burnt out. And that is the business model in universities today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And the big question is, are university leaders willing to make changes and prioritize mental health instead of profits? I don't know.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and I think it's not even just, I mean, I'm gonna give a little bit of credit to senior leaders because I think in a lot of cases it's not even profit. I think in a lot of cases, universities, you know, I was lucky, I was at a university that's very financially stable, that, you know, it's a strong university in terms of its institutional kind of stability I guess. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But there's a lot of universities, certainly across the UK and I suspect everywhere else as well, where it's not a case of protecting profit, it's a case of protecting the actual institution because if you cut it too much, it ceases to function anymore, and that then becomes a whole other. Ethical and organizational issue. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's like, okay, we can cut your workload, but it means we can't be a research institution anymore. We can only be a teaching institution, or we can cut your workload, but all the arts and humanities have to go because they're not bringing in enough money or whatever. Right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yes. That's an excellent point.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For emphasis. I don't believe that we should be doing any of those things. I'm a big fan of all disciplines being in universities, but I think sometimes we can sort of separate the big baddies who are the senior leaders who are doing all of this for their own ambition and their own kind of profits and whatnot. And I don't know, maybe I was lucky at my university, but I did a lot of work with other universities as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I didn't really find those people. I found people who were desperately trying to keep budgets together and desperately trying to make everything balance and who couldn't really see how to change stuff without jeopardizing these other markers that they're also, you know, these are esteem markers here and the rankings there. And the income there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Student experience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, student experience, yeah. We have the research excellence framework in the UK to measure our research quality and all this stuff. And I saw people who were genuinely, desperately trying to do their best, but couldn't see how they could simultaneously make all these markers work and relieve pressure on people at the same time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yeah, no, I think that's a really important point to make. And I should, yeah, I'm not in senior management, have, have no desire to be in senior management because I've seen and heard the experiences of people in those roles, and you're absolutely right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: It's not as easy as saying, well, let's just put health first, mental health first. Um, but it's, it's really complex and it's really hard trying to balance budgets and at the same time prioritize mental health. But I still kind of feel like there is, there is a lot of room for universities to say, as an institution, we need different markers of, of success other than our profit, our bottom line, our productivity, our journal output. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Why don't we ask our employees? I don't like the term work-life balance, but let, let's ask them questions about psychosocial safety climate. Let's ask them about burnout, about stress, about how well they're coping. So I think also looking at the whole picture, rather than just a narrow sort of set number of indicators. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I think it's also important to recognize that if they can get some of this stuff right or more right than it is now, it should, according to the literature, at least have an impact on some of the performance measures as well. I feel like I'm spending this whole episode talking, but I've done lots of interviews recently for podcast episodes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I also have somebody called Dr. Andrew Dewar coming on, who now works in a conservation company, but he did a sports psychology PhD and he was talking about creating positive work environments essentially. And one of the things he was talking about is that actually, if you can get the wellbeing piece right, it should lead to increased retention, increased productivity and things as a, now I realize, I'm not saying that's a reason to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think there's a reason to do it in and of itself, but for people who are worried about those more objective markers, it if done right, it should move the needle on those two.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Absolutely. That's what I teach my students, or I try to teach my students every day that if you have people who are feeling as though their organization cares about them, prioritizes their wellbeing. Having a really supportive supervisor, that's really important in terms of retention, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, all of those outcomes. If you can support employee wellbeing, you're right. Those rewards will follow your loyal employees. They will be staying with you and they'll be performing better because they won't be overwhelmed and burnt out all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And as we say in the book, you can't do a good job at work when you are constantly exhausted. You can't do a good job for your students or in particular, your PhD students. You can't do a good job in your teaching and your research if you are constantly overwhelmed and exhausted. It's just as, as human beings, we're not meant to function like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I do know a handful of academics who are very good at, at performing at a high level, even when they are overwhelmed and stressed, and I've done it myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: But I would say you cannot do that consistently for a long period of time. Sooner or later, your body will burn out, either physically or emotionally. We are not built to withstand really high levels of stress for extended periods.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and they might be being productive in their own work, but in my experience, they're almost certainly affecting the mental health of the people around them one way or another. You know, we talked about that we create the climate for undergrads, but we also create the climate for our peers. Right. And I know I was head of education, I always mention this on the podcast, but I was head of education during the pandemic. So I oversaw our taught masters and undergraduate programs for my department during the pandemic, which you can imagine was a whole thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And [00:40:00] I. I was not, I mean, I held, I'm proud of what I did 'cause it was a very challenging time and I, you know, we held it together and delivered the programs and whatnot. But I did not make my peers life easy. Because, because I was stressed and overwhelmed. I was asking for things at the last minute. I was asking for, you know, with time pressure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I was not fully thinking through the best way to deliver messages before I delivered them. So I wasn't necessarily consulting as much as I could. And, you know, and I have a lot of compassion for myself with that. 'cause it was an incredibly difficult time for all of us. But my overwhelming stress and procrastination to some extent definitely impacted the people that I worked with, my peers, let alone the people that were sort of junior to me and being asked to do things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So. Yeah, it's not sustainable. So we should get on though to what we do about it. Right, because I think we've convinced everybody there's definitely a problem here. So the second half of the book is all about the kind of structures and solutions that we can take. So what sorts of things stand out to you as key priorities? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Well, we talk about the importance of taking a systems approach and also not just being reactive, but also taking steps to prevent harm from occurring to mental health. So university leaders really need to understand how to develop a mentally healthy workplace. And this is about having, at least in the context of academia, a workplace that protects, promotes, and also responds to the mental health of people working in higher education and those studying as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So recognizing that everyone has an obligation to contribute to creating this mentally healthy workplace, but especially senior leaders. And I do think that it's important that we give people the tools to help them cope with stresses at work and take steps to prevent burnout. I run workshops and seminars and invited presentations about academic mental health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I do that myself , but we know that if you really want to create a mentally healthy workplace, you need to make changes structurally and culturally as well. And often on, on social media, particularly a Twitter, you hear about universities having a mental wellbeing day.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Mm-hmm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Or offering a yoga session or a, or a mindfulness session. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Or llamas, I've seen or alpacas come to campus and I mean, don't get me wrong. Exactly. I'm gonna go and visit llamas given the choice, but I don't think it's gonna influence my overwhelm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Oh, exactly. And look, I'm a huge dog fan. As anyone on social media will know. I just, I, I think dogs are incredible. They're a real therapeutic best impact. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: They're [00:43:00] amazing. Exactly. Dog. People find each other and know each other, but, you know, having puppies on campus, couple of days outta the year is, is not gonna be enough to support people who, who are overworked, exhausted, worried about their job security, burnt out, dealing with negative student evaluations. All of these other factors in the workplace, they need to be addressed. It's not just about individual level interventions. They can help, but it's not enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I would also argue that universities need to hire and promote people who care about mental health, who are also gonna be healthy role models. And I've discussed this with colleagues recently about the fact that there are many senior scholars in academia who are not great role models, and I, I talk to PhD students a lot and they talk about the fact that actually their supervisor engaged in behavior that was highly exploitative or they [00:44:00] bullied their students or they harassed their students and they created a climate of fear in the lab that they were running. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Universities should not be protecting and promoting those people. Change starts at the top. We need to make positive changes so that we have positive role models in, in the work environment. And that might mean, as I said responding to instances of bullying and harassment and actually terminating the employment or demoting or having some kind of consequence, because all too often you hear about these people who are very well known, big names, bringing in a lot of money to universities, and everyone knows that they engage in exploitative bullying behavior and nothing gets done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And I hear this from PhD students in universities around the world. I should say, I'm not speaking about my own institution here. I've been very lucky at UQ to have a really wonderful team around me, [00:45:00] but the stories that I've heard and also the stories that we've heard on the Voices of Academia blog. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Shows that a lot of students really are struggling because of poor role models. And this might also be, you know, PhD supervisor who answers emails at all hours of the day, has no, I hate the term, but work-life balance. They don't talk about the importance of protecting and promoting your mental health. Well, that should be part of PhD supervision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I think also we know that having adequate financial support is really important. It's a very protective factor for mental illness. And we know PhD students, their stipends, their scholarships are often, they're not enough to live on, and therefore students have to take on far too much extra work. They become overwhelmed and stressed and they're struggling. And that contributes to poor mental health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And I would also add, in addition to financial security, more job security for not only like PhD [00:46:00] candidates, but early career academics and postdocs. There's lots of things that universities can do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. And even as you're talking, I think the structural solutions to some of those things, so, the promotion thing. For example, one of the things I've seen happen recently because they want to make, quite rightly, make promotions more transparent and more equitable and all of those things. We've seen a move in a number of institutions towards slightly more sort of points based systems where if you've got this much of this or that much of that, then you get promoted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I quite like it from the point of view, it doesn't rely on this kind of either the tap on the shoulder, you are ready to go up approach or the sort of who can spin the best story approach. But I think the downside that people haven't allowed for is it doesn't allow for people who engage in the behaviors you just talked about. Right? It doesn't allow for that to get taken [00:47:00] into account anymore because it's this thing of, well, if you've got this much grant income, that many publications you've taken that many PhD students to completion that ticks the boxes, whatever other boxes there are that ticks the boxes up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You go, congratulations, professor, or whatever. There doesn't seem to be scope within that for there to be a, hang on, they ticked all the boxes, but at the expense of everyone around them. Yes. I don't know how you account for that in a way that's fair and doesn't allow it just to be like, oh, we don't like her very much so. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, but it feels like it should be, or it should at least affect your ability to take on new PhD students or to apply for internal funding or those sorts of things so that it has a kind of tangible. Impact on, on your career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Absolutely. I agree with that 100%.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then you also mentioned finances as well. This is my little bug bear just because it was something I took utterly for granted at the university that I spent my [00:48:00] career at and I'm baffled to find is not at other universities, which is flexibility in what percent time a PhD student is. So many of my part-time clients. Their university, you either have to be a full-time PhD student or you are a 50% student and those are your two options. And it's ridiculous. The number of students that I work with who have a full-time job and are doing a 50% PhD and it's like 50% is three and a half days. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If you're including, you know, weekends and whatever, a full-time job Yep. Is five days. This is eight and a half days without any weekends. This is, this just doesn't fit and I don't understand. 'cause I know if you are in like the US and it's already a six year program, it could make it an infinite thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I don't understand why you couldn't just structure in. You are on a 0.2, you are on a 0.6. [00:49:00] Whatever works with the amount of external work you're having to do to live. So that you can do your PhD at something that's remotely plausible. 'cause I don't know how you do half of a full-time PhD while you've got a full-time job and children a lot of the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I get it, you don't, you don't sleep. It's such stupid thing. Implement. Yes. That takes no, just a little tiny bit of thought really annoys me. Oh dear. Right. Anyway, so one of the things you did talk about towards the end of the book is how important it is to tailor any solutions to the nuances of academic life. What do you mean by that? What do you think makes academia different to other workplaces?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: It's always interesting when I talk to my friends outside of academia and, you hear people talking about the way that they work and their interactions, and you think academia really, it is its own little [00:50:00] microcosm, isn't it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: But it's, it's a unique kind of industry because it has so many of the risk factors for poor mental health and so few of the protective factors. And it, like I say this all the time, but no wonder people are struggling so much. You have people starting out as a PhD candidate on very low pay in the knowledge that they may not have a job, the end of the experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: It's highly competitive. It is entirely dependent in some disciplines on where you publish and how much you publish. And the level of output is so huge. Something that I'm really passionate about is the issue of teaching evaluations. And we have a, an amazing chapter in the book about. All of the evidence that teaching [00:51:00] evaluations are or can be, I should say, can be harmful to mental health, especially if you're a woman or from a minority group or both. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: In what other industry can people rate your performance when they perhaps never seen you? I know that many of the students who've written evaluations of me have never actually walked into my classroom yet they are enrolled in my course, so they get a link at the end of the semester. How is that good practice like when you get these anonymous comments? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: In some cases, certainly at my institution, anonymous comments from students who perhaps have never seen you, and yes, comments are screened so that certain words aren't included, but there are still some really harmful, in my case, I've had defamatory comments that have reduced me to tears, and it's like, it's just wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And as Gail Kinman and some of her colleagues have said [00:52:00] academia today, it's changing a lot of those factors such as job security and autonomy, they're actually diminishing in universities. 20, 30 years ago, you had a guaranteed job for life, but that's not the case. There's so much competition that there is no guarantee you'll have a job at the end of a PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So it's little wonder that there have been so many articles coming out recently about the great resignation in academia. You have people finishing a PhD and saying, I don't wanna work in academia any longer. I wanna go into industry. You would've seen this probably a lot. I know that in the US there have been some institutions that have had trouble getting postdocs that like they can't fill the roles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: There are also mid-career academics and I know because I've got friends who are saying, I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm in my thirties and forties. I wanna spend time with my family. I wanna prioritize my health. I can't keep [00:53:00] working myself into the ground and they are leaving. So academia is this unique situation where you are under pressure pretty much constantly from the moment you start as a PhD student till the moment that even when you get to professor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I've got friends who are professors who are getting burnt out. So I think that it's the nature of the work and funding pressures and, I mean, I don't work in science, but I have friends who who do, and if an experiment fails, there's like six months, 12 months worth of work. The work environment and the work itself are not conducive to good mental health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I think there's this element that there, you've mentioned a couple of times, there's a lot we love about academia, but I think that bit also adds to it as well. Because for me, the stuff that was [00:54:00] always time pressured, the stuff that was always urgent was the health and safety form for this and the prepare for that lecture and go to that meeting and fill in that bloody form for the fourth time in a slightly different iteration. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And all of those things, right? Yes. But the bit that we all love the doing of research and the engaging with students part. Yeah. That part was always the slightly less urgent part, but it was also the part that A, we wanted to do, and B, that in theory at least, we'd be rewarded if we did sufficiently. Yes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But there was never time for it. Right. And so I think academia has this because of its slightly kind of vocation vibe. It kind of creates this cauldron where we are more likely to do it in our inverted comm spare time. You know, I used to hear academic, I still do with my clients academics, hearing all speaking all the time, saying on what [00:55:00] I really need is like three weeks, three clear weeks, and I'm thinking for a holiday wonderful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Where I can just write and I'm like, that's not a holiday. Not a holiday. That's work too. Absolutely. And I think that adds to it all right? Because I think if you are in a, you know, you're in a highly pressured environment in a investment bank or whatever. Yeah. You are not, at least with all respect to investment bank, well not that much respect to investment bankers, but you are then, you are not then trying to fit this passion that almost slightly feels like a hobby in among, you know, I've never met anybody who does their like book reading during their work hours when it's work books. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But we sh. We should be able to, you know, there should be hours in the week to read the books that you need to read. That shouldn't be an evenings and weekends thing, in my opinion. Absolutely. I think that's why No, no, I agree. Academia are a bit weird. [00:56:00]  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yeah, yeah. No, you're absolutely right. The fact that we care about the work that we do. We, we hope to make a difference with our research and support our students, and I think that because academia is full of people who genuinely, I. Want to do a good job and connect with their colleagues and, and support their students. And often going above and beyond. Like I teach first year students, I teach about 900 of them every year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Wow.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: That's a lot. I know. And you know, you want to do a good job and you wanna perform at a high level. There's lots of type A perfectionists in academia, right. Um, it's, it, the work just spills over because how can you do a good job in 37 and a half hours a week? There was a study out of the University of Sydney a couple of years ago here in Australia that academics work, I think it was between two and three days a week, unpaid. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Two and three days a week. That's how much unpaid labor is occurring. Yeah. And the [00:57:00] other point, which I think is really important is because of the job insecurity and the pressure around appointments. The prevailing sort of idea is, well, if you don't like it here, you can leave because there's like 10 people in the queue behind you who would love your job, who can probably do it for a short period of time until they burn out as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And I've seen this happening, I've got friends in medicine and it's almost like that same sort of cultural, belief is happening here. Like jobs are scarce. So if you don't like it here, you can, you can go because we will have no trouble filling your position. So that just adds to, you know, to the pressure and to the stress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely, and I think we're also really good at adding it to ourselves, right? We're also really good, partly because we're passionate of what we do, but partly because we kind of, you can feel a bit vulnerable and a bit scarce that I really gotta have all these things going. [00:58:00] That actually, even when we're told focus on quality of papers rather than quantity, dah, dah, dah, you know, in the research exercise excellence framework in the uk, over the period of the assessment, you have to have four papers to, that's like your sub individual submission. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And there's a big push to, you don't need to publish 20, let's do four good ones. But when you are in a pressure environment where you don't quite trust leadership and you don't quite trust the sector and things, it's hard to believe that. And so sometimes you've got the university pushing you hard, but then you've got these high achievers, us like pushing ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Sometimes even hard, or at least as hard, partly through passion and partly through fear that makes it such a sort of, what's the word? Like an interaction I guess, between the kind of institutional pressure and that kind of self-doubt pressure [00:59:00] that forces us to do more than we perhaps need to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. So that actually leads me in really nicely to my last question. So a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are PhD students and junior academics. I have some more senior listeners, but all of them in the context of this big sort of sector wide issue, are still doing their work and need to look after themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So while this more structural change is hopefully happening to some extent, how can people look after themselves?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Yeah. So yeah, as you've said, as I've said already, individual level changes are not enough. But I personally have had some pretty nasty experiences with burnout. Talked about this on other podcasts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: I've talked about it at the Voices of Academia blog. And I guess just speaking from my own experience and also what the research says, I say to people that it's [01:00:00] really important to learn to say no, which sounds very easy. It's much easier said than done, but really being mindful about setting boundaries around your time and being strict with those, because as I've said on social media, academia will take and take and take and take from you if you let it until there is nothing left. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: So, being very conscious of how you spend your time and look, saying no to things that, that are not gonna nourish you and that are not going to align with what you really care about. And really briefly, I think losing my mom, my mom passed away a couple of years ago while we were writing the book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And my own experience with burnout as well. Like those two kind of experiences, I was so sick. I spent three weeks in hospital. I could not work. I was so sick [01:01:00] that really showed me that for me, there is nothing more important in my life than my health and my loved ones. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Like that is the bottom line. And I would say to people, work out what is most important to you, and if that means that you are not going to make professor by 40 or make professor by 50, that is okay. So I would say really redefining what success looks like for you. For me, success is getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Having a little bit more balance. Going to Pilates class twice a week, having an actual break. So I'm about to have a Christmas holiday. I'm not planning it on looking at my email for at least two to three weeks. Take your annual leave, don't feel guilty about it. If you are one of those people who wants to make professor by 40 or 50 or whatever [01:02:00] other goal you have in mind, if you wanna do that, that is fantastic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Friends who are 40 and a full professor, but if you want to take, I guess, an alternative view of what success means, you are allowed to do that. Very basic things, it sounds incredibly logical and common sense, but sleep, nutrition, and exercise, if you can pay attention to those building blocks of mental health that will help you, to support your mental health. We know that even just missing one night of sleep that affects your emotion regulation the next day. No wonder poor sleep is a huge predictor of developing clinical depression or anxiety. So food, nutrition, exercise, exercise is one of the biggest factors that can protect your mental health, can help you cope with stress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: For leaders, I would say develop a [01:03:00] culture in your organization where mental health is talked about, where we share our experiences. You allow and you encourage your employees to take breaks. I'm so lucky to work where I am. We have senior leaders who will say, I am taking two weeks off. I won't be looking at my email, I won't be responding to emails at all hours of the day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: Um, you know, all, all of these little things, you know, finding ways to nourish yourself outside of work, truly disconnecting from work, having regular breaks. Um, and I, I would sort of, end on two things. For PhD students in particular, having a peer network, having social connection is so important. Again, it's a really big protective factor when we are thinking about things like anxiety and depression, having friends around you, having people you can talk to. I would also say having friends outside of academia who can give you a little bit of a reality check. That's really, you're nodding. That's really important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: My sister is [01:04:00] my best friend and she's like, why are you thinking of working on the weekend? That's, no, don't do that. Let's, yeah, to the park. Let's go on a holiday. You know, having people around you to give you that reality check. And I would also just finally say, because I'm doing a lot of research in this area, just being compassionate with yourself and not beating yourself up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: If you don't make that, you know. I guess some deadlines are really important. I shouldn't say use that as an example, but you know, just being kind to yourself and if you don't meet all of your goals one day, that is okay. Speak to yourself as you would speak to somebody you love. Like that's a really common self-compassion exercise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: The way we talk to ourselves, we're often really self-critical and like really harsh in our language. Try reframing that. What would you say to somebody that you really care about? You know, instead of beating yourself up, say, I did the best that I could. And that's enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much. I feel like I could talk to you for [01:05:00] hours about this stuff. We've mentioned about 40 different links, which I'll put all in the show notes for people to dive into but if people wanna stay in touch, follow you on social media, where can they find you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: You can find me at Twitter at Dr. Marissa Kate. You can find me at LinkedIn at Dr. Marissa Edwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marissa: And I guess just before we finish, I will be really brief in saying this. It's hard, like it's really hard trying to treat yourself with compassion. It's hard saying, no. I've learned that it's taken me years and years and I don't get it right every time, but just trying is good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Marissa. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, [01:06:00] stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-31-protecting-your-mental-health-during-your-phd-with-dr-marissa-edwards thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-30-doing-a-phd-with-a-chronic-illness-with-special-guest-krystina-francois <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode, we welcome Krystina François, a third year PhD student and current member of The PhD Life Coach membership. Krystina shares her experiences of doing a PhD with chronic illness, coming to terms with being disabled, and how she balances the needs of her PhD with looking after her health. We have a mini coaching session about her writing schedule, which is relevant for all PhD students, as well as hearing her recommendations about how universities could better support students completing their research with health challenges.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-07-how-and-if-to-work-when-things-feel-uncertain" target="_blank"> How and if to work when things feel uncertain </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-14-how-to-stop-feeling-guilty-when-you-rest" target="_blank"> How to stop feeling guilty when you rest </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/32-how-to-seek-the-help-you-need" target="_blank"> How to seek the help you need </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast where I am again joined by a special guest. And this is going to be a bit of a mashup of a session because this is going to be kind of a combination between interview and coaching with one of my membership clients, Krystina Francois. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So welcome, Krystina. So I am so excited to have Krystina here. I have worked with Krystina for a little while. And one of the things that we have talked about is the fact that Krystina is doing a PhD with chronic illness, and it's something that I've wanted to cover on the podcast for a really, really long time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And in our discussions, it kind of came around that you would be interested in doing that. And so I'm super excited to have you here. So maybe we start before you even introduce yourself, let people know why did you feel like it was important to come and talk about this stuff on a podcast? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Well, first, like, thank you so much for having me, Vikki. And I think the reason why I [00:01:00] said yes is so enthusiastically is because I had been searching for content, whether it be podcasts or books or online forums that really come from the perspective of folks who have chronic illness and are in a PhD program. And while there are some great books and like some great influencers to follow, that there's not really much out there. And so I thought that given our coaching relationship that, this would be a great, a great thing to, to participate in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's amazing, and you're so right. And that was something that I had recognized too. But one of the things that I try to be really cautious of as a coach is, like, staying in my lane. And so there's a whole load of topics that I am really happy to wax lyrical about on my own on a podcast. And then a few that I'm not. So listeners will know a few weeks ago, we had guests here talking about doing distressing research. That was one where I really felt I needed people with [00:02:00] proper expertise and proper experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And although I have family members with chronic illness, and I've supervised PhD students with chronic illnesses before, there's nothing quite like hearing the experience of somebody who is actually doing it at the moment. And just so the listeners know this reason, this is going to be a little bit of a mashup is because I think Krystina has got so much expertise just to share, I just want to ask her questions in the way I would, if she was a sort of interviewee. But equally, Krystina, I know you've got some specific challenges at the moment that we thought it would be fun to coach on. So why don't you tell people a little bit about your background and what's challenging at the moment? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Yeah, so I am one of the PhD students that had gone into industry prior to going back to school. So I'm on the older end. I'm 36. I say that because [00:03:00] it will help with the context of my chronic illness as well. I had spent the past 14 years doing immigrant rights, advocacy, racial justice organizing and gender justice work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And I am getting a PhD in political science. I'm in my third year and I'm in the American system. The average graduation rate for my program is, I believe, seven years. So just to let folks know, we have three to four years of coursework first. Then we transition into our dissertation and we have our qualifying exams right before that. Again, I'll come back to why that's important in terms of my disability. And so I was very clear, even as an undergrad, I did political science as my undergrad degree, as well as history. And I knew from then that I would be doing a political science PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I really wanted to be a political science professor, particularly because number one, I love the subject so much. And number two, thinking [00:04:00] that it would be really important to have more diverse voices in the field, who are generating knowledge as well as at the front of the classroom and so in my work life, my non academic work life, I would always have in the back of my mind like how this particular phenomenon or experience that I'm having fits into this larger picture of politics, and could be understood by others. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So I spent a lot of time doing like training. I would do trainings for legal volunteers, trainings for Undergraduate volunteers and I've realized I really liked the teaching part. I finally after spending, you know, so much time being like a service provider, then a policy analyst and advocate, and finally being in local government, I was like, okay, it's time. It's time to go back to school. And I had this deal with myself that like, I would go back to school by 30 or it wouldn't happen. So I did. I actually met my timeline.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's huge, right? Even that bit, even that's huge. [00:05:00] And remind me, at what stage did the disabilities and the chronic illnesses start to affect? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: It actually happened by the end of my first semester. I had gone on an international trip as a part of a human rights delegation, and I had a simple ankle sprain which actually ended up being more complicated and never healed. So I returned from the trip in like October and towards the end of that semester, I had to ask for some extensions, you know, or had to receive some incompletes because of trying to treat this ankle ended up being way more complicated than I initially thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So I first learned about accommodations and the disability office because one of my professors at the time, you know, seeing me hobbling from class to class was like, you know what, you should register with the disability office, um, and say that, you know, you need some extra time or to be able to zoom into class because I'm really concerned about you work walking on this air [00:06:00] cast with a torn ligament. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So that was my introduction also to the formal process of having an injury, disability, chronic illness in academia, 'cause it was actually a professor, nobody else had told me. And I was fortunate that she had actually advocated for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And it, it seems so haphazard sometimes as to how people hear about this. And obviously at this stage, we're talking about an acute situation, right? We're talking about what you thought was going to be a one off period of recovery and then get on. So how did you find the kind of accommodations once you finally heard about them? How did you find that process?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So the process itself seems straightforward because, there is a point person and they give you a checklist of the type of documentation that you'll need from your health care provider. There's certain language that they request and at least in the US, [00:07:00] it's because we do have the American Disabilities Act and there are very, very particular language, that the university is held liable for, right, so they have to offer accommodations. They are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations and we'll go back to this reasonable question but it was straightforward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: However, getting my healthcare providers to actually complete the paperwork was a little bit more complicated. There wasn't really advice on like how to navigate getting the supporting documentation and then once we finally able to get everything squared away with the paperwork, not all of my professors actually were providing me with the accommodation of being able to zoom into class.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So there was the first hurdle was the bureaucratic and then there was the actual implementation and it ends up being a theme of, uh, there's what the [00:08:00] university is supposed to do and then there's what actually happens, um, because ultimately, uh, you know, professors have a lot of discretion in how they run their courses.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So it's around that, that reasonable word, isn't it, right? As how do we interpret what is reasonable and it sounds as though in your case, that was interpreted differently by different professors.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Definitely. So I, yeah, I had been taking three classes, which is a whole separate story of like taking three classes my first semester and one of the professors just wasn't responsive to the disability office person or to myself. So I experienced a mixed bag just from that, that like last month of the semester of my first year, um, trying to navigate with this injury.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what was the sort of, I guess, intangible stuff that you were having to manage during that time? Because obviously there's [00:09:00] the practicalities of the bureaucratic staff, the actual implementation of things, but like, on the inside, what were you dealing with?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I, you know, I was a bit in denial. Number one, I was just like, it's fine. I'll just hop around with my cast. But then it started to, to hit me that, you know, what if there is something wrong? What if this doesn't heal properly? It took up mental space that would have been, allocated to me focusing on my coursework. So there was the time spent that wasn't expected doing therapies and all of the scans and the doctor's appointments and everything like that, which was eating up my time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Then there was the mental space that having this injury was taking up, which split my focus. Imagine this is my first semester in graduate school. I'd been out of school for like [00:10:00] almost 20 years. And being a student again, actually setting up your study practice, the sheer volume of reading, like, you know, for folks who remember your first semester, it's like, how is it humanly possible for me to read all these things every week? And you're asking me to write a paper that's worthy of a journal as a final paper. And I'm like, I just got here. I don't even know, like you know, the conventions of the discipline. Um, and so it was. Already a big period of adjustment and this added a layer of complexity. It's not so much that I had less time to do things, it's that I had less time to rest because I was doing everything that I needed to do school wise and doing everything I needed to do health wise. So that meant less sleep, right? Or that meant less social time, less balance and actually doing both full time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One of the things that I notice a lot with clients that are managing chronic illnesses, tell me whether this sort of resonates with [00:11:00] you, is that there's also a lot of uncertainty about how hard to work yourself too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I know this is an issue for anyone, right? Grad school is hard, there's always an endless amount of stuff to do, but at least if you're mostly physically healthy, you kind of know where your boundaries are, right? But if you've got a new condition like you did, and you're in this new environment where you're not quite sure how much work you're meant to be doing, how did you navigate that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So I had to basically listen to my body and it gave me no choice. So it was working to the point of a physical reaction. So as I mentioned, I had this like this ankle injury, what happens simultaneously, which I, you know, later on discovered this was the beginning of my autoimmune disease. Um, I start having issues with my hands. And you can [00:12:00] imagine if you have a boot, you're on crutches, you're using a walker. So I basically develop, uh, tendonitis. Uh, in both of my hands, which then impacts what? My ability to write, my ability to type, and so my hands would be fatigued quite quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So, it wasn't to the point of I couldn't use my hands, but it was, okay, I would work, work, work, work, work, type, type, you know, furiously taking notes, until, oh, my hand cramps. So it was my body's alarm clock, that actually was what forced me to have some type of balance. I didn't have a strategy because again, I was just thinking about this as an acute injury and me, you know, trying to be the stellar PhD student, bright eyed and bushy tailed, until my, my body said no. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it's so interesting, isn't it? Because in many ways, we want to try and know where the stop point is that's like half an hour before pain hits or, you know, dysfunction [00:13:00] hits or whatever, but that must be so hard, especially when it's something you're not used to and you haven't grown up with. That must be so hard to kind of figure out where that is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I see this a lot with clients who've got like post viral fatigue, so long COVID and all those sorts of things where they've grown up healthy. If they push themselves a bit too much, okay, I'll sleep in tomorrow. Happy days. I'm fine again. Let's go. And all of a sudden they don't know where those boundaries are anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Definitely. And I think that was the biggest mental shift was , how do we do that 30 minutes before we get the screaming pain? How do we build in rest, build in, um, you know, and this is where I would like to shout out occupational therapists. And I think occupational therapy is severely underrated because you learn uh, okay, work in three minute sprints and then rest for one minute or 10 minute sprints. Even if that means like putting an actual alarm on your [00:14:00] phone, which I wouldn't be surprised if may accidentally hear what alarm go off during of this session, although I did put my phone on silent, but having those reminders end up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: actually being a part of your study practice. So like just like you would make sure that you have environmental alignment of like having your pdfs open and your reference manager. You would have your bottle of water and make sure you set your timer on so that when you're in the flow you are able to actually take care of yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's just one more thing to think about though, isn't it? It kind of sounds easy when you say it like that. And it's just, it's exhausting, right? I have to do my timers. I have to do my physio. I have to do my, whatever it is just to be able to do normal things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Exactly. And that's also where I realized that it was taking energy away from me, just reading the reading. You're not able to do that because especially well, [00:15:00] there's having the brain fog and the fatigue and all of that. And then there's the exhaustion from the medical admin. And you're trying to focus on these brand new concepts and that in and of itself is already a physical strain, like, the amount of time that we spend sitting at a, you know, at a, whether it's a cafe, library, whatever, and we're just sitting and reading, that is also physically exhausting. And I didn't realize that until I had other things that were exhausting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, definitely. So let's carry on with the story then, because obviously we've alluded to the fact that this acute injury did not get better and go away. So tell us a bit more about how that kind of progressed and how you managed that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Yeah. So basically over the course of a year, I end up having other ailments. I had back to back kidney infections, which was like very random. So spring semester of, again, my first year, I was [00:16:00] in the hospital three times for three weeks at a time. Boom. That's the majority of the semester. So again, I have to advocate for being able to zoom into class. I have to advocate for extensions. As I'm trying to figure out what's going on with my immune system. And then I start in terms of my ankle, the pain is not resolving, the swelling is not going down, although I'm hitting all the marks, in terms of physio, the orthopedist is like, I don't see anything wrong besides the inflammation, and says, hey, maybe this is something systemic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So we do some testing and the testing doesn't come back with anything. So I say this because it's something for folks who have autoimmune diseases, sometimes you don't catch, you just, the blood work is not happening at like the right time, but, your body is already making these, these changes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And so I first end up getting diagnosed with endometriosis, which in and of itself is this, this weird, it's [00:17:00] not considered an autoimmune disease, however, it has autoimmune portions and it's inflammatory. It's a whole body disease, not just a gynecological issue and we are recording this in endometriosis awareness month so that's why there's my little quick plug.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I end up having to schedule surgery. And I'm like, okay, I'll do it during the break before the semester starts. So I have the surgery, but one of the things that develops is also the hand pain that originally was triggered by me using a cane and crutches doesn't go away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And what first we think is tendinitis of the thumb, ends up being carpal tunnel and then cubital tunnel. And I end up, luckily having an orthopedist that was a really big advocate for me to do additional testing and to see other specialists rather than just cut me open, which surgeons tend to like to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Um, and doing some nerve testing and realizing that [00:18:00] I had severe nerve damage in my right hand and I'm right handed. At a certain point wasn't able to even hold a pencil or type, which ends up, you know, being two very important functions for a PhD student. So I end up doing back to back surgeries during the summer to not disrupt my academic flow. First the endosurgery and then the hand and elbow surgery. Um, and unfortunately it ends up taking me two years to see a neurologist. And what I ended up finding out is I have CIDP, which is a rare autoimmune disease that your body attacks or eats up the coating of your nerves, the myelin of your nerves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And normally it starts in your extremities, your hands and your feet but it's happens to your entire body. And so I'm, I am officially diagnosed, and actually, I started treatment last month. And so it's been this long journey of diagnosis and surgery and trying to see the specialists, but also ends up being that I have varying levels of functionality of [00:19:00] my hands, which impacts my academic career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Maybe let's tell people a little bit about what kind of practical impact did that then have on you at this stage of your PhD?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Right. So, oh, so I forgot to mention that I also ended up getting diagnosed with seronegative rheumatoid arthritis as well. It ends up that I am able to get into this flow of able to attend class, participate. I download apps so that I can listen to the readings instead of having to hold the book. Or I'm able to use voice to text in order to, you know, write my notes or, or whatever it may be. Um, and I'm able to attend class for the most part. There's sometimes due to inflammation and pain and whatever that I end up having to either skip class altogether or request to be zoomed into class. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And I start to get into this flow of the semester is great. By the end of the [00:20:00] semester, I'm burnt out, exhausted, like fully unable to use my hands. All of my little tricks and tips are not sufficient. And I end up not being able to finish my final paper. And so I get into this incomplete trap. So, uh, for folks that don't know, let's say if you are missing one key component of the coursework for your class, um, the university has a policy of being able to give you an incomplete, so a placeholder grade so that you're able to have extra time to complete that task, because grades, you know, are due. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I'm able to fortunately have professors who are understanding and willing to give me the incomplete because you're not they're not required to give you one, even though you are a person with chronic illness, and you have accommodations again that reasonable word comes back into play. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: It is at the discretion of the individual professor whether or not they will give you an incomplete.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:21:00] And then a bunch of these you still then need to resolve, right? That, you know, that that's not the end of the story. You then have to figure out which ones you're going to retrieve to full grades and so on. And that's the point we met, right, that you had this bunch of incompletes that felt kind of, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but felt kind of unachievable, right? They felt overwhelming, at least.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Overwhelming, for sure.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, and so tell me a little bit about that overwhelm, how you felt when you were kind of looking at that, that pile of, that pile of incompletes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I just want to make sure the listeners are aware, it's quite so big, partly because you're a massive overachiever. And therefore had taken on more courses than you needed to take. So this is something else I often see, right? With people who are very, very able like you, and who have health problems is sometimes they're not even trying to do the minimum, they're trying to do the stuff they want to do too, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Exactly. I will thank you for that disclaimer because [00:22:00] it took me, it even took me a while to accept that the reason why there are all of these incompletes is because I was taking on way more classes than necessary. Um, and you know, my eager, like, I want to learn. I'm here to learn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I want to absorb everything. That class sounds interesting. Um, why not? Uh, yeah, It, how do I say this? I wasn't in denial, but it, because it felt like a constant cloud over everything that I was doing. It was like, as I was, you know, moving forward every semester, finally learning the lesson of taking less classes. Finally, advocating for myself with the department to see if there were any other resources available. I had to completely shift my mindset and finally understand that I had a chronic illness and coming to terms with having these papers hanging over my head and my primary presentation of rheumatoid arthritis was in my hands. I'd spent my whole life with my writing process really rooted in me taking notes by hand, doing the active reading, and [00:23:00] then when I would be writing my papers, I'm a free writer where I just type. And I couldn't do either of those things. I could not take my notes. And, and we know pedagogically that like, there are some people who remember things through the act of writing by hand. And so I was hitting a learning wall. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And I was freaking out because I wasn't able to just free type for a few hours to do these papers and knock them out. That's part of why they were hanging over me, is because I wasn't able to address them the way that I had been trained to do up until this point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, definitely. And. I just want to go back with an additional disclaimer just so all the I know you know this but so the readers are all aware of this. When I said this is because you took so many classes. I don't mean that that was your fault. This is, oh, it's your fault because you don't know. I meant that more to [00:24:00] illustrate why, how much because of the capable and interesting person that you are, how much was on your plate when all this other stuff came along too, and this notion that your old coping strategies, stuff that had got you so far through such an interesting professional career, through all the rest of your academic career and things, suddenly weren't there anymore. How did that feel?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: It was very destabilizing. So on the one hand, I'm going through an identity crisis of like, I am no longer an able bodied person. If I ever was, that's, you know, that also is like a myth. So I was coming to terms with that. And then I was coming to terms with, I can't do things the way that I always have. And I'm on a challenging new academic journey because PhD is very, very different from undergraduate learning, very different. And you [00:25:00] know, I had been really steeped in immigration law and legal training, it is a very different way of reading, engaging with the text. We're all about knowledge production versus necessarily critique. And it's really hard to do that. when you're trying to figure out how to get your thoughts onto a page, literally.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> With interjection. If you are finding today's session useful, but you are driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me. After you've finished go's, my website, pH life coach.com, sign up for my newsletter. We all know that. We listen to podcasts and we think, oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter's designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions, and you'll get one action that you can take immediately to start implementing the things we've talked about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of [00:26:00] online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's faces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I think that's a really good point for us to transition perhaps into a little bit more of the coaching stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I am going to ask you at the end more about what you think universities should be doing differently and that sort of stuff, because I think your background as an advocate in a variety of situations, I think you're a perfect person to comment on that. But let's get into a specific challenge at the moment. So you mentioned before we started recording that writing is still the thing that is you're finding difficult. So pick something specific and let's delve into that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: All right. So I have a plan of addressing, of completing one paper a month for this term to be able to get these, these incompletes [00:27:00] resolved. And I'm lucky enough that I'm not having to take coursework this semester so that I can focus on that. I started the year January and I think that's when we had had a conversation about the incompletes, uh, I had set out. I'm like, okay, I'm going to do one paper a month. However, I end up with these new diagnoses in January and a surgery and then treatment beginning in February. So boom, two months are off of the board. So now we're in March and now I'm like, okay, I'm going to do a. Two papers, like two, like one of the more intensive papers that is a scaffolded assignment with a professor that's highly, highly critical and engaged, I will say, I'm working on that paper, and then, one of the lower hanging fruit, which is more of a comparative textual analysis paper. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So, that's where I'm at right now. My goal is to have this done by the end of the month, and then I'm doing paper, which is more of comparing two different theorists and relating it to my own research [00:28:00] idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So, I mean, the first thing would be, is it a good idea to work on both of them? Like, am I being too ambitious? I think that's, that's been a challenge of mine, so I'll stop there. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And anyone who's heard me coach before knows I'm not going to give you like a yes, that's perfect. No, it's not. I know. But let's work it through together, right? And I think that process of thinking it through is useful. So just to clarify for me, you originally said you were going to do one per month, one in January, one in February, one in March. And you're talking about doing two at the moment. But that's still, correct me if I'm wrong, with the intention of finishing one of them in March and finishing one of them in April. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Okay, perfect. Because I thought for a second there, our response to not having being able to do one in January and one in February was doing two in March. I wouldn't want to have a conversation about that. But no,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: that's not going to lie, I did think about it, but I was like, no, I can't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And listeners, I bring that up for a reason because, not with Krystina [00:29:00] specifically, but with other clients. The tendency that if you've got behind on things, for whatever reason, whether it's a chronic illness or any other reason, the tendency to then say, well, I'm going to have to do even more than I planned within this time period now, is really, really high. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But if we weren't able to do the old plan, setting ourselves a plan that's more ambitious than the old plan is understandable, but it's probably never going to work, but that's not what you're doing. So that's okay. So take me through why, if we are trying to do one in March and one by the end of April, why did you choose to work on them in parallel rather than to get one entirely done and then do the next one?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Um, because the, one of them is, I have to do it step by step, so I have to send her the paper proposal and then I have to send her the draft and then go on from there. So [00:30:00] it's gonna be spread out over time and I didn't want to wait until next month because then that would like bring me closer and closer to the end of the term. So I have to work on it throughout the term, because there's going to be a back and forth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So there's going to be gaps where it's on her desk rather than your desk. Right. Okay. Right. Perfect. Do you kind of stand by that decision? So do you like your reasonings for picking, doing it like that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Um, that is a good question. I mean, I think, I don't think that my reasoning is particularly strong outside of the fact that it's more time consuming. Like, it's because it has to be spread out over time is what led me to that decision and I don't necessarily think that's a great reason.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why not? Tell me why you don't think that's a good reason.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Um, I'm not sure. I think that I love the topic. So I think having it spread out over time is not going to be arduous work. It gives me a [00:31:00] chance to dig into the material a little bit more. It also overlaps with some of the other papers that I have to do. Um, so it won't feel like a slog because I like it. However, the, the part that I don't like is it's going to be a bit of a slog because it spread out over so much time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, perfect. So, what we get to distinguish out here is what are the bits that are the consequence of the circumstance you're in, that this is a piece of work that needs input from your tutor throughout, versus what are the consequences of your decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. And for me, your decision sounds very logical because if you've got some time periods where it's going to be on somebody else's desk, we get to think what we're going to do with those time periods. And so the first thing, before I tell you the other reasons I think that it's logical, the first thing I want you to think about is how long do we anticipate those being? So is this person somebody who will send it back in a [00:32:00] day or two, or is it somebody where it might sit there for a week or ten days or longer?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Uh, no, she's very good at getting the feedback, like, within a day or two.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so, did you consider the possibility of resting in the gaps?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: No. I did not. I was like, okay, great, and then I'll work on the other paper, the, the, in the gaps. But I probably should rest.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, we're not going to do shoulding. We're not doing shoulding. All of this is your choice, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But it's a very different situation if the feedback is going to take two weeks to come, then happy days. Let's crack on with something else in between. We're still not going to call it working on the papers simultaneously, though, because that's not true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We're just working on them sequentially over and over again. Right. But if they're going to only be short gaps, what advantages or disadvantages would there be to resting in those gaps instead of [00:33:00] working on something else?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Right. Actually, I mean, I think that I should rest during those times, especially because she gives very substantive feedback. Like, she gives both some of the more, like, grammatical structural things, and also the big questions really, um, really gives, uh, great feedback. So arresting would make sense because it is going to be a lot of work to then implement her edits.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what would be the downsides? Can you see downsides to doing that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I'll immediately, it would be that, you know, I still have, I still have to make progress on the other items. It could be that, given my fatigue and given my, you know, needing to have frequent breaks, um, that I don't write. I take a writing break during that time, but I can do the reading. Whether it be like, I use the listening app, like to at least get a first [00:34:00] pass at some of the reading for my other paper. But that I choose not to do anything physically intensive during that time that could be  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and I think one thing that might help with this is understanding a little bit better how you structure your week because obviously I know that you do some other work as well. So how many days a week are you expecting yourself to be doing work, either PhD work or other academic work?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So I'm also teaching three classes. So full disclosure, that is the other work that I'm doing. So I am marking, course prepping and then, and presenting. So three days, three days a week I teach, and then I have two off days, off days. I have, you know, again, because of my health admin, I have treatment or therapies, basically five days a week. And so what I had put in my plan [00:35:00] was that I have like a writing and reading time block, every day. But the times of the day vary to be conscious of like when I'm most productive, considering the teaching and the health activity that I may have to do. Um, and I, I do, I actually have the writing and reading time block seven days a week instead of five. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: People who are watching on video may see my eyebrow raise. Why?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: That's a great question. Um, because I'm very strict about not doing my teaching work seven days a week. I really try to, like, limit it to those days or my, like, full on prof mode and my health appointments, again, are only through the five day of the week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So I figured that I could make up some of the time that, that is, that would be needed on the weekend. And, um But no, then there's no [00:36:00] time for rest. I know that, that, that is clear after saying it out loud.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm enjoying watching your face as you hear yourself talking about things, because like, making up the time is such a common thing that people talk about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And for people listening, I know a lot of people will be listening to this who have chronic illnesses, but there'll be a lot of people who listen to the podcast every week, listen to this one as well. And this is true for anyone. If there's been reasons that you, you know, personal family things or whatever it is that means that the week hasn't gone exactly how it is, I want you to be really careful around this notion of making up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because whilst it sounds dead productive and it sounds what's going to keep you on track, especially if you know you've got health problems, then that making up might be the bit that delays you if it adversely affects your health.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Right. [00:37:00] And this is where having pause, like having rest is something that should be built into my schedule as well, like just as much as the other time blocks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: 100 percent and that's true for anyone right but it's crucial for people with chronic illness. So just to clarify, just for me a little bit, so I can see quite how high my eyebrows go in, um, how many hours time block are you talking about on Saturdays and Sundays? Uh, I can see your face that my eyebrow is going to be high. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Um, so I, so it's like about, it's like a five hour time block, which sounds  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: pretty substantive.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So, yeah, we are learning to deal with, I think, four maybe autoimmune disease interventions so far, and teaching three classes. And catching up our incompletes and trying to look after our health while [00:38:00] we do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And our plan is to do this by working seven days a week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Yes. That does not seem realistic when I think about, especially because, fatigue is such a big part of, um, you know, like between like the lupus and just generally autoimmune diseases, and like fibromyalgia and stuff like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: The fatigue is the one symptom that we don't have a medical intervention for. You can't just pop a pill or like have some matcha and like, you're gonna power on. It's, it's not. It's, if I fall asleep while reading, it's out of my control. Then, you know, it's, it's juggling this, this still, this notion of making up time and having to let go the notion that you will never make up time, just like having a sleep deficit, like you, like it's gone, like it's happened and it's coming to that acceptance that, um, You know, [00:39:00] you have to deal with whatever the situation may be and whether you hit your goal for your time block or or not. Um, that time has passed and then you just adjust. moving forward. So I do think maybe instead of having a five hour block, I do a three hour block. So the week the my week day blocks are either two hours or three hours. So maybe break either breaking it up my weekend time blocks to not be like, okay, from one to five, I'm going to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: But rather, from 10 to 12, I will work on this, get some rest, do something restorative or something else, and then maybe have another time block for two hours?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm gonna push you here. I understand this notion of sort of accepting that we can't make up time. I actually think it's an irrelevance because time spent is not what gets your work done. Completing tasks [00:40:00] is what gets your work done. We don't have to make up hours. We have to complete tasks. Okay? And we have to complete tasks to a sufficient standard. One of the examples, I want to go back to something you said earlier, was that because you were doing it over a longer period of time, you could delve deeper into some of the interesting papers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Don't do that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We are resolving incompletes. If you want to read papers for fun, you can do that later. We're resolving incompletes. And this is the danger when we give ourselves more extended periods of time to do things because it feels compassionate. We start saying, Oh, but I could probably do more than one at a time if I'm doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And Oh, I can probably do more. So anyone listening, if you've ever asked for an extension for whatever reason, and then you've convinced yourself it needs to be better now because you asked for an [00:41:00] extension, this is speaking to you. Okay? I know a high achiever like you isn't going to enjoy the notion of bare minimum, but we just need to get these done at this stage. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You have your whole dissertation phase to dive into your specialist topic, be the leading expert in it. These we need done. And I would argue, especially if you've got chronic illnesses associated with fatigue, if you work fewer hours, you will complete more tasks. Because when you have lots of hours available to you, it's easy to go, Oh, I'll read this other thing too, because I've got time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'll do this bit because I've got time. I'll spend ages making a decision how to write this sentence. Whereas if you've got less time, you're going to write the sentence and you're going to read what you need to read and you're going to get it done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: That really resonates because [00:42:00] also, as a person with extreme fatigue, if I am able to do more with less time, I'm also able to rest. And that's the only thing that is the only medicine for fatigue is actually listening to your body and resting. And so by forcing myself to work in a smaller amount of time, a more realistic amount of time, to get the task done. And just when the task is done, it's done. And then I can take a rest rather than moving on to the next task. That would also be something, like, when we find a cadence as a person with chronic illness, it's really to say, if you have available time, rest. Like, my doctor is very much around, like, if you can fit in a 20 minute nap, do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hundred percent. And I want to emphasize, when I say that resting more will probably enable you to get more done, that is also not a reason to rest more. You get to rest more because your body needs rest. [00:43:00] Because you as a human need rest, even if it didn't enable you to get more done, if you need it, you need it, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But where you've also got these tasks, I've seen it countless times in clients that when they decide to work fewer hours, they power through their tasks more quickly. So I want you to spend some time thinking about two different things. One is about your weekends, okay? How much of your weekends can you clear out? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm a big fan of two days. That feels like a weekend to me. But then also, building, breaks into the ends of bits of work. So whether it's taking, you know, if you decide not to do that other piece until after this first one's done, and taking the days while your supervisor's got it to rest, it might be that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It might be planning that, okay, when that finally goes in, I have three days where I don't do PhD work before I start the next one. So [00:44:00] that it's not this relentless train. It's periods of getting stuff done and then recovering. How does that feel?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I think that that makes a lot of sense. It resonates. Um, it also, you know, in terms of motivation, unfortunately, I am a power through kind of person, which is part of how we are in this situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: But I mean, that's just, uh, my, my innate reaction is like, okay, if I just hit this goal, um, knowing that there's this reward at the end. And so whether that be the three days off in between papers or a certain amount of time between papers, or rewarding myself with, like, a weekend where I don't, like, actually do any academic work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, that's just a weekend. That's not a reward. I still remember, there was a postdoc I worked with years and years ago, and I remember her talking about the Easter holidays. She was like, it was amazing. I had two whole [00:45:00] days where I didn't work. Dude, that's a weekend. You're meant to do that every week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Oh, you mean it's not a seven day, like life isn't seven days? Um, yes. So, also, honoring, I would say, honoring the weekends would be another thing to think about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, the one thing just from something you said, I want you to be cautious of is, these little mini rewards at the end of handing things in, I don't want you to let that become boom and bust. So I want you still to be thinking about how am I doing my three minutes on one minute off? Or how am I doing my 20 minute naps? How am I only working my allocated time blocks and all of those things? Because what we want to be doing is working in a sustainable way and then having a gap. Working in a sustainable way, not, Oh, I am a bit sore, but I'm going to power on through because if I can just get this done, I'll have three days off. We're not talking about that. We're talking about maintaining this kind of maintenance level of activity [00:46:00] and adding the, the periods of time off.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I think that sounds right.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And one of the things, and you can let me know whether this is okay to share, but obviously you're in my PhD Life Coach membership. One of the things that I'd like to work on with you in the future when we're in our group coaching sessions, is the sorts of thoughts you're going to have to nurture during those rest periods, so that they're actually restful and don't consist of you going, I should be working. I should be doing something. Why am I just laying here? I should be able to get on with my stupid body doesn't let me do it. Those sorts of things. So it's kind of beyond the scope of today. Maybe it's something I'll talk about in a future episode. But we can certainly work on that in the membership so that in those periods, whether it's during the day or in kind of blocks off, you're like, look, you know, if you go to like a spa or something, you're like so fancy and so nice. So you get that sort of vibe when you take a break, rather than [00:47:00] say, oh, I'm slacking off today. Yes, yes, we want the bright sunshine down on your face. It's like, ah, it's so nice to have a rest kind of vibes. So we can work on that together.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Definitely. We're going to need to work with that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So, before we finish up, I want to ask you what you think, and we're not going to talk specifically about your members of staff, your university, but at a more general level, because academics listen to this too, and I'm actually going to send it to some universities as well. what do you think that universities should be doing more of, less of, better, to, um, support PhD students working with chronic illnesses and disabilities?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So the first thing that comes to mind is definitely, there's this deference to the person who is facing the illness on what it is that they need, but we actually are often overwhelmed with even just coming to the understanding of what our health needs may [00:48:00] be, but like, we have no idea, because most folks that are coming to request accommodations, it's because it is a new illness. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And so it's not fair to put the burden on what is it that you need the university to do or what is it that you need from your professors, to put that burden on to the student who is already trying to navigate so much. It would be helpful if you all if folks had like some commonly requested accommodations or, you know, if a student, if somebody has fatigue, here are some common things. If, if folks have a physical limitation, here are some common things. And I will say that like my university has been like helpful in some ways of that, like the person who serves in the role of the disability advocate. Also resourcing the disability office in your university, having one person or a few people really be the advocate and the point person for hundreds of [00:49:00] students or thousands of students, depending on how large the university is unfortunate, and it does a disservice to both the students and the professors, because neither one is getting the support that they need in order to successfully progress forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: So properly resourcing, your disability office with enough staff, and making the investments in the support technologies like Otter AI and Grammarly, and these are not plugs specifically, I am not sponsored by any of these people, but there are a whole slew of technologies now that are AI based or are just better than some of the old, desktop based softwares. Like we're not all sitting at desktops anymore. We're on our laptop or we're on our iPad or tablet, or we're on our phones. So Investing in app based, or web based interventions is, is way more helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Um, and then lastly, there needs to be some reform around [00:50:00] incompletes. Incompletes can't be the only solution for students who need extra time, or whose disability or chronic illness interrupts the semester because it ends up being a trap, and I think that institutions are aware which they've responded by giving less time for the students to complete their incomplete to motivate them to get resolved faster, but actually, when you have a chronic illness that is unpredictable, It increases the burden and the stress and emotional dress on the students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: And my very last point is the culture shift, that if you're not meeting deadlines, that doesn't mean that you're unreliable because your illness is outside out of your control. And I think that's one of the, the biggest learnings for me in unpacking my own internalized ableism is that you're not unreliable, you're sick. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's huge. I'm sure so many people need to hear that. I'm going to add a couple that I've learned [00:51:00] from you, just to add them in. And one is around this definition of unreasonable. So for me, I don't understand why at least an individual university doesn't decide what's reasonable. I just think the idea of individual academics being able to determine what is reasonable. Now I know, teaching in like sociology is different to physiotherapy or whatever. I get it. There needs to be some level of sort of local understanding. But It seems to me there should be much clearer expectations that at least normally, this would be reasonable, this would be reasonable, this would be reasonable, and for those professors to then be properly resourced to do it, right. Because there is the other, you know, I've been, we're both academics, we both teach, we have both been, I'm sure, on the receiving end of accommodation things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Some of which are dead easy, you know, extensions or whatever, fine, no problem. But when [00:52:00] it's then, you know, you've got a blind person who's going to be in your laboratory class or whatever, it's like, absolutely, I 100 percent want to accommodate this. What specific expertise and extra resource are you providing me with so that I can do this properly, and I'm not making it up as I go along. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so I think the university's investing in that sort of, so there's a much clearer structure and support for the academics, because there's some academics who are just idiots about this stuff, but there's a huge number who want to help, but are already overwhelmed. And when requests come in, it's just one, one thing too many to think about. Right. Um, and that, but yeah, before I say this, is there anything you want to say on that one before I give the final one?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: I think that it's a hundred percent right. That universities should invest in preparing professors, how to respond to, um, to request and actually sharing best [00:53:00] practices. I think that is, the low hanging fruit is here are some best practices. Not so much, there's this emphasis on terminology and, like, it is extremely important, but actually being able to ensure that your student is able to participate at the level as anybody else, regardless of their ability status is what is most important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And for me, not even just training, but actually people to help you do it. Because like, if I need to provide my learning materials in five different formats for five different disabilities, I want to do that, right? I want to make this as accessible as possible. But that's just quintupled my workload in many ways, and that's not always feasible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So yeah, so actually having some kind of done for you service as well, where the professor, if you have somebody with X disability, you get access to these people who will annotate your pictures and put all the alternate text and all that jazz. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then my last one, [00:54:00] and this is unfortunately U. S. specific, and so it just blowed my mind, is around when people have to take time off for things, is thinking about implications for healthcare, which I know we've talked about in your situation, and thankfully makes me grateful for the UK every day that we don't have to think about these things, but in countries where there is health insurance, universities having really clear policies around their students in terms of what happens to your health insurance if you need to take leave of absence, if you need to take suspensions and things, because the fact that you even had to consider that just blows my mind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Right. And I think that is one of the biggest challenges for students with chronic illness or disability is when you actually what you really, really need is a medical leave of absence and you can't take it because you need the health insurance from your student health insurance, and I think that, um, also like for any administrators that are listening, often [00:55:00] there are academic consequences for not performing or meeting a certain deadlines. However, there's often not an awareness of what the consequences are in terms of your access to healthcare because access to healthcare is tied to your full time enrollment status. So let's say if you are not able to be enrolled full time because you have a registration block on your account because of an incomplete, that actually has health care implications, at least in the U. S.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the version of that that is across the whole world is visa implications as well. So, right, for any international students who are experiencing chronic illness while they're overseas, I've seen that be a real issue as well, where they need to take a leave of absence. But if they take a leave of absence for more than three months or whatever, they lose their visa status or their family loses their visa status or whatever it might be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Exactly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank [00:56:00] you so much. That was absolutely incredible. I appreciate you so much for sharing all of that. I hope the little coaching block was useful too, and I can't wait to keep working on it all with you in the membership. So thank you so much for coming, Krystina.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Krystina: Thank you so much for having me. And this was such an important conversation and I hope that it leads to folks taking action.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm sure it will. And feeling so much better for hearing your experiences. So thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and [00:57:00] academics time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 31 Mar 2025 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-30-doing-a-phd-with-a-chronic-illness-with-special-guest-krystina-francois thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-29-how-to-stop-wasting-time-by-trying-to-be-too-efficient <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode of The PhD Life Coach podcast, Dr Vikki Wright explains why chasing ‘perfect efficiency’ is actually making your PhD harder. Many students think that taking flawless notes or writing excellent first drafts will save time — but this mindset often leads to procrastination and stress. Instead, Vikki reveals why starting imperfectly is the key to progress. She explains that writing is part of the thinking process, reading evolves with your understanding, and connecting with others can be the most effective use of your time. If you're overwhelmed by the pressure to be ‘productive’, this episode will help you work smarter — not harder. Ideal for PhD students and academics feeling stuck, behind, or anxious about their thesis. Listen now to learn how embracing imperfection can help you finish your PhD with less stress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <span> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-37-why-you-shouldn-t-read-when-you-re-writing" target="_blank"> Why you shouldn’t read when you’re writing </a> </span> </div> <div> <span> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-12-why-perfect-plans-fail-embracing-imperfection-in-academic-planning" target="_blank"> Why perfect plans fail: embracing imperfection in academic writing </a> </span> </div> <div> <span> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-03-how-to-get-started-on-a-task" target="_blank"> How to get started on a task </a> </span> </div> <div> <span> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-03-how-to-get-started-on-a-task" target="_blank"> How to use the do know don’t know list </a> </span> </div> </div> <div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm getting a bunch of new listeners at the moment, which is amazing. So if you don't know me, my name is Dr. Vikki Wright. I was an academic and PhD supervisor for 20 something years and in a large research intensive university in the UK, where I made it to full professor specializing both in how stress affects health and in how to effectively train PhD students. I now run the PhD life coach full time, meaning this podcast, my membership program, my online courses, and my workshops. Today is actually something that came up in one of my membership conversations. So I had a student who was thinking about writing and reading and was getting quite stressed about how much she had to do and I'm sure we all kind of empathize with that feeling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things that she kept saying was that she wants to be efficient. She needs to know how to read things, how to take notes in order to be efficient. She needs to know how to write things in order to be efficient. And I asked her what she meant by efficient while this is going on. So this is in a group coaching format, by the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm talking to her on screen, but then we've got the rest of the members online as well, watching this happen. And they're jumping in the chat going, "yeah, yeah, me too, me too. Tell us how we need to be more efficient. I need to be more efficient too. I'm so inefficient." And so everybody was really getting on board with this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I asked her. What are you meaning by efficient here? And her definition of efficient was when I've read an article I want my notes to be good enough that I don't have to go back to it over and over again to find the stuff I need, I've got my notes. And when I write, you know, I know I have to do drafts first and stuff but I don't want to be editing it 47, 000 times I want to know enough that I write it to a level that will need some editing, but that I won't have to do tons and tons of rewrites too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And everyone's in the chat going, "yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, tell us how to do this, Vikki, tell us how to do this." And it was one of those moments where I had to break to them that what they were desiring was the wrong thing. It's completely understandable that we want to be efficient. In fact, people are telling us we need to be efficient all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if your definition of efficient is only reading things once or twice because your notes are so good and only having two or three iterations of writing because you're writing so good Then what you're actually doing is making yourself enormously inefficient because when you come to do the thing, you come to read the paper, write the notes, start the drafts, all you can hear in your head is, this has got to be good or I'll be wasting time. I've got to get all the notes down that I need or I'll be wasting time and then what we end up doing is spending four hours reading a single research article which is only going to contribute to one or two sentences of our introduction but we need to make sure we've got everything we need to be efficient. Or we procrastinate writing because I can't start writing until I know exactly what the structure should be and exactly what I want to say, because that would be inefficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's such an understandable response to uncertainty and time pressure and high workloads and all that stuff that you guys are struggling with. And by the way, this isn't just a PhD student thing. I see this with academics saying this too. You know, I only have an hour a week to write, so I have to be efficient. I have to use my time perfectly. But that's not efficient. Asking yourself for perfect notes and asking yourself for excellent first drafts is not efficient. What it is instead is denying the very research process that we need to be engaging with. Let's take reading as an example. When you read an article at the beginning of your research project, you're reading it with your naive, uninformed, open and intelligent, but not very kind of knowledgeable brain on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so the stuff you need from the article then is completely different than the stuff you need from it when you've read around the literature, you've got a really good overview and understanding and you've got much more nuanced questions now. It's completely different than what you need from it when you're deciding on your methodology and you just need to look at that bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's completely different than the stuff you need when you're trying to interpret your results and you don't understand why it's showing what it's showing. Every time you read an article, you're reading it for a different reason. And if you, at the very beginning of your research project, are trying to anticipate every possible thing you might need from this paper, it's just a losing battle. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a waste of time. But you're doing it with a beginner brain instead of coming back and doing it with an expert brain later. The efficient thing to do is to read the article for the purpose you need to read it right now and keep a record of where that article is. So that later, when you need to read it with your more educated, more informed brain or with a specific goal in mind, you know where to find it, right? But you don't have to make notes that cover all of those eventualities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The same is true with writing. When we put pressure on ourselves that we have to have a good first draft or I'm going to spend forever editing, what happens is you instead spend forever reading and faffing about and not getting on with doing your writing because you don't quite know enough yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, that's the inefficient bit. Not starting writing is the inefficient bit. Not just because it will get you going, but more importantly, because writing is part of the thinking process. I'm going to say that again because it is absolutely crucial. Writing is part of the thinking process. Writing is not something you do in order to record your kind of final, perfect thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Writing is a tool that you use to work out what your thoughts are anyway, to work out what you do understand and what you don't understand and what you actually think about it anyway. Cause there's nothing like seeing it written on a piece of paper or on your document for you to go, Oh yeah, I really don't understand that concept. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do I? Or, Oh, actually, yeah, I do think that I have an opinion about this. So what the most efficient thing to do is, is start writing immediately. Not with the intention of any of that text being in your final article, but with the intention of that text helping you learn to write, helping you figure out what you're thinking, helping you keep track of what you're reading, and what thoughts you have about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to give you an analogy from my own hobbies. You, those of you who know me know, I love a good hobby and I have all the stuff, all the hobbies at the moment, it's kind of collage and abstract art and lino printing and gelli printing. That's exciting. I'm getting distracted, focus Vikki. But I used to get really cross that I wasn't better at art. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I do stuff and it wouldn't be that great. And I'd look at other people's and I'd be like, oh, that's disappointing. And then I realized the problem was I was. Trying to paint a painting where anybody who's good at art knows that way before you paint a painting you do like 50 different little squiggles of what might it look like and a page of 10 pages of like what colors might I use together and what happens if I do this and what shapes do I like over here and what materials might I use that's why it's so fascinating to look at like real artists sketchbooks and stuff because you can see where all this stuff came from. My uncle gave me an amazing book about architecture sketches and seeing these like incredible rough sketches of buildings that ultimately became these incredible architectural detailed drawings but seeing them at that very early stage. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's the process. It wasn't inefficient for that architect to not start with a technical drawing. You know, that's the equivalent. We think when we go, I want to start with a good first draft. It's like, Oh, well, I want to design a building. Better get into my building computer program, whatever architects use. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and start drawing up some architectural plans. They don't do that. They just grab a sketchbook or a virtual sketchbook and start squiggling. There might be a little tower here and some doors over there. They come up with concepts and they come up with loads of them. And that's how they figure it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If there's any architects listening, I apologize for that very un technical explanation, but hopefully the analogy works. So what I want you to do is recognize that a lot of the things that you are calling inefficient are actually the process. They are actually research. Making mistakes is not inefficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Making mistakes is part of the process. Going down a way and then realizing that you're wrong or that the argument doesn't stand up. isn't inefficient. It's research. That means we've eliminated that version or we've come up with an argument as to why and now we're going to do this version instead. This isn't inefficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I can be really, really frank with you, regular listeners, you're used to this. Everybody else, remember it comes from love. If I can be really frank with you, the bit that's inefficient is you keep telling yourself you have to do it perfectly. It's inefficient to keep telling yourself you're not good enough to do this. It's inefficient to tell yourself that at some unspecified point in the future you're going to know enough to do this well. It's inefficient to keep telling yourself that your supervisor's useless and everything's awful and if only things were better you'd be able to do this really well. That's a bit harsh. That is not making excuses for bad supervisors. If you have a bad supervisor, find my podcast episode about how to deal with a toxic supervisor and check it out. This is not that. But when we use up our brains on worrying about us not being good enough. That's the inefficient bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we go and do some pointless bit of, like, color coding or labeling or scrolling on social media because we're not ready to write yet, that's the inefficient bit. If you want to be efficient, I prefer the word effective, but if you want to be efficient, you want to get stuff done in the timescale you want to do it in, the best thing you can do is get on with it imperfectly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that's inefficient is spending more time looking for answers in other people's writing instead of in your own brain. I am, once again, I always have to put my, my caveats in. I'm once again saying, not saying, you don't need to read. Of course, I'm not saying you don't need to read. Of course you need to read but if you don't know what argument you're going to make or you don't know how you're going to write something and you are looking for the solution in somebody else's article you are looking in the wrong place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You need to read that stuff but the answers to what you're going to write are in your brain and you just need to decide them. So stop being inefficient by looking for your answers outside of yourself. Do your research, read the stuff, but then spend time in your own brain making decisions about what argument it is that you're making in your article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other, here's a little bonus one for you. The other thing I see when people are focused on being efficient is that they don't engage with some of the extras that are on. They don't find time to come to coaching sessions they have access to. They don't find time to go to research group seminars or to just hang out in the department and chat to people. They don't find time to talk to other people about their research because they need to be efficient. They need to use it. I haven't got much time for this PhD. I need to fit it all in. I need to focus on the important stuff. Sometimes those connections are the most efficient thing you can have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are certainly the most effective thing you can have. When during the pandemic, I really limited myself in terms of how much time I spent talking to staff because I had so much to do. It backfired horribly. It meant I was out of touch with how people were doing. It meant I was miserable. It meant I wasn't getting the support I needed. I wasn't giving the support that I was able to give. My attempt to be efficient made everything work less well. If you are missing the social community things because you're like, Oh, I don't really have time. I should probably just get on with my writing. Please reconsider. The community will strengthen your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Having connections with others will give us the kind of strength and knowledge and feeling of relatedness that we need in order to complete our work and to enjoy our experiences. Being efficient is not about knowing what the most important things are and only doing those and never doing anything outside them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Being efficient is getting on with tasks that are core parts of your research. And that's talking to people, telling people about your research, writing reams of drafts that will never do anything other than clarify your brain and making notes on papers that are what you need to know from that paper right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's stop aiming for this kind of clinical structured sort of efficiency and go for the kind of efficiency that makes up this actual messy fun academic process. I hope that's useful. I think it's crucial. I am so grateful to the student who bought it to my group coaching sessions. I know everybody in the room really needed to hear the conversations that we had about it. I know they got a lot out of it and have already been telling me about the ways it's changed their practice. Make sure you let me know To, um, if you're on my newsletter, you can always send me an email. Let me know how you've applied the stuff you've learned in the podcasts. If you have any questions, just email me too, and I will answer them in future episodes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 24 Mar 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-29-how-to-stop-wasting-time-by-trying-to-be-too-efficient thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-28-how-to-overcome-your-fear-of-presenting-with-special-guest-author-linda-ugelow <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> If you dread presentations, or would just like to be a bit more confident when speaking, then this episode is for you! Linda Ugelow, author of Delight in the Limelight, is talking about why so many of us struggle with public speaking and what we can all do to improve. If you listen carefully, you’ll also find out what happened when I was live on stage in a wetsuit too &#55357;&#56842;  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> You can find out all about Linda <a href="https://www.lindaugelow.com/" target="_blank"> here </a> or follow her on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@lindaugelow" target="_blank"> TikTok </a> , <a href="https://www.facebook.com/linda.ugelow/" target="_blank"> Facebook </a> , <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindaugelow/" target="_blank"> LinkedIn </a> , or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/lindaugelow" target="_blank"> YouTube </a> .  </div> <div> You can also buy her book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delight-Limelight-Overcome-Realize-Dreams-ebook/dp/B095XP74M9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2LM68LLJO79LW&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.I8G038PLAAlj0Gnu_KYDeg.R32EN9m3a9kztX0kO9LjY6cYS7OHOfOl97viDoS1_-Y&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Delight+in+the+Limelight%3A+Overcome+Your+Fear+of+Being+Seen+and+Realize+Your+Dreams&amp;qid=1741269874&amp;sprefix=delight+in+the+limelight+overcome+your+fear+of+being+seen+and+realize+your+dreams+%2Caps%2C151&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank"> Delight in the Limelight </a> or find it on Audible.  </div> <div> You can get her <a href="https://lindaugelow.com/rituals/" target="_blank"> Speaker Preparation Checklist </a> to feel grounded, focused, and energized when you speak.   </div> <div> If you want a giggle, you can also watch my FameLab <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHNRYorOjNs" target="_blank"> disaster video </a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg84u1T1mOM" target="_blank"> my response </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach podcast. And this week we have a guest author with us. So welcome Linda Ugelow, the author of Delight in the Limelight, who is an expert in all things presentations and overcoming your fears of speaking in public. So welcome Linda.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Thank you for having me, Vikki.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, it's exciting to have you here. Tell people a little bit more about yourself and how you came to write a book about this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I became an online coach back in 2014 or so, and when it came time after I built my website and I decided I was going to help people overcome stress in their lives, I had to put myself out there. And all the marketing gurus at the time said there was this amazing new technology called live streaming. And there was this app called Periscope. And what they said is, you got to get on every day. And I thought. Okay. I'm going to get on every day to build my following. What they didn't tell me was it was terrifying. And every day my heart was pounding like a caffeinated race horse, but I figured, you know, after a few weeks I'll feel better and I'll Google how to get over my nerves and I'll utilize deep breathing and power poses and meditation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And I'll reframe my mind. To like pretend it's excitement and not to think about me, but to think about the audience. And sure enough, I got to day 75, 10 weeks later, daily broadcasting. And my heart is still racing like a caffeinated racehorse. And I'm thinking, what is going on? You know what, you know, why hasn't all this experience, this daily live streaming gotten me to a place of feeling confident. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And I realized that I'm managing it okay. With all those things I mentioned. But I didn't want to have to manage it. I didn't want to have any fear at all to have to manage. So I decided that day I'm going to get rid of the fear. And I had background in expressive arts therapy, a psychology background, movement, like dance movement therapy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And I thought, I'm sure I've got the answer to this. The first thing I decided to do before I got rid of it was to investigate it. I thought, what is this fear anyway? So I closed my eyes and I asked if the fear could talk, what would it say? And what came back was you're going to be attacked.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, wow.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And all of a sudden I thought, wow, have I been attacked? And what thought, Oh my gosh, I have. In fact, my sisters used to attack me all the time. When? Whenever my mom put me in the center of attention saying, why can't you girls be more like Linda? Cause I was the good girl. I saw the punishment my sisters got, and I decided that was never going to happen to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: So I became the goody, goody, I never got punished by mom, but I did get punished by my sisters. for having my mother's favor. Then it hit me, duh, so I'm not comfortable being the center of attention, being on camera, or I was a performer on stage for, I think, over 30 years at that point with my Women's World Music Group. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Hated, hated having to introduce a song. No wonder why, because there was a part of me that remembered it was dangerous to be the center of attention, and then a light bulb went off in my mind. Maybe this is what the fear of speaking is all about. It's not about that nice audience that's encouraging us, but it's about those times that we had in the past that eroded our confidence that made us feel it wasn't safe to speak. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Now, in my case, with that particular memory, I was being elevated but it invited the jealousy of my sisters. They hated me for it. But I also had times that I was bullied when I was ignored by all the other kids at school. Times that my mom would say, why an A minus and not an A plus? You know, giving me this feeling I have to be perfect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm only laughing with that one. I'm only laughing because I empathize. So we have a running joke with my mum, thankfully it doesn't seem to have caused too much trauma, a running joke with my mum that I'd come home with a 98 percent on my science test and she'd asked me what happened to the other 2%. And I've asked her about it and she's like, what did you expect me to do? To be like, oh my goodness, you're so amazing. She's like, yeah, we'll talk about the other 2%.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Exactly. Yes. Give me some credit. That was a really, really good outcome.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: She was like, you got enough credit from getting a 98%. You didn't need more from me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Yeah. Well, these are the inadvertent slights. That we get and they may be minor and on the, on their own, they may not be sufficient to create this anxiety speaking, but when you have that, plus maybe an embarrassing experience in public, or you are hurt in some way, abused, you have, like, my father also told me he wasn't interested in what I, you know, what my thoughts and opinions were, he wasn't interested in the things I was interested in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: That led me to believe that what I had to say wasn't interesting and other people wouldn't feel that way either. So when you have these different items and stories and memories from your past, plus you know, those messages like silence is golden, children should be, you know, seen and not heard and don't stand out, keep your head down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: All of these things that are meant probably in some beneficial ways to help us get through life more successfully. You know, to create compliant children who are good and get good grades, those things don't necessarily translate and us feeling bold and being able to take risks and stand out and take up space because we're so busy going by the rules and trying to be good students and good kids that we don't realize it's working against us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure. And I loved your, the dedication of your book, the way you said it's to the speaker inside waiting to be set free. And I just, tell a bit more about why you chose that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Because I felt like I spent most of my life hiding. And I think that's the question I like to ask people. And I think we should ask ourselves is like " When did we decide it was safer to hide?" </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And yet there's a part of us that wants to be seen and heard. That's our nature. That is our human design. Children love being the center of attention, especially when it's, you know, positive one, like the first steps we take, or when we laugh and people laugh with us. Or think of about children at the playground hanging upside down saying, look, and it could be the 50th time that day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And they, they just love that positive regard at, but somewhere between then and later on, it all changes. We give that up for caution. So my dedication is to that person who, which I do think is most of us who really want to be seen, heard, valued, respected, feeling like we can participate fully in the lives that we are living and in the areas that we feel passionate about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So many of my listeners, almost all my listeners are either PhD students or academics. So they're working in that university world. And there they might have speaking that's teaching or it might be presenting to their research groups, or even externally at big conferences and all that sort of stuff. So there's loads of academia, as you know, that involves speaking to other people. So for the people who are listening, who really empathizing with the things you say. Where would you even start? Because most of the things you talked about at the beginning as not having worked for you, are the stuff that we're told most of the time, right? So, where would somebody who's struggling with this start? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I really believe that it is worthwhile to investigate the source of our speaking fear, because what happens is that unexamined, it continues to crop up. It's a trigger for, you know, past wounds and yes, we can manage it. And if you're only going to be speaking once in a while or if it doesn't bother you that much, it may not be as important, but if you do want to feel like this is not an obstacle for you, it's really worthwhile to say, where did I feel dismissed? What were my family relationships like with my parents, my caretakers, my siblings? My school relationships, were there any times in school that I felt rejected or dismissed or ridiculed in public? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Once we know what these issues are, we can then address them. What we want to be able to do is change our relationship to them. Because what happens is when we have these experiences, we think it means something about us. We ascribe meaning to it. And what we want to do is find a different meaning. Of how it sits inside our neurophysiology and in our memory so it's not activated. It's not sore. It's not a sore wound, but it's a healed wound. And we do that by forgiveness, by giving compassion and love and maybe understanding to our younger self who maybe didn't have the same resources that we have as an adult, it could just be a matter of journaling, it could be a matter of doing some forgiveness but to yourself and to other people who may have been involved, I love using a particular modality called emotional freedom technique, which people may know as tapping or EFT. I've just had wonderful results with it myself and with a lot of my clients. It's kind of a way of interrupting the pattern of how a memory or story lives inside us and opens us to a wider possibility, a bigger palette or canvas for that story to sit. And so it feels like, it has a right place in our life because truthfully, we're not going to get through life unscathed. Things are going to happen, but it's how we're able to look at them and address them and move on from them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: That allows us a sense of inner freedom. I feel like there's no shame in having stuff. We all have stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm. I find it fascinating. This is probably beyond the scope of how you deal with it now, but I find it fascinating the difference between whether these experiences kind of lodge themselves in you in that way or not. So, the listeners know that there's, there's a whole bunch of the stuff I talk about normally that I am still working through with. Procrastination, overwhelm, all that stuff, I am very much still working on myself with my clients, whereas public speaking is one, occasionally I get a bit nervous in a kind of like, oh, there's 4, 000 people out there kind of way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But beyond that is one that I've just I've never really had an issue with, yet I can think of a whole bunch of times. I mean, I was told to shut up and talk less pretty much my entire life. And I can think of a whole bunch of times that things have gone wrong on stage and stuff and it's interesting why these things lodge with some people and mean something, because I don't think it was anything clever or special that I did at the time that means it didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Like I said, it depends on the meaning, the meaning we ascribe to them. So I actually invite myself to make mistakes now and to mess up so that I get practice in handling them not only for myself, but so that I can model for other people. If we're somewhat amused by ourselves, it's not going to be an issue. But if we feel like it's about our self worth and it's about our ego and we're not valued valuable because of it. Someone's going to be angry at us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? I think for me, looking back, I knew I'd get told off but I think I generally entertained myself. I'm going to get told off, but I think I'm really funny. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: So that's what I mean by you feel amused by the mistake, that you have a way of handling it that you feel like your sense of self is intact. And, and that's where we want to get to. We want to feel like our sense of self is intact in spite of our imperfections. In spite of our mess, you know.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The listeners will know. There's a bunch of other imperfections that I have that I am very much still working on the not beating myself up about. It's just interesting in the kind of how some of them work out and in fact they're finding it amusing. I can't remember whether I've ever mentioned this on the podcast before but I did a competition called FameLab which is a sort of public communication of science competition and you have three minutes to talk, it doesn't have to be your research, but you have three minutes to talk about research in a way that's fun and engaging to the general population but you're not allowed slides so you can bring props if you want but you're not allowed to have a presentation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I took part in the local heats, and I won the local heats. And I went to the regional finals, and I won the regional finals. And then we had this training weekend and stuff, and the training weekend was amazing. People listening, if you haven't checked out FameLab, make sure you do, it's really good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then the final was in the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, so like a full, proper, like, big ass theatre with, I don't know how many people, hundreds of people. We were streaming live on the internet, my dad was in the audience, my then boyfriend was in the audience, mum was watching from her, you know, it was, it was a whole thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I had been way too ambitious about what I was trying to fit in this three minutes. Because normally when I'm presenting I'll make it up as like, you know. I'll, I'll have notes, but it won't be scripted. But this, I was like, I'm going to have to script it. Cause you know, three minutes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: It's three minutes and you can't go over. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I can't go over. Gotta be precise. And I had tried to jam too much in. That was my error really. And I got about halfway through, told a joke. Everybody laughed way more than I'd expected them to. I relaxed and enjoyed it. And then I had no idea what my next line was. And I was like. And I stood on stage, I was in a wetsuit for other reasons, and so I'm still on stage, it's like, this is like an actual stress dream. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm live on stage wearing a wetsuit in front of my family and I can't remember my words. And I then remembered and carried on, but I ran out of time. And they were really lovely in the questions and let me catch bits up and stuff. But I remember, I was a little bit mortified, but I decided to make a video about it afterwards, about the experience, why it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and doing the talk I wanted to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that, it was just a really interesting experience, because It really wasn't that awful. Even though, like, the worst thing that could have happened, pretty much, happened. And everyone was really nice about it. And nothing awful came afterwards, and I wasn't attacked, and it was just a re it was actually a really good experience. And that's why I wanted to share it afterwards so that other people could be like, you know, if this is what you're scared will happen, it can be okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Yes. Yes. I love that story because what it shows to me is that by your willingness to not hide it because of mortification, but to share it, it gave you the opportunity to really reflect on it. To make it into something that was positive as well as a good story. Cause I always make great stories and if we could only see it in that way, we would be much more content and happy and satisfied with the speaking that we do. So I think that, I think you have a wonderful handle on how to frame your own speaking experiences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: You know, it sort of reminds me right now I'm working on a speaker log and journal for this very thing. So like going into it, you can think through your mindset and how you want your attitude and why you're excited about it and what you're concerned about and, you know, lift, build yourself up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And then at the end, you can go back and do exactly what you did. What did I like about it? What do I wish was different? What do I want to remind myself for next time? And the idea behind it is that every speaking experience we have is an opportunity to grow in some way. And if we look at it through that lens of this is an opportunity for me to try something out, or this is an opportunity for me to just explore, what does it mean to be more myself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: What does it mean? If I let myself be a little more dynamic or whatever, or be more grounded. And this time I'm going to just feel my feet on the floor. I'm going to notice my, my breathing more so that I feel more relaxed or I speak more on my breath or, you know, any, any thing that you pick out and you say, this is my point of exploration and experimentation, then you see speaking more as a journey rather than a destination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And I love the thing of preparing beforehand, because I think people often they're preparing the content beforehand, right? And then they're thinking about managing their nerves when they're there doing it. But the idea of planning in advance what you want to be thinking and feeling and stuff as you go through why you're doing it and stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's yeah, that's such an interesting idea. And I also think that is something that's useful even for people who are confident, because one of the things I've noticed is I'm now so comfortable speaking that I'm sometimes a little slapdash with it that I'll be like I'll talk about this and I'll talk about that and I'll talk about that and it's like that'll be fine, happy days. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And someone gave me some advice a while ago that sometimes actually if you've got things that you're really strong at, rather than worrying about your weaknesses, getting amazing at the things you're strong at rather than alright, you know, I think I'm pretty good. I definitely don't think I'm like world leading. And so something like that, I think is, is actually really interesting, even for people who don't suffer from nerves, but who want to maximize their skills as a speaker.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Yes, that's it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So when people have sort of had some journaling they've done, you know, sort of delve back into their memories and things like that. Um, they've sort of maybe identified some things and you, you obviously talked through some techniques and we'll link to where you can get a copy of the book in the show notes for people who want to know more detail about that. What are things that people can do there and then in the moment to look after themselves if they're feeling scared. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Well, I think that in the moment is really not the place to start. I think it's beforehand. And there are many things that you can do beforehand. One of the most powerful things is mental rehearsal. And what I mean by mental rehearsal, I'm not talking about rehearsing what you want to say, but rehearsing how you want to feel and rehearsing how you want to express yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And when you imagine yourself feeling good and seeing yourself, let's say in front of classroom or in front of the jury, you know, for your thesis and your, you see how passionate you are and how happy you are and excited to share this body of of material with people. Then you are pre paving that experience to happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: If you do that 2 or 3 times before you speak. You're going to have so much more fun and you're going to feel more grounded in your speaking because when you get up there, you will be ready to be on. So, and that is part of the mental rehearsal is like, imagine yourself starting out, like, the walking to the front of the room, you know, what does that feel like? How do you want to feel and how do you want to see yourself, you know, grounded and confident and relaxed and excited or whatever it is, it'll be different for each person. So mental rehearsal is really, really important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Another thing that's very important is to warm up your body. Because you think that speaking is a mental thing. No, it's a physical thing. And if you are tight in your body, if you are, you know, anxious or jittery, you're going to want to move your body, stretch out, just feel a little looser and more open. Likewise with your voice, because your voice is your instrument of speech and a lot of people say, I'm not sure what's going to come out of my mouth. Well, that's why we warm up. No singer would get on stage without warming up their voice. No instrumentalist would start to play for a concert without warming up. It's like you want to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Again, with the neurophysiology, you want to get in that groove that you want to be in. So if you want a strong voice, if you want a resonant voice, open your mouth and if you may know some singing, you know, exercises, you can do those or just go, ah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so that you feel like when you open your mouth, you know what's going to come out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Well, one thing that I do is I love to take a line from whatever it is I'm going to say or likely to say, or maybe it can be anything else and I slow it down. So I'll speak a bit like this. And as I do it, I feel the back of my throat opening and I feel all the vowels sing because I want my voice to ring when my voice rings. First of all, it feels really good, but second of all, it's more articulate. People can hear and understand the words I'm saying rather than if I'm speaking a bit like this and I don't have much ring or my, my, it's just constricted in my throat. And it doesn't feel as good first of all, but it's also harder for people to hear and it limits my ability to be more dynamic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: So if you have resonance in your voice, you can speak more loudly. If you're like this and you try to get louder, it's going to be scratchier. Yeah. And it also limits our ability to use the melody of our voice. What we want to be able to do when we speak. And I think this adds a hundred percent to the fun that you can have when you speak is we want to feel like we have all of the notes available to us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: In order to describe what we want to say with the feeling that we have behind it, with how we want to emphasize certain words so that people really can understand, not just like if I was going to be very monotone in my dynamics, it might be like this and you can hear me, but after a while, your brain's going to get a little tired and you're not going to feel the same thing as if I'm really like being a tour guide with what I want to say by how I say it. And so this, this is, I think something that one can really have fun with and play with before either you're teaching or you're doing a presentation to practice with a sense of big expression, maybe even over the top expression, not to say that's how you have to present that, but it allows you to incorporate and see what is the extent of your personality here, because when you have a personality and you let it come through, people are going to really enjoy it and take in what you are talking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love this because I come from a science background, and this is just not stuff that we talk about. And I think this is the joy of having somebody who's got the sort of performance background that you have, and obviously all your sort of expressive therapy work and things. I think this more kind of artistic performance side to this is so useful for everybody. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: My sisters were the ones that did the performance stuff. I was very much on the sports pitch and definitely nowhere near a stage and definitely don't want me singing. So I have like no performance background to put to this at all. So are there any other examples of a quick exercise that somebody could do that would get their voice warmed up and enable them to kind of play with these melodies that you talk about?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: So, I'm thinking into my speaker green room, it's a program I have that I make videos where people can do these things alongside me, but I would, let's say, start with my body and I would shake things out, like shake my hands, shake my shoulders, shake my hips. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I would, rotate my joints around my neck to loosen up my neck, my shoulders. I might put on some music and dance a little bit just to kind of like raise my energy. I would then open my mouth and say things like blah, blah, blah. I've already given you a bunch of things that you can do, either saying words or just making sounds. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I would also allow myself to, after kind of like doing some big stuff like that, I would bring my mind into focus because I think it's important for us not to feel just like we're splattering ourselves out there, but that we need to have our brains focused. So I might do something where I just stand still. I might bring my fingers together and draw a line down from my head in front of my body and just like physically in envision, like bringing, bringing myself into alignment, you know, whatever that means. But I physicalized that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I might, there's something called pacing where it's from something called brain gym that I like to do where. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: You do something called cross crawl, which you lift up one knee and you touch it with your opposite hand. You lift up your other knee, you touch it. And the idea is that you are crossing your body across the midline and supposedly what they say they're doing is they're bringing both sides of your brain together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that when I do this, I feel more focused. There's something else where you can rub right underneath your collarbones and you put your other hand on your belly and this does a similar thing that just brings you into your body. Brings you into focus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I do feel like when I'm speaking. I like to remind myself to feel my feet on the floor, to feel my body relax. You can practice this by any time of the day, just doing a quick body scan and say, Oh, what's my body up to right now? What's my posture feeling like, where are my hands, where are my legs? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And when you do this repeatedly, it becomes part of your somatic awareness, and the more somatic awareness you have in your everyday life, the more you can bring it into your speaking. So like right now, while we're speaking, I feel my feet on the floor. I feel how my arms are moving through space. I feel the breath that I'm taking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I'm feeling the sound coming out of my breath. Now you don't, you don't occupy all these spaces all at once. You kind of layer. And that's what the fun is of the growth of becoming a more grounded speaker is that you can start in one place, start with your feet, start, then add your breath, then add your arms, then add the visuals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Like, where am I looking? Am I looking into the camera? Am I looking into people's eyes? What does it feel like to look at people's faces for years? Oh, my God. I was afraid to look into people's faces. I, I, I, it was like I had this resistance, but I added it on by experimenting. So this is what I recommend for people to do is to experiment like, what is my experience like? What do I like about my experience? What would be nice to add?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And it's so interesting hearing how intentional it all is, you're increasingly making me feel like I'm, I am getting by with some slightly misplaced confidence and charisma and not a lot of else. It's like, I have so much pleasure having people listening, even if they're, you know, they feel comfortable with talking, there's, there's so much here I think for everybody.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Me too, Vikki, you know, I feel like I, it's not like I feel like I have arrived. By any means, but I feel like I'm part of my journey, which is so different than 10 years ago when I was avoiding doing anything in public in that way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I was on stage as a dancer, singing with a group that was okay, but to get on stage like I do now and speak or to get on a podcast and talk like this. No way. I mean, it was like beyond my comprehension that I could do that because I had had some very negative experiences. Embarrassing experiences speaking and I did not come out of it the way you did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, I mean, you were talking about the dancing and singing that seriously, the idea, you know, we always take, take people on like team building things, whereas outdoor pursuits and stuff. And I'm fine. I'm there. I'm loving all of it. It's great. And other people like a fish out of water. I always say, if they did a team building exercise at work that involved me having to sing or dance on stage, I might actually die. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I once did a performance, which again, I'll link in the show notes, cause I'm super proud of it. An aerial silks performance in a community circus. And that is literally the only thing I've done since I was about 10. And the idea of doing that stuff. There will be a whole load of trauma in my past as to why that's so terrifying. So I, I very much empathize when I think about it and you know, I don't have it for speaking, but I have it for those, those other forms of performance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Yes. And you know, if those other places of performances are interesting to look at, if they're relevant in our life, because they also show us, well, where do I have, again, that inhibition? Where did it feel unsafe for me? Like, did I, did someone make a comment about my dancing ever?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, it's the sisters. Same as you, it's all about the sisters and one of them will will listen and laugh a lot. So Nicola, I'm talking to you right now. Anyway, I have one last question for you, which is thinking about that time after the talk. So same as we said, the bit before doing a talk often gets neglected, other than the actual rehearsal of the content, then you've got the doing of it. I think there's a really key period afterwards, and it sounds as though you do too. So what can people do after they've done a presentation that will make it? It's more likely that the next one will feel less scary.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: I think whenever it's possible, if we can have more speaking opportunities set up together rather than singularly, it's going to help us feel like it's more of a growth experience. So let's say you do have to present to a jury. If you can set up other experiences like that, several, before you have to do that one. That's going to help you. And each time, if you're looking at how can I grow with each one, that's going to set you up for better success for the highest stakes one. And even after that higher stakes one, if you can do something public afterwards with what you presented, do that, like set it up, go to the library or invite peers or other people from different departments to come and listen to you that or do a panel or something that extends the experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And then, as I mentioned, you know, in my, in the speaker log and journal, the kinds of things that we have is taking time to reflect and say, what did I like about that? What was great? What do I feel proud about? What do I wish was different? There're still going to be things. And if I want it to be different for next time, what can I do to make that happen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think there's something around generating compassion as well at that time, isn't there? One of the things I always talk about with my clients, you know, sometimes we're preparing for a viva or a job interview, all those sorts of things, is you don't have to believe it will go well, because we don't necessarily know whether it will or not. We can try and make it go well, but we don't know that it will, but we can decide in advance and afterwards that we're going to be kind to ourselves about how it goes, no matter how it goes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Yes. Absolutely. I'm really glad you brought that up. One of the prompts in the journal is I forgive myself for, yeah, yes. And the other thing to remember is that oftentimes imperfection is more relatable. And I can't tell you how many times when I've made, I mentioned making mistakes on purpose or not on purpose necessarily, but allowing for them every time that's happened. People have always come up to me and thanked me for showing what to do when I forget what to say or when I put up a slide and I didn't know what it was, you know, was there for, and I admitted it to the audience and then it turned out, you know, everybody laughed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: And I even got a client from that one time because they said that was my favorite part. So we shouldn't try to avoid our imperfection. Just know that it makes us relatable. So allow yourself space to be relatable and not always be so perfect. We don't want perfect people all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thank you so much. We will link to where people can get copies of the book in the show notes and everything. Is there anywhere else? Are you on social media or anything like that? If people want to know more, where can people find out about you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linda: Well, I'm Linda Ugelow everywhere, U G E L O W, but I would love to be able to share like a checklist of these preparation rituals because I think it's good to have it in mind. And you can get that at LindaUgelow.com/rituals.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Perfect. I will link that all in the show notes and I'm sure lots of people will check it out. Thank you so much for coming today, Linda. I really appreciate it. I think that is super useful information that I'm going to be trying to take on board. And I know for people who find presentations deeply stressful, that's going to be super useful. So thank you. everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 17 Mar 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-28-how-to-overcome-your-fear-of-presenting-with-special-guest-author-linda-ugelow thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-27-how-to-do-it-all-a-listener-q-a-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> In this episode I answer three questions from listeners on different topics, but that are all loosely connected to the idea that we want to be able to “do it all”. I give Julia some tips on writing up a PhD with small children, I advise Susan on how to prepare for her comprehensive exams, and I give Sajini some ideas about managing overwhelm when balancing writing up with working as an international student. Interestingly, these are all topics that I don’t have direct experience of, but stay with me as I apply our mindset principles to these very real challenges.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-8-how-to-prepare-for-your-viva" target="_blank"> How to prepare for your viva </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. Today I'm going to be answering questions from you, the listeners. I have three people who have submitted questions about doing their PhD while parenting, dealing with the anxiety to do with examinations. And balancing work and PhD as a part time student, even if none of those specifically resonate with you, there is stuff in here that is going to be relevant for all of you, I promise. So stick with it. If you have questions that you want me to answer in the future, do make sure that you send them on in. If you're on my newsletter, you can just reply to that each week. And if you're not on my newsletter, why not check out my website, the phdlifecoach. com and you can join the newsletter right there from the front page. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alternatively, if you're listening to this on podcast, there should be a question, send Vikki a question box. If you do that, make sure you tell me your name because otherwise I won't be able to shout you out when I answer your question. You can send me questions that way. Or if you're watching this on YouTube, use the comments down there and I will answer them in a future episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before I get any further into the episode, while I remember. Are you guys on Instagram? If you're on Instagram, please follow me. I'm starting to build more of a presence over there. I'm sharing advice and tips and general motivation and cheering on. And somehow in a weird world, I have more people on my newsletter or my podcast than I do on my Instagram. So if you're not following me, I am at the PhD life coach. Please follow me. Please. Retweet, that's not Instagram, reshare, you know, post, share my reels, comment, do all that good stuff that means that your fellow PhD students and academics will also find me too. I would really appreciate it if you can help me out with that. And in return, you get that daily dose of motivation, inspiration, tips, and hints. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, let's go with the questions. My first question comes from Julia, and she asks, Is it possible for you to ,talk about writing up your PhD while also being a parent to small children, without going crazy, in her words. So it's PhD, last month of writing, having two small children, both under five. Now, the first thing I'm going to say, I don't have children. I have stepdaughters, but they didn't come into my life until they were teenagers. I definitely did not have children when I was doing my PhD. And you might say that means that I've got no kind of grounds to give advice from, and I certainly don't have grounds in a do it like me kind of way. However, think that you can still really apply lots of the mindset stuff that we talk about to this specific challenge, even if you haven't experienced it yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And to be honest, I have unbelievable respect for anybody who is trying to do their PhD alongside a family, whatever age your children are, balancing those different really important roles is something that it's, it's inherently difficult. So I want you all first of all, Julia, you particularly, to start by giving yourself a massive congratulations and a massive amount of understanding that this isn't that you're not good enough here. This isn't that you're bad at this. This is an inherently difficult thing to balance. Okay? That's not to say we're not going to try and improve the way we're thinking about it, the way we're managing it, or anything like that. But when we can start from that place of compassion, the kind of problem solving becomes a lot easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the next thing I'd say is it's really important who you're comparing yourself to. And this is going to be true for lots of you, not just parents. Often what happens is we simultaneously compare ourselves to somebody who is doing their PhD full time with no dependents, who's potentially fully funded, somebody who's in a very different situation and we see what they're doing and what they're achieving and we think, Oh my goodness, I'm not doing it like them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But then we also look at parents who are perhaps not working outside the home or certainly not doing PhDs and think, Oh, I'm not being a parent like them. And this is where you're being really unfair to yourself by comparing yourself to two essentially 24 hour jobs, the PhD student who's doing not other things, there's 24 hours there, this parent who's not doing 24 hours there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're trying to tell yourself that you should be able to live up to both of those people when in reality you've only got half the time that they have. So we get to be really careful about who we're comparing ourselves to. What we want to get to is a place where we can say I am doing. a really good job at being a parent who's doing a PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, a PhD student who's parenting. The way we do that, instead of setting ourselves completely unattainable targets of doing all the things they're doing and all the things they're doing, is we get to identify what are meaningful metrics for ourselves. And this is true whatever you're trying to balance. I used to work with a lot of people who were balancing, being elite athletes with academics, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The same is true there. Some of you may be doing part time work. We'll talk about that more in detail later on. But a lot of you will be balancing other things alongside your studies. We get to decide what are the meaningful metrics for us. And we can do that in our PhD, our professional lives, and we can do that in our personal lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want to ask you, Julia, as a PhD student, what are the most meaningful metrics for you? And a lot of that will depend on why you chose to do a PhD. Did you just need the qualification for the progress that you wanted to make? Is it a passion project about this particular topic? Are there specific skills that you wanted to learn? If we can get back to our why, then we can prioritise what the meaningful metrics are for us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because lots of people will have lots of opinions about what makes a good PhD student, a good academic, whatever stage of your career you're at. But only you get to decide which are the things that are most meaningful to you. Do you just need to get this qualification done? Do you want to have publications? Is widespread networking and connections important to you? Is public outreach and engagement and impact important to you? And you might say all of those things are important, but based on the why behind your career, you get to choose which ones you're going to prioritize at the moment and make those your meaningful metrics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does that mean that you will sometimes be disappointed that you need to say no to things that could be an amazing opportunity? Yes, absolutely. But you get to decide what those meaningful metrics are. And remember, I say metrics as though they all have to be super measurable. It could be, and it is often the case for many people, that what is most important to you is that you love your topic, is that you love doing the research and being part of that research community. That can be your meaningful metric. You can decide that, you know what, I am not going to spend time chasing down every single bit of funding, every possible publication, but I do want to engage in departmental seminars and talk about intellectual stuff and make space and time for collaborative discussions. Okay, when you decide your meaningful metrics, you can put those in the diary first.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The same is true on the parenting side of things. What are your meaningful metrics for parenting? Do you definitely want to be there for bedtime every night? Is that important to you? Do you always want to eat as a family? Do you want to be the mom or dad, who turns up at all the school events? Do you want to be on the, you know, the parents committee and providing cakes for all the cake stalls. Do you want to always be the one that drives them to their activities? Whatever it might be, what are the meaningful metrics for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again, it might be lovely to do all of those things, but some of them will feel more non negotiable than others. Now, with all of these, whether it's your academic side or your parenting side, I want you to also really ask yourself where those choices come from. Do they come genuinely from your true heart and beliefs, or are they influenced by the people around you, the things you see online? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because what we want to separate when we're choosing these meaningful metrics, we want to separate the kind of shoulds from the I actually want to and I actually think it's important. And then we can narrow it down to a much smaller range of non negotiables, much smaller things that you're committing to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then from there, we think about our thoughts. We think about what we tell ourselves when we say, Oh, I, you know, I haven't been to their school play. We say no. I know, but that's not the bit I decided that makes me a good parent. The bit that makes me a good parent is that I'm there for bedtime so they can tell me about their day. That we spend time together on the weekend, whatever it might be. It might be that your meaningful metric is spending time actually with them and engaging with them. Even if that's only a shorter amount of time, rather than being present but not really present because you're worrying about other things or doing your work or whatever. There's no right answer to these meaningful metrics other than you get to choose them for reasons that you like and then you have your own back about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing I would add in is remember for all of you, you are not just an academic and a parent, you are not just your roles, you are also first and foremost a human being in your own right. And so when you're working out your meaningful metrics, I would really encourage you to also think about what are your meaningful metrics for you as an individual person that is separate from your PhD or your academic career, that is separate from your parenting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What is your kind of minimum commitment to yourself? Whether that's something you go and do once a week outside the home, whether it's a period of time that you need to transition from one role into another, or what you do at bedtime, or what it might, whatever it might be. What's the meaningful metric that means that you're looking after you as an individual? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't have to be perfect at any one bit of this. We don't even have to be perfect in our attempt to pull it all together. We just have to be doing our best to hit the things that we think are important. The few prioritised things that we think are important. And we have compassion for ourselves and each other when that doesn't go exactly to plan. If we can prioritize like that, we can look at it in the round and go, you know what? All of those things considered, I'm doing a pretty good job </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My second question comes from Susan and she has comprehensive exams coming up. So I have a really international audience. Those of you in the US and some other countries will know exactly what I mean. Others will not. Comprehensive exams are usually the culmination of the first few years of a PhD. So in North America, for example, PhDs are typically longer than here in the UK. They start out with more structured courses, with coursework associated with them. The comprehensive exams are usually the bit that are the transition from those taught courses into being able to start your dissertation. They're structured very differently. Most places in the UK don't have them. But even across North America, they're structured differently between different institutions. But even if you don't have those sorts of exams, the advice that I'm going to give Susan today is relevant to any kind of upcoming stressful thing that you've got. So maybe you've got a presentation to do, or maybe it's even your viva , it's relevant across all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Susan's question was, how do I get over the anxious feeling of comprehensive exams? I have no clue. My professor explained it and the questions he asked as a simple trial, scared the living out of me. They've now been pushed to the full. There goes my summer. Okay. The first thing to say, same as with Julia, I want you to recognize this is stressful. It's okay to be anxious about something that you haven't done before. That is completely normal. Sometimes, you know, you're talking about wanting the anxious feeling to go away. We don't have to make the anxious feeling go away. It's understandable to be anxious. But what we get to do is we get to decide how we're going to look after ourselves through that anxiety. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the first thing we're going to look out for is where we're making it more anxiety inducing than we need to. Now, one of the things I noticed in the question is a lot of drama around this, which is understandable. We all do this, right? I want you to think in your own examples where you add drama to stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you talked about having no clue and it scared the living out of you that your summer is over now because of this. There's a lot of what we call all or nothing thinking there, where you know absolutely nothing, you definitely can't do it, your summer is definitely over. And the problem with all or nothing thinking is it feels terrible and it's almost always not true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't believe you when you tell me you have no clue about your exams. You may feel like you have no clue, you may be telling yourself you have no clue, but I think you know some stuff about it. Okay, and when we keep this all or nothing thinking, we don't give ourselves the opportunity to find that grey area where, okay, I know some stuff. Okay, maybe my summer's not ruined, but there is going to be these challenges. We don't allow ourselves to find that kind of nuanced area that is actually probably much more accurate. If you know you experience all or nothing thinking a lot, I have a whole episode about how to recognize all or nothing thinking and what to do about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this case, let's look at them in turn. So first of all, I highlighted this idea that you have no clue. Is that true? Is it really true? One of the tools that you can use to help yourself with that, again I have a whole episode on, is called a Do No Don't No list. I want you to grab a piece of paper, divide it in half, write on one side I do know, one side I don't know, and I want you to really brainstorm about these exams. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What do you know about them already? What do you know about how you prepare, and what they expect, or what topics might come up? What do you know factually? What actually are you able to answer questions on? And then at the same time, I want you to be writing on the other side the things you don't know. What are you not sure of? What areas of your research are you less confident on? Because when we give ourselves that I've got no clue, there's nowhere really to go for that. Where do we even start? But if we can get ourselves to, okay, you know what, I do know these things. There's these factual things I don't know about how they work or how to prepare for them or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's these topics I'm okay, confident on, need a bit of a refresh, but they're not too bad. There's these topics I really struggle with. Suddenly we get to a place where we can actually move forward, we can action plan from here. Suddenly it becomes me, you, and this small thing, rather than just, I have no clue what's going on. Again, I'll link the episode, uh, for the do know, don't know list in the show notes for you as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What that then allows us to get from is going from, I've got no idea. This is all gonna be terrible not to, this will be fine. Okay, most people think we need to get to this will be fine. I don't feel anxious, but that's not plausible for most people and it feels so far away that we don't even try and get partway where I want you to get to is I can figure this out and I can look after myself if this is hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? Those are two really important places. Let's take them one at a time. So, I can figure this out. We're not telling ourselves we know everything. We're not telling ourselves we're ready for these exams. If these exams aren't until fall and autumn, then you're probably not ready. But that's okay, because they're not till autumn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? So, telling yourself you'll be fine, we don't know you'll be fine, and we don't know you know everything, so let's not bother telling ourselves that bit. But I do know you can figure this out. I do trust that you are somebody who can identify the things you need to know, and you can get a long way to knowing a lot of them. So we get to tell ourselves, I can figure this out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also get to tell ourselves, I can look after myself when this is hard. Because again, if we tell ourselves that we're going to somehow become so amazing, it's not going to be hard, and that if it's hard, it's a problem. Then It's just not really true, is it? You're doing something difficult. Doing a PhD is difficult. Having an academic career is difficult, whatever context you're applying this to. These things are difficult, but that doesn't mean they have to be unpleasant. So, if you know that you're going to have a period of time where you're going to be studying for these exams, how do we make that okay for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is where we go into boss mode. Those of you who have done my Be Your Own Best Boss course will know about this. If you haven't, check it out on my website. It's a self paced course that you can just buy for yourself. If you can go into boss mode and make sure that you're doing a appropriate amount of work, that it's clearly defined tasks, that you are supporting yourself logistically through that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you can decide how you want to speak to yourself through this process, then you can make something that is going to be difficult much less unpleasant. You can do challenging things by virtue of the fact you're in an academic career, you've done challenging things before. If you can be careful and caring to yourself while you do these difficult things, suddenly they're enormously less intimidating and you can feel supported while you get them done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Remember also, if you struggle to apply that stuff to yourself all the time, that you kind of know that you want to structure your time a bit more, you kind of know that you shouldn't criticize yourself so much, but you find yourself falling back into old habits, that's completely normal. That's why most people need ongoing support with this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My membership program is going to open back up at the end of april 2025. So if you're listening to this before that, you can get yourself on the waiting list. Doesn't commit you to anything, but it means that you will find out all the information as we go along. So where you've got something where you're like, you know what? I want to learn how to support myself to do hard things, but I'm struggling doing it on my own. Come on into the membership. Let us support you because we have a whole community of people who are all trying to learn the same things alongside you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My third question comes from Sajini, who says that she's working part time, she's doing her PhD at the same time, and she's feeling really overwhelmed with her material, she's feeling really overwhelmed with balancing both of those things, and she's very worried about the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And to add on top of this, she's an international student, which is bringing her a whole bunch of complications that she feels are kind of heightening this experience of feeling overwhelmed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As with the others! Let's just recognize that doing a PhD or working in academia overseas, away from the place that you grew up, is a challenging thing to do. It can be super exciting, don't get me wrong, super fun, loads of amazing opportunities, but it is inherently challenging and it's challenging in ways that we often don't think about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We often think about the big things to do with visas and funding and language and all those complications, but sometimes it can just be as simple as not understanding the difference between certain brands of food. I remember a good friend of mine, I don't know whether I've told this story on the podcast before, a good friend of mine is Dutch and when she was first over here she was just so frustrated because she didn't know which was a good brand of ketchup, for example, and she'd find herself in the supermarket just wanting to make some simple decisions and just not knowing which brands she liked and it was just one more thing to think about. For other people, it will be things like cultural norms, like understanding what time to turn up for things, what's considered too early, what's considered too late, things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How close do you stand to somebody? How direct can you be in your communication? Some of you will find that you're expected to be a lot more direct than you're culturally comfortable with. So you're having to choose between doing something that you feel is rude and doing something that gets misunderstood. Others will find the other way around that your way of communicating is considered too direct and is considered rude by the people around you. And so you're having to kind of hedge what you say in ways that feel ridiculous so as not to be judged by others. There's a whole bunch of cultural considerations that happen when you're working away from where you grew up. Okay. So let's give ourselves some credit here. You're balancing a lot of things. Being a part time student is a big enough balance. And then when you throw being an international student on top of it, it's not surprising that this feels difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So where I want to go first is to give yourself a load more credit. And again, I have a whole episode on being more proud of yourself, but I want you to recognize all the things that you're doing here. Often the overwhelm comes from focusing on all the things we haven't done and all the things we're not good at. We can work on not telling ourselves those things. But another way is to squeeze it out with the positives. Is to squeeze it out by recognizing how amazing it is that you're doing the things you're doing. And you can get really specific here, really specific about exactly what you are proud of. You're proud of the friends you've made where you are, you're proud of the fact that you've got through your first year, whatever it may be. You're proud of the fact that you have now got a favourite ketchup in the country that you're working in, and that is one decision you will always be able to make. You can be proud of all the big things and the small things, and the more we spend time telling ourselves those things, the more we believe that we can get past the next set of obstacles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next thing that I would say is that when you feel overwhelmed, a key thing is to have tasks that you can grab and move forward. So often when we're overwhelmed, we think we need whole new systems. We need a whole new approach. We need to do things differently. Usually it means we need to pick a thing that we need to do and get it done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, preferably an important thing, not just like little admin tasks. We need to have something that we can say, you know what? If I'm overwhelmed, I work on this document. I work on this manuscript. Let's go. Okay, and we try and break those things down into achievable chunks. Again, if you find that hard, I'm referring you to lots of other podcasts today, but there's a wealth of info for you. I also have an episode about breaking things down into chunks. If we can say, okay, I haven't got to think about all of that job, all of this academics, all of my, you know, missing people from home, all that stuff. Here's one thing I can do this thing. That can really help us to manage overwhelm. One thing, do that one thing. And when your brain's telling you you should be doing the other things, this is the thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other tool that can really help with that is role based time blocking, which again, I've talked about in another episode, but especially when you are managing part time, so you're doing your PhD and doing something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And to be honest, Julia, this one's for you too, because this is really useful for parenting as well, is get really clear which role you are in at any one time. So in this hour, I am in writing mode. I am not thinking about things to do with my job. I'm not thinking about stuff I need to do for my family back home. I'm in writing mode. In this hour, I'm in parenting mode. In that hour, I'm working for my job, whatever it might be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can get really clear of which role we're in, then we can use that to nudge our brains. When our brains say, Oh, yeah, yeah, but you actually also need to do X. Or, Oh, yeah, yeah, you actually need to do Y. You go, I do. But not right now, because I'm in writing mode right now. I'm in parenting mode right now. Or I'm in part time work mode right now. Okay? So you get to decide when you're in which roles, how much time you're willing to give to each of those different roles. And use that as a way of managing the thoughts that are constantly telling you you should be doing something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that that was useful for you all. If you have questions, either about anything I talked about today, or if you have new questions that you think I haven't done an episode on yet, then do let me know in the ways I said at the beginning. Maybe I will answer yours next time. Thank you to Julia, to Susan, to Sajini for sending their questions in. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 10 Mar 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-27-how-to-do-it-all-a-listener-q-a-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-26-how-to-look-after-yourself-when-conducting-emotionally-distressing-research <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> &lt; <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> All research can be stressful but if your topic is inherently distressing, it becomes even more important to look after your own wellbeing.  </div> <div> In today’s episode, I welcome Dr Tina Skinner and Sarah Warbis who are experts in researcher wellbeing. They talk about how researchers can support themselves and, even more importantly, what support institutions should be putting in place to ensure that those conducting research in distressing topics get the help they need. Whatever your topic, there is useful advice about caring for your own wellbeing.  </div> <div> *Please note that there is a brief mention of some distressing topics from the start.* </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <a href="https://www.bath.ac.uk/projects/the-researcher-wellbeing-project-rwp-addressing-researcher-distress-trauma-and-secondary-trauma/" target="_blank"> The Researcher Wellbeing Project </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=Ij1-N6FOLUKwrY_MiUBrnt81tb08TOtCupphEawJv7hUNk5CTjBYNzBGTjg4UllPQThWWUNIN0RHTC4u" target="_blank"> Join the Researcher Wellbeing Group  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might also be interested in this new research by <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/sportex/quinton-mary" target="_blank"> Dr Mary Quinton </a> on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482631.2025.2464380#abstract" target="_blank"> Best practices for supporting researchers’ mental health in emotionally demanding research across academic and non-academic contexts </a> . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hi everyone, just a quick interjection before we start. Today's episode is about researcher wellbeing, and particularly researcher wellbeing when you are researching distressing topics. I think will be relevant to everybody regardless of what you research but the nature of the topic is that we will be mentioning early on examples of the types of research that people may find distressing. That means there's going to be mentions of things that some of you may find triggering or distressing or that you may want to think about what little ears you've got around you while you're listening to this episode. We don't go into lots of detail, the focus is very much on how we support researchers doing this sort of work, but I didn't want those things to come as a surprise to you. I hope you find this episode as valuable and important as I think it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and this week we have a particularly important topic. Now, those of you who listen regularly know that most topics to do with PhDs and academia, I'm willing just to witter on and give you my views and opinions, but this topic has come up a few times and it was something that I felt I wasn't in a good place to talk about. And that is how we look after researchers when they're doing emotionally challenging research. So I have two expert guests with me instead, who can give us their views and advice on all the ways that we can look after ourselves. And importantly, that our institutions should be looking after us as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So let's welcome Dr. Tina Skinner and Sarah Warbis. Thank you so much for coming. And, let's introduce yourselves. Sarah, should we go to you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Yeah, sure. So I am Sarah Warbis. I am literally just finishing my PhD in psychology at the University of Bath. My PhD has been looking at bystanders who witness a sexual assault and how we can encourage them to intervene and using virtual reality to see. But I a few years ago kind of realized the emotionally challenging nature of my research. So I'm basically here because I run a early career researcher, researcher well being group.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And Tina?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Hello, I'm Tina Skinner. I'm also from the University of Bath, but I completed my PhD in 1998. So a little while ago. I'm here because I run the Researcher Wellbeing Project, which started off at the University of Bath, but we're now taking it across several different universities to try and improve and address researcher wellbeing, in emotionally challenging studies. I have studied, gender-based violence, for the last, 30 years or so and more recently and by recently, I mean in the last 15 years, I've done research around, uh, disability and, uh, employment. I'm. Disabled myself, I'm neurodiverse, I'm dyslexic, ADHD, and I have long term pain, so I became particularly interested in that kind of field as well, so I come at the kind of researcher well being, area from both doing an emotionally challenging topic, such as gender based violence, but also from a kind of a neurodiverse, and long term pain perspective as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Okay. So. Let's start right at the beginning. What do we mean by emotionally challenging research? You guys have obviously given some specific examples there, but what types of things are we including?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: I tend to talk about emotionally challenging studies now, not just topics, um, because there are, you know, topics, such as rape and sexual violence, which we've already mentioned, or, being unwell or disability that, that can be challenging. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And those topics can be challenging because we are ourselves experience those things, or because they are intrinsically difficult to study. But then there are also things beyond things like, crime or injustice, that might mean that the context where we're studying is challenging. So it could be that we're studying something fairly innocuous, but the location where it's where we're studying is perhaps, be challenging and, and unsafe. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: But also the methods that we use might be particularly difficult as well. So in the, in the biosciences, for example, there might be experiments that are being done, with animals, which could be particularly challenging as well. And no matter what our perspective is on that, those can be particularly difficult for the people doing the experiment. So there's a whole kind of range of different ways in which we can see that studies can be emotionally challenging. Sarah, can you add?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Yeah, I mean, definitely, as Tina said, it's not just the topics, it's the methods and everything. And yeah, if you're testing something, or if you're doing research in a war zone, obviously that's going to have an impact regardless of the topic. I think just to give a few other examples, obviously I've spoken to researchers who study death, which obviously is one of the most upsetting topics we can talk about, and how people grieve, um, how we kind of had the funeral process and everything. I think also things like studying mental health, that, people especially that are doing longitudinal bits of research with the same participants all the time, obviously, if they're working with people with depression, there is always a risk that someone could self harm or commit suicide during the study, and it's how you deal with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: There's also, kind of something I'm appreciating more and more a lot of people who research climate change as well can be really upset by their research of climate anxiety around dealing with basically researching the end of the world to a degree, and the anxiety that comes with that. So there's so many different topics that can be emotionally challenging, but I think the important thing is it's down to the individual to define what that is for them. So it might be that there's a topic that I don't find particularly challenging emotionally, but actually Tina might, or vice versa. And yeah, it's important that the individual researcher defines what's upsetting to them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Yeah. And there's, there are things that, that some people might think, studying, managing your finances or food, might consider those things as not particularly challenging. But of course, if the person that they're interviewing has a very difficult relationship with food, or if you're studying poverty, and the people that you're interviewing are. really finding it very, very difficult to feed their children and to make ends meet, you know, sitting and listening to those stories, can be particularly difficult as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I think this intersection between, the topic that's being studied, the people that you're working with, the methods you're using, your own experiences and your kind of location. I think that's such an interesting way of looking at it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The one that struck me that I don't think we've mentioned is sort of structural inequalities and that kind of thing. Racism, sexism, all of those sorts of issues where if the researcher comes from the groups that are also being studied, then I imagine that is the sort of thing that would be potentially very emotionally challenging as well, to be studying racism as a black person living in the UK, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Absolutely. Exactly. And that's often why you get people researching certain topics, to be honest, is a lot of the time it's because they're passionate about it, because they're angry. Like, I, I research gender based violence because I'm fed up with the world and how we treat women and, the proportion of women that are assaulted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And obviously that's even more extreme for if you are a victim of gender based violence yourself. So obviously you're going to have even more of kind of a motivation behind it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And there are, there's also something that we also need to consider. So there might be, different things that will be, uh, emotionally challenging to, to different people. So if, if that person has, who's doing the research has directly experienced the thing that they're researching, they might find it emotionally challenging to, to simply do read the literature.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Whereas for, for others, the challenge comes to when they're generating their data, for others, it might be that that that has all gone well, but when they start to try and disseminate the information, and their findings that they're passionate about, they might get kind of really aggressive responses back, or they might the policymakers might not want to listen to them. It might be that people are studying extremist groups and they start to publish on that and then get threats themselves, so the stage is actually the dissemination stage when you've gone public. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And then, you know, you're getting a person is getting targeted with hate speech and sometimes physical threats, because of their findings. So, there's all sorts of different stages as well that, that may not be challenging.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's such an interesting perspective because I think often we don't think about that side, or at least I hadn't thought about that side of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And I've heard similar stories where it was people publishing research and then the media really oversimplifying the research to a drastic degree. And then obviously social media running wild with that. And then suddenly these researchers are having to do all this kind of like press damage reduction afterwards. They just weren't expecting in their line of work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. So before we go on to the kind of what we can do about it stuff, what sort of impact do you see this having on researchers? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Okay. We did some research with social scientists, humanities and social science academics and, there were a range of impacts from, water off a duck's back, I'm completely fine, and might have felt feelings of empathy at the time, right the way through to quite marked trauma responses. So kind of vicarious secondary trauma responses. Between that, there's a whole range, it does very much depend on some of the things we've already said about, you know, whether people have had shared experiences. It depends on the training that they've had and the things that they have in place, so less likely to have a more severe um, impact if, they've got training in place and got the support available, which is why we're going to be talking about that later on. But also, you know, the amount of power and control that they had in that context. So, you know, actually, PhD students have often chosen to do their subject and chosen to use their methods. But for those early career researchers where you might not have a choice about what you're doing and what methods you're using or whether you have to continue in a particular field of research might be more impacted and those who have different but unrelated issues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So it could be, I talked about neurodiversity before, but it could be that you're going for a divorce at the time or that you're caring for your mother and things like that. There could be also physiological responses. So, you know, that kind of feeling unwell. Feeling sick, because of what we're listening to or, uh, the injustices that we might be studying. Some of them can be cognitive. So our ability to think, you know, our job is about thinking. And if we've got disrupted thinking, because we're stressed and, feel traumatized around the that particular issue, then that. can be highly problematic as well. Um, so there's a whole range of different ways in which, we might react to greater and lesser extents.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Yeah, I guess just to add to that, obviously you can have things like any, uh, any person, or any academic, but any, in any job, you can have things like burnout, in your work, but also things like compassion fatigue, that obviously we see lots in the news to do with kind of nurses, um, when they're interacting with patients. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And also, as Tina says, secondary trauma, which, it's It's, it's kind of terrifying when you start to think about it, thinking, well, doing our line of research, we can have the same symptoms as someone who been traumatized, that individual who has primary trauma, who say, has been assaulted. We can have the exact same kind of physical and emotional responses from doing our line of work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: So it's important that we tackle it. I think just kind of giving my own experiences for me. It's things like, realizing that I was almost hyper planning my own safety being a woman walking around, outside on my own. And obviously I'm, I'm very lucky. I live in Bath. I live in a very safe neighborhood. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: I shouldn't really have to worry about this stuff but finding that actually I was thinking, okay, well. I'm going to go on a walk along a canal on my own. I need to make sure that I've got, like, escape routes. I've got this. What if this person's following me? And I'm just thinking, like, this is too much kind of overplanning, but also it comes with thinking about these things on a daily basis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And it also can come out in kind of strange places, like watching films, and I, I try to avoid watching films that have any kind of gender based violence topics in them, but I'm, I kind of found myself watching a film the other day that I didn't realize had content on that until you're kind of further in, and then afterwards just being in floods of tears, just really angry at the world, because obviously this is what I'm thinking about on a daily basis, so it's, it's kind of just heightening your thoughts on those, for me at least. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and I think even take those things are all sort of the really serious psychological and physical and social consequences of this stuff. I think even at a really practical level, you know, I coach people all the time who struggle with things like procrastination, right? And I imagine if you're doing topics that are so emotionally challenging, it adds a whole other layer to that just in terms of your actual productivity and how fast you can move through material and your, how much sort of effort it takes to get yourself to sit down and do it. You know, there's a lot of people I'm working with who aren't doing topics like this at all. And it's taken them a lot of effort to get themselves to the desk to work because they find it difficult for example, if you then also know that you're studying something that whilst important to you is so deeply unpleasant to experience some of the time. I imagine there's a load of sort of just knock on effects.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Absolutely. So one of the symptoms of vicarious and secondary trauma is avoidance. And that's something that's wasn't hugely common in the sample of researchers that we talked to. But for some, they might not want to encounter the subject again inside of work. So avoiding analyzing data that they know is going to be quite traumatic for them. So, those things that are difficult anyway, as researchers analyzing data can take a huge amount of time and it's really hard. And, if you've got really emotionally challenging data as well, particularly if you were involved in generating it, and you've already heard that, um, then, you know, that can be really, that can be really difficult. So my experience that was particularly emotionally challenging, early on in my career was when I was analyzing, a couple of hundred case notes of young survivors of rape who'd reported to the police and it was qualitative data, but I was coding it for, for a quants, piece and reading their, their cases was particularly difficult and writing that paper was, very, very difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And in the end, um, I didn't use that data. I felt by the time I actually got to the stage of it almost being publishable. I thought, no, it's kind of, it's out of date now. And I hadn't understood at the time, this is over 20 years ago, hadn't understood that the reason I was finding it so difficult to engage with that data and finish that paper was because I was myself suffering from secondary and vicarious trauma. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now, in a previous conversation, Tina, you raised something that I thought was fascinating, but again, I hadn't really thought about in terms of how there are some people with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Other things that are nothing to do with what they're studying that mean that they're more likely to be impacted by this stuff. And the example you spoke about then was dyslexic students having to spend more time with qualitative data. And I wondered if you could speak to that and any of the other types of groups that, that maybe. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Absolutely. So, as you know, I'm dyslexic and, transcribing is a pain for anyone. Transcribing can take a huge amount of time when you're dyslexic and processing speeds are different but then you're having to re listen and re listen to really emotional recordings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So you're spending more time with the data then, but when you're analyzing the data as well, reading and rereading. Now, I am now an average reader. But, some of my academic colleagues are 10 times the speed of average. So if you take a lot longer to read things, you're spending a lot more time with your data as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: so in that context, you're spending more time, but also you're less likely to be able to have breaks, which is something that's really important when you're working with data really emotionally challenging stuff is to have breaks and take time off. Um, but you might be working around the clock to be kind of pretending that you're normal and you don't need reasonable adjustments and so that can be really challenging too. So you're spending much more time with your data. And so it appears like you've done only so many interviews and it appears like you've, analyzed only so many things, but It will have a substantially longer amount of time associated with it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: There's also, different people are more likely to take on other people's feelings. So that kind of, I'm much more like an emotional sponge and some people argue that that's associated with being neurodiverse. I don't know. I think it's probably just a difference that we all that we all have. Some people are, you know, it's water off a duck's back. Other people are much more likely to be empathetic as well. So I think we're talking about neurodiversity rather than specific, learning difficulties, but those, that can impact on, how we are with our, with the people that we're researching and with our data and how we analyze it as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So it's really important that we're aware of how we react, and are able to manage that proactively. So I know that I'm a sponge, and so I, I make sure that I've got lots in my kind of wellbeing toolkit to look after myself and, also to make sure that my research participants are looked after because, um, if I don't, then I worry about them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So, um, you know, there's lots of ways in which you might need to prepare really effectively. I mean, we should all be preparing effectively, but if we understand ourselves, that can really help us to think about how we look after ourselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that's such an important thing for supervisors with students, especially if the supervisors perhaps aren't neurodiverse, don't have disabilities, perhaps are more of a sort of water off the duck's back type person, to not assume that the people they're working with are going to respond in the same way when they start supervising people in these sorts of topics. I think those are sorts of things that it's really important to remember that not everyone will respond the way you do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And that goes both ways. Yes. And I think that that was one of the things that was really helpful for me when I did the Researcher Wellbeing Project study, was to be able to understand that there are people this really doesn't affect, , but they're in the minority. Those who are more extremely affected, like me, are also in the minority, but everyone else is a continuum in between. And when we're, when we're starting off in, I thought I was really quite tough and before I was, you know, before I was 30, I pretty much didn't cry very much at all. We don't know if we're going to be the people that are affected or not. And so the important thing is to prepare to have resources in our toolbox to look after ourselves, such that if It does start to affect us, then we have these things in place, but that we're also already looking after our well being anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: But of course, you know, some of the people listening may have already undertaken their research and be already analyzing the data and feeling a sense that this is affecting me and be thinking about, okay, so what can I do now? And we're going to kind of start to talk about that too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. And should we start there in terms of what people who either are looking to do this sort of research or find themselves in the midst of it can do to look after themselves and we'll think about the impact of what can be set up at kind of institutional research team level in a second. But what can people do for themselves?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Um, one of the things that I've been trying to advocate for, and I use myself for myself and with the students and staff that I work with is what I've called a researcher well being plan. And I specifically call it a researcher well being plan rather than self care plan because I don't think it's just about self care. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: It's about thinking about how we can care for ourselves, but also how we can draw on family, friends, supervisors, teams, groups, um, networks to help us, um, cope with this kind of work and the kind of things that we're talking about are, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Uh, at the base level, you need to get the, the food and the sleep and all of those kinds of things sorted. So what are we eating at decent times? Are we looking after ourselves in that way? So that's good for any student, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And then if we're thinking about the next level up, we're thinking about, you know, safety and security in terms of our body, our health. So Looking after our physical health, is really important. So, uh, exercise, getting that stress out of our bodies, being able to do something where we're not thinking about the work. So it might be that we're going gardening, or it might be that we're going socializing with people and things like that, but, to make sure that we also ensuring that we're secure in the research that we're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So when we're generating the field work notes, making sure that we, are in a safe environment, that we've got all the protocols in place that we need in order to do that. And then, that kind of next level of Maslow's hierarchy is kind of feeling a sense of belonging, and making sure that we're working in a team or a sense of a team. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And that feels quite difficult when we're talking about, you know, you might just be working on your own with your supervisor, but actually that's a team, right? So, trying to make sure that we're working cooperatively in a supportive way, really effective. And particularly when we're doing emotionally challenging work and that sense of being part of a team. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So it could be that there are the students who are doing work around a similar topic to you. So it's that kind of sense of kind of connection. And then trying to nurture our confidence and well being as well. So, when we're disseminating our research or doing our first presentation and things like that. One of the things that's really important is that teamwork happens. So it's not just the student who's presenting on their own, but they've had an opportunity to practice with their supervisor or with their peers and, to be supportive. So it's really important that The student is in a kind of a supportive collegiate environment in order for them to thrive and, and do well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So there's lots of different levels from the basic stuff to the, you know, exercising to get stress out of our bodies and, doing hobbies that distract us or that we enjoy and we can really kind of, focus in to trying to make sure we've got a collegiate environment to work in. and that's really quite difficult if you're, a student, because that is often something that is very much set by the supervisor, and it's quite hard to ask for that as a student. But if you're not able to ask for that or you're not getting that, then you can reach out to networks like the network that Sarah runs to get that kind of collegiate support and sense of the team trying to go in the same direction. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: I think just to add to it, the key point for me is just prevention is the best way forward. It is much easier to, prevent things like secondary trauma happening than it is to deal with it when it does happen. So the kind of the quicker you can get ahead of it, the better. I think as well, it's remembering that everyone is different and obviously there are broad techniques that can work for everyone. But actually, when you're thinking about the content of something like a research well being plan and the strategies you're planning to bring in, it's really thinking, okay, what does work for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: So for me, that was talking to my support network. So talking to my husband and saying, okay, I'm just about to start my PhD. I'm going to be researching this really upsetting topic. What are, for me, what are the cues that I'm not doing well. So asking my husband, like, how can you tell when I'm really upset with work? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Like, what are the things we need to be looking out for? What are the things, we should worry about? And as well, it's thinking everyone's different when it comes to relaxing. So for me, it's. It's odd, but it works that if I've had a stressful day, I want nothing more than to curl up on the sofa and watch a horror film, because that works for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: But for most people, that'll be your absolute nightmare, I get it, and not very relaxing at all. And in the same way, um, I know Tina does a lot of swimming, whereas I can't think of something more stressful than having done a full day's work and thinking, right, I've got to go out to a swimming pool. Like, I would much rather stay home, do some kind of yoga, or I, I love doing kind of angry feminist dance workouts and stuff like that, that it's, it's really thinking, okay, just because someone else's wellbeing plan works for them, doesn't mean it necessarily works for you, and just remembering that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And yeah, I can't stress enough that, Tina has a wonderful set of resources, which she and her team built as part of the Researcher Wellbeing Project, which I'm sure you'll, share the link to, um, with all these kind of details of templates of research wellbeing plans and ideas for how you can kind of implement that and prepare and they are absolutely fantastic for that. So I tend to send people straight to her website when we're talking about this topic. And I think obviously we'll get onto in a minute institutional support in this area, but I think another thing is until the institutions start stepping up their game a bit, it is kind of okay. Well, we can take the lead like we can make a difference. We can have an impact in this area. So for me, that was, um, in my first year, realizing that there wasn't any kind of ongoing support in this area for PhD students at our university. So with myself and Sam Hooker, who's a PhD researcher in the Center for Death Studies and Society. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: That we kind of got together and thought, okay, well, should we just start by setting up maybe like a monthly coffee meeting or something that's just researchers at the university who are all researching upsetting topics like doesn't matter what the topic is, which we just get together and just chat about how it can be pants sometimes. And then from that, that then evolved to, okay, well, let's have more structured sessions. Let's have guest speakers like Tina talking about their work, how they've overcome challenges. And then from there, this has kind of evolved into what is now a group of, I think, just past 200, I think, students across different universities across the UK. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: I think we've got some international members as well, and some people from beyond academia, so we've got some members from the police, where we all come together once a month and either discuss topics that are particularly important related to research well being, or, yeah, have wonderful guest speakers come and talk about their different areas of work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And, yeah, just having that pair space to really acknowledge. Okay, yeah, this, this can be rubbish sometimes. And we should be talking about that very openly. It's not a taboo topic, but something like that, as Tina says, with kind of thinking about belonging can do absolute wonders. So I think my suggestion to people of, okay, well, what can you do? Obviously prepare, but the other suggestion would be, okay, if your university doesn't offer support where you want it, make it, just set it up yourself. Obviously, if you have time, do not over overload your workload at the same time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Yeah, I think the one of the things that Sarah said that's really important is that, um, it's it's different for different people but also it changes over time. So I used to use lots and lots of meditation. And they just stopped working for me. So now I just listened to a story that I love, but I know really well, and it sends me to sleep. Not because it's not very good, but just because, you know, it's a comfort thing. And those things might. What works for you at one time might not work for you at another time as well. So it's being prepared to kind of get something else out of your toolbox, um, and, and try it out. And, there are also, you know, counselling and support that you can get through the NHS, but also from the university and some counsellors are not great. And you might turn up and think I'm not talking to them, but others might be really good. So it's worth kind of trying. So having that in your kind of toolbox as well. Um, one of the things that we've been pushing for is if you know that it's an emotionally challenging topic, beforehand to have a clinical supervision available, which obviously is that cost. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: That's a monthly thing that, um, you know, costs about 75 an hour. So it's building that into a research proposal at the start and if you haven't got that, then it's asking your head of department or your doctoral training partnership lead and trying to find that funding. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Clinical supervision is a preventative thing. Trauma focused counselling after the event is another thing. So we recommend 10 to 20 sessions of trauma focused counselling. And again, that's something that you have to convince your university that there is a need for that and because it goes over and above the kind of standard six sessions of stress management counselling that you can access through student services or through staff services. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Wellbeing services have become infinitely better than they were over the last 20 years. So there's some great services available but, if you've experienced secondary or vicarious trauma, you might need more support than that. So it's well worth going to student services for support, but it's also thinking about if something has gone wrong and you'd need further support, reaching out and trying to get funding for that additional support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So, you know, there's lots of, there's, it's that kind of whole range of different resources can go into that toolbox. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: That is the research wellbeing plan. But. It really does also need to be supported by your supervisor by your department by your university and by our whole research culture as well. And that's something that we're pushing to change too. Sarah and I are founding members of the Researcher Wellbeing Strategic Change Group, which is now an international group, which is trying to make positive change around well being. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: The culture so that we talk more openly about these kinds of things, because it's only really in the last five years that I've been talking about these kinds of issues and start to support people's needs proactively, and help them plan , so they're not just trying to care for themselves, but they feel cared for as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And listen, listen to you both speak one of the other groups that kind of came into my mind. I work with a lot of part time students and distance learning students and people who've got other jobs, they've got caring responsibilities, all those sorts of things. And it just struck me that a lot of the things you're talking about take time, they take often access to things that may be campus based. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I know we have more online services these days, but certainly that sort of sense of belonging, something that I see that a lot of part-time and distance learning students really struggle with, and I wonder what advice you could give to students who aren't on campus maybe when they're doing field work, as you mentioned at the beginning, or where they just haven't got a lot of time to put towards nourishing self-care activities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Be compassionate to yourself. Because we can often put a lot of pressure on ourselves, particularly if we're part time, we're working, we might have children and unless we prioritize our own wellbeing within that context, being able to do all of those other things becomes much more challenging. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So, yeah, as a mother of of two children, both of which have now gone off to university is a lot easier for me to look after and stick to my wellbeing plan than it was when they were small children. So absolutely I empathize with what you're saying. And when you're working part time and you have less resources and you have less funding, then that's also really challenging.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: What I've heard in our research and also in the interactions me and Sarah have had with other researchers doing challenging topics is partly scaling back what we're doing. So, one of the things that I often recommend is, is don't do more than two challenging interviews in a day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: One in the morning, one in the afternoon. Now that's not always practical. It's not always possible. You might be interviewing in a prison, for example, and you've only got one day access or two days access, and it's all been arranged for you. It's not always possible, but where you can plan to have breaks, both for you and the participants, if that's relevant, that's really important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So you don't have to be perfect. But try and make sure that you're thinking about your own well being within every decision that you're making and sometimes that might mean needing to scale back. Sometimes that might mean pausing, study for a particular amount of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: The other thing I would say is it's okay to ask for things and it's okay to ask for support too. So from your supervisor, and from your department and institution, because they're as invested as you are in you being able to actually effectively complete. It doesn't look good for them if you don't and so asking for what you need and perhaps drawing on the resources of the research wellbeing project and Sarah's fabulous group and saying, you know, this is, this is something that's now becoming recognized as an important issue. Have you thought about how you might, how we might incorporate that into how I'm supervised and into my own work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Exactly. And I think as we kind of collectively move forward in that way of recognizing this more and more. I think it's definitely something Tina and I have spoken about that these things shouldn't be an add on that you're having to do in your own free time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: It should be these are part of your work day. That it may kind of feel quite strange at first, but things like going to the gym, if that's for your researcher well being, should be part of your work day. In the same way as kind of any health and safety thing, when we think about kind of physical injuries, should be part of your work day as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And yeah, I think obviously, must be incredibly tricky. This is coming from obviously someone with no dependents or anything and kind of working full time, but I can imagine, yeah, it must be incredibly difficult when you are working part time, trying, I don't know how enough people manage a PhD alongside kind of a full time job as well, but as Tina says, I think it's being compassionate for yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: There are a lot of kind of things online anyway, post COVID, so things like our Research Wellbeing Group, because, uh, it's across universities, it made no sense to have it in person, so some resources are available online to pull from. And, yeah, I think it's Uh, kind of coming back to something Tina said, I think it's thinking about what looking after yourself means to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: But that might not be you are doing everything under the sun. You are doing clinical supervision, gym, yoga, meditation, extra therapy. It might be you are just giving yourself a 30 minute break in between transcriptions, having a cup of tea and just focusing on yourself for a bit and like before you pick kids up like that might be what it is for you. So it's just, it's, it's trying to be compassionate with yourself as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Absolutely. And sometimes looking after yourself is, you know, just thinking, okay. The only way I can cope is thinking about what's the next right step. So not putting huge amounts of pressure on yourself because a PhD is a huge amount of pressure, jobs, huge amount of pressure, family responsibilities, a huge, huge amount of pressure. But in this moment, what's the next right step? What can I do? It's also thinking, um, although we don't, we feel like we can't, we don't have time sometimes that taking that break allows our brains to work better. So, just taking a break, closing your eyes, breathing, you know, is it, it's basic, but, you know, taking a, you know, a breath in for four, pausing for five and then, breathing out for six. That calms down our whole bodies and tells our bodies that, you know, there is no danger right here. It's just a computer. Don't worry, you know, so there are small things that we can do. And if we start to build them into our standard daily practice, if they become the automatic thing, if the automatic thing is take a breath. Take a break, have a drink of water rather than let's just soldier on I'll be fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Yep. Then that those things only take a few minutes, but they can make a huge difference to how we feel about things. Exactly. Lots of researchers also talk about taking things. A bit slower so that they can cope with the emotional, emotional challenges and that has does have a potential impact on how quickly you get your PhD, how quickly you get your promotion, et cetera, but looking after ourselves is really important if we're going to be compassionate and kind to ourselves. And so it's thinking about, okay, so what are my priorities in this, in this context?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Exactly. And just to add to that as well, I think, we often kind of panic during a PhD about, oh God, like, I want to finish within three years and I've only got so many months left and it's kind of a mad panic. And obviously, it is incredibly difficult when funding does not cover beyond a certain period. So, I do get that, but I think it's just knowing, with hindsight, in five, ten years time, obviously, you will look back and you will see I got a PhD, you won't see I got a PhD in two years, nine months and five days versus three years and two months and two days, that it doesn't matter in the long run how long it takes and you should be looking after yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And also just thinking about people who have kids or are carers for family members, that it's something I, always say to like friends and family with young kids when they're kind of going through a stressful period of You you aren't any use to them if you're not looking after yourself That if you are emotionally distressed if you are really struggling to function Because you're upset by, Be that your research or anything else in life that you're not necessarily in the best position to help them is the whole put your gas mask on first before anyone else is that you do need to look after yourself in order to help other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One of the things you mentioned there, Sarah, I think is really interesting, this idea of it not being an add on and it being structural. So one of the things I was thinking about is, are there ways of designing studies to sort of be cognizant of all this stuff? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I'm thinking in terms of like being realistic about the number of interviews that you need for an article to be usable, etc or when you're designing studies, if you know you're going to be doing really in depth interviews with a really vulnerable group for one study. Is there something connected, but perhaps less emotionally charged that you can do for your other study and things? And I just wondered. How much that side of things is something that's sort of taken into account, or even examiner expectations, I guess, in terms of how, what quantity of work you would expect to see in a thesis that's about these kind of topics.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Definitely. I think. I guess in research in general is first off, when we talk about kind of incorporating things, the reasoning behind it is something Tina and I have kind of talked about a lot that really the university, be that your employer or the university you're studying under has a legal obligation to look after you, be that through health and safety laws or rules around well being, they should be looking after you. Like, it is your right as a student, as an employee, to be protected. So it isn't just us saying this, it's, there is a basis to it. And again, coming back to the point of kind of prevention is key. It's one of the things that, um, I guess Tina and I are working on as part of the Research Wellbeing Strategic Change Group, of trying to get research wellbeing embedded throughout an entire project and in institutions. So it should really be the first time you're talking about research. Well, being is during the bid process that it should be. You are putting in money for things like clinical supervision, even gym membership, things like that. And it should be that when you're working on timelines of a project, you are allowing more time to, um, account for emotionally distressing topics and things like that so that it's not a sudden crunch of, oh, well, we've got to have this data collected by next Tuesday, that it should be thinking right from the offset of, okay, how can we prepare for this anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Absolutely. And, building that into our well being plans too. So if we know we're going to be doing some particularly difficult analysis or data generation, is there something else that we can do to, you know, if we need to take a break from that, to do something else instead, rather than just feeling like, I don't know what to do. I don't want to do this, but I don't know what to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So having a plan for that too. So might write something or, put in an abstract for, you know, for, for a conference that you really want to go to that's in a year's time. But, you know, just taking a break from doing that really difficult stuff right now and doing something that's that's fun, but also, I mean, I'm now at a stage where when I go swimming, I have my best ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Yeah, so I used to go swimming to forget about work and was desperately trying to forget about work. Now I'm going, Oh, that's a good idea. And so if we have a different attitude towards looking after ourselves, so if I'm doing a, if I'm running a tutorial, which. Loads of PhD students might be running tutorials for students and things. If I can, and if it's not raining, we go outside and we go for a walk. Um, so we're out of the office, but we're also, you know, we're walking along having a nice chat. The same conversation that we would be having around the study that they're doing, or they might have a particularly difficult thing that's happening. But, um, I'm building my wellbeing into the way that I work. Um, at the start of lectures, I now bung on some music because like Sarah, I like to dance out any stress. I get really stressed before a lecture. So I, you know, put the music on. Um, and you know, the students are not many, but occasionally I get one bopping along with me um, but you know, it's so it's building those things in. So it is about, I think trying to change the culture that we're working in as well, the idea that we should be strapped to a, to a desk, uh, while, I mean, as a, as a person with ADHD, that was the only way, the only way I could stay at a desk and work was to imagine myself chained to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So that's not a healthy way of working. So thinking about alternative ways that we can, we can work in order to, um, do things. So, so now, for example, when I'm doing the first listen through of interviews, I will listen through while I'm while I'm walking, I have to get special permission to do that because I'm on a mobile device. But one way of doing things to help stimulate my thinking around how we're going to analyze this data. So there are there are different ways that we might be able to build that in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And If a university has guidance that has these kinds of recommendations and these kinds of options that people don't have to continually be rethinking. Oh, how can I do this? How can I manage my wellbeing a bit better? Um, you know, if they've got guidance around this kind of stuff, that's helpful. We've produced some guidance from the research well being project of how to write a well being plan and we've got template and, um, you know, what kinds of things might go into your well being plan but also how to manage the well being of your research participants and what to do when you get And so we've got, we've written those as drafts that anyone can take and cut and paste, just reference and at the University of Bath, the plan is that eventually we will be making those mainstream documents. They have to be edited and developed and approved for this university and I've set up something called DW4R Well which goes across Bristol, Bath, Exeter and Cardiff and we're all trying to work together to have similar guidance and recommendations around these issues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So we're trying to get a kind of a cultural shift Where we're thinking about our well being as much in the ethical procedures and the initial design of a research project as we are our participants well being. We're not there yet but the arguments that I'm having around these issues are fewer than I was expecting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And I think one of the advantages post COVID is that people are now much more aware of people's mental health and the impact that it can have and the cost that it can have, actually. So if people have to go off on sick leave. That's a cost. So actually, if we can avoid that by looking after each other appropriately and as Sarah was saying, due diligence, actually, because it's a legal requirement under the Health and Safety at Work Act to do risk assessments, including not just physical but mental health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So if we have research that has the potential over and above, the standard risks to impact on our mental health, then the university has to indicate and your supervisor and you have to indicate what you're doing over and above the standard in order to help yourselves and be helped. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And so, if you're finding that your supervisor and your institution aren't being helpful in that, it's always helpful to have the law also on your side, that they are supposed to be looking after you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And, there are various different groups that you can get involved in, including Sarah's network, who will give you top tips on how to, if your supervisor doesn't really want to talk to you about this, where do you go? And what do you do? So we've written some guidance around. That as well, if you're not in the ideal situation, and someone like Sarah isn't your supervisor, then how do you then approach this as an issue as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: So, exactly. Yeah. And I think I just wanted to jump in and build on something Tina was saying, it currently feels like. In, in research that it's everyone having to reinvent the wheel and everyone is, is having to do such like an individualized approach because there isn't anything out there suggesting, oh, well, here's what your university is doing. Here's the protocol in place at your university, there isn't a lot of stuff out there. Um, so it feels like everyone's having to say, oh, how could I look after myself? And yeah, what could I do here? Whereas the big thing we're trying to work towards at the moment as well is, is leveling kind of universities together so that we have standardized procedures across them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And there is an expectation as well, not just in the institutions, but also with funders that it's not an anomaly to suddenly have someone asking for clinical supervision in a bid, that actually it's expected that, oh, okay, yeah, you're doing an emotionally challenging topic, why haven't you asked for this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: So that should be part of it. And yeah, this is a big thing we're trying to do of getting everyone on the same page with this. of collecting all the knowledge that we have because there are so many incredible people working in this space. and it's pulling that all together and saying, okay, what, what's the ideal look like? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: And this is one of the things I absolutely adore that Tina and her team created as part of the research wellbeing project of having these, bronze, silver and gold standards. of what the institution should be doing, but also what the individual could be doing. So it's , this is the standard, this is what we need to be working towards, so that everyone is on the same page. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And I think checking even just as basic as checking what your university actually does provide. So I remember when I, my old institution, they put on a session about looking after yourself on social media and what you do if you suddenly find yourself, you've gone viral for reasons that aren't great. And you're, you're getting, you know, unhelpful messages and all that stuff. And I've been there 20 years. I had no idea that there's a 24 hour phone number at the university where if you find yourself receiving abuse on social media because of work related social media posts, you can contact them and they'll advise you what to do. And I guarantee that many, many, many people at the university, I don't know if it still exists, I presume it did when I was taught about it anyway, it did. I guarantee there'll be loads of people who didn't know that that's the case. And so I think sometimes it's, it's not even having to reinvent these things at universities, it's even just making sure that people within these huge institutions actually even know what the different bits of the university are providing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Absolutely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: And so, one part of the wellbeing plan is okay. So what are the services that I can access? And one of the things that, I asked master's students, I was running session for masters and PhD students at the University of Bath around, you know, researcher wellbeing and how to write your own plan and stuff is, for them to just go and pop into the counselling service. And just into reception and ask, okay, so what do you do? What do you offer? Not because they necessarily need it now, although I think some of them might have done, but so that they know where to go and who to talk to, if things do go not so well for them. There are kind of great talking therapies that you can access depending on your area, through the NHS. Now, most of them are cognitive behavioral therapy, which doesn't suit everybody, but I've used it three times and eventually it's quite helpful. Um, so there are different stages at which you might be able to and different services that might be effective for you many of which are free. Um, so they have waiting lists. So, you know, the NHS tends to be a year's waiting list , you know, but sorting out and working out before you get to a crisis stage is, is really good. And, our university now does have a crisis counseling service that you can just ring up 24 hours and then you're able to have that person to talk to, to help you plan and to help you think through those different issues. And again, it's, it's, you know, planning, but also, you know, if the first one you try isn't, isn't terribly good. Try someone else.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And remembering that certainly in a university, these things are likely to be provided by a variety of different teams, right? You know, I think back to my experience, sometimes it's counselling and wellbeing that provide this stuff, but sometimes it's the staff support unit, sometimes it's the graduate school, sometimes it's disability services. Sometimes it's library services. It's all these different bits of universities that often have their own bits to do with specific well being, to their part of it. Also, just to contextualize, we have worldwide listeners here, so we've been quite, um, UK centric in terms of talking. NHS and all those things, but eventually that message of doing your research as to what's available in your country, your institution, your program.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Well, if you're in, in, in, um, other Northern European countries, your access to services might be infinitely better, um, than, than, than ours. You know, when I'm doing training, In Norway or Denmark or Sweden, the need for having trauma focused counseling as an option that's already prefunded within your funding bid is not necessarily there because you can get a, you can get a clinical psychologist much quicker, much easier in that environment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: There are other environments where the likelihood of that is really small and it's about, um, how you can draw upon different resources in that context so yeah, there's a range of diversity and it's, it's thinking about what will work for you in your context, and what is available and finding out what things are available is part of that process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Exactly. But I do think also it's important to note that It's obviously incredible for researchers to be taking a proactive approach, especially PhD researchers, with finding those resources. But again, coming back to that institutional change, there should also be training for supervisors so they are aware of this to begin with, so they know the resources that their student has that they can use. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Yeah, 100%. We provide training through the research well being project, which is we've kept the fee really, really small. So I think it's £20 for a PhD student and £40 for a member of staff, just so that they can access that training. But the other thing that I find really hopeful is, you know, PhD students are the academics of the future, right? So you might not have had this support. Right. I didn't have this support, but you can make sure that your own students do. You can make sure that your own teams do. You can make sure that your next funded proposal, and as you become more influential, you build that in. So, it's learning from your own experience, putting in place what you can now, but then having the aim to increase and improve, um, in the future as well. So, this kind of learning around how we look after our wellbeing isn't just for you now, it's for you, you know, when you, when you're in the position where you can make those decisions and when you can make those applications yourself, and building in what is needed for you and your team. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Exactly. And even when you are a PhD researcher, that I've been lucky that I've had, I think about seven research apprentices work under me on my research, who are all volunteers. But one of the first things I do is talk about researcher well being and how we're going to prepare for that. And talking about what they can expect and yeah, how to look after themselves so that it's ingrained from the first step. So even as a PhD researcher, we still have responsibilities for others, even at this stage of our career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Yep. I mean, Sarah's in the psychology department and it's quite different from I'm in, criminology, sociology and social policy and it's managed quite, quite different. I quite like the way it's managed in psychology, so it does depend on your department, but you also have PhD students who are tutoring, who are supervising dissertations and mentoring other PhD students and, all of those are opportunities to help other people think about how they look after themselves while you're looking after, you know, yourself as well. So it's a, yeah, it's a lot of potential for your listeners to make a big difference in this area.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. And thank you so much, not just for coming in and giving so many wise words, but for all this work that you do, the, the actual research that you do is emotionally challenging, but I'm sure running these networks, while very rewarding is emotionally challenging and time consuming in itself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So the, the whole sector thanks you. So where can people find out more? You've mentioned a couple of resources. I will link them in the show notes, but if there was one place that you would send people, each of you, where would that be?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: Well, I was going to say the research wellbeing project web page, which has, I think you're going to provide the link has all has the report that we wrote, but it also has all of the things that we were talking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tina: So it has a link to Sarah's wonderful network, and other networks that you can use, if you're not an early career researcher, so, there's those things, but it also has all the resources that we've been talking about in terms of wellbeing plans and guidance and things like that, as well as there's also a section that has the researcher wellbeing strategic change group, where if you want to influence change around this, and you can do that if you're a PhD student as Sarah is one of our founding members, has demonstrated. There is the information there too, and under that information is top tips if you're trying to bring this into your department, and you want to start a discussion around this. So, Yeah, that's where I would recommend you had a look. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: Yeah, I was going to say the exact same thing. So yeah, I would go straight to Tina's Researcher Wellbeing Project web page. And like she said, it has links to my group. But also you will be providing Vikki the more direct link, to sign up to my group, if you, if you want a kind of more peer support aspect, but, um, as Tina mentioned, there's so many resources on her projects web page. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sarah: There's things as well, like, what to do if your participant becomes distressed in this situation. Again, thinking about more broadly about it being emotionally challenging topic for participants as well as us. There's so many fantastic resources on that and so many links to other kind of networks and and resources. So I would definitely check it out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Absolute wealth of support for people. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. Thank you for having us. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 03 Mar 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-26-how-to-look-after-yourself-when-conducting-emotionally-distressing-research thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-25-how-to-edit-your-work-without-hating-yourself <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> One of the most frustrating moments in a PhD or academic career is reading through your first draft—only to realise it’s a mess. It doesn’t flow, the arguments feel clunky, and now you’re stuck figuring out how to fix it. </div> <div> In today’s episode, I’m sharing practical techniques to help you transform that rough first draft into a polished manuscript—without the overwhelm and self-criticism. Whether you’re writing a thesis chapter, journal article, or conference paper, these strategies will make revision smoother, faster, and far less painful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-5-how-to-shorten-your-work" target="_blank"> How to shorten your work </a>   </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-2-how-to-handle-negative-feedback" target="_blank"> How to handle negative feedback </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-44-what-to-do-when-you-get-contradictory-advice" target="_blank"> What to do when you get contradictory advice </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-30-how-to-break-your-work-down-into-chunks" target="_blank"> How to break work down into chunks </a>   </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-20-how-to-improve-your-writing-with-guest-dr-katy-peplin" target="_blank"> How to improve your writing (with Dr Katy Peplin) </a> </div> <div> <br/> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This week, especially for any of you who are editing writing, or who have edited writing in the past, or who will be editing writing in the future, because there's something about editing. We often think that when we've got that first draft down, it's going to be easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At least we're not generating new stuff from nowhere, right? But then we sit down to do it. And it's so hard, because you're trying to focus on what you need to do, but you're not really clear what you need to do. You know it's not good, but equally you don't really know how to fix it either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the whole time, I don't know about you, but certainly often for me and my clients, running through the back of your head is this narrative that you should have done a better first draft, that it's never going to be good enough, you don't know what you're doing. All of that kind of self criticism.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, we talk about writing a lot on this podcast, and there's going to be various episodes that I'm going to ping you off into. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, for today, what we're going to be thinking about is how to do that editing process without hating yourself in the meantime. High standards. That's all we're looking for here. Not hating ourselves. So, what do I mean by editing? I'm meaning anything that comes between a first full draft and a completed manuscript. So this might be your initial run through of it. It might be responding to your supervisor's comments, your examiner's comments, reviewers comments if you're submitting things for publication, all the way through to that point at which it is declared finished.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the reasons I think that it can be so painful doing it it's It's that self talk that happens while we're doing it, that these edits not only mean something about this piece of work, about how good it is. They also mean something about us as an individual. If the supervisor says this isn't clear, often we hear this as you're not clear. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first thing we're going to do before we get to any of the practical tips. And there are going to be practical tips. Before we get to any of those practical tips, I want to remind you, editing is a normal part of the process. Writing a first draft is a really, really long way from submitting an article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That doesn't make it any less onerous knowing that. But it can make it a little less painful if you know that everyone goes through that editing process. I used to label my files with like new versions each time I worked on a paper. And by the time I was submitting for publication, I'd be on like version 35 or something, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I used to show that to my students because they were always amazed because they saw me as somebody who published a lot and who was good at writing. And it never crossed their mind that my first draft didn't look like that published article. Even the version I submitted didn't look like that published article because I improved it based on the reviewer's comments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know it's occasionally made it worse based on the reviewers comments, but that is a story for another episode. But mostly, it was improved because of what the reviewers asked us to do. Okay? Nobody writes that way first time, even your most talented and amazing supervisors. So editing is a normal part of the process. It is not a sign something's gone wrong. It is not a sign that you did a bad first draft. It is a sign that you know the difference between a first draft and a finished piece of work, and you can slowly work through those changes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if it's specifically responding to comments that you struggle with, in terms of handling negative feedback, I want you to go find, after you've listened to this episode, I want you to go find my episode on handling negative feedback. Okay, it's season two episode five something like that, you'll find it. Go to the phdlifecoach. com website, click on podcasts, you'll find them all. That episode really acknowledges that receiving feedback and editing your work is an emotional process, that that's okay, but that we also don't need to feed that. We also don't need to kind of buy into this narrative that it's this big, terrible, stressful thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's completely normal to feel overwhelmed, to feel frustrated, to feel disappointed, all of those things, but we don't need to feed it. And if that's something you really struggle with, do go check out that episode.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we're going to think about more today is the actual how to go about the edits that turn it from being a big nebulous task into something that's actually doable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the first tip here is to separate editing from writing. And then we're going to separate editing into a variety of different tasks too. So, why do we separate editing from writing? This is because they're two completely different activities. Generating new text is a completely different skill to making text sound better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Checking whether text does what it's meant to do. If you do them both at the same time, what happens is you write a bit, delete a bit, write a bit, delete a bit, smack yourself a bit, write a bit, delete a bit, decide that it's rubbish, go and drink more Diet Coke. It doesn't help. So, same as any of you have heard me talk about different writing roles before in the workshops that I ran, I want you to think about text generation as one job, okay? Creating the substance. Some people refer to this as like filling the sandpit before you start to create your sandcastles. Text generation is simply putting some stuff there to work with. Filling the sandpit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we're going to do editing. As a separate process, and as I've said, what we're going to then do is not do that as a single process either. Instead, what I want you to do is think about editing as a series of layers. Okay? And we are only going to do one of these layers at a time. Some of you, I know, are going to argue with what I say today. Some of you are going to say, that's so inefficient, Vicki. I could do it all at once. Some of you are going to say, I couldn't possibly ignore a typo. It will ignore, it will annoy me too much. You've got to. Okay, I've had that conversation with people on here before. Sometimes you just got to suck it up. What we're going to do is we're going to do one thing at a time and whilst that may not feel efficient, I promise it is hugely more effective. And I actually have an episode planned for you where we're going to talk about the difference between efficient and effective and when you want to be one and when you want to be the other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But until then, trust me, go with these layers. Now, that means I've got to explain to you what I actually mean by layers. What I mean is that we're only checking for one thing at a time. Okay, I want you to imagine that I asked you to go for, go for a walk and I want you to look for anything that's yellow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By the way, that's a good mindfulness activity if you ever need one. Go for a walk, look for anything that's yellow. And you will start to spot all the things that are yellow and you'll be like really good at spotting yellow things. Do do do do do do do do do. And you'll go and it'll be a really pleasant walk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, now if I told you to go for a walk and spot everything that's red and yellow and blue and green and spot trees and spot cars and spot postboxes It's going to be super overwhelming because you're gonna be like, uh, postbox, uh, yellow, red, you're gonna miss things You're not going to enjoy that walk That is what's happening when you try and edit everything at once when you're correcting typos as well as making your sentences sound better as well as checking whether it actually makes sense or not It makes no sense to try and do all of this at once. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're gonna do one thing at a time, we're going to start with the macro editing, the kind of editing that really is content focused, structure focused, and then we're going to polish later. Because apart from anything else, there's no point polishing the bits that you may well just delete anyway, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a waste of time. So, it doesn't work, can be a waste of time. So, where are we going to start? Our first job is, does it actually say the things we want it to say? And one way that I have found really, really useful, and I can't remember whether I've ever talked about this on a podcast before, I do talk about it in one of my courses, is what I call a reverse plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. I didn't invent this. I have no idea who invented this. I used to use it back when I was a student and I used to teach it to my PhD students as well. What you do is you get your manuscript, your whole manuscript, and you look at it one paragraph at a time. And you say, what does this paragraph say? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you summarize it in one sentence. What did this paragraph say? Summarize it in one sentence. And you do that in turn for each paragraph in your writing. Now this is going to tell you a number of things. First thing is, is that easy? Because it should be, if it's right. So if this is a well structured, well written piece of work, which it won't be from your first draft, but if it was, then it would be really easy to say, this paragraph says this, this paragraph says that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'd just whiz through it. If you find yourself going, I have no idea what that paragraph says, or that paragraph says about four things, or whatever, happy days! We've realized, okay? So, but you try. So the first thing it tells you is how easy is that? You make a note where that paragraph kind of says too many things, that paragraph didn't really make a point, that paragraph kind of said the same as the previous one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we get to look at that plan, right? That list of things you've got, those list of sentences. So now instead of trying to manage a 15, 000 word manuscript, we're now trying to manage, you know, 40 sentences or whatever it is. And that's when we get to say, well, hang on a minute. That one and that one are exactly the same as each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That one and that one. Why do I talk about that up there and that down there? That makes no sense. You can even compare your reverse plan back to the original plan. Does it even look like what you thought it was going to? Because sometimes we have a plan and then we deviate from it, which isn't a problem, by the way, but sometimes it can be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes if we've deviated and now we like this new version. Happy days, but if we deviated and we're like, oops, I didn't even cover that section anymore. I forgot I didn't do that. So you take it back to that plan by doing that reverse planning process. And that's where we look at the really broad strokes stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does it say what we thought it was going to say? Is it roughly in the right order? Does each paragraph represent a specific point? Okay, so we're checking we got the right pieces before we get any further into anything else. Now, when you are reading these paragraphs, do not decide to make the sentence sound more elegant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do not correct typos. Do not, if you notice that you've got the same word six times in a paragraph, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Our only job, our only job is to turn that manuscript into a reverse plan, to compare that reverse plan to our original plan, and to look and see whether things are roughly in the right orders. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? Does our paragraph structure roughly make sense? And that's quite, I say that's our only job. That's quite a big job. Okay? Especially if it's on a pretty rough first draft. Fully, fully expect at this point to be talking about wanting to merge paragraphs, talking about wanting to shift things around, delete entire sections, all that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Completely, completely normal. And that's why we're not going to polish anything until after this bit's done. Okay, this can be a point that's useful to have chats with your supervisors. Kind of go in, you know, I'm thinking I might need to leave this bit out or split that into two sections. That kind of big structural decisions you might want to discuss perhaps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Expect a bunch to change. Then once you've made those decisions, you go back in and roughly action those in your document, okay? Those of you watching on YouTube, you can see me kind of flapping my hands around, which shows you're on the podcast, so I'm not getting the full joy of it. But imagine me moving things with my hands in the air. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, so you're going back into your original document and going, Oh, I said I should move that paragraph there. Okay, let's do it. Boom. Okay, and you move them around, you put them in place. We're not worrying whether the transitions work perfectly anymore. We're not worrying about whether we introduce our definitions in the right places or not anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not worrying about any of that stuff. We're just dumping stuff roughly in the right places. This is the equivalent of, if any of you have moved house, this is the equivalent of roughly getting the right boxes in the right rooms. Okay, you don't bring a box in the front door and start opening it up and going. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh, here's a toilet brush that needs to go in there. Here's a whatever that needs to go in there. I don't know why toilet brush was the first thing that came to my head. Okay with it. Um, You roughly dump boxes in roughly the rooms they need to be in. Okay? That's what we're doing here. We are roughly checking that the boxes are roughly where they need to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I mentioned that we don't need to look at transitions. Once you've done that, now we're going to start looking at transitions. And the first two transition points we want to look at is the start, and the end. So for me, one of the first things you want to check is, does this article start where it needs to start? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is where, in my experience, an awful lot of PhD students and academics start too far back in the story. Now let me explain what I mean by that. If you imagine your introduction to a paper as an inverted funnel, so it's wide at the top and it's getting narrower and narrower and narrower, that should be the shape of your writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the top of the funnel, the top of that triangle, is the kind of broad brush background to what you're talking about. So for me, it was stress and immune function. I'd always start with things like psychological stress has been demonstrated to have an impact on a variety of health conditions. Reference, reference. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, that kind of vibe, right? And then it gradually gets closer and closer. This is particularly apparent in immune function where blah blah blah blah. The impact of stress on psychological, um, the impact of psychological stress on vaccination response has been particularly explored in with blah blah blah, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It gets gradually more and more specific. I was talking stress and health, then I was talking stress and immune, now I'm talking stress and vaccinations. Okay? It gets more and more narrow. I want you to translate that out into your own topics. Now, there's a variety of places you could start in that story. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I often think we start too far up the triangle. So, if I was writing an article for a journal like the ones I used to write for, so Brain Behaviour and Immunity was a big favourite of mine, um, if I was writing for Brain Behaviour and Immunity, They already know that stress affects health. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They literally all do that. They all know that stress affects immune function more specifically. So I could chop off the entire first two paragraphs of something set up like that and start with stress has been shown to impact antibody response to vaccinations. That would be a great place to start. I don't need any of that other stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the rest of my field, you know, I was a sports scientist, um, people do paragraphs, two, three paragraphs about why obesity and physical inactivity impact various health conditions. Any sports scientist reading it knows that. Now, if you think it's crucial that that information is there, you can consider turning it into sentences instead of paragraphs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead of a detailed paragraph on each of those things introducing it, you just say one sentence. It impacts health. This is often through markers of immune function, for example, vaccination. Okay, so my first tip, transitions, where are you starting? Make sure it's appropriate for your audience and see whether there's anything you can chop off the top. There almost always is, in my experience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You then look and see whether you finish at the right place, whether your transition at the end, i. e. your conclusion, finishes in the right place. Usually, in my experience, people here lack specificity. They take their, so a discussion is a triangle the other way around, where you start narrow after your results and you get wider and wider, as you start to apply your findings back to how they fit with the rest of the literature, what impact they might have, where the weaknesses are, what future studies should be, and then your conclusion should be your kind of final, like, implications or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In my experience, the conclusion is often pretty shallow and needs either beefing up or deleting. So check your conclusions as well. Does it actually say anything or is it just a nice little, and that was what I did on my holidays type paragraph, in which case let's turn it into something more meaningful. So check your two transitions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next transitions we're going to look at are the transitions between paragraphs. Okay, what I want you to do here is each of your paragraphs at the beginning of the sentence, the paragraph should tell you what the paragraph is about and the end of the paragraph should lead nicely in some way to the next paragraph. Okay, there shouldn't be some weird jump that requires me to take some leap of logic that isn't logical. Okay, you've now roughly put these in the right order. We're now checking that one leads to the next. Is any terms that you use in that paragraph defined previously or at least defined here? For example, is there any assumptions you're making that they know things that you haven't said yet? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can then go through checking for transitions. So notice how each time we do this, we're doing it with a specific job. I want you to see how easier that will be than trying to do everything at once, both in terms of that kind of overwhelm while you're doing it, but also in terms of putting it on your to do list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because one of the things I get told so often in my group coaching calls, in my membership, is I don't know how to break tasks down into smaller chunks. And if any of you, I want you all to look at your to do list. If edit introduction is on your to do list, I'm talking to you. You, okay? I'm talking to you right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Editing is not one job. It should not be a task on your to do list. Check introduction for transitions between paragraphs is a task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Check paragraphs for repetition is a task. Check. Sentence structure for errors I often make. Now there's a little aside that I wasn't planning to put in this episode, but I'm going to. Um, when you get feedback back from people, I want you to take a note of stuff you often get pulled up for. So, um, run on sentences was one I always pulled people up on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you don't know what a run on sentence is, look it up. You definitely need to know. Uh, split sentences is the flip side of that. Incomplete split sentences. Check what that is, look it up. Um, all of you will have things that you often do. I tended not to do those things. I tended to repeat myself. I tended to get fixated on a particular word that would end up being used lots of times. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would fail to notice that I'd started calling something one word and then later on changed the specific word I was using later on, if you see what I mean. So inconsistencies. So I want you, whenever you get feedback, I want you to have a browse through it from a kind of what am I often doing here? point of view. Okay? Because then we're going to put them on our to do list to check in future. There is no excuse. If your supervisor regularly pulls you up for having run on sentences, there is no excuse for you not to have check for run on sentences in your, like, list of things that you edit for, so that you never make them do that again. Use your supervisors for the stuff that's useful, that's cognitively demanding, that's subject specific, not for stuff they've already told you you're doing wrong.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to run through looking for different things each time. Does this mean you're going to read the same article a hundred times? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yes, probably. Does that make it less efficient? No, because each time you're doing it, you're doing it better. Okay, I'm getting fired up on this because people spend so much time trying to do this in an efficient way and it just ends up not working very well and being really painful. So trust me, I want you to try this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Don't just blindly trust me. Have a go. See what a difference it makes if you're only looking for one thing as you scoot through. Okay, and then what we're going to do is we're going to order those things you're doing in sort of reducing magnitude. So the first things that you're looking at are the kind of gross macro structure stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does it say what I need it to say? Um, yeah, that kind of stuff. Then you're going to get into the kind of what order does it sound nice ish kind of stuff. And then you're going to get into the is it grammatically correct? Are my references in the right place and my punctuation good? All that stuff later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so you're kind of working your way through this list. Any of you are like, Oh, but I should probably correct things as I go. No, you'll find them later. If you saw them this time, you'll find them later. At best, just highlight them or something like that. Okay, because otherwise you really will be like, Oh, I'm just correct this one. Oh, there's another one over there. And then 15 minutes later, you're meant to be restructuring your article. And all you've done is correct typos. Okay, stay with the one more focus. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things that's really important, especially when you are up against a deadline, whether it's handing in your thesis, handing in for a journal deadline, or whatever it is, is remembering the big picture here. So, there is an almost infinite number of things you can check for. Having a good run through that kind of gradient from the macro stuff to the micro stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Brilliant. But I also want you to ask yourself a very important question. And that important question is, is this a pass fail issue? Okay, because if you're going, Oh, I don't quite like how this sentence goes. Not a pass fail issue. Does it make sense? Is it vaguely clear? Happy days. Let's go. Okay, especially if we're tight for time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it a pass fail issue? Is my argument unclear here? Yes. Okay, right, we're going to deal with that. Do I use too clunky words in consecutive sentences? Yes, I do. It's fine. People will cope. Okay. Is it a pass fail issue? The flip side of this, I'm now going to shout out my gorgeous stepdaughter. I was helping her with a piece of her schoolwork the other day. And there was one part that I was like, can you see how this, this couple of sentences isn't necessary to answer the question? And her reply was, but I like them. And I said, I know, but they don't do anything in this essay. And she said, I like them. And she decided to keep them. And because I'm the bigger person, I rose above it and I let her keep them. That's fine. But my warning to you guys is hanging onto sentences just because you like them is not the route to writing your best writing. Okay, I tried to tell her that, but she's 17. She doesn't listen to me. I'm her stepmother, but you guys, you listen to me. You choose to listen to me. So you need to listen. Don't hang on to sentences just because you love them. Okay? Try it without it. If you've got a sentence you just think sounds amazing, delete it. See what happens. Okay? It can often solve the problems that you didn't realize it was causing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, those are the different levels and many of you will be saying, Okay, Vikki, that's great. I understand. But sometimes my issues are kind of more vague than that. And to be fair, sometimes your comments from supervisors or reviewers will be more vague than that. Supervisors, I'm shouting you out here, okay? I love you dearly. I know you're busy. I know you're trying to do your very best with your students. I am there with you. I've been there. I've done it. But, feedback that says you need to go deeper here, or clarify this, or flesh this out, not, not helpful. Really not helpful. Okay. And I know it's down to the student to or the person who's writing the article to come up with this stuff. So equally, I'm not saying you have to tell them exactly what they should say. But comments like that are incredibly difficult to answer because. They're not just thinking, how do I make this clearer? They're still trying to understand what you didn't find clear in the first place. And so they're trying to answer it, partly by what they think will make it better, but also trying to guess in some weird way what it was that you wanted them to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and so they don't help. So, supervisors, if you're listening. A little more detail in those comments. Super helpful. I know it takes more time, but it hopefully means there are fewer iterations of feedback going through. So in time, it should speed things up. But even just saying, it's not quite clear what you're saying here. Are you claiming X or are you claiming Y? I found it hard to understand the difference or something. Okay, just giving a little bit more depth as to what you mean.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Students, obviously I can't coach all your supervisors, so some of you are going to have to deal with getting comments like that. It's fine, what we're going to do is we're going to clarify them for ourselves. Okay, so whenever you get a comment that you think is vague by your supervisor, I want you to turn it into a more specific piece of guidance, because otherwise you're going to avoid answering it forever. If you're not quite sure what they mean, you either need to ask them what they mean, or you need to kind of try and guess what they mean, and turn it into something more specific. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. Now, if they've said, I need to go deeper here, um, and you read it and you're like, yeah, I do. I know I do, but I don't know how. That is firstly completely normal. I'm going to refer you, I also have another episode, with Dr. Katy Peplin, who's a writing coach. And she talks about something called the taste gap, which is that when we're at the beginning stages of our academic careers, we are able to recognize something that's not good enough and not able necessarily to do something about it. I'm a bit here with my abstract art at the moment. I can appreciate which art I like and which I can't. I can't produce art I like yet. Working on it. So not sort of going, oh I recognize that it's not quite clear or it's not in depth enough but I don't know what to do is completely normal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The big tip I would give you is if, especially if you're regularly told you need to go deeper, you need to explore this more. I would find an article or ask your supervisor to recommend an article that they think does it well. And then we're going to do some proper, like, text analysis, okay? And so, those of you in the arts and humanities, this will come easy to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Scientists, this is not something we do quite so often. But I want you to look, how do they write? Find a paragraph, ask your supervisor to help you, or identify it yourself. Find a paragraph where you're like Yeah, that is a really good paragraph, okay? So clear, so in depth, so precise, love it. What do they do? Let's understand, like, you know, like you look at art and you're like, oh, okay, how have they built this up over time? How have they, why do I like the way this is composed or whatever? Analyze a good article. Realize what they do. And then what I want you to do is give yourself much more specific instructions as to how to answer that question. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One way, and I've used this example before in other things, one way to help to give yourself better instructions is to imagine you're giving instructions to somebody else. So either you've got a research assistant or you're giving it to an AI prompt. Please don't. I would recommend generally not giving it to an AI prompt, especially early in your PhD. But imagine the instructions you would give them. You wouldn't just say, go deeper here. Who knows what they'd do, it'd be chaos. Um, you'd give them much more detailed instructions, right? I want you to do that. Find three more pieces of evidence that back up this point. Find a counter argument to this and present it. Get way more specific about what that actually means, and then you're creating yourself tasks that you can actually do. If there are comments that you are regularly skipping past, it's usually because you haven't defined what they mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All the way through this, there's some really practical tips that you can use to edit your work. And all the way through this, our other job is our own emotional regulation, okay? Editing work is laborious, which means it takes cognitive energy. It's easy to interpret as a, like, critique of ourselves, which means it takes emotional energy. All of that is okay. It's okay if you find that hard, particularly if you're newer to this, but to be honest, throughout your career. Recognize that. Use that as a reason to praise yourself for the stuff that you do. To recognize the steps that you're going through, the progress that you're making. Look out for the chunks of text where you didn't get any comments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's amazing, like that's a compliment in itself, okay? Give yourself space, allow yourself to do this work, allow yourself to feel the feels, but make it as easy for yourself as possible by having these clear tasks that you're going to do. I really hope that's useful. Let me know which of these you've tried before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe I've talked about some of them in past podcasts. I've got to the stage now, there's so many episodes I can't remember. Um, Let me know if there's any other techniques that have helped you with editing. I'm going to mention my sneaky Comic Sans one before we go. If you're just finding this all a bit stressful, and it all feels a bit too important, a bit too meaningful, and you can't deal with it, turn everything into pink Comic Sans. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of my clients came up with this. Love it. Turn everything into pink Comic Sans. There's only so upset you can get about a thing that's written in pink Comic Sans. Can't take it seriously. Okay? So use colour. Use colour if that helps you. If you found that useful, do make sure you're on my newsletter, jump onto the website to find it. and let me know what you've tried out, any issues you've had or suggestions you've got for, um, other ways of editing your work. Now, I am building up to do a client Q and A episode soon. So if you have a specific topic that I haven't talked about on the podcast before, a question that you have, Please do submit it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can either submit it through my website on the email address or on your podcast thing, there should be a send Vikki a question button. If you use that one, make sure you tell me your name. Cause otherwise I will never know who you are. It comes through anonymously and I will make sure that I answer your questions in a future episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 24 Feb 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-25-how-to-edit-your-work-without-hating-yourself thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-24-how-and-why-to-write-for-medium-and-beyond <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Want more people to read your research? This week, I’m joined by Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, to explore the benefits of writing for a general audience. We’ll discuss how sharing your ideas beyond academia can boost your visibility, strengthen your writing skills, and position you as an expert. If you’ve ever wondered whether anyone will actually read what you write—or how to reach more people—this episode is for you! </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Find out more about Tony Stubblebine and some of his most popular articles <a href="https://medium.com/@coachtony/about" target="_blank"> here </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach. And I have a very exciting guest with me this week. So I would love to welcome Tony Stubblebine, who is the CEO of Medium, the online blogging platform. So welcome, Tony.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Well, thank you for having me. Yeah, I sure am the CEO at Medium, and I'm excited to talk to you, uh, because I used to be a coach before this and, uh, at Medium we have, uh, a strong affinity for academics. So hopefully we find something exciting and useful to talk about today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. Definitely. Now I'm sure the vast majority of the listeners are already aware of Medium and probably regular readers as well, but just in case there are people that aren't, because we do have listeners from all over the place, just let people know a little bit more about what they can expect from Medium and what your role is within that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Sure. Medium is a modern blogging platform. You know, blogging has been something that's been a big part of the internet since, let's say, the year 2000. And Medium is the latest incarnation. And our aim is to be a great place to read and a great place to write. That's a very broad mission, you know, could be about your personal life, but a lot of what gets written on Medium is people that are trying to share their knowledge and experience with other people. And that's what I've always liked about blogging is that it's a way to transfer someone's one person's wisdom to a big audience. And before blogging, there wasn't as much of that as I would like.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure. And how did you go? You mentioned you were a coach before. How did you go from coach to what you're doing now? That feels like quite the journey.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I remember when I joined Medium, there was a head of PR, who had to kind of write the announcement of who I was and I thought, Oh, she's never going to be able to package this up. There's too many things. And, uh, and she just went with the headline "industry veteran". </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Okay, that's actually pretty good. Um, I'm a programmer originally had to have a computer science degree and had a whole career in startups, both in helping to build them. Uh, most notably is on the team that launched Twitter, and then later as a founder and for me, the whole trajectory was to find more and more meaning in my work and I would say I started like this almost like a Maslow's hierarchy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I defined meaning when I graduated as money, I just wanted enough money to be comfortable, then I got that because I'm very lucky to have graduated into a field that paid well. And I was like, okay. You can only look at mortgage calculators so long before you think, well, what else do you want in life? And, so this kind of kept moving up, trying to find work that mattered more, and eventually it just dawned on me. Um, and I, this is not for everyone, but it dawned on me that the only way I was going to have the meaning I wanted was to be in charge. And then it dawned on me also I needed to pick a certain type of work that was attractive to me. And what's always been attractive to me is helping other people grow. And I think blogging is a way to do that. But there was a period before this where I was running, I would call it a self improvement company. It was the first habit tracker on the iPhone. And then we expanded that into habit coaching and then to more general coaching. Yeah, coaching was tended to be pretty productivity focused, or pretty behavioral. Uh, but I got a, maybe a 10 year period where that was the sole focus of my life. Yeah. And that's, that's why I go by Coach Tony still because to some people that's who I am.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And then what led you into Medium? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Ah, well, bigger opportunities. I've been close to the company since launch. It launched in 2012 and, uh, I actually, like I was so close that I shared an office with them. And so I was involved in kind of attracted to it and I'd worked in other types of online publishing at various parts of my career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And then I just kept getting more and more involved as I fell more in love with the platform and with the product. And at some point they opened up a potential for some partnerships and I became a publishing partner and because I was already close to the company, I spent a lot of time advising them and I think it turned out that I'm not smart about very many things, but about Medium, it turns out I'm exceptionally smart. And so a lot of the things that I had advised turn out to be very true. And at some point, the founding CEO, who was fairly famous internet person, he had founded Blogger, he had founded Twitter, and then he had founded Medium. He wanted to step aside. And so I made the case that I could, take over and that there was a direction that I wanted to take Medium that would probably be healthier, better for the Internet and better for the company itself. So that's what happened. We made a transition about a little more than two years ago, basically because, you know, he had run the company for more than 10 years and was ready for a change in his own life. Very fair. and the timing worked out that I was also ready for a change and had been so successful on Medium I was able to make a good enough case that they, they handed me the reins. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. I love hearing these sorts of stories because often you sort of see it in retrospect, right, you know, the person who had to write a bio of how you ended up where you are, you sort of see this like neat package in retrospect. And I love hearing how it sort of, I'm not saying there wasn't direction. I'm sure there was direction in all of this, kind of, you know, Oh, I, I was here. And so I made these opportunities and then, cause I was good at that or I contributed this, it went that way. I think it's really useful. We don't often hear stories in that kind of organic way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I heard this thing said about startups, but I think it's really true of careers too. It was a startup is a process by which the founders come to understand themselves. And I always liked that quote. Because you think a startup is that you create a business from scratch and you create the quote unquote optimal business. But the truth is that every decision you make along the way is edited by your own personality and your own desires. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And I think that's the same thing that's true in careers, is I understand myself better, I guess I'm 25 years into this career than I did on, on day one. And that's kind of how I told the story to you, right? It's like, I just wanted money on day one. And then I came to realize that's not actually what I want. What a surprise, right? And so. It was, it was directed, but definitely it was not directed with any real self knowledge, uh, that came, that came from experience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. Now, we are going to talk about Medium and the benefits of writing Medium and things like that, but I heard you talk about something a while ago that I just thought was fascinating and would be so interesting for our listeners. I think it builds both on what you do at Medium and on your background as a coach. And that was, you were talking about moving beyond habits, which for somebody who developed a habit tracker, I thought was just really cool. Moving beyond habits towards thinking more about values and identities. So I just wonder, why should we be moving beyond habits? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: There's all of these tactics that work and like I've come to find, kind of the main misunderstanding in all self improvement is the idea that there's like one quick fix. And it's like, you know, we see that fail over and over again, and yet, on the other hand, we see all of these people succeeding. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Right? And so what did they actually do? They succeeded through a lot of work. And I like, I almost, like, I try to steer people in that direction, right? Like, we hope for a quick fix, and then as a result, we're afraid of doing, like, quote, unquote, all that work, right? But when you see people who succeed, and then you actually interview them and talk to them, it's not that much work, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: It's more than you want, but less than you fear. And so I'd actually rather be more upfront with that. And so I got obviously a lot of value in really structured habit building, and I gave a lot of value to, you know, a couple million people. And now it's like a form of software that's established. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And so just even we laid the groundwork for a new type of tool that's well used by a lot of people. But then I also got to touch every other kind of modality of intervention. And I found kind of surprising to myself, the combination of meditation, which is a skill, I think a skill for introspection essentially, you know, I know Calm is a famous app. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And so you might think meditation as a skill for calming yourself. I think the real thing is like noticing what's going on in your head. That's the thing that is cross applicable to other things and that and therapy. Like I was better in therapy because I was a good meditator. And at one point in therapy, I think, and there's probably a lot of people's, uh, um, experience in therapy, we essentially just worked on self acceptance. And I was so shocked how much that work did for my productivity. I was just like, just blown away. Right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And, kind of the understanding, you know, when I'm fighting myself and when I'm not fighting myself. And, if, and this is really true, the word if, if you can reach deeper into yourself, you'll make more progress. Sometimes you can't, right? If you can't get there, then, the surface level habit building, well, that's the best available tool to you. ,if you can, you'll get further and, Bye. So some of the, some of the ways that you can reach further is like, is can you change your identity would be one? Like, who are you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And, um, I would say, again, to make it personal, I struggled as a CEO when I thought I had to be someone different than myself, right? Like, you know, we have stereotypes of CEOs out in the world, and I'm not any of those stereotypes. And it was through this is connected back to self acceptance and through identity is like I wanted to be a CEO, but I didn't want to be that type. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so what sort did you think you had to be?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Like very aggressive, pushy, manipulative, those sorts of like kind of aggro kind of uh, things. I'd gotten feedback, even fundraising that I was too soft. I thought that was very interesting, and it was costing me the ability to build the business I wanted to build. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And, so I had to come at it some other way that was congruent with who I am and what my strengths were. And it's hard to do that if you don't have any self acceptance because you're sort of rejecting your strengths constantly rather than, you know, accepting them and building off of them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. It's such a different vibe, isn't it? It's one of the things. That was a real transformation for me, moving from trying to fix your flaws to building on your strengths. You know, I've never been somebody who's been that kind of methodical, just carefully and consistently stick to exactly what I said and work my way through it kind of thing. And for years in academia, I told myself that was who I had to be. I bought every planner you can possibly, every habit tracker. Stopped filling it in after a couple of weeks because I felt bad because I hadn't ticked enough of the boxes and it became a little symbol of shame. Um, and it wasn't until I had coaching, that yeah, realizing that actually some people succeed that way and it's wonderful. But actually there's, there's a lot of different ways that you can do this and consistent enthusiasm is one I've never struggled with and that can take you quite a long way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Right, exactly. Um, so you had a good coach, like they could kind of, this is what I love about a good coach is they'll give you a new view on the world that like kind of the power of a coach to reframe, you know, the opportunities about available to you. It's so powerful. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, I love this story just for you. Like you got, you were able to flip from shame and fighting yourself to love and acceptance and hey, guess what? Along the way, you became more successful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And ironically, more organized too, right? Yeah. That's the thing. It's often you even end up making progress in the things, you know, like ,you must have had your moments where you had to be firm and you had to be some, you know, I'm not saying aggressive or any of those things, but where you had to be like strong in your decisions and all of those things, you know, sometimes we accept ourselves. It's then easier to do the other bits as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I, you know, I, I didn't, I hesitated to go too deep on like what it takes to be a CEO, because sometimes it very different from, you know, what your listeners might need, but like the way I would simplify it is it's true. The people I interact with do need some level of strength from me that I was not presenting. It turns out that there's more than one way to get it, and I actually got it through, um, uh, mindfulness, uh, self reflection and clarity, which then changed to a different presentation of steadiness. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: So I think anytime I'm able to kind of exude the strength that I think people need from me It's based on a really firm foundation, which is different than like naked aggression, Yeah, which would be a different strategy that might work for somebody else, but I knew it wasn't great work for me so I was able to find a different different path and I think there's some version of that for every person's career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think it is actually, I know it's a different context, but I think it is super relevant in academia because whilst I don't think academics have the same stereotypes about them that CEOs of startups might have, there is absolutely an issue with PhD students and junior members of academic staff leaving academia because they don't want to be that person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They look at the people above them and they see them working or allegedly working 80 hours a week. I don't think anybody works 80 hours a week. But allegedly, you know, they're in the office all the time. They're sacrificing their family and personal life. They're, you know, they're selfish with their, like their ideas and, you know, cautious around collaboration and all that stuff. They're kind of trying to get recognition at the expense of others and all these kinds of worst stereotypes. People look at that stuff and go, well, I'd like to be an academic, but if I have to do that to succeed I don't want to. So I think I think this translates out probably more than more than is obvious to some people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: That's great. Yeah, there's more than one way to win at politics. And sometimes you can. Benefit from doing it the opposite of everyone else. You'll take a lot of shit for it and a lot of people who are expecting you to behave the way that they, they do will continue to counsel you that way. Um, but you know, like, as, as you say, I think over and over on this podcast, probably like there's more than one way to succeed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: A hundred percent. Now, one of the habits that a lot of my listeners want to change is the habit of writing more regularly, writing more consistently and all of that. And I wonder what thoughts you, how you can kind of use maybe thinking about it in terms of values and identities in term to actually work on that sort of a habit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Um, uh, we've done so much work on writing and I've seen so many ways. This is one where I actually think strategies do really well, like the whole world of strategies just boil down to make it easier. Like, you know, essentially. To put, to go from zero to a fully formed, coherent thought that you would like to share with people is too big of a leap, and especially if that's from zero to a thesis that's going to, like, get published in a journal, that, there's a lot that has to happen in between, and a lot of writers, uh, just benefit from building the muscle, the daily muscle of some writing every day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: But what I found when I looked at productive writers, the number one thing that stood out to me always was consistency that if you look at the daily schedule of Stephen King, or I know these are not academic writers, Stephen King, or, uh, how do you say your last name is Ursula K. Le Guin she's also a sci fi writer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: They're done writing before two o'clock in the afternoon. And I just think about like every, every person I ever met who was writing, you know, like an academic paper, they were their initial question to me was, how can I stop procrastinating so that I could write eight hours a day? And it's like, well, it turns out no one who's a productive writer writes for eight hours a day, you know, and so just reframing that to, could you just have 30 productive minutes tomorrow often gets a lot of the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And so I've tried, I've seen it, um, and then even more generally for writers everywhere, uh, there's a reason the phrase shitty first draft exists. It's just like, your first draft does not have to be your final draft, right? Write whatever you're capable of today and make sure your fingers keep moving and that's then it's possible to build on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: The kind of, to me, the most amazing transformation I ever had with an academic writer who came to me specifically with this question. How do I stop procrastinating so I can write for eight hours a day. So that's interesting. And, you know, as a coach, you don't want to lead with the fight, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Like, I hear that question. And, there is absolutely a part of me that's like, that's impossible, you know, like, um, and, and so this is the most amazing transformation. As I asked him, I said, Well, let's get to that. But first, could I give you a challenge? Could you get a stopwatch? And tomorrow when you sit down to write, start the stopwatch the second your butt hits the chair and stop it, uh, the second you finish your first sentence. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And just tell me how quickly can you write one sentence? And then he came back and he said, Wow, that was surprisingly effective. And, you know, I took them like 32 seconds or something and he said, and then I kept going, I wrote for about an, about 45 minutes and it was the most that I'd written in six months. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And he said, maybe I only have to write an hour or two a day and I'll be fine. And I think, you know, what we kind of discovered through experience is that, the framing and the shame is coming from an unrealistic expectation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: So in coaching there's a framework that comes from Robert Dilts called logical levels. And, I'm a little bit out of practice as a coach, but my memory is identity is near the top and then belief is, is below this. And so, this academic that I was working with, they were struggling just because they had a toxic belief and that belief was productivity was eight straight hours of writing. And if we were able to work our way out of that belief, everything else became easier. And that's what I was saying earlier about if you can change something deep in the person in yourself, then things will get much easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: But you can't, of course, you know, we need progress today sometimes, but we can use these more surface level approaches, but the example I just gave was an example of the power of belief change, you know, and this is something a coach can do a lot to help you with, is kind of help you introspect on some beliefs that might be holding you back. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you must see with people that write regularly for Medium, you must see a shift in. identity as well, right? Because, I mean, I think about the people that I coach and the PhD students in my membership and they have these beliefs, they have beliefs about how much they should be working and how easy other people find it and all these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But they also have this identity that they're a high achieving person, but they're probably not good enough to be doing what they're doing. And so they sort of have this very wobbly academic identity, And they definitely don't, if you ask them if they're a writer, they definitely don't identify as a writer. Um, you know, they write. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Most of them, you know, they've all done undergraduates. Most of them have done master's programs. They write loads, but they don't identify as writers. I just wonder what sort of transformation you see in people's identities as they write for you more and more.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Right. Blogging is a nice way to lower the bar so people can have that identity change because we all hold writing and such high regard, you know, I think it's one of the most common ambitions or aspirations that I hear from people, which, you know, there's something you kind of put your finger on how illogical that is like, we all write, we text, we email, we write thank you cards, like, Like, if we graduated middle school or elementary school, then we write, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And so that, so that the majority of us don't have an identity as a writer is literally false, but it's true, you know, and even, you know, even the highest achievers. They'll tell me, like, I wish I could find a way to write. And, um, so there's some fear that can only be overcome through experience, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And then you do it and you realize, Oh, I do have something to say and people want to hear from me. And maybe sometimes you learn these, I would call them like mechanical or tactical lessons, like a lot of people who write regularly do it by simplifying their message. So, a lot of times, I'll have in my head an essay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And there's going to be 10 points that ladder up to one, right? And I was like, well, that thing's never going to get published because I don't have time to write that. And then and so I'll have to remind myself, what if I just picked 1 of those points and satisfied myself with this is what I'm going to write and publish today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Um, and then you do that and you feel the joy of the experience of having succeeded that way, and then you feel, yourself smarter. I think there's always something inherently healthy about writing for the writer, right? Like, it forces you to articulate your thoughts and your ideas, and that sticks with you forever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Um, and then you get the feedback from an audience. You're like, oh, I actually was helpful, you know, like, I think we're all looking for some sense of meaning in the world. And sharing our knowledge and wisdom with other people, which, you know, who's dripping with more of that than academics? That that just gives people an important sense of meaning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I think it's so funny because I think academics seem to have this kind of balance between on one hand, lots and lots and lots of them want to have more impact. They want people to know about their research, they're excited about their research and things like that. And then on the other hand, this kind of belief that their work's too complicated, you know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I couldn't possibly reduce that down to something small. Now I have a little mini background in science communication when I was still a still an academic, and I believe that if you fundamentally understand an idea you should be able to really whittle it down to its, to its key points, but lots of people don't believe that. And I wonder how you, what you've seen in terms of people kind of learning how to do that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I think one thing that is like the most practical and simple advice I could give someone is just flip it and react to something instead. Right. That like you can see if people in the world are not understanding a topic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Right. And, um, It's that's a good way to blog, because then, you know, you don't have to think, well, what is the idea that I'm going to pick today? And then you also, you know, people are interested in the topic. And a lot of times it has built in motivation. There's something frustrating about seeing other people misunderstand something that you know, well, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And, uh, like, I found that just that advice on its own is enough like you just, you know, you figure it out, right? Um, so. I in America right now, we have some strange ideas, especially around health, popping up. And so I'm running into a lot of academics sort of like, I have to correct that. That's not right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: They're not thinking about it the right way. But before that, like, just like, even, you know, I think kind of scientific or academic information right now feels more politicized than it used to. But before that, it was still in a system of kind of a traditional media system That really likes to oversimplify a topic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: So you'd see in psychology, all of the psychology kind of, um, ideas that hit the mainstream, because the pattern, as I understand, like, as it looked to me, where they were all essentially in the, like, one simple trick, because that's the kind of psychology idea that the media ecosystem is set to expand. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And so. Maybe like a lot of, you know, a lot of psychology research ended up not replicating well, but the stuff we heard about was like that was wrong with all in that one category. It's like, um, you know, postures and and whatnot. And so, if you actually have that deep information, a lot of people just want to correct it. Right. And this is, someone's wrong on the internet is one of like the fundamental, like, feelings of being on the internet. Like, that's what sparks participation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's there to get angry. My husband says that to me, says that to me quite a lot. Why do you read this? I was like, because it's fun. I enjoy getting angry. It's fun.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: That's right. It's good to feel alive.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Exactly. Nothing I like more than having a little rant. No, for sure. And it's often, I mean, I, I often say to people that if you think what you understand. is too complicated, that means that people who know a lot less than you are going to be the ones putting their voices out there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's what then gets everybody riled, right? Because as you say, you know, that's where we end up with the, you know, what is it, the blue Monday? You know, I'm sure we're recording this now in the middle of December, it'll come out in the new year. I'm sure we will probably have seen all the news articles about the most depressing Monday of the year and all that stuff that is based on no science whatsoever. It then ends up being the people that know less whose, whose voices are heard.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Yeah i, and that's what, I mean, this is what attracted me to blogging originally is I felt like I was actually working in publishing. I was working for a book publisher that focused on software engineers and programmers, but it's the same as traditional publishing was in the role of educating the world and like I worked for a company that took it as seriously as anyone, but I could still see the flaws in it and what happened in the early days of blogging is that we started to hear directly from the source that maybe had never been given a voice before, and they would get into niches that the, kind of, mainstream publishing was not able to get into like, you know. I work for a book publisher and it has to be big enough to warrant a book, you know, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And a lot of times they would cover it with more depth because you would hear from the world's expert on something or you'd hear from the person that cares the most about researching that topic or explaining that topic. And, you'd hear about it faster sometimes, right, like, especially I felt this as a book publisher is that, you know, take us a year to get a book out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And sometimes people want the information today and think about, like, how long does it take for good research to move from academia to the mainstream, right? To take years, it could take decades sometimes, right? Um, and so I thought, like, I always thought this is. The good side of blogging and what we call user generated content is like, Oh, we're, we're really going to give everyone in the world a voice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Um, well, some of those voices have information that the traditional publishing routes, journals included, just don't cover and so it could be a really big improvement and in some cases a really big improvement, regardless of all of the flaws that have seemed to come with it as well now, you know, misinformation and division and anger and whatnot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Inside of it is this core of, you know, really helpful people and voices that you just never would have heard from and that's, I mean, that's why I'm here before, because so many of those voices are academics.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I found, so I, as I say, I did a bit of science communication when I was a relatively junior academic. And it was hilarious, because I was doing, you know, I was, I was publishing, I was going to conferences, I was doing all this stuff that I was dead proud of. And I don't think my granny has ever been more proud than when I had a short article in the Daily Telegraph here in the UK. And it wasn't even about my specific research, it was about some stuff that had been done in my school by other people and because she could find, it was on a piece of paper, she could show it to her friends and all of this. She was just absolutely so excited about it, in a way that people outside of academia just don't really get publications. So I think there's just something very sort of immediate about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: That's the thing that I wish academics actually shared more is how much reading you've done. So all of your incentives are to publish your own research, right? Or for the most part. But along the way, you've done so much reading. So, one of the things I'll see when academics come to Medium is that they'll just cover a topic and some of it will be their own research, but they'll share so much more of what they read. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I think before we started recording, we're talking a little bit about procrastination, and this is a piece, I mean, a pretty like niche piece that I think actually your audience would like to read is from this guy, this guy, Tim Pychyl, P Y C H Y L, who is one of the premier researchers of procrastination. Like, he is an academic, and he just wrote, What is procrastination? And he wrote it as a blog post. And he, like, summarized all of the pieces of research, some of which is his own, and I've never highlighted more on a piece of writing or understood, you know, this, like, topic that we all struggle with more deeply than Tim coming in and writing an explainer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: And, I think that's, like, kind of this incredibly valuable service that we don't, you know, we don't give a lot of room for academics to do and share, share with the world because you do so much reading and you're so positioned to understand it. Right? Like, it's really problematic when I personally go read it an academic paper because I'm not evaluating it very well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I'm not really evaluating probably the methods and the analysis and the behind it very well. But you all are in the position to do that and not to say, well, here's what the research says, but also I would counterbalance it with this other research. And, you know, here's about how trustworthy I think it is and, um, and the general public would be a lot smarter if there was more of that going on, in my opinion.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's such an interesting idea because I think often when academics think about this stuff, they think about it in terms of sharing their own research, which obviously down the line when that's appropriate, brilliant, happy days. Um, but I love it as a, as actually as a reading, learning exercise for the students. So obviously great for the public, don't get me wrong, but thinking about it, you know phD students and academics are super pressed for time all the time. And so sometimes things that are nice to do sort of go by the wayside. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But one of the things I often try and coach students on is writing when they're reading. So often people say, I don't know enough to write yet. I just need to read a few more articles, read a bit more, read a bit more, read a bit more, and then I'll be able to write my academic piece. And. I try and encourage them to write as they go about what they're experiencing as they're reading the articles and what their thoughts are and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I hadn't really thought about kind of public for a way you could do that. But the notion of sort of identifying five or six articles from a topic that you need to get to know, and deciding that you're going to write a short blog piece about what they find. I think. I mean, it'd be great for people who are interested in that stuff to read, but as a kind of learning modality, I think that would be really interesting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I do too. Absolutely. Right. And, as I was saying, kind of the kind of, as I was making the case for why this would be so valuable, I was thinking, we should, you know, the two of us should connect this back to a person's goals, because there's so many different goals for writing. And I, like, I kind of, I want to give some nuance to straight altruism, right? Like a hundred percent what originally drove blogging was just that I have something to share and I want to be heard on this topic. And it wasn't about forwarding your career or anything really practical, but as the kind of the blogosphere and the, you know, the internet has expanded. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: There are actually a lot of really specific goals that people have in mind and sometimes it is furthering your career. Sometimes it's like getting more visibility with your peers, but sometimes it's getting more visibility with the business world because you want to do consulting on top of your work There's definitely a lot of academic specialties where that's a big part of people's careers sometimes it's about transitioning from your PhD program into a job like your writing is sort of like the de facto portfolio, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Like, like, oh, now I understand what you're about because I can read your writing. And sometimes it's, I just want to do good in the world. And sometimes it's, I want to get paid for this. Like, these are all plausible reasons to write. And like, I always hate for someone to hear one reason and think, Oh, that's not for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Right? Like, there's a lot of different reasons for writing. I would say most writers that I run into do have at least a little bit of the, I just really want to share something and be heard. You know, like, that is a big underlying desire. Um, but that's just such a common desire too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and then I think connecting it back to when we were talking about values and identities as well. I think it, well, I wonder whether it would also, help to establish your own identity as an expert as well, especially for my more junior listeners, the PhD students, who are very used to being at the bottom of the, in their academic lives, at least the relative bottom of the research tree, you know, their supervisors know more than them. Everyone around them knows more than them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it's quite easy to get yourself into, Oh my God, I know nothing kind of vibe. And The more you talk, the more I'm sort of thinking that actually writing about stuff that's directly relevant to your research, but for a more general audience, whether that sort of develops that sense of, you know what, I do actually know that some of this stuff, I might not know as much as my supervisor yet, by the end of the PhD they will, but during the PhD, not, but I know loads more than most people. And. I can demonstrate that through this sort of writing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Yeah, I just, I love it for kind of a, a self esteem practice in a period when you're like sort of at your lowest point, like, cause we all go through these ebbs and flows and yeah, you're at the bottom of the totem pole, maybe by surprise, like you're not used to it. Maybe, you know, if you're working at the same time that you're in school, especially maybe you have seniority at work, but not, not as an academic. Um, yeah, I love it for that and, but it just like, I don't know, maybe I'm like too wired for ambition.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: It immediately occurred to me this one simple trick. Which is, this is a marketing trick, but I think it works for what we're saying here, which is, um, the shortcut to being the number one at anything is this marketing shortcut called category design, where you take this goal of being number one, and you take the category and keep making it more and more specific. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: So, even though I'm not a practicing coach. I am the best coach in this building right now. I happen to know that because I know who's in the building, right? That's like the simplified version of doing it, but had told me that some of your clients and maybe a lot of your clients are doing kind of the paired, like working while, um, so if like if their academic program is in any way tied to their work, boom, that's category design. They're now the world's expert on how those two things connect, right? That's something their professor doesn't know yet, right? Because they don't have the same experience. And so I think, you know, that's almost like a ladder of increasingly sophisticated reasons to write like. One is just to build the muscle of writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: It's fun. It clarifies your own thoughts. Maybe you, maybe you make other people smarter. That's the next run. Um, but eventually you can think of it as a way to really represent your own expertise. And kind of the shortcut to that is, I'm going to find these pairings of topics that, yeah, there's no competition for it, right? And, um, I've like, I almost like try to be shameless about that, right? Like it, it doesn't help to be an also run, especially in sharing information, you know, find some niche where you can really contribute something original is a lot easier than people people realize.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much. Now, if people, and as I am completely sure they will be, are now convinced they want to at least have a go at doing this sort of public facing writing, whether for Medium or anywhere else, where would you suggest people start?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: I think the trick on Medium that will help people the most, is to understand that there's already a lot of publications on Medium. They're sort of community run publications with sometimes very narrow focuses. And I mean, like, there's a publication of paleontologists. There's multiple publications of geologists. And so what's so cool about that for Medium is it means if you're a first time writer, you don't have to go it alone, you don't have to feel alone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Um, and it's not going to feel like publishing for a journal. And these people want to hear , from your listeners. And I think that ends up being probably the best starting point for a new writer on Medium, is to find a publication that covers the topic that you care about, and just submit to them because you'll get a little bit of feedback about kind of the learning curve of blogging. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: There is some, um, but it's a learn by doing experience. And so that's the tip I would give to anyone who's thinking about publishing on Medium is it's to look to our publications as the people that can help you get your, get your feet wet.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you mentioned when we were chatting before that there was a guide for academics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: Oh, absolutely. We just wrote up an excellent guide. It's been super well received and we'll send it to you and hopefully it'll show up in the show notes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Absolutely. Well, I'm certainly convinced that I'm going to be looking for some publications to see who I might approach as well. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I feel like we've gone from sort of thinking about habits and values and identities and really wrapping that all into writing and writing practice. So I know this is going to have been so useful for our listeners. So I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tony: It's been a joy. Thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No problem. And thank you everyone for listening. And I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 17 Feb 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-24-how-and-why-to-write-for-medium-and-beyond thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-23-why-what-you-do-matters-and-when-it-doesnt <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Do you ever wonder why you’re even doing this? Whether your research actually matters and whether the world actually cares? In this episode I’m telling you exactly why I believe your work matters, no matter what you’re researching. I’ll also tell you what bits (that we often worry about) don’t matter! This episode is designed to listen to whenever you need it, so make sure you save it somewhere for those days when you’re struggling! </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-22-what-to-do-if-you-want-more-reassurance" target="_blank"> What to do when you want more reassurance </a> <br/> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I am here today to tell you one thing, just one thing, and that is that what you do matters. So often we sit here in our academic careers, doing our PhD, whatever level we're at, feeling like no one even cares about anything we're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hardly anybody's going to read it anyway. What impact will this ever actually have in the world? And why did I sign up in the first place? If you're feeling like that, it's totally normal. We all go through those stages. And that's why I want to remind you that those things are not objective truths. Those things are stories we tell ourselves when things are feeling difficult and when we've forgotten why we're doing what we're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The work you do is important, regardless of what you're researching. Sometimes I have clients who say, oh, but you know, if I was researching for a cure for cancer, or I was researching about establishing peace in the Middle East or whatever. If I was researching those things, it would matter, but who cares about my little bit of literature? Who cares about my little bit of history, but I want you to know that these doubts happen no matter what you're researching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have clients who are researching those exact things, those things that seem so obviously valuable and they still feel often like a tiny piece in a huge jigsaw that they have no idea whether it will work anyway. The discipline that you are studying within and the topic you are studying does not inherently make you sure that your research is valuable. We have those doubts across all disciplines, all research areas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what you do is valuable because you're a small piece in a massive jigsaw. Because you are creating and producing one small piece of a jigsaw that nobody else would have produced in the way that you're producing them. But we don't know how it's going to fit together in the future. It's not like there's an actual jigsaw where all the pieces are kind of preconceived. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're creating a you shaped jigsaw piece, a piece of this giant puzzle that we don't know where it's gonna go. And that means we can't be sure how much impact it will have in the future, but equally we can't be sure that it won't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sometimes it's the most unusual obscure bits that capture people's imagination the most. Certainly when I ask clients in my workshops to share what they're researching on, sometimes it's the stuff that I would never have thought about. I still remember a student from, its gotta be 15, 20 years ago, who was researching the history of pantomime, and I just thought that was the most fascinating thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those of you who aren't in the UK, that may not be so relevant for you, but for me, pantomime is such a huge part of being a child in the UK. And the fact that most of us don't know anything about where it came from and how it developed, I just think it's fascinating. These are the things that will be in museums in the future. These are the things that will be in a book on somebody's bookshelf that they picked up just because it looked cool when they were wandering around a bookshop when they're not meant to be spending any money. The things you do are important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The approach that you take is important. The fact that we have hundreds of thousands of people out there doing PhDs, who are learning how to take huge amounts of disparate information, often contradictory information that's arguing with each other, and to turn it into a meaningful argument. The world needs that. The world needs to be able to understand the nuances between different arguments, to understand that there isn't right and wrong, that there's a whole load of grey in between, and that we can make evidence based arguments for where we sit on that nuanced continuum. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The world needs those skills. The world needs the skills that you are developing. The world needs people that can manage this enormous unmanageable amount of information and turn it into something coherent so that other people can learn from it who haven't got your skills. The world needs what you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The world needs people that can define a huge project, decide what it is, and make it happen. The world needs those people. The world needs people who have creativity and insight and who can stretch our knowledge beyond where it is at the moment. If you feel like you don't know enough, it's because you are literally at the edges of human knowledge. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is what you're doing when you do a PhD. When you work in academia, you are meant to not know enough. Because that is what makes you read the next bit and to write the next bit and to understand the next bit. We need people who can operate in that sort of uncertainty and still make it happen. The world needs your research and the world needs you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I said in this episode I was going to tell you one thing and that that's what you do matters, but I'm going to tell you one more thing too. And that's that the stuff you do sometimes doesn't matter. Now, that might sound like a massive contradiction, but so many of my clients flip from everything I do is completely pointless and no one cares to, I have to get this exactly right in exactly the ways it needs to be done or else I'm a failure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's why the second half of this is to remind you that so much of what you do doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you tell the story in this order or that order, as long as it tells a coherent story. It doesn't matter whether you include this article or that article or this quote or that quote, as long as you can justify why you've included it or why you've left it out. It doesn't matter whether you take a quantitative approach or a qualitative approach or what exact measure you use, as long as you can justify why you did and you only interpret within the realms of what you did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A lot of the decisions that you're getting het up about don't matter that much. You have to have a good reason to choose it. You have to be able to defend it. You have to understand the weaknesses of the choice that you made. And other than that, it doesn't matter. What is important is that you move this research forward, that you develop the skills that you need to push this piece of research forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's all that matters. And that means learning to sit in that uncertainty and move forward anyway. Learning either to be comfortable with the fact that you're not quite sure where you're going next, or to be okay with being uncomfortable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The tiny things that you are stressing about probably don't matter. But the research that you do, the fact that you're doing a PhD, the fact that you're having an academic career, those things matter. Go do them. And this episode is specifically designed to be short and for you to come back to it whenever you need it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So save it, send it to your friends who need to hear it right now. You matter. Your research matters. The little things you're worrying about probably don't. Let's just crack on and get this research out into the world where it can have the impact and bring the joy and the interest and the intrigue that it deserves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 10 Feb 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-23-why-what-you-do-matters-and-when-it-doesnt thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-22-are-you-in-an-emotional-overdraft-with-special-guest-author-andy-brown <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> Do you ever feel like you’re only succeeding because you’re working more than is healthy?  </span> </div> <div> <span> That you are subsidizing your work at the expense of your wellbeing?  </span> </div> <div> <span> Then today’s episode is a must listen! I welcome Andy Brown, author of The Emotional Overdraft and we chat about what we mean by an Emotional Overdraft, how to know if you have one, and what to do about it. </span> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> You can find out more about Andy Brown and The Emotional Overdraft <a href="https://emotionaloverdraft.com/" target="_blank"> here </a> <br/> <div> Find out the extent of your emotional overdraft by completing this <a href="https://emotionaloverdraft.com/self-assessment/" target="_blank"> assessment </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Transcript </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And today's episode is one that's come about through a kind of spontaneous moment of "Oh sod it, I might as well try" on a train. So I was on my way to Stirling and I took with me a book, The Emotional Overdraft, those of you on YouTube, you can see Emotional Overdraft by Andy Brown. And I found myself loving it and I thought, you know what? I wonder if there's any chance this person who's written this amazing book would come on the podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so I messaged Andy, and as those of you who are on YouTube can already see, here he is, Andy actually agreed to come on the show. So welcome, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Uh, delighted to be here and thank you for asking me. And to be on the podcast where, from the person that runs the How You Can Be Your Own Boss course is great. And I was listening to chunks of it and you were talking about being driven by our thoughts which drives our emotions or feelings, which drives our behaviors and outcomes. And I thought this is these are my people. This is, this is what I talk about as well. So it's great to be here and I'm very excited about the conversation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much. And yes, that was the thing as I was reading it, it's always one of those wonderful moments where you read some bits where you're like, Oh, that's what I say to people. And then you read other bits where you're like, Oh, and I hadn't thought about it like that. And that's where, you know, you're in exactly the right place. Cause you're kind of, you know, you're on the same page. There's things you agree on, but equally. You're kind of bringing slightly different things to the table, which is, which is perfect. So let's start with. Let everybody know who you are and how you came to write this book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So I'm a non executive director these days because I'm old, but my career, I started out in market research. So all you PhDs going, yeah, that's not real research. But I started out in market research, uh, which took me into advertising and I spent 35 years working in and running advertising agencies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And for the last 10 or so. I've been a non exec and an advisor to creative and research businesses to helping them build more valuable businesses. And that's really where the idea of the book came from. So looking at the challenges these, these founders and these, these leaders have in their businesses that just seem to be whatever the question, the answer seemed to be "I'll do it." You know, they were going to do it. They were the answer to everything and I spend a lot of time talking to people about how you can resolve that. But the researcher in me just kept coming back to it and going, I wonder if there's something seems to be consistent here. So so let's let's ask people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So I did a little bit of research and what I discovered was that, what I subsequently called an emotional overdraft, this idea of subsidizing your, your enterprise's success at your own mental or physical cost is pretty universal. In fact, spoiler alert, it is universal. Um, and it doesn't just exist within business, although my publisher said, you need an audience, Andy, so you've got to write it right, right for the audience, you know, right for a business audience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: But I do believe emotional overdraft is absolutely universal state. So I did the research and I discovered that almost everyone at some point or another is subsidizing the success of their venture or whatever they're doing at their own mental or physical cost. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: One where another and some people that feels like an overdraft to me. It's that sense of you dip in and you dip out when you need it And some people dip in and stay there and and that's very damaging and dangerous, Yeah. Other people can dip in and then come out again Just like financial control, you know, there are people that use their overdraft when they need to buy something expensive, they pay it straight off, they don't incur all those terrible costs, and it's gone again, but it's a useful facility. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Other people don't manage their costs very well. They've permanently maxed out their credit card, they're permanently in their overdraft, and they're paying a hell of a price for it. And it felt to me that that emotional cost of running a business, or I've got a good friend of mine working on his PhD, and he's probably been doing it for 10 years, and I know that that stresses him out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I know that that pressure, it's the same thing. And his behaviour is basically contributing to that. Broadly, I'm not saying he's to blame, but I am saying it's broadly a behavioral issue. Uh, and those behaviors tend to come out of habits. And that's what the research threw up was there are a number of habits, which tend to underpin these behaviors, which we can do something about. Because if it's habitual or if it's behavioral, it's not easy, but we can change that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: As long as we can spot it, we can change it. So that, that's what the research showed. The book took two more years to come out, but was published in January 2024. So, yeah, it was quite a relief and quite exciting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you mentioned that it was written for a business audience. I think I came across it first, I think you talked on another podcast and it was on the back of that, that I bought the book and thought that it would be really, really relevant. And I love this idea that when you're thinking in one setting, you know, a book that's focused. very much for people that are running their own businesses and there's bits in it that are not specifically applicable in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But there was so much of it that resonated, whether that's with PhD students who make up probably the majority of the people that listen to this, but also all the way through, and maybe even more so as you go further through an academic career, and now you're not just responsible for your own research but you're responsible for grant income. You're responsible for teaching and personal tutorials and supervision and all that stuff as well. And it just, there was so much that resonated with me at every level.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You talk about being your own boss. And I thought that is the boss you or the implementer you. And that's, that's the same situation. That's, you're a boss of one, you know, you're a company of one, you're the CEO. So you're still leading, even though you are the only person leading, and the only person you're leading is you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: But you're still leading, and the principles all hold true, which is there are ways of behaving which will make things easier, more sustainable, more effective, and more impactful. And there are ways of doing it that will make it inadvertently harder and more costly to you. And that's, so the exact principles apply through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I get. I mean, it's this strange thing when you launch your book baby into the world, you get, it takes on its own little life. I, I get emails from mothers and that is not my audience for the book, but I had one who sent me a voicemail. And it, she just said, I bought your book on someone else's recommendation. I, and I'm not flogging the book, I'm just sharing the story, but I bought your book. I read the first chapter. And it was like you were talking to me. So I phoned my friend up, and on the phone I read her the first chapter, and I said, who's he talking about? And my friend said, he's talking about you. Now, that's not the person I wrote the book for, but she's effectively this mother with kids, and a partner, maybe, and a family, and a wider network of friends, and societal pressure, and all those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Effectively is the leader of that community, of her micro community, and it was speaking to her. So it has taken on a bit of a life of its own, which I love. I think the reason I wanted to come and talk to you is because of the idea. The concept of an emotional overdraft, I think, is a helpful label that we can use in the right at the right time to spot what's going on and to do something differently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And if that's when you're a mum, or a working mum, or a PhD student, or you're running a team in a university, or you're running a business, great. If it works for you, then take it and do things with it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. All the way up to the very top. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So just to pursue that a little bit, when you find yourself in an emotional overdraft, it's okay to dip in. We've all done that. It's, you know, when I get people talking to me and they're saying, yeah, but I'm running a new, I'm running a business, I've got a startup or of course I'm working long hours. Yes, of course you are. But if it's persistent, if you don't stop and pay yourself back, if you stop doing exercise, if you don't find time for your family, if you stop seeing your friends, if you withdraw from your community, you stop volunteering or doing the things that feed you emotionally, that cost eventually catches up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So it's important to realize maybe I'm in my emotional overdraft. Maybe I've been here too long. Maybe something's going on. And in that moment, recognize that you can genuinely help yourself if you're able to change some behavior.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think that having the name for it really helps. That really resonated with me. So you've touched on this a little bit in terms of what people might see themselves stopping doing. But how would somebody recognize that they're going into an emotional overdraft?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Yeah, it's a good question, and it is different for everybody. I think what you're looking out for is physical or mental change. So, putting on weight, maybe. I mean, it is so, so different for everybody else, so I'll try not to make it all about me. But, it might be putting on weight, it might be losing weight, it might be physical change, it might be withdrawing From certain situations, your family. It might be, you know, stopping doing sports. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: It might be that you find you're more easily distracted, you are less able to concentrate or work for longer periods of time. That's another good clue. You can't stick to a task. Your to do list is being carried forward and rolled forward and rolled forward and stuff isn't getting done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You maybe stop looking at your to do list. You stop engaging with it because it's feeling overwhelming and a sense of overwhelm is a very good signal. And these can be tiny, tiny things and these can roll up into quite major things. So there's lots of little signals. If people call it stress, I'm feeling a bit stressed. You're already there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I'd be looking for those things that are leading up to, before the point where you might admit that you're stressed, or feeling overwhelmed, and that you've definitely got there then, but you'll recognise that. It's those small changes in behaviour. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And one of the things I do encourage people to do is to, if you think that you are subsidising your PhD at your own personal cost, then get other people involved in that. Share that thought with somebody. It doesn't have to be a professional. I mean, share it with a friend, share it with someone else who's doing the same thing, who can empathize. But, but talk about it and externalize it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Because that then gives you a forum to start understanding. If you hold the thing, if you hold on to it and look at it and explore it and get inquisitive, then you've got way more chance of starting to understand what might be happening. I'm not saying it'll fix it, but it's definitely, it makes it more tangible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: That's why the labels are helpful. If you can label it, it makes it a bit more tangible, then you can explore it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I love, I think this notion of subsidizing is so important because obviously, you know, people talked about stress, they talk about burnout and all of these things, but I think this notion that this can be what's propping up success., That sometimes there are people who are outwardly doing really well, their PhDs are progressing well, their academic careers are looking good, but it's only working because they're propping it up with their health and wellbeing, as you say, I think is such an interesting way to distinguish it from just solely a stress issue. That this is actually a structural thing that means that as it stands in its current form, your workload is not viable because you're having to sell this really important stuff essentially. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And it's invisible. It's not easy to measure and so in business and I won't talk about profits and loss and all those things, but that's the analogy I use in business. But in business, it's easy to measure financial measures. What do we, you know, what do we sell? What did it cost to do it? What staff costs do we have? Those things are easy to measure and so we measure them. Emotional overdraft, that invisible subsidy that's coming from my cost to my health, me not going to the gym, me not looking after myself, me disengaging from my family and my support network, that is not easily measured. And if you can't measure it, it's far easier to ignore and kind of pretend it's not there and pretend that it's normal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: It's just It just, it just is. Lots of business people, lots of leaders I talk to go, well, that's the job. It's meant to be difficult. It's meant to be hard. I'm meant to have a consistent level of low level stress. I'm meant to feel like that. No, you're not. I know loads of people who do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I know people who run businesses and I'm sure you know people who, who, who work through a PhD who don't, it isn't fueled by stress. It's not subsidized by a constant sense of discomfort and, pain. It doesn't have to be that way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I am going to be really cheeky. I've realised I've forgotten to feed the dog and he's crying. He's literally crying. It's going to be 30 seconds.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So now we can talk about the real stuff, can't we? What do we think about Vicki's podcast? Are you enjoying it? I was just chatting to your listeners.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh yes, I'll leave that bit in, they all know about Marley. He was literally nose butting me. Cool, right, let's get back in the zone. You mentioned that, like, profit and loss isn't so relevant as measures in academia, and you're right, but I do think there are kind of similar things, you know, we equate publications or impact factors or grant income and things like that are some very measurable things of success. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Or even how, you know, how long to a submission. Many of my PhD students that I work with are obsessed with how long it's taking them, you know, are they going to submit within their funded period? Are they going to submit when they thought they were going to, et cetera, so I do think there's kind of comparable quantitative.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Yeah, and that's, and that's, there's comfort in quantification. There's comfort in numbers. There's comfort in you know, you're making progress. You're hitting the milestones. That's great. I keep coming back to that Chinese proverb. You can't measure a pig fat. And I think it's right here in the sense that what they mean is simply measuring the pig is not the thing that's making it fatter. It's feeding the pig is what's making it fatter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Sometimes you can console yourself with the measurement and the measuring. And what you're ignoring is what are you actually having to pay to make that pig fat? What's it really costing you? Let's, let's torture this analogy to death. If you're, if you're taking food from your own table to fatten the pig, something's gone wrong there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And so that's really the point I think about this is that it, it's really hard to quantify. I think it's possible to, to identify even if you can't quantify it exactly. So we can identify it, uh, which is an important thing to do, but because we don't quant, can't quantify it exactly, It's easy to disregard it, but the impact or the halo effect of emotional overdraft can become all too visible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And I think, especially for my PhD listeners, I want you to also think about your supervisors and the impact that their emotional overdraft, because I'm pretty confident most of them have one, has on you potentially. And then the impact that your emotional overdraft has on other people, because when you're feeling like this, right, it changes how you're interacting with everybody else, you know, you've got much less patience, you're much less likely to be able to sort of reach out and be collaborative and all those sorts of things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You're more sensitive to criticism. You're less open to, to people helping you. Potentially, it depends on your nature, how it manifests itself. The other thing is emotional overdraft is incredibly greedy. So even if you think if you're sitting here thinking well, this isn't me I'm not dealing with this firstly you're lying to yourself because everyone has to some extent deals with this But what it can do is it can it can go and steal other people's it can create emotional overdraft in someone else and then take it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So this is the, you know, the person that's working really long hours that they're not going home until late, that they're not engaging with their partner. One day they come home, there's a note on the table that says, you know, I've left you. That, that, that is a classic case of, that person has probably been subsidizing you with their emotional overdraft for a very long period of time and you didn't realize it. So it's, it's pretty insidious. And it doesn't care where it goes to get sustenance and emotional overdraft. It will, it will go and find it where it can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. I think we have thoroughly convinced everyone that this is really important. And that lots of people are probably experiencing it. So let's get to what can we do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If people really, if they're listening to us today and going, Oh my goodness, they're talking about me. Where do they even start? Other than reading your book, obviously. If you're not going to push your book, I will push your book.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Well, interestingly, when I first submitted the book to the publisher, they said, this is great. We really liked this, Andy, but where's the rest of the book? And I said, well, what do you mean? And I'd got so excited about the concept of emotional overdraft and digging into emotions and this idea of which you talk about, which is you're thinking, driving your emotions, which drive your behaviors, which drive your outcomes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I'd not written the second half of the book, which is what the heck do you do about it? So they sent me back away. It's part of the reason it took so long, which actually just quite straightforward. So, yeah, you definitely can do something about it. Um, I think there's a couple of steps, though, here that are quite important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: One is to try and measure it. We've talked about measurement a lot here, so I mean, if there's people listening who can come up with a better solution than this, then please do, but there's, you know, some brains listening, so please do think about it. My solution for measuring emotional overdraft was to think about it as a relative, as a relative thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So if you think this might be you, set up your spreadsheet, get a piece of paper, whatever, whatever floats your boat, and track every day whether you think your emotional overdraft has gone up or stayed the same or gone down. And you need to do it on the day. It's not really journaling, but it's a simple form of that, because you won't remember, you won't remember in a few days time how you felt. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So on the day, at the end of the day, find a moment to reflect and think, do I feel like my emotional overdraft has got bigger? Has it gone up today? And why might that be? Is it about the same as it was? Or have I done something, did I do something today that made me feel better? That makes me feel a little less stressed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Start with an index, so typically 100, I guess, if you want to be conventional. Add one if your emotional overdraft has gone up. Don't add anything if it's the same, and take off one if it's gone down. And what you might find across a month is that you've had, I don't know, let's say 15 days where it's gone up, 5 days where it stayed the same, and 10 days where it's gone down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So you're net 5 days up, so your index would have gone from 100 to 105 across the month. And what that tells you, broadly, your emotional overdraft has got worse in that month. Now, 100 to 105, I don't know, that might be good, it might be bad, it depends on where you are at the moment, where you started. But if that carries on, and it went up by 10 the following month, then you're suddenly at 115 and 5 the next month and 20 the next month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You really have got to be thinking, way before four months, by the way, what can I be doing differently? And that's where the notes really help. If you're making little notes every day, it doesn't need to be long, it's just a few bullet point keywords, even is going to give you the opportunity to go, is there a pattern in this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Is it the end of the week where I'm getting physically tired or is it that I'm not recharging at the weekends? I'm withdrawing and I'm just sitting on the couch and watching TV or what's happening and try and see the patterns and try and see what's going on because even just doing that will give you the chance to , to bring some data to this, really. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'd just add one thing on the, the measurement which I think is in line with the stuff that you talk about but sort of reminded me of some of the stuff we talk about too, which is, if you're making a note about why it went up or down, I'd really encourage people to think about circumstance stuff, but also about their own thoughts, because I could imagine a world in which somebody would say that their emotional overdraft has gone up because they got negative comments from their supervisor, and they'd write that down as their reason. And I'd really, really encourage people to write negative comments from my supervisor. I made this mean I'm not good enough to be here, or I'm worried that I'm now not going to finish the paper, or whatever, because I think, and I know we'll talk about thoughts and things in a minute, but I think noticing where there's circumstantial stuff that might be shifting this, but also noticing where it's coming from the things you're telling yourself is really powerful to separate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You're right. Not just look at the circumstances, but look at the thinking and what's behind that thinking, how you created it. Uh, the second thing I'd say is in the research, what what I discovered was that there are approximately 10 broad areas of behavior or drivers as I call it, which every response I got was a combination of some of these 10 and whatever feedback I got from from the research I could drop it into these 10 areas. So there's 10 drivers. I won't talk about them all but It's different for everybody And I'm no psychologist. So I can't tell you why you've ended up like this Why you are a J. F. D. I. Which is just flipping do it as my publisher insisted I call it or why you have a challenge with trust or why you feel the need to be loved by people. That's not really the point for me. I mean, go ahead and explore that if you wish, but that is what's manifesting in your behavior and online at the emotional overdraft dot com I've created a kind of a very simple. Online, it's sort of a quiz. We called it the Cosmo quiz the whole time I was writing this. I don't know if Cosmo magazine still does these 50 quizzes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I don't know, but I remember them from being </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Do you know what I mean? I have a younger sister and we used to read them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think we are of a certain age. Other people might not get this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: But there was 50 questions that will tell you whether you'll still be with your boyfriend at the end of the summer. It was ridiculous stuff like that. Has he bought you flowers? Yes, no. And this is 50 yes, no questions, and the output of which is a spider chart, which identifies where your behaviors are contributing to your emotional overdraft most. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And your shape will be different to everybody else's. Everyone's different but it's a really useful exercise. Mainly it's pretty accurate given that it's a 50 question quiz and it's, you know, it's invented by a marketeer, not, not a scientist, um, but it seems to be fairly accurate and people tend to, I see people nodding when they get it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And even if it's not do some honest reflection and go, well, why do I think that's wrong? And why do I think that isn't me? And is that really, am I really as good at that bit or is it wrong? And why is it wrong? So it's just a vehicle for reflection. But it definitely creates some, for me and for most people I know who've completed it, it creates some thinking around what are the things that are happening typically for you that are almost triggers for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: What's the sort of thing that's going on? And if you do that, then you get what that does is that sensitizes you to the particular drivers that, that might be causing you the most problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So, JFDI is a good one actually. It's quite a good one which is the, just flipping do, I'm a doer. These are people who identify as doers. They get stuff done. Um, I've learned to say, get stuff done as well. I'm a doer. I make stuff happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: That's great. It's a bit like a SWOT analysis, this, you know, when you did these at universities, every strength is a weakness, every opportunity is a threat. And being a doer and getting stuff done and not hesitating and making stuff happen is brilliant on one hand but the flip side of it is that it can be, it can lead you to do the things that aren't necessarily the priorities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: It can lead you to do things that are giving you the hit and the buzz. But that aren't really getting the important things done. You're leaving things back on your to do list that actually would move the dial. The things that would have the most impact. But as we all know, every tick on a to do list is created equal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You get the same amount of endorphins from, I don't know, rewrite my list tick. I mean, I've been known to add things to my list which I've done which weren't on the list just to tick them off. I'm sure lots of people have done that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I stand by that technique.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: It's legit because if you reflect on your list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I think that's okay. I also, by the way, don't call it a to do list at all. I called it a don't forget list and that changes my relationship. I was a slave to my to do list. It was to do. You've got to do this. This is, you fail if you don't complete, whereas a don't forget list is great for me because I'm a little bit forgetful and actually it's the same thing, but it's just saying this is stuff you mustn't forget to do and then each morning I prioritize a few things off that list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So it really, that helps me as a technique. But, uh, so what I'm saying is, is JFDI can be very helpful to you, but it can also lead you to behaviors, which particularly start to get an emotional overdraft and you start to develop signs of stress or burnout, it then becomes worse. You can feel like you're getting stuff done, but you're getting the wrong things done and you're smart people and then you know it. And then you feel bad about it. You feel you haven't achieved things, and that piles on into your emotional overdraft. So again, you're starting to feel worse. This, this thing feeds on itself. All of these behaviors in and of themselves can be a good thing. Empathy is one I talk about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: People say, how on earth can empathy be a bad thing? Everything in business certainly is talking about empathy is the great, everyone needs to have empathy. And that's totally true. But the other side of this empathetic feeling is the need to be liked, the need to feel belonging, the need to feel that you are one of the gang or that you're accepted and that's driving the wrong behavior. Or can be driving the wrong behavior, and it might not be behavior that's serving you. It might be behavior that's not serving your PhD. In the end, it's not serving anybody.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So being aware of of where your behavior is coming from, I think is extremely helpful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I will link to the site that you mentioned in the show notes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And it's so easy because it's the same name as the book. So emotional overdraft. Go there. Um, and then you really can do something about it because you can go, okay, let's get, let's get organized about it. And I, I don't mean to add things here to do this. I don't, I'm, someone said to me, Andy, you've written this book and I feel like I need it, but I haven't got time to read it. I said, well, that's okay. Don't read it if you haven't got time to read it. And that's gonna make you feel worse.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Also, I found it sneakily on Spotify this week as well. So, if people have Spotify Premium, you can find the audio version too. So, um,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Tuck in everybody.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There's that option too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So, yeah, and I think there's a sense of, I'm listening to this Andy, I get it, I see what you're trying to say, but I'm so busy, I'm so stressed, I'm so stretched. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: How do I make this time to reflect? How do I make this time to stop? How do I even start to change this stuff? I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel. Or worse, I'm sort of careering downhill on a, it's been snowing in Dorset today. I'm on a sledge just hammering down the hill. I'm not stopping until I get to the bottom. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And I know that's how it feels. And I know that's what your brain is telling you. But there is a finite amount of time in every day. And your job, as being a better boss of yourself is to make the time to be the boss you, I'm not going to just steal your idea here, Vikki, be the boss you, and what's the difference between the boss you and the implementer you? The implementer you is hammering away, getting things done, piling along, taking the to do lists, maybe doing the wrong things, that's all the stuff we've been talking about. The boss you's job, and I talk in analogies as you've spotted already, um, is to stand on the bridge of the ship and look at what's coming. What risks? Is there a storm coming? Are there pirates? Is there land? Is there a shoal of fish? Is there opportunity? Your job is to be up on the bridge of that ship looking forwards, looking out, planning, having some kind of vision for what you want to happen, some direction. It is not simply to be down in the boat, rowing like crazy. And if you stop for half a beat and think about that, you know it's right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And that's the time, that's the moment that you go, Okay, now I'll stop for a second. I'll just take a moment and recognize that working on me is just as important as working for me. And, and work on yourself a little bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And if you're finding that really difficult, I'd encourage you to talk to someone else about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Because it's so much easier to find time to talk to someone about this. Just put the words out. That's why we have coaches. That's why we have mentors. That's why we have tutors. That's why we have people whose job it is to listen to us. Find, find that person or find those people and in the book I talk about a board, a personal board and this, everyone has this. So in a board in a company is a group of experts who come together and their collective skills are what drive the business forwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: But you can have a personal board and that might be someone who just listens to you, someone who's just what I call a cheerleader. Just someone who is there who goes you're great I don't care what you do. You're great. Sometimes you just need that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: you just need the cheerleader You might need a mentor. You can maybe find a mentor. You may already have someone in your network of contacts who could be your mentor. A coach. So a coach is different. I mean, a coach and mentor, there's a slight distinction there. Um, someone who's going to help coach you through the specifics of what you need to get done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Someone who you can lean on in that moment. So that's three people on your board already. You might have someone who's a physical coach or a trainer, and I have a personal trainer because I know I would not go to the gym unless Luke was down there tapping his watch going, you're late again, Andy, let's do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: But I do go, I go twice a week, and I run twice a week, and Luke, when I, if I don't run, Luke whatsapps me, because he can see on Strava that I haven't run. So, I'm all for personal accountability, but sometimes it helps to have a little external accountability to so you can build a group of people around you and I would encourage you to let them know they're your personal board and those people then are the ones you can lean on without feeling guilt without feeling like you're putting on them without feeling embarrassed or awkward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Ask them if they're prepared to do that. And it doesn't mean you'll call on them, even. It's just that they, they know they're there. And in my experience, most people, if you say, I'd like you to be my mentor, I'd like you to be my, my supporter and my cheerleader, they're flattered. And they're up for it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So that, I think that's a really good idea to, well, I would think it's a good idea. It's my idea, isn't it? But it's not, conceptually, it's not my idea. The idea of a personal board is not my concept, but I did jam it in the book. So, yeah, I think that's a really good way to start and the other thing is about yourself. And the way we talk to ourselves, I think, is very important and very helpful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and there was a part when you were talking about the impact of thoughts in the book. One thing that I really liked was you were talking about how positive emotions can feed your resilience and how you can sort of reduce or make yourself less susceptible to the overdraft by making sure that you create space for joy and interest and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I, I think that's fascinating because I think we often focus on reducing negative emotions, and we often think that the way to move ourselves out of emotional overdrafts and things like that is that we inevitably have to do less, we have to reduce our workload, we have to sort of take things off our plate, and maybe it's the bit of me that likes to be able to do everything, but I think it's really interesting this idea that actually you can do the same things sometimes, but if you can do them with joy and interest and fun, then they don't deplete overdraft as much as if you're doing them in a, Oh, and I've got to do this and I should have done it before and I still haven't done it, so we should probably do it, but I don't want to kind of vibes. I wonder if you could. Speak to that a little bit, because I love that part.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I don't know, you kind of nailed it, but we create the world we live in. Our brains are amazing at controlling how we think about everything and you genuinely can re reset your thinking about any given circumstance. So if you get up in the morning, you think, Oh God, it's just I couldn't do enough work yesterday and I've got piles to do and I've got to send this off by five and it's going to be long day. I had a day today that was going to be many, many, many meetings. Monday this week was awful on Sunday night. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And I was thinking, I literally, even my lunchtime had been taken with a meeting. I was thinking it's ridiculous. Why does no one care about my, my physical wellbeing? And no one's who's scheduling this stuff. And it was me, of course. So what an idiot. Uh, but I had a little word with myself because I said, well, firstly you're busy because, you're in demand and your clients want to talk to you and those people really value what you have to say. You're having an impact on their businesses and you're having an impact on them and I get amazing texts. At the end of Monday I got a beautiful whatsapp from one of my clients who said after our conversation I felt completely different and she was in a not great place. She said I felt completely different. I cannot wait to get into work tomorrow. So this is why you do it and I reminded myself on Sunday night before I went to bed. That there'll be a lot of meetings. That's a fact, but I can go into those meetings thinking, and this is nine opportunities to make a real impact on people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Or I can spend the rest of the evening feeling like a grumpy old codger going, you know, who is it that does all these things? It's ridiculous. I've got a horrible day coming up tomorrow. I went into that day. I had an impact. As it turns out, I got feedback that I had some impact on some people, which is the buzz I get from my job. And at the end of the day, I felt fantastic. That, that, that idea, you can translate again and again and again. You genuinely can, and it's a question of practice, really. I use the "I wonder" exercise, which I know you may have spoken about before, Vikki, but  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: no,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I haven't, but I  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: it's really useful. And you can use it on yourself. But traditionally you use it in front of somebody else. So if there's someone with a with a challenge that are dealing with, You can get two people sit in front of them and they do an I wonder exercise. So they talk out loud. The person they're talking about isn't allowed to say anything. They just have to listen. And the two people exchange, they start the sentence, every sentence with, I wonder. So it's not judgmental. It's not factual. It's just, I wonder if the reason that Andy got so cross was because he hadn't realized that there might be another reason why that person did what they did. And you can have that conversation backwards and forwards and you can have it with yourself. So if you can catch it and stop and go, well, I wonder why that, that busy day is making me feel so cross. I wonder why my 5pm deadline is stressing me out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Well, you could go, well, I know why it's stressing me out. I have, I've got too much to do and I can't do it by 5pm. But it's not the 5pm deadline. It's your thinking that's stressing you out. So what, what, what's going on in your thinking? I'm not going to complete everything by five o'clock. Is that true or isn't it? Because sometimes that's not true. But if it is true, then if you can take that moment and go, well, okay, what would be the best thing to do at this point? Would it be best for me to let someone know that? Because they'd much rather know before five o'clock, I'm going to let them down. And it's nine o'clock now. I can phone them now. At least they know I'm not going to deliver, then they may be able to, you know, if they're depending on me for it, or if it's a deadline, they might be prepared to extend that deadline, or they might be prepared to help or do something differently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So, just by stopping, you can go, wondering what, what you're thinking is doing for you. If you're feeling something, just look at it briefly and go, is that serving me? Is that telling me that maybe my thinking is not of the quality it might be? So you're stressing and panicking about five o'clock. I'm in panic mode. What can I do about it? How can I think differently? It's such a good exercise. So I wonder why I'm thinking that way. I wonder why that's where I'm getting to. It's not easy. It takes practice, but again, talk to other people about it and see if you practice with other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The other one where you were talking about things you can do about it that really struck me as relevant for this audience was the one around self worth that a lot of the problems here come from people attaching their self worth to their productivity or their work and that's something I see with my clients a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What can people who are running up this emotional overdraft because they're convinced that they have to be good at what they do, they have to do lots of it, they have to be the best in order to be worthwhile. What can they do about it, do you think? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So I think if your self worth is tied up in, in your work, you are setting yourself up. You're putting yourself in quite a risky position, because if your self worth is purely about the quality of the output of the work that you're doing, of the writing that you're producing, or the thinking that you're producing, or the time in which you're producing it, other people's opinion of the work that you produce, you're giving your power to other people and other things all the time. So you're giving that away.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And I think that's, if you're striving for that there's almost no upside to it. You could be proud of the work you produce. That's the only upside. But the downside potentially is that you, you really are putting yourself at risk of of judging yourself purely in one dimension or in one direction. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So that the answer to it is really to understand where your self worth comes from and to look, look for other ways of justifying yourself or understanding your worth within your society, your community and so on. So I think it's it's almost limitless number of options you have open to you. Working with the working with the scouts keeps coming to my mind on this  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm a Guide Leader.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Maybe there you go. And that's what I mean. It's sort of finding something that's beyond you is particularly valuable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: If you find that your self worth is wrapped up in the production of that paper or simply achieving the, the grant, you know, the funding you were talking about, and then you don't, where does that leave you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Whereas what you might realize is that I might get another chance that might open up a different opportunity. That's, that's a shame. It's unfortunate. I, but I tried my best and now I can do other things I can focus on other stuff. So it's, it's a really bad place to be from an emotional overdraft point of view because it's, it doesn't really have any upside. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And even if you do really well and you get the grant or, you know, the paper's published or you get the peer recognition or whatever happens, what happens next?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, those goalposts move quickly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And we never stop. You know, we are still being chased by the saber toothed tigers in our brains, our monkey brains. So, we are not geared up to stop and dwell on the good. We don't spend time reflecting on how marvellous we were and how fantastic it was. We immediately start thinking, how could I have done this better? What am I doing next? What's happening? We're thinking about, we still don't want to get killed by the thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Back in the day when we lived in caves, if we stopped and congratulated ourselves every time we killed a deer or something, we'd get eaten. So we don't think that way. We're not wired like that. So, even if you succeed and your self worth is boosted in that moment, it will not last long.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And some people, one of the things I often try and remind people is that even if you're somebody who thinks that your work is your main purpose, I mean, I'm saying, I encourage people to have lives outside of academia, to have their hobbies and their fun and all that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And I see, I see emotional overdraft as my mission. I actually, my mission is to talk about this to everyone I can because I think it helps people. So it is my mission. I'm driven by it, but not to the point where other things are excluded.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I agree. And the thing I try and remind people, is that if you're going to attach your worth to your work, at least attach it to your life's work, not to this one paper, you know, I think this is why we see it so often with people who are at the beginnings of their academic careers is they've had this whole time through school and university where they're usually the brightest people. They're usually scoring amazing marks and everything like that. Suddenly they become PhD students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's not quite as straightforward anymore for them and Their worth is tied up in this one chapter they're writing and so getting critiques from their supervisors or submitting to a journal and getting rejected is suddenly an indictment on their entire kind of ability and thoughts and the stuff they're trying to put out in the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I try and remind people, at least see your worth in terms of the body of work you're going to do over your 40 years in academia, for example, because then this one little thing isn't like a massive mark on your self worth, it's just going to be one little part of the story of all the great things you contribute through, through your academic work. And I think sometimes that can help separate it out a little bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Definitely right. And this is, again, an opportunity for reframing, isn't it? Because you could look at that rejection and go, well, that's it. I'm, I'm not good enough. I'm, I failed. It was, it reflects on me. I'm poor at this stuff. I'm not cut out for this or, or they are stupid. They can't see my brilliance or whatever. You can react that way to it or you can go, this is an opportunity to learn. This is an opportunity to maybe, maybe the time is right for me to stop. Maybe actually I could be doing something way more practical, that that would be contributory in some way, because I do think everyone should have a sense of where they're trying to go, not just not the end of the paper, but a north star something further on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Because if you don't have that, you're basically jumping, you know, like a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad. You're just, the success is not getting to the lily pad, the success is getting across the pond. That's, that's that goal. So, um, another tortured analogy for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So I, I think you're absolutely right. And, and it's such an opportunity to see the world in a different way. How could I have done that differently? What could I have done? How can I change this? How good am I at taking criticism? Is this an opportunity for me to hear criticism and become a total criticism ninja, take this on and do amazing things with it? Well, that's the opportunity it presents. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now, one thing I wanted to ask you about. I really enjoyed the final bit of your book, because often people talk about, you know, "and here are all the things you can do to get over this problem" and you had, you had that big chunk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But then you had the sort of, and then other things you can do after that. You know, if you want to take this further, you want to think about it in more depth. And I really, really enjoyed that chapter. And one of the things that really stood out to me as a really clever idea was this notion of a relapse kit. And I wonder if you could tell the listeners a little bit about the relapse kit. Cause I thought, I thought that was really clever and it was something that I hadn't heard about in other places.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Yeah, so, it sort of came from, um, as an amalgam of other people's ideas. So it's not, there's no new ideas in the world, of course there aren't. But I struggle with my weight and my weight's gone up and down over the years. I'm 59 now and it's probably never going to change, but I, I keep hoping and I'm pretty harsh on myself, and my self speak is pretty, pretty horrible, and I'm very judgmental, and, and it's, it's, yeah, it's not, it's not great when I fall off the wagon, and particularly with me at snacks, and a coach I was working with said, it was chocolate biscuits at the time, he said, if you find yourself going to the cup and having a chocolate biscuit, he said, That's a relapse. You know, we're trying to go through 28 days without having one and you find 14 days in, you, you, you have, you haven't failed, really, you've had a chocolate biscuit, but you're not going to eat the whole packet. And if you do eat the whole packet, say you've just eaten a packet of biscuits. Failure would be doing that every day and going back to that sort of behavior. So that's just a relapse.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: And that happens in all sorts of walks of life in all sorts of ways. All the behaviors, particularly in trying to change habit. So he said, put a little note in that cupboard with the biscuits. He said, I just want you to write a little note where you tell yourself what, what you think about yourself in that, what you really think about yourself in that moment. And what I really think about with myself when I, when I'm being rational about it is that's normal. It's human nature. You've just had a damn biscuit. It, it doesn't really matter. Don't have another one, Andy. Don't, don't just carry on because my, my brain goes, you failed now. So it doesn't matter.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You might as well. And by the way, go to the shop and get another packet. So that's what the note said. And he said, and just tuck it by the biscuits. And when you have a biscuit, if you relapse, get the notes out and have a little read. And I just thought this was such a good idea, such a strong idea. So, a relapse kit could be if you find that you're struggling to get down to some deep work and you're distracting yourself again with YouTube or social media. That's a typical sort of thing that might happen, I guess, your relapse kit could be a note to yourself, which just to remind yourself. What that does to you and why you, why you're probably doing it and, and to be kind to yourself and give yourself some helpful advice, it could be, someone's phone number. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: So maybe in that moment, the best thing actually you could do is phone. You've agreed that you're going to phone one of your personal board and you can phone one of them up and say, I've just spent 2 hours watching YouTube videos about cats on skateboards. And I'm really not getting down to my work. I'm starting to spiral a bit and it's now kind of getting down on myself, which means I still can't work and it's getting worse, so I'm going to watch some more and you can chat about it. And maybe that's your relapse kit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Maybe it's it's what's your motivation. It might be something that reminds you your motivation, but have it available and have it, not out and on your table or on your wall. I think you have to, with a relapse kit, you have to go and think of it like a first aid kit with the white cross on the top. You're going to open this box, open this thing, and it's going to help you in that moment. It's going to be like a emotional bandage. It works every time, particularly if when you, when you plan it, when you structure that relapse kit, you do it with absolute kindness and generosity towards yourself. You have to be thinking. I love this person. I want this person to succeed. They're just human. I know they do great stuff when they can really get down to it. So I'm, I'm going to forgive them. They need to forgive themselves and have another go. If you do that, it works incredibly well. Don't have a sign there that says. You weak individual. That's not what we're talking about here. That's like putting rusty razor blades in your first aid kit. That's not helpful. Yeah. It's got to be something helpful. But it, yeah, I get lots of feedback on that and it really does work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, and I really like that you emphasize the kindness and the reassurance and then I think not making it too big a deal that you've realized because I think often when we wrap that up in a load of shame and a load of self criticism, we end up avoiding our goal for much longer because suddenly you hate yourself because, you know, you said you were going to write this much every day and you haven't today and then you start avoiding it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Day one, a thousand words a day. Day one, I haven't written a thousand words.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and so you then avoid it for a month. I've failed. Yeah. Instead of being like, oh, okay. I was going to do a thousand words today. I haven't still got an hour left. Maybe I could do 200. Let's crack that bit out. We'll get on tomorrow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: You know that expression if you've only got 40 percent to give that day and you've given 40%, you've given a hundred percent that day. I love that idea. If that's what's available to you and you've given it all. So this sense of kindness is really important. That's not, I'm not a new age woo woo thinker, but genuinely self kindness is one of the rarest commodities and it's something to cultivate in yourself if you're listening to this. It's really important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you can even bring that into the goal setting. So as an example, I would never recommend somebody sets a no biscuits for 28 days goal, because you screw that up one day, you've missed your goal. If you set yourself as few biscuits as possible in 28 days, for example, or even better 28 apples in 28 days or whatever it is, giving yourself something alternative to do, then it becomes something that you can work towards throughout. If you have one day where you have a biscuit, then okay, crack on. I can still have 27 days where I don't eat a biscuit and that's pretty awesome.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Exactly that. So designing the goals are really important. And talk to someone like you who, who understands the precise nature of what you're dealing with and can give you some practical hands on help. That's, that's really important here. So that. You know, that's the point. You don't have to do this alone and doing it alone is not heroic.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love this. You're telling people to come to me for caching. I'm telling them to buy your book. It's like a mutual promotion.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: Sorry, everybody that wasn't set up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We're just that good. Anyway, thank you so much, Andy. I really, really appreciate you coming on. We've already mentioned your website a little bit, and obviously the book, but if people want to know more, where can they find you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: I'd say go to emotionaloverdraft. com. I produce a podcast myself, and there's lots of interesting case studies on there. I write about it a lot. Just knowing more about it is a helpful thing to people, and yeah, everyone knows where they can buy a book. Go independent if you can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 03 Feb 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-22-are-you-in-an-emotional-overdraft-with-special-guest-author-andy-brown thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-21-six-types-of-social-support-you-need-as-a-phd-student-and-how-to-get-it <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> You can find links to Dr Lilia Mantai’s research <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=z90Y6JAAAAAJ&amp;hl=de" target="_blank"> here </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/8-how-to-build-your-own-academic-community" target="_blank"> How to build your own academic community </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you sometimes feel lonely or like you haven't got the support that you need around you, unfortunately it's not that unusual. Often when people feel like this, they feel like they're the only one, right? That everybody else is part of this like fun and vibrant academic community and has got friends around them supporting them and cheering them on, when in reality I speak to PhD students all the time who feel really disconnected from their studies. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you don't get on with your research group as well as you thought you might, and outside of that you're not sure where to find an academic community, or perhaps you've had to move away from family and friends and you're really missing that. Maybe you're a part time student, a distance learning student, whatever it is, there's tons of reasons why you might currently be feeling lonely, and you might feel like you haven't got the community you need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As usual though, I'm here to tell you that although it's normal, it doesn't have to be like this. And in today's episode, I'm going to tell you about six different types of social support. Five of them grounded in some quite interesting literature that I found and one of them, which I haven't found in the literature and I think is really important. We're going to use this framework to kind of audit where you're at and to think through what's what types of support you might want to actively try and build over the next few months. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach and this week we are talking about social support. Now many of you will know I stayed in the same university all the way from undergraduate through to full professor so I was there 25ish years in the end and you'd think that would mean that I had. a pretty stable community. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the fact is that actually in academia, at every kind of milestone you hit, you have a big change of people. So when I finished undergrad, they left. Then when I finished my PhD, lots of the people I did my PhD with left. And then over the years, I kind of made friends with different groups of people, many of whom then got jobs in other places, moved on and so on. So there were several times during that academic career where I really felt like I was having to rebuild the support around me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And at that stage, I was kind of winging it, I guess. I was feeling like I didn't necessarily have people at some stages to, like, go do fun stuff with, at other stages, who were kind of at the same place as me in their careers, where we could share ideas and things. And so when I noticed that, I made efforts to build those connections. I'm quite a social person. I'm quite extroverted. And so once I noticed what I needed, I didn't find it too challenging to go out and at least start creating those bonds. To tell you the truth, I'm having to do it a little bit now because, um, many of you will know I left my university job back in 2022. I'm living in a much smaller place than I used to, and I'm still finding my friendship group. I've got an amazing family network around me. I've got a few old friends near here , but in terms of those sort of fun, hobby connections, and I used to have a lot of them in Birmingham. I'm still figuring that out, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But often it can feel either like not a priority, or it can feel a bit like you don't know where to start. Or it can all feel a little bit like luck that you either meet people you get on with or you don't. Now, I did make an episode quite a long time ago called How to Build an Academic Community. And if you haven't listened to that one, I will link it in the show notes for you. I highly recommend you go back to listen to that because there's some really important stuff about the kind of how to connect with people, where to connect to people, um, in that I'm not going to touch on in today's episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I want to do today instead is to give you a framework to assess where your support is at, to better identify what type of support you might need more of. And some of this builds on, as you know, I always try and be a kind of evidence based practitioner. I'm trying to stay up to speed with the literature, bring that into my practice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You guys want to be connected to an academic for a reason. You don't want me just making stuff up. So I was looking for some stuff to do with social support and PhD students and academia, and I found some really interesting work by somebody called Dr. Lilia Mantai. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I am hoping, I'm going to contact Dr. Lilia to see whether she'd like to come on the podcast at some point in the future. But one of the things that I pulled out of her work were these different types of social support that she identified and the different roles that they play in academia. And so what I'm going to do today is I'm going to introduce you to the four that she outlined in her first pieces of work. A very important fifth one that she then uncovered when she did some more detailed research. And I'm going to finish up with one that I think everybody overlooks and I'm going to explain to you why I think it's overlooked, why it's so important, and what you can do about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first four that she identified is built out of the social support literature. These were moral support, emotional support, guidance and mentoring, and companionship. So let's think about those. The first one is moral and I was a little bit like what do we even mean by moral support. How it's usually framed is around inspiration and encouragement. This is having people around you who support you and cheer you on in what you're doing and give you a kind of image of what it could be like. So for some of you, those of you who are in positive supervisory experiences, you might find that your supervisors are an amazing source of moral support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That you look at them and you're like, oh my goodness, one day I could be like them. If I work hard, if I do all the things, I could be like them. You see the change they're making in the world, see the impact they're having, the publications they're getting, and you're kind of inspired to make that kind of change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For others, maybe it's senior people in your research group, so the PhD students or academics who are a few years ahead of you, whatever stage you're at, right, there's people that are kind of ahead of you, and those people may be encouraging you, they may be sort of showing you what's possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now this is really important because whether you're doing a PhD or working in academia more generally. We often don't spend too much time in the big picture. We often spend time in the day to day of, I need to do this. I've got that on my to do list, that needs writing, that needs researching, whatever it is. And we don't always take that time to kind of take that step back and remind ourselves why we're doing it. Having somebody who is inspiring or encouraging or both can help you recall that big picture. When, in the best circumstances here, when you see that person it reminds you of why you're doing this stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For others of you, maybe you're thinking that you don't get that from your supervisors, from your research group. And that's okay too. You can look further afield in academia for people who are perhaps more in line with your priorities or doing things more the way that you would like them to be and maybe think about how you can remind yourself of those people more regularly. Do you want to follow them on social media? Do you want to try and meet them at conferences? How can you make those people a more tangible presence in your life?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For others of you, that moral support might come from other parts of your life. It might be your friends or your family. Maybe you've got a reason you did your PhD. Maybe you know somebody who has a condition and you're now researching that condition. Maybe you've grown up with somebody who always inspired your interest in archaeology and now that's what you're studying too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'd really encourage you to think about who in your life inspires you, who in your life encourages you, and to think about not only how can you have them in your life more often, but also how can you have those conversations and those reflections more often. Because there's something very energy giving about being encouraged and inspired. So try to identify who that is for you and how you can get more of them in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second type of support that she identified is emotional support. This is somebody who really provides a listening ear. So they don't necessarily have to inspire you to great things, they have to be there for you when you're struggling. They need to be somebody who you're willing to be vulnerable with, at least to some extent. You're able to share your worries and concerns with, and who will give you that safe space for you to be able to talk about the things that are bothering you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I think this kind of divides down into different sorts of support in that sometimes you want somebody who totally gets it and who'll perhaps moan along with you, right, so that you don't feel like you're crazy. So that you feel like other people experience this and they will say, yeah, tis is rubbish, I hate it when that happens, that happened to me too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times, the listening ear you need is somebody who's completely detached, who can help you sort of retain some perspective and who can help you see that perhaps outside of academia the things that we're stressing about aren't as big as we're making them out to be. Who in your life provides that listening ear? How do you feel about sharing with them? Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel like you burden them? Do you feel like you talk too much or not enough? Do you feel better after you speak to them? Ideally, that person doesn't necessarily fix the problems that you've got, but helps you to feel heard and helps you feel like these problems are both legitimate and manageable one way or another.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, for me, I kind of have my insiders and my outsiders, right? I had really, and I still do have really close, lovely colleagues who would be my emotional support who knew exactly what I was going through, knew the people that I was moaning about, knew the types of situations that I was talking about, and so could really empathize and understand without me having to explain it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that has been absolutely crucial at so many stages of my career and that builds over time, right? Some of those people who I feel like are my closest people now started out as people I didn't know that well. They started out as people that I invited for a coffee every now and again and we had a little chat and slowly you get to know and trust each other. So you can build these things over time. Then on the other hand, there were people that are outside my academic circle who are a listening ear, but in that slightly more detached way. So I have friends that work in the corporate world, and they don't get it at all. They don't, you know, they don't understand what I do, and why the things that feel like a big deal to me are important. But they love me so they listen to me talk about it and sometimes they give an angle that maybe I hadn't even thought of a different way of looking at it based on their experiences in their different world that they live in. So this emotional support can come from inside the academy, it can come from outside the academy. Some of you may also have professional support in the sense of counsellors, therapists, that sort of thing. And again, you can never underestimate the impact of having that really neutral space that is solely about you, unlike with friends where it goes both ways, where it's solely about you to be able to talk through the kind of the deeper aspects of the emotions that you're experiencing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third type of support I want you to think about is guiding and mentoring. Now the obvious person who should be providing this is your supervisor, your supervisory team, your dissertation committee, if that's how your structure's set up. The people that are actually, it's their jobs to provide this stuff. And I want you to think about how that's going for you right now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What sorts of support is your supervisor good at providing? What support do they automatically provide that you find useful and that's working well? What elements are working less well? Either they don't provide it unless asked, or that you don't like the sort of support they provide, or that you just don't feel like they're there for you. This is one of the reasons why it's important to separate out these forms of social support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because when we think about our supervisors, there can be a tendency to expect our supervisors to provide all of this support. They're going to be a listening ear, they're going to inspire, they're going to enthuse, they're going to guide and mentor us. Maybe we even expect to have social time with them as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to encourage you, your supervisor doesn't have to provide all of these. Hopefully your supervisor is providing at least some of these, at least some of the time. They don't have to provide all of them. So think, in terms of guiding and mentoring, where is your supervisor really useful? Where are they expert? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where are they willing to help? Where does it fall within their comfort zone? You can then think though, where are the gaps in that? Where's the sort of guiding and mentoring that I'm not getting? So for example, one I've seen is people where the supervisor is amazing at teaching research skills. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They'll be in the lab with them, they'll be hands on, they'll be helping them develop whatever technique it is they're doing. Super, super helpful at training in the laboratory, testing the equipment, you know, learning new techniques, all of that stuff. But if you want guidance and mentoring about organizing your time, or you want guidance and mentoring about how to write effectively, this person might not be your person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe they're really bad at it too. Maybe they're naturally amazing at it and so have never really thought about it before. And I want you to think if there's gaps in that guiding and mentoring. Where can you fill those gaps? Think about where are there gaps and where can you fill those either within your university or beyond. So it might be bringing in collaborators. It might be accessing support for things like writing, for example. Most of your universities will have how to write effectively courses and all that kind of thing. How can you fill the gaps instead of spending time sort of bemoaning the fact that your supervisor doesn't provide everything? How can you find the bits that you're not getting from your supervisor and fill them from elsewhere. Or how can you identify the bits you're currently not getting from your supervisor and consider whether it's something that you could legitimately ask your supervisor for. Sometimes they don't do it automatically but it doesn't mean that they're not willing to help with those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth type of social support is companionship. This is often not anything to do with academia. This is having people that you can just have fun with. Now this might, if you have your own families or you live close to your family, it might be your family. It might be friends, it might be people, like I was saying at the very beginning, from hobbies that you're involved with. One of the things I adored about where I was before was I had sort of little pockets of random people. I had my paddle boarding club and my circus club and my people I knew from kids camp and my people I knew from the adventure races I worked on and things. I had my little random pockets of people, whose company I loved, who I always had a giggle when I saw. And where I felt like a part of a little group. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now one of the problems in academia, whether you're a new PhD student all the way through to a senior professor, is we often convince ourselves we don't have time for that stuff. That by the time we've done our work and dealt with our responsibilities, particularly those of you who have children that you're looking after, we think we haven't got time for that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should be working. You know, academics work all the time. And I'm here to wipe away that. I guarantee that you will be more productive if you have some times of companionship every week, if not every day. There is something about having playtime, having time where you can relax and just enjoy somebody's company and not have to think about work and not have to think about performing well or any of those things that is so good for the mental health, so good, I believe, for your physical health that it will infuse everything else you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think we're going so far as to say. I think it's super important, even if it doesn't make you better at your job. Even if it does take a bit of time away, and you don't make up for that time by being more effective, I think it's still super important. I think you need it to be a functioning human being. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The people that I saw being most miserable in their PhDs and academia more generally, are the people who didn't have any of that stuff, are the people who only worked. If you feel like you've let that slip, if you're listening to this going, I just don't have that, I'm in a country where I don't know anyone, or a city where I don't know anyone, I haven't had time, don't worry, it's okay, this isn't some like big failing of you that you haven't, we're, you're under a lot of pressure, and that's okay, it's fine that you're under, and that's okay, it's understandable that with all the pressures on you, you've prioritised other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But this is my little call to you to do one or two things to just try and build some of that companionship. That might be taking people for coffee at work, just suggesting catching up for a little zoom chat with people you don't know that well, maybe, or preferably please do some stuff outside of academia, even if it's one off stuff, even if it's going to be, you know, I'm not saying you have to join a club and go every week or whatever. Find something that's fun to do once in a while where you might see the same people. If you go back at the same time, you might see the same people and where there's little opportunities for interactions. So I've just joined a netball club. I can't remember if I've told you guys that before. It's like slow basketball. Um, And this is perfect. I don't go all the time. I've only been going a few weeks. So I haven't made any good friends yet, but we chatter before it starts. We have a giggle while we play. We chatter afterwards. At some point, I am sure that we will suggest, you know, probably when the weather improves a bit and things, we'll suggest going for a drink afterwards or meeting up for a coffee during the week or whatever it is, there's opportunities there for it to progress into more friendship type things. I want you to look for things like that, whether it's going to the gym, whether it's going exercise classes, art classes, whether it's just regularly going to the same coffee shop. So you might see the same people working in the same coffee shop and you can sort of strike up a bit of a conversation with them. Introverts, I know this may sound completely painful, but we don't have to do it with lots of people. We don't have to do it hundreds of times, but just putting yourself in a position where you might have that kind of regular contact can be an amazing way to build that sort of companionship. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those were the first four moral, emotional, guidance and mentoring companionship. And then Lilia Manti identified a further one. She did research with PhD students and their supervisors and really identified how social support can also help you in your developing identity as a PhD student, as an academic. And like I say, I don't want to go into this in tons of detail because I do hope that I'll be able to get her to come on the podcast at some point in the future to talk about it in more detail. But essentially, when you go from the beginning of a PhD to the end of a PhD, or starting an academic position to becoming a more senior member of staff, you're not only learning new skills and doing new things, you're changing who you are as a person. You are becoming an academic. You are starting to identify as somebody who has academic skills and who has academic opinions and belongs to an academic network. And your social support is hugely important to this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I've seen over the years, particularly at undergraduate, but to some extent at PhD as well, people who do their PhD without ever really engaging outside of that direct supervisory relationship. They've got their friends at home, they've potentially got family at home, they turn up, they do the things they need to do, they leave. And that can be, if your goal is simply to get a PhD, happy days, do it, let's go. But if your goal is to become somebody who is an academic, whether that means you want it for a career or not, but if your goal is to identify as belonging to an academic group, then we need to have the connections in place in order to do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I'm going to refer to the how part of this. I want you to listen to that podcast I mentioned called how to build your academic community. I also want you to listen to an episode that I recorded with Jen Polk a few months back where we looked at networking. So if you're just like, Oh my God, no networking, definitely not. That's awful. Check out that episode. We kind of debunk a whole load of thoughts around networking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when we surround ourselves by people who care about the research that we're doing and where we care about their research and who think about things the way a historian or a biochemist or whoever you are think about things, that starts to change who you are too. It starts to change the way you see yourself. Suddenly it's normal to be somebody who can experience a critique of their work and not internalize it too horrendously and respond to it in a constructive way. Suddenly you become somebody who is part of that broader academic community. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again, for some of you, your supervisor will be a real kind of gatekeeper, facilitator to this, introducing you into different networks. They'll really see that as part of their role. Others won't. Others will take a more functional approach to supervision. They won't necessarily, they'll see getting you through the PhD as their prime concern, not so much sort of enculturing you into these sorts of academic communities. But that's okay. You can do this in your own ways. You can build that sort of network for yourselves. This doesn't necessarily need to be within your direct group if your supervisor is not providing it. But it does need to be within your kind of academic setting or discipline more broadly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are trying to develop ourselves as somebody who is capable within this setting and who feels they belong to the setting. Again, if that doesn't feel like you right now, that's okay. This is a kind of, this is an audit, right? We're checking in. There are some of these that you'll be like, I do not feel like that at all. And that's okay. What I want you to do is just start thinking about where you can build tiny bridges towards these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I promised at the beginning that I was going to share with you the five that Lilia Mantai talks about, and then I was going to share with you the one that she doesn't talk about, and I, to be honest, I haven't seen people talking about. And I think the reason we haven't is because most of these data collections are kind of bottom up. They ask PhD students, what sort of support they get, what sort of support they want. They ask supervisors, what kind of support do they provide? What kind of support did they have? And you can do that super thoroughly, but the problem is, if there's a type of support that people don't even recognise as a type of support, don't even realise that it could be helpful, then it's not going to come up in that sort of bottom up exploration. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the type of support that I think is missing is self developmental support. What I mean by that is support that helps you develop your processes, that helps you organize yourself more effectively, but also helps you with thoughts and emotions. That helps you to manage yourself more effectively. To self regulate. To make decisions. To show up as the person that you want to be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, many of us seek this out in the form of podcasts or in the form of self help books, right? But often it doesn't progress far enough to become an interpersonal relationship. Now I found when I started reflecting on this, I found that I actually did have this in some elements of my life before I got into coaching and things because I made friends with people who were interested in that sort of stuff too. So you guys have heard me talk about Professor Jen Cumming a number of times. She and I are very close friends and we were both into kind of that self-help vibe and working out ways to be more effective without having to work harder and all of that stuff. And so we used to swap tips. You know, we used to learn about bullet journals and both try out our bullet journals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hers are beautiful. Mine did not last. Didn't always work. We'd look at different project management software or different ways of managing the stresses that we were under. And so we sort of made this kind of very informal, very kind of unintentional in many ways, support network for that kind of more human side of self development. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And lots of people don't, right? Lots of people don't find people who are interested in that stuff. I was lucky that the person I found who was really interested in that stuff, was also a psychologist, was also an expert in self regulation, was actually trained in all of this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so in a good friend, I found somebody who had professional expertise too. So I was super spoiled. Most of you don't have access to that. Most of your supervisors can't support this stuff. They might talk to you about Gantt charts, they might talk to you about to do lists. All those things, but they don't have, most of them won't have the expertise to support you if you said, I tried it but I couldn't make it work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I had good intentions but I didn't follow through because they don't have expertise in behavior change. They don't have expertise in habit management. They don't have expertise in emotional regulation. Most people don't have access to that sort of support. And it's such a shame because that support underpins everything else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I guarantee that every one of those other sorts of support I talked about, you probably have thoughts about. You probably have thoughts about being too nervous to turn up at a club where you don't know anybody. You probably have thoughts about whether you're burdening somebody by sharing your emotions with them. You probably have thoughts about how much help you're allowed to ask for from your supervisors. Seeking out all the other types of support is affected by our thoughts and emotions and our ability to self regulate those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even the practical stuff I was talking about, whether you have time for it or not, whether you have time to seek out those things, and more importantly, you believe you have time to seek out those things, is dependent on your ability to manage your tasks, to prioritize, to make decisions, to manage your own overwhelm, to manage your general life organization. This sort of support underpins everything else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of you who know me well will know where this is going, but I promise it's not the only place it's going. So one place this is going is I can provide that support. The PhD Life Coach membership specifically does that. It creates a community of people who are all trying to figure out what their best realistic selves looks like and how they can make this whole thing feel more fun, more engaging, more purposeful, and more intentional. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, in the membership, not only do you get access to me and my expertise, more importantly, in many ways, you get access to each other. My members are cheering each other on, they're offering each other bits of advice in the background, they're connecting each other to tools and techniques and books and opportunities that they might not have seen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're doing co- working sessions where they give accountability to each other and show up just to help the other person to work. So they're kind of mutually assisting each other. So it connects you with a community that actually can provide quite a bit of this. It can provide some inspiration. You see people in the membership go on and finish their PhDs when you remember them being coached about how they didn't think that would be possible. That is hugely inspiring.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can provide emotional support and emotional support that isn't. Indulgent, that doesn't just go, Yes, it's terrible to be you, isn't it? Which, sometimes we need to hear that, but often we actually need something a little more neutral to help us think about what we're struggling with and to potentially reframe it or handle it in a different way. It can provide that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't provide guidance or mentoring in a technical sense, but there are times where we provide guidance and mentoring in things like reading effectively, and organizing your studies, and organizing your time, and all of those sorts of things. So there's elements of guiding and mentoring there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's definitely elements of companionship. I have people who jump on Zooms with each other all around the world, just to catch up and just to be cheering each other on and helping each other out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it also hugely helps with developing identity because one of the biggest limits to developing identity is a sense that if I was an academic, if I was a good PhD student, I wouldn't worry about this, I'd be able just to do that. It wouldn't be this hard. And being in a community where you see other people experiencing those things and being effective and succeeding makes you realise that I can feel like an academic, even though I often am finding things difficult. That I doubt myself sometimes, that I don't know how I'm going to do something.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> None of those things stop you identifying as an academic, as a PhD student. And finally, I think it is one of the unique places to support you to develop yourself. To develop the way you want to speak to yourself. Develop the way you want to treat and organise yourself. You're not going to be perfect. I didn't get out of bed this morning at the time I intended to. I'm still working on that. But I am on track to get done today everything I said I was going to get done, including recording this podcast. And that's because of the skills that I've learned in this sort of setting and because of the skills I teach in this membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you're not interested in that, hold fire for two seconds and I'm going to tell you some alternatives. If you are potentially interested in the membership, this episode comes out on Monday the 27th of January. If you are listening to it live or anywhere close to live, you can literally join the membership now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are open from Monday, the 27th of January, 2025 until Sunday, the 2nd of February, 2025. Okay. A full seven day week. If you go to my website, the phdlifecoach. com, click on the membership, you will find all the stuff you need to know. It is £149 for three months You'll get all the details on there, but there's workshops, there's themed coaching sessions, there's open coaching sessions, there's online courses, there's co working sessions, there's access to me through Slack if you can't make it to the live sessions. So there's a ton of stuff. Check it out. Join now. We start on the 3rd of February. You do not want to miss out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you're sitting there going, there's no way Vic, I'm really sorry, this sounds great, but definitely don't have any money for this. Um, you know, PhD student can't do it. It's okay. I gotcha. First thing, make sure you're on my newsletter. I mention it every week. Make sure you're on my newsletter. You'll get structured support every time. You will sometimes get hear me talking about the membership and encouraging you to join. Feel free to ignore it. If you're not in a position to pay for it, you don't want to pay for it, just skim past those bits. It's all good. I'm not offended. Happy days.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And keep an eye out. I'm going to do a monthly webinar on a specific topic this year. You can sign up to as many of those as you want. Get the free support that's there. So you've got my podcast, you've got the newsletter, you've got those workshops. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you want that little bit more, and you think you can prioritise £149 for three months, not per month by the way, total, £149 total, if you think you want that little bit more, if you've tried to implement stuff on your own before and it just hasn't worked out, Let's go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quarter one is going to focus task management, time management, how we can build a kind of structure to a life that feels fun and doable and that helps us achieve our goals. I mean, three months to do that. Amazing. I'm so excited. I've already got a ton of you on the waiting list. I'd love to have even more on too. So jump in, go do it now. If you're listening to this and it's past February 2nd, don't worry. We're going to open up again at the end of April, go to the same place. Make sure you're on the waiting list and you will be the first to hear about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening, everyone. I want you to think back, take a moment after you finish listening, especially if you're currently driving or walking or whatever, and you can't make notes. Think about those six areas. And even if you're not going to join the membership, I want you to identify one other area where you want to make a concrete step. Where you want to do something to improve your support in that area. Have a think, let me know what it is. You can always email me vikki at wembury coaching. com. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let me know what the one thing that you might do to improve your social support is. I promise it will make everything else feel easier. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 Jan 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-21-six-types-of-social-support-you-need-as-a-phd-student-and-how-to-get-it thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-20-why-we-should-think-less-about-deadlines-and-what-we-should-do-instead <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/" target="_blank"> Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking" target="_blank"> How to do role-based time blocking </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.michaellinenberger.com/" target="_blank"> Total Workday Control by Michael Lindenberger </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I have a deadline, I have always been able to hit that deadline. I'm not going to tell you that I hit it in some kind of calm, organized, working methodically all the way up to it kind of way, but through pulling some late nights, a bit of overenthusiastic working, whatever it might be, I will hit that deadline. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The tasks that I've always had problems with, and I know a lot of you have problems with too, are the tasks that don't have an externally imposed deadline. Maybe we try and put our own little fake deadline on it, but we know it's fake so we're able to push it back. Or maybe the task is really vague and there's not even a point at which we know it's complete, read more or whatever. It's those tasks that I always struggled with. Now, as usual, I'm not going to lie and tell you I'm perfect at this now, but I have found a tool that massively helps me schedule and get done some of those important but non urgent tasks that often fall by the wayside.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that this tool has helped with is smoothing out that runup to a big, actual formal external deadline. So rather than kind of skidding in at the last minute, I am now getting better, not perfect, but better at starting work on it earlier and working towards it in a more consistent way, and that's the tool that I'm going to teach you in this episode. So keep listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. The first thing I'm going to say before we get started properly is you might notice my voice is a little croakey. This is actually the improved version. I had flu all over the Christmas and New Year period. I'm now feeling fine, but my voice has not yet recovered. So it's not too bad, but if I squeak a little bit in this episode, please bear with me. It's all good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, voice or not, I've got a really important tool that I know is going to help you guys loads and loads, so I want to get this podcast done, and even more excitingly, I want to tell you about the membership program, which if you're listening to this live, is opening in one week's time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So at the end of this podcast, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what that involves and some of the new structures. So even those of you who are current members need to listen to this because it's going to be super cool. I'll tell you a little bit more about what you're going to get out of it, what it's going to look like and how you can join if you want to be a part of this very special community. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So Before I tell you what the tool I'm talking about is, I want us to think about the problem with deadlines. And for me, the big problem with deadlines is that they tell you when something needs to finish. But that doesn't tell you much about the process of getting it done. And some things have very hard deadlines. So usually a grant deadline, for example, is very fixed. You can't just write to the grant offering body and say, can I have longer, please? So there are some deadlines that are like. super clear, super hard, it's got to be done by then. If you're booked in to do a talk, your talk needs to be done at least at some level by the time it's time to do your talk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then there are kind of externally set but somewhat fluffy deadlines. So these might be submitting a chapter for a book to the editor, submitting a draft to your supervisor, any of those sorts of things. So notionally, there's a deadline. Somebody else will know if you don't hit that deadline, but there may be some flexibility. Often you can message your supervisor and say, this came up, that's taking longer than I thought. I've had this issue, can I have an extra week? And it usually works. And to be honest, same with submitting to books and things like that. I used to feel really bad about asking for extensions to those deadlines. And then when I spoke to the editor, they're like, yeah, everyone's taken the extension. Don't worry.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then there are things where there's no real deadlines. I have a bunch of tasks around CPD, for example, I'm really keen to make sure that I'm an evidence based practitioner, that what I'm teaching you guys is based in the literature and the research. And so those CPD tasks, unless I specifically decide that I'm going to talk about that thing in that podcast, in which case I have more of a deadline, they don't have real deadlines. I can set myself deadlines, but no one else knows what they are, and they're not real. There's no consequence for missing them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what that means is, whilst deadlines can be a useful motivator for certain tasks, it means we often end up prioritizing tasks that have deadlines over tasks that don't. And that's not necessarily a criteria of what's most important. Just because it has a deadline, it does not mean it's more important. If you have to fill in some boring form, which you have to do in academia, and there's a deadline it has to be done by, that task is not more important than reading a research article to stay up to date in your field, for example. But the fact that it has a deadline associated with it will usually mean that we will prioritize it over tasks that don't have specific deadlines.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, many of you may be familiar with Stephen Covey's work. He wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I highly recommend reading at least a summary, maybe not the entire book, but if you Google, you'll find loads of summaries. And one of the things he talked about was the four quadrants of tasks. Some of you all heard this before. This is not the new thing I'm teaching you. I'm just making sure everyone's up to speed. And in this he maintains that you can classify tasks as important and not important, and urgent and not urgent. And if you use those two scales, you end up with a quadrant where you've got one quadrant which is important and urgent, one quadrant which is important but not urgent. And those are the ones that we're talking about that we often neglect. Then there's urgent but not important. See little forms, that kind of jazz, and then there's the not urgent not important stuff And he maintains that you start with the important and urgent stuff Then you move to the important but not urgent stuff, the stuff we usually neglect. Then you do anything that's urgent but not important. And you try and either ignore or delegate stuff in the other box.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I find that quite a useful framework to kind of think about my tasks. But I have to say, it never worked for me. Certainly not when I was an academic. Because by the time I'd finished all the important and urgent tasks, I had run out of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you don't pre schedule the other stuff, if you don't block time for the important and not urgent tasks, the important and urgent tasks expand to fill the time you've got, in my experience. I was also never very good at defining what I mean by important. You know, I would I was the person that said, you need to make a priority list. My priority list would be like 40 things. So that's not a priority list. That's just a list.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, it kind of gave some insight into the types of tasks that I was neglecting. Those important but not urgent tasks. But it certainly didn't solve the problem. Now I mentioned there time blocking. If you want to know more about time blocking and specifically about my version of time blocking, I want you to check out my podcast episode about how to use role based time blocking. I'm not going to go into lots of detail now, but essentially this is where you're putting time in your diary for particular categories of work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, I block time in my diary for CPD. I don't decide weeks in advance exactly what I'm going to read or watch or learn during that period, but I'll block in time that is specifically for the role of continuing professional development. Do go check out that podcast. I will link it in the show notes. If you can't find it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that I think deadlines don't help with is the sense of having an overwhelming to do list. So, deadlines. You guys might have deadlines all the way for like the next three years, right? You know roughly when your PhD is going to finish if you're doing that. You know roughly when you might apply for promotion and what the deadlines are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might have a conference booked in October. You might have a module that needs delivering by December, whatever it is. You've got deadlines often that are not just these imminent deadlines. You've got all the way through to six months, a year, three years. What that means is without careful management, your to do list could be huge because you've got write talk for conference, which actually should be around 12 different actual tasks within that, but let's just call it one for now. And it's on your to do list because you know you need to do it and you know what the deadline is. So there it is. So every time you look at your to do list, thinking, what do I need to do? There's too many things. There's all these things that some of which you don't need to think about yet. Because it's not till October. It's not till December, whenever. But you look at it and it takes up cognitive space because your brain goes Oh yeah, I need to do that too. Yeah. And I've got that coming as well. And then next month I need to do that. And da da da. It fills up our kind of cognitive capacity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, how some of you get around this is having a kind of master to do list of all the things you need to do. And then more kind of daily and weekly to do lists where you pick things off this, which is brilliant. Love that system. We want to be getting it right down so that we can see these are the things. You, me and these two tasks. That's all we're doing. Okay. Makes it much, much more manageable.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the tool I want to talk about today is a way of semi automating that and strategically deciding what you're doing when. Because I don't know about you, but when I just have a master list and then I pick things off it for what am I going to do today or what am I going to do this week, I pick off stuff that I want to do and I abandon stuff that I don't fancy or that feels difficult or feels boring or long winded or whatever. I never pick it off.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the tool that I want to teach you today is about using start dates as well as deadlines. And in many cases, instead of deadlines. I actually got this from a pretty old school now book. I read it at the time. This has been in my shelves for a long time. Called Total Workday Control, by this guy Michael Lindenberger. Okay, and I want you to see, it proudly announces, covers Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002. So the actual kind of technical stuff, people on YouTube will be able to see me flicking through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The technical elements of this are pretty out of date because it is a system that is designed to work through using Microsoft Outlook. However, there are some principles in it that are enormously useful. I actually want to re, I was going to say reread, I want to reread, I want to re flick through this to see if there are other things that I can pick out of it too. But the one I want to teach you today is his notion of throwing things over the horizon.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So he talks about this idea of having too many things on your to do list so that they're all sort of there in your mind when you need to just get on and focus. And what he suggests is that you go through your tasks and you decide which of these do I need to work on now or do I choose to work on now? Now, some of that decision making may be to do with deadlines that are coming up. Some of it may be choosing which are going to have the biggest impact, which are the most important for you, those sorts of things. And what you then do is you decide which things you don't need to be thinking about yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, for example, if you're doing a presentation in November, make slides for November's presentation should not be on your to do list right now. You should not be seeing that. Now, you might want to think back and think, Okay, what data am I going to be presenting? Is there any data collection or analysis I need to be doing now that's going to feed that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, do I need to be doing ethics applications? Do I need to be doing project planning? What is it? What am I actually going to be talking about? You don't need to be making your slides. And so what he suggests is that we throw making those slides over the horizon. i. e. we take it out of our kind of current to do list and make it pop up in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I might think, right, I need to make sure that I know what data I'm going to be presenting so that I can backtrack and work out if there's anything I need to do now. But let's assume I'm presenting data I already have. So if my presentation is in November, I probably want to be making my slides mid October, depending on when in November it is. Some of you might want to take longer than that. I'm now pretty fast at making slides. It's not something I have much drama about. So I'd probably put it in for mid October. Okay, that's your start date. The deadline is maybe two days before the conference so that you can send off your handouts or whatever it is. But the start date is mid October. And you can do this with a bunch of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have, here's 10 articles that you need to read to stay up to date with your field. They're not for a specific piece of writing you're doing right now, but they're new. You could, instead of looking at that list and going, Oh God, I need to read all of those. You could throw nine of them over the horizon and set one of them as a start date for this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. So at some point this week, you want to read that. Now you could give it a deadline. You could say, I want it gone by the end of the week so that next week I do the next one. But even just having it as a start date means it appears on your to do list and puts in your consciousness that that's actually one you're intending to work on this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the joy is if you use either my role based task management sheet, which you can email me to ask for, so you can email info at wenburycoaching. com, email me, you can find it. It's a kind of interactive Google sheet where you put your tasks in, it uses the system that I use. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you use something like that, or if you use Click Up or Notion or any of these kind of automated task management systems, you usually have to add a column that start date is not usually one of the default columns. Most people don't use it, but you can set up a column that start date as well as deadline. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then what you can do is you can set filters. So in my Excel sheet that you can all get, I have filters already on the columns, so you can filter by start date. And in ClickUp and things like that, so I now use ClickUp, the version that I share with you guys, teaches you the basic system to see if you like it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've now transferred it into ClickUp. I've made filters, so that I have a filter that is started tasks, so tasks where I have passed the start date, i. e. I should be making progress on them. . What that means is there's a whole bunch of things on my task list that I don't see pop up until I need to start working on them. And that's amazing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one-to-one coaching or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, you might ask, yeah, but I don't know when I'm going to start working on it, because it depends how long the other things take. Perfect. I have a system for that, too. What I do there is I have a specific date that I throw them to. So what I will do, for example, is I will book some time in my diary on, let's say, February 2nd. I'm recording this on the 16th of January. I'll book some time on the February 2nd and I will throw all my tasks that I don't know when I'm going to do them to a start date of February 2nd. That doesn't mean I'm going to start them on February 2nd. What it means is I'm going to review them on February 2nd. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So on February 2nd, I'd block an hour into my diary to look through my tasks and decide, Do I actually want them on my start list now? I. e. I'm intending to do them in the next week or so. Or do I want to throw them over the horizon again? Some of them you might just throw over the horizon again until March 2nd or April 2nd or whatever your next one is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or you throw it, say I'm not doing it this week, but I am going to do it next week. So you set a more specific task, set a start date for it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, what this does is many things. It simplifies your to do list so that you only see the things you actively want to be working on now. So it really reduces overwhelm, makes it much more straightforward. It gives you a structure by which to review your to do list every month so that you can make decisions about what you are and aren't doing. And this one's very important for me, is the act of having to throw it over the horizon every month. And I do this, I have tasks that just go and go and go. Next month, next month, next month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then at some point I will say to myself, Vik, are we actually doing this thing? Because at the moment we've put it off month after month after month after month. Are we ever doing it? Or are you just accepting that this one's not going to happen? It kind of encourages you to review whether you're going to do the thing you said you were going to do anyway. So it kind of clears up those historic to do lists.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now that actually reminds me. Those of you who've stayed this long on the podcast , I'm going to give you a sneaky extra tip. And I planned to do this, then I got sick, so it didn't happen, but I'm going to replan it into my diary. Little tip for you. If you've got a bunch of little bits on your to do list whether they're, for me they're usually crappy little admin tasks. Things I just, I need to talk to my website host about something. I need to, I need to talk to Microsoft. That's a whole other story. We're not going there. Anyway, I've been not doing those things. You might have those sorts of things. You might have reading. You might, there might be a bunch of things that you've kind of pushed backwards. I would really encourage you now, go and grab your diary. And, Look a few weeks ahead and block in something, time where a week doesn't look too bad. Block in a couple of hours and mark it as historic to dos. Okay, so this isn't a specific role. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This isn't I'm going to be doing marketing things. I'm going to be doing operational things, whatever. This is historic to dos and your job in that two hours is to do as many things that you've been putting off as possible. This works perfectly at home as well. So if you found that there's jobs around the house, or maybe things like booking dentists, that kind of stuff that you haven't done, book in a time to do historic to dos. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the joy is A. It blocks time where that is your job. Other things aren't more important. But B. It removes a little bit of the shame. Because one of the things that stops you doing these things isn't that they're particularly difficult. It's that you've got a bunch of emotions about the fact you haven't done them yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas if your task is literally to get done things you haven't got done. Much less shame about it. So it's like, that's literally the job. That's literally what this time slot's for. I don't need to feel bad about the fact I haven't done this so far because I've literally blocked in time where doing things I haven't done for ages is my job. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's a sneaky bonus for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that you can use start dates for, let's take that example of a conference in November, is you can use it to support your project planning. So a deadline in November tells you nothing about what you need to be doing during the year. But what you could do is break that task down. Let's imagine now you do have to collect data for it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You could break that task of the conference in November down into all of its constituent parts. And so you've got to, let's go backwards, you've got to make this. Slides, you've got to, well, you've got to make the slides content wise. You've got to make the slides beautiful before that. You need to know what you're going to say. You need to have planned it, before that you need to understand your findings before that. You need to have findings before that. You need to have collected data or whatever your. Before that, you need to have designed the project, recruited participants, found your resources, whatever it is. Before that, you need to have a big picture idea of what it is you're intending to do. Before that, you might have to apply for funding, you might have to get ethical approval, you might have to get access to an archive, whatever it is. There's a whole bunch of different tasks.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What start dates allow you to do is you can spend time identifying what those different tasks are, and then you can give each of them a start date. Now, if you use something fancy like ClickUp, like I do, you can set the map as dependencies where the next thing doesn't appear until you've done the one before it. I actually quite like it appearing because if you're are still in the habit, as I am still a bit, of not doing the things on your to do list when you said you would, the next one pops up anyway, so it stops it kind of getting you a bit like, Oh, blimey, I need to have done that and that. So it kind of gives you that little sense of urgency. You can set in all the start dates, so you know that even though you don't have to do the conference until November, realistically, You need to be project planning now so that you can collect data in March so that you can analyze data in June so that you can whatever, you know, you put your time scale in depending on how, how much pressure you're under and how much time you have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can then put start dates in for all of those subcomponents. So this start date idea is brilliant for your tasks that have no deadline, that are really important but don't feel urgent. It puts them on your agenda in a specific week, but it also helps you avoid that crazy run in to a deadline where you've only just realised that actually there's a billion things you need to do in the deadlines then. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It helps you to pace that out over the year. And of course, when you're looking at start dates, you can put into your diary your other constraints. So if you have children, you might want to be more gentle about what you put start dates during the school holidays for. If you have a period where you're going to be on holiday, you don't put any start dates during that period. So you can structure it around your life. If you know you've got a heavy teaching period, let's not put lots of research start dates during that time. Okay? So you get to, by using start dates, which you're in control of entirely, rather than deadlines that are either fake or set by somebody else, then you can also schedule the work around your key things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you're telling yourself, yeah, yeah, but I don't always follow through, or that sounds great, but it sounds a bit complicated, and I don't know where to start, that's something I can help with. And that's my final announcement for you all, which is the PhD Life Coach membership is opening to new members at the end of January. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And how it's going to run is instead of joining monthly and kind of coming in and out whenever you want. We're going to be a quarter. If you join at the end of January, you are in until the end of April. You are going to have three months specialist support, and it is focused on structures. It is going to be focused on time management, task management, designing a day and a life that you love, so that you can do the things you want to do in a way that feels good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're going to leave the quarter feeling clearer, feeling more capable with a personalized time and task management system that you know how to practice, you know how to iterate, and that you can work on with minimal self judgment. Because I ain't going to teach you a tool that you do this perfectly. I ain't found a tool that I do this perfectly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I have found tools that enable me to do this with minimal self judgment and still achieve my goals, even though I don't do any of it perfectly. And that's what I want for you guys. If you're interested, I want you to go to my website. I want you to click on the membership and I want you to put your name on the waitlist. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're listening to this live, so in the week, beginning the 20th of January, put yourself on the waitlist. If you're listening to it in the week, beginning the 27th. You could just join. So just go to the same place on my website. You'll find a button. If you're listening to this afterwards, we are going to reopen again at the end of April for the second quarter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So keep an eye out for that. Put yourself on the waiting list. You'll be amongst the first to know when what's happening and when it's open and when I announce the new theme for the second quarter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All important question, cost. I hate people when they don't tell me what the costs are, make you go and search through pages. I've reduced the prices. It's cheaper than it used to be. It, the quarter is going to be 1 49 Great British Pounds, which for people more familiar with US dollars is 180, 185, something like that. That's for the entire quarter, not per month. For that, you get access to six two hour workshops about things like how to write when you're struggling to write. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get access to 12 themed coaching sessions where I teach you all the specifics of the various time management task management systems and support you to adapt them to meet your needs. You get access to 24 coaching sessions. The sessions are going to change in time over the day to try and make each week to try and make them as accessible as possible for as many people as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you also have access to all my self paced courses. So if you can't make the live versions, there are self paced versions of all of these courses that you can access. You get access to my Be Your Own Best Boss program, which is like my flagship big course . Access to that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also ask me questions in Slack. So if you're ever in a position where you're like, Oh, I can't come to the live session. I really want some advice. You can ask me questions in Slack and I will give you personal responses. It is so good. The members love it so much. Make sure you check it out. Go to www. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> thephdlifecoach. com Click on the membership you'll find all the information and I would love to have as many of you in there as possible. Current members. How exciting is it that we're going to have this more structure to it? You're going to get, uh, sort of your own worksheets that you can work through if you're not able to attend sessions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's going to be amazing. I'm so excited to continue working with you. Thank you all so much for listening. Go away, look at your task list, see whether you can allocate start dates to just a few things, and see how it works for you. Let me know. You can always message me if you have questions, anything you're unsure about. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 20 Jan 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-20-why-we-should-think-less-about-deadlines-and-what-we-should-do-instead thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-19-secrets-we-wish-phd-students-knew-with-dr-gertrude-nonterah-of-the-bold-phd <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/geenonterah/" target="_blank"> Dr Gertrude Nonterah on LinkedIn </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://theboldphd.com/" target="_blank"> The Bold PhD  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u-uPOKru9Q" target="_blank"> 55 academics reveal PhD student secrets you won’t learn in school!  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach and I have another guest with me this week. Um, so welcome. This is Dr. Gertrude Nonterah from the Bold PhD and I am super excited to have you with us today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: I am so excited to be here, Vikki. Thank you for inviting me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No problem. Well, I came across you, as you know, on YouTube, so those of you listening, I will link all of this in the show notes, but if you haven't found the BOLD PhD on YouTube already, I highly recommend that you go check it out after this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when I was looking, I was like, oh my god. There's so many things that we could talk about that you talk about on YouTube. But we picked one where you had talked up to 55 academics about secrets that PhD students don't know. And that was just so intriguing that I was like, that one, let's talk about that one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But before we get into it, Tell people a little bit about yourself, what you're doing now and how you got there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yes. So, so thank you for the questions. Thank you for the introduction. I'm Gertrude Nonterah, like you said, and I got into this space of talking about career design for academics and PhDs about four years ago. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So prior to that, I PhD as a postdoc for almost three years at a big institution here in the US, a research intensive institution. And somewhere around the three year mark, one day, uh, PI calls all of us in after a lab meeting, he calls all of us into a room and says, Hey, guys, we run out of funding for research. And so in 90 days, you all are going to lose your jobs. And so this is really, um, What happened? This is how this whole thing began. And this was back in 2018. And when the postdoc ended, I thought that getting a job, and at that time, I wasn't really sure, like I had an inkling that I didn't necessarily want to stay in academia and become a tenured professor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I didn't know where else I would go. Right? Because when you have a PhD, the idea is that you're going to stay in academia to become some kind of lecturer or professor or researcher, right? This is a path that has been well trodden for most academics and PhDs. Well, I began to learn about the different paths that were out there beyond academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the trouble was I didn't know how to communicate my value to companies outside of academia. So I kept on submitting my academic CV, thinking that people would be impressed with my credentials and my degrees and nobody was. I had to just learn through the school of hard knocks, how to present my work and how to talk about my work so that people outside of academia would say, Oh, she's not just an academic. Um, you know, because there is that, there is that bias where people just think, Oh, she's an academic. She probably doesn't know how to do anything. Um, I'm sure, I'm sure Vikki, uh, you're familiar with that sentiment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so like really showing people my value. And I began to document some of that on YouTube. And essentially, that's how the Bold PhD was born, and I didn't realize that in documenting that I would gain sort of an audience around this subject. I thought this, everybody knew this stuff. I thought everybody had figured this stuff out, but the more I wrote about it on LinkedIn and the more I posted YouTube videos, the more I learned that, oh my word, that a lot of us go through the whole academic system and nobody ever teaches us the basics of career development, the basis of career success. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, it's just assumed that, Oh, they're smart people. They'll figure it out. But I cannot tell you how many, the hundreds of people, if not thousands at this point, to be honest, hundreds of people who have sent me emails or instant direct messages and said, thank you so much for sharing that. If you didn't share that, I would never know how to communicate my value. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really that's how it got started. I hope that I hope that helps answer the question. That's the short part of the story.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, so, so helpful and so true. I really, really recognize that because apart from anything else, these students are getting, I saw it where I was. Um, the students are getting supported by people who mostly haven't done that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? So, you know, when you're going through your PhD, you've got your supervisors who are in a pretty good place to help you explain your value in terms of getting an academic career, because that's what they did. And so they can kind of guide you through that. But the vast majority of academics who are supervising PhD students will never have done what you've done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They'll never have actually gone and had to sort of, you know, get jobs outside of academia and figure out different ways of telling that story. So it's probably no surprise that PhD students aren't getting taught it directly. But I agree completely that it's a, it's a big gap for sure.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: It's such a big gap. I feel like ever since I started talking about this, there were a few blogs here and there that talked about it, but it was just so few and far between. I think now there are more voices that are speaking up about this because More and more academics are choosing careers outside of academia or sometimes not necessarily choosing, but there's just not an option for them in academia, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think I read a paper a few years ago that said only about 20 percent of PhDs will ever get tenured faculty positions. And that was in the US. I don't know about other places. I spoke to a friend of mine who, um, worked in the UK and she kind of confirmed that statistic, it was even lower for the UK. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, you know, there are more and more people choosing careers or working outside of academia. So I feel like that's no longer such a black box, but still I find that there are people that are like, how do I How do I present my personal brand? How do I write a resume for industry versus academia? You know, so it's, you know, hopefully I've, I've helped enough people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you're going to help more. I know that for sure. And those two things you mentioned there, I know you've got videos about. So if people want to know more specifically about those things too, they can, they can go dig that stuff out as well. So tell me about how this talking to 55 academics came about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: That's right. So I made a LinkedIn post and this is about three months ago. We're recording this in November of 2024. So this was, I think somewhere in August or September. So August and September usually marks the beginning of the school year across most countries, right? And usually it's when the new batch of graduate students, PhD students are getting started. So I said, well, semesters are starting all across the world. Okay. PhDs who are in my LinkedIn connections, give your best advice, give the advice you wish somebody had given you when you were starting graduate school. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think that post ended up getting about a hundred comments of different academics. And I counted about 55 individuals who had responded. I'm sure it's a little more now, but the last time I checked there were about 100 comments and it was just an education in career advice in surviving graduate school and so they had given all these these pieces of advice that to be honest, if somebody had given me that list of advice when I started graduate school I think I would have been in a much better place than I was when I was looking for jobs outside of academia and was unemployed for almost a year and a half, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's how that post came about. And I, once I made that, that post and I saw how much traction it got and how, how many times it got reshared and commented on, I decided to make a YouTube video about it. And I think that's what you discovered, right? Yes. And so do you want me to go into some of what that people said? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, I am. Yes. But I want to ask you one thing first, because, you mentioned that you were unemployed for a year and a half, and I just think it's amazing that you went through this period where it must have felt super uncertain and things and you found it in yourself to not only get through that and carry on and do different things, but to put your journey out there, to develop these skills and stuff. I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about that. What that was like and how you, how you got yourself to do those things. Cause it would be so easy in that situation to kind of feel sorry for yourself or feel bitter about the experience that you'd had or how people should value your skills. And I'd love to just know a little more about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yeah, so I was bitter and sad that I won't lie. I cried because I think for most I'm a millennial. I in my early 40s and all my life I was always told, do your best, go to school, get good grades and everything else will work out. And that's exactly what I did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I went to school. I got good grades. I went and got a PhD. I did everything society said would set me up for success. So why wasn't I successful? Why was I unemployed and barely scraping by? That made me incredibly upset, right? Because I felt like a big failure. I felt like I'd failed myself. I felt like I'd been lied to so many things, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There were people, I would look at people who maybe didn't have all the credentials or education I had, and they seem to be doing well. Now I have since learned to be careful about comparing myself with people because sometimes you may see somebody and you may judge them to be successful, but you know, what does that mean? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's really important to define success for yourself and not. Get caught up in other people's lives. That's a that's a losing battle. So I've since learned to be careful about doing that but I was still really disappointed in myself for doing everything I was told to do and still not be successful or as successful as I thought I would be at that point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I'm the kind of person that if I go through something, I begin to think, is somebody else going through this? Like, our human experiences, it doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter what your experience or your upbringing, most of us have very similar life experiences, maybe just in different settings, right? Just a few things change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's when I told myself, well, maybe I'll put this out there and it will help somebody, because I don't want somebody to fall in the same, I'm a teacher at heart, maybe that's why I pursued a PhD, and so I want to teach people all the time, sometimes, you know, even unsolicited, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so, and so, um, I really wanted to just show, tell people that if you're going through this, you're not alone. You're not a failure. I just really wanted to say that. And ever since I started doing that, the number, again, the number of people that have sent me an email or something to say, thank you. I was on the job market for a year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was in the job market for six months and I watch your videos to keep me going. And I'm like, Oh, thank you so much. I'm glad that that helped. So I didn't want people to feel despondent and helpless, as helpless as I did. And so that's why I began to do that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if I can just reach out to somebody and give them some hope that, you know, just because you are unemployed and you have a PhD or unemployed and you have a master's degree, doesn't make you a failure. You know, hopefully I would have done part of my job.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And it's so important. Thank you for sharing that you, obviously you went through the sadness and the disappointment and the bitterness and stuff as well because I think sometimes people think that handling things well in inverted commas means that you don't experience any of those emotions. And I think it's really important that people recognize that you can feel all of those things and it's probably completely fair and completely understandable to feel all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you can also decide to do things that will help too. I think that's super powerful to hear. So thank you. How, just on the timelines of it though. So were you, and then, okay, I'll tell you where this is coming from. So I'm trying to get fitter at the moment, right? Cause I want to learn to do like fun fitness stuff, like the kind of calisthenics where it's like handstands and things like that. And part of me is like, this would be quite fun to share my journey, right? but then part of me is like, I only want to share my journey if I actually get to my journey. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. So, were you like, Were you sharing in like real time with you being, you know, you applying for things and sharing all the way through? Or was it that you kind of got some way along this journey and were starting to see things improving and so you then tried to help people that were behind you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yeah, I think both of them are good approaches. I think I was a, a little further along the journey.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: So, when I started sharing on LinkedIn, at this point, I was an adjunct professor at a college. So in the U. S., we have community colleges, and those are two year colleges. You can do community college for two years and then transfer to a four year university, and it's still considered that you did two years of university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, usually people Get into community college after high school. And for a lot of people, it's a cheaper option. It's a more accessible option, right , to help them bridge their way into university. So I was an instructor at a community college. And so I began to share a little bit of my experiences there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then when I finally landed my first role in medical communications, which is where I work now in the arena I work in now, I was like, Oh my goodness. Like the, the light bulb started coming on. So I started to share, you know, so I had been unemployed, for the 18 months, almost two years prior and, um, in between me, while I was unemployed, I started a writing business. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I started writing, and one of the ways I would get clients was really share my work or share the tools I was using on LinkedIn. So that's how I. I got started. I never meant to like start sharing about my career or anything. I was just trying to find a way to find clients for my business so that I can actually have money to survive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as I did that, I began to see it as a platform where people shared ideas. And so I just, I'm telling you, all of this was really like, I stumbled into it. I never planned for it to become anything. I just shared my journey and all of a sudden it sort of blew up , and people began to reach out. So I had gotten a little bit along the down the road with my journey. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, I never really talked about being unemployed online, but I was talking about my freelance business and getting people so people have been following me since 2018. They know how it started and then somewhere 2020 ish. I started sharing around that transition out of academia, and then that it kind of just  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, so interesting. So let's get into the secrets. What do you think the most important things that PhD students that would make such a difference if they if they understood during their PhD?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yes, so there's so many, the first one is faculty jobs are not prizes, they are jobs. I loved this one so much because, again, if you, if you're only tuned into the academic narrative, then usually the sentiment within academia in general is academia is sacred and pure and is not tainted by capitalism. And if you get a career there, then it's the most respectable thing you can do with a PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reality is that it's just a job. And they are not, you know, academia is not really untainted by capitalism. If you think about it, right. Now, this is not me knocking capitalism. I mean, you know, this is not me doing that. But the reality is that there are universities within this country. I live in the US. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's so many universities now that are basically hedge funds. They have billions of dollars in the tuition that people pay that they have put in funds, you know, to, to enrich who we do not know, but it's real and it's there and these, these things are happening and yet you have academics who sometimes work at some of these institutions and are barely scraping by. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you think that, you know, it's a sacred calling to be in a faculty member, you know, I really understood the sentiment behind the person that made that comment. It's, it's not real. It's, it's, that's, you've been brainwashed to think that, right? And so, regardless of what you choose, whether you choose to be in academia or you choose to work outside of academia, there's no real evil side. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no real dark side. It's all just a job, right? So whether you get a job in academia or not, you're probably doing just fine and, and that's okay because people would be really disappointed. I've had people say, I feel like a failure because I didn't get this job in academia. And there's no reason why you should feel that way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or I remember when I had one of the first posts of mine on LinkedIn that kind of went viral and I ended up making a video about that. And that video also did well, was when I talked about why I left academia. Right, and people have even, I've had, I've gotten a lot of flack for that video too. But anyway, um, I talked about the fact that I enjoy teaching my students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really did. But ultimately, it wasn't a sustainable income and the way healthcare works here in the U. S. usually, we don't have a nationalized healthcare system, not saying that that's only the kind of healthcare system that you can have, but because of that, you have to pay if you're not working for a company that covers that, you have to pay out of pocket, and to get really good health insurance is very expensive, and even when you get good health insurance and you go to the hospital, you may, you know, if it's a thousand dollars, You know, your health insurance may cover 800 you still have to pay 200, you know, so there's just a lot that goes into not having a good job or health insurance, for instance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so for me, because I had to think about that and have to think about my family and the needs at that time. I have a child who really needed medical care and that medical care was too expensive coming just from our pockets. And so it was imperative that I get a job that could support me in that way so that I could cover those costs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If it was just me alone, okay, whatever, I can eat ramen noodles and, and just go to bed. But now you have people who begin to depend on you. It's okay to say, I'm making this move for the people I love. I'm making this move so that I can have a better financial future and not feel guilty about making moves like that, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because that's what's wrapped up in that comment. Faculty jobs are not prizes, they're just jobs, is if you are in a faculty job and it's not paying you well, it's not helping you meet your financial goals. You're not able to cover your children's health care. You're not able to cover things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not like, and I always say this, I wasn't trying to live frivolously. I was just trying to even just survive, you know. If that's you, then, you know, that's your permission to say, hey, I can look for something outside of academia that maybe pays well, it helps me take care of my family, helps me meet those financial goals and obligations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, for sure. And it's so reinforced, I think, you know, I, and I'm going to keep this anonymous for the purposes of the podcast, but I've known people in my past where as a supervisor, they were like really disappointed if their students didn't follow into academia and somehow treated it as though they'd wasted this time training them and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And even though I, I did, I spent like 25 years in academia before I did what I did, what I'm doing now. I never really got that because I, I feel like we're training PhD students to do a million different useful things. And I never really understood that, but there, there was, I saw it all the time, this kind of, that that's the legitimate route and anything else is disappointing in some way. So yeah, I loved that one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what's next?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Well, yes. ,Your cohort is not your competition. They are your village. So I loved that too, because, one of the things I talk about sometimes is networking. And sometimes we're like, I hate networking because we all think of networking as going to those events with a business card and maybe exchanging it and then you leave the networking events and just toss that business card in the trash. We think that that's what networking is. And, you know, I've been trying to like show people that networking is more than that. Right. And then there are people that tell me, oh, I'm an introvert. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hate talking to people. And I'm an ambivert. I can be both that depending on the environment, but I definitely have strong introvert tendencies. And so I get that, right. But one of the things we forget, one of the big networking opportunities we all miss is realizing that the cohort, the PhD cohort we're part of, whether that's your year or even the people that are before you and after you are a network, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are a village. They're not your competition. So like just having silly, you know how academics can be sometimes a competition, right? And so, Just falling to that silly competitive behavior like you stop it right and and really see these people as people that can help you get your career ahead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  A lot of us would like to think that everything is a meritocracy. Right? Nothing is a pure meritocracy. Nothing. A lot of us love to think this and no society is a pure meritocracy. That apart from you having to do well, having to publish papers, having to do excellent work, you have to learn how to build relationships, how to navigate politics, how to talk to people, how to find mentors. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so this part of it, this part of your cohort or your, the PhD, the people in your PhD program, being a part of your village is one of the things that you're going to have to learn to do so that you're not just depending on your brilliance to get ahead in your career. And I find that this is so true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, recently I was interviewing a PhD who had been an academic. She had been a professor for about 10 years at a university. And then the pandemic happened and she decided to transition away from that career path. And you know, the first thing she told me was I immediately got in touch with a professor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> With my alumni network, I immediately got in touch with them and just began to ask those people who were not working in academia or those people who I'd known before. Hey, how did you career switch? How do I talk about myself? You know, she just began to talk to these people. She didn't go outside of herself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She just went to the people that she had gone to school with. Right. And so really seeing these people as your cohort and developing those relationships is going to be great. Maybe you're listening to this or watching this, and you didn't develop those relationships. It's not too late, right? When you go on LinkedIn, for instance, and you click on a specific company, sometimes those companies will tell you if there's somebody from your school or somebody from your network that works there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can tap into that and say, Hey, we went to the same product, right? You know, university, we went to the same high school, even sometimes, um, I just saw that you work at ABC company and I just wanted to, to connect. And that could be your, you know, because we, as human beings, we all love it when we find commonalities with each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so if I say my son swims and somebody is a swim mom. She's also going, Oh, my son swims too. And immediately we have a connection. You already have connections with people based on your PhD cohort, based on the broader alumni network. Leverage that and don't shun people or make them your competition. Make them a part of your village.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And I, I see people not necessarily making it competition. Bear in mind, I came from a sports science department. We were as competitive as it gets. But for me, there's also a difference between the kind of competitive where you're like both cheering each other on and trying to slightly outdo each other, but it's all quite exciting and fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Versus what I see a lot more of with my clients and people in my membership membership is people sort of being like, oh, Gertrude's already published two papers and I haven't, and I must be rubbish, and that whole kind of making it mean something. When, I don't know about your cohort, but like looking back through all the PhD students I've known going through my school, how long people took to finish their PhD or how long they were writing up for or whatever doesn't seem to relate to anything to do with where they are in academia now. It's just a really pointless metric. And how many changes you got after your viva and things like that seems so important. And then I say to people like, you know, how many changes did your supervisor get? And they're like, I don't know, it's like, because no one cares, it's fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so, yeah, it's just, it's almost, it's even like really stupid things that we get competitive about. The other thing I wanted to add was, it also doesn't have to just be within your own, like, department or university. One of my, so I have my kind of cohort that I went through my PhD with and things who've been amazing, bunch of them were at my wedding and things like that. Um, but then there was also the people who, I used to go to quite small conferences and it would be the same people each year and so like through the early stages of my career. And I consider a bunch, you know, they're all over, most of them are all over the U. S. And I consider them my cohort too, and that's been wonderful maintaining those relationships and just, and they're all super high flying in their field now and stuff. And so it's, it can be useful too, but more importantly, it's just been really nice. You know, sort of being part of that kind of little network of people that came up at the same time, just in the discipline, even though we were in completely different PhD programs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yeah. Yeah. I know that's an amazing addition for sure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I know it doesn't always, you know, if you go to massive conferences and where you don't see the same people and stuff, it doesn't necessarily, or you don't get the opportunity to, to go to as many conferences, it doesn't quite work out, but I think there's lots of different places you can find your cohort too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Sure, for sure. Absolutely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, so give us another one. Wow. So I'm loving these.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yes, absolutely. I like this one where it says, your dissertation topic does not need to define your identity as a researcher.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes. Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Like I don't know why somehow the people, I don't know whether it's everybody, but at least a lot of people I've come into contact with who have PhDs think we're locked into this one thing, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just because we became an expert in that for five years or six years. You're not, you're not limited. Your identity is not a genetics researcher. Your identity is not the specific, you know, niche subject that you studied. You can apply your skills to a plethora of things. And so one of the things I encourage a lot of PhDs to do is come out from the little pit, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You've been in that pit for too long. You've got a bit of tunnel vision. Yeah, it's too dark. Come out of it a little bit and realize that your skills that you acquired on getting on the way to getting the PhD are not limited to that one subject, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you build the skill of literature review, it's not just for that one subject. If you build the skill of writing about a subject, it's not just for that subject. If you build the skill of designing experiments to test your specific hypothesis, that's not just what your skills are for. Your skill of asking questions and your skill of hypothesis building can be applied to various areas, not just the specific subject you studied or your specific discipline. And so helping people see that has also been one of the, the wildest things I've observed. Like when I, when I say that and the light bulb comes off in PhDs eyes, I'm like, how did we not know this, you know? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so, um, just letting people really realize that. You don't have to allow your dissertation topic to define your identity. You can, you can switch.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: And it can be fun.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that's even useful during your PhD too, because one of the things that I see a lot is that people find negative feedback, for example, really hard to take because they've wrapped up their identity in their topic so much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So then anyone saying, Oh, I'm not sure I quite believe this bit of the experiment, or, you know, have you thought about changing your argument like this becomes essentially someone saying, I think you're stupid and your ideas are bad. And so I think that kind of just. separating yourself just enough from your work, not that it's not important to you or whatever, but that it is just your work, can really help in kind of how you receive feedback, how you develop your ideas, even aside from, from what you do afterwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Such an important point.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yeah, and then I'll jump on. So the next one is ask for help when you feel lost because we all feel lost at various points. And I think this is a really important one that builds off the points you just made, that you're looking at other people and you're thinking, Oh, this person is doing so well, or she made that presentation and it was so good. Or, you know, and I remember doing my postdoc at some point I was lost. I didn't know where I was going with my question. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I told my PI, I said, I feel lost and I feel like an imposter. Um, and so it's okay to, to express those feelings. Um, because actually, very, very high achieving people tend to all have those thoughts running in their heads. Right? You're high achieving, your whole life you've gotten maybe straight A's or, you know, a few A's and B's. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You've always had a high GPA. And so you tend to think that. If I don't have that, then I lose my identity. Talking about identity. If I'm not brilliant, then who am I? And so, because if I'm not, if I'm not brilliant, then who am I? I'm not going to ask the question because it's going to make me look stupid. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Forget that everybody else in the room has those questions. Everybody else is feeling just like you feel. They just haven't said it. They just haven't voiced it out. And so I find, I wish I had done this more. Um, and so in hindsight, I'm, I'm giving this advice that if you find yourself in a PhD program or maybe early career and you have questions, ask the stupid question before you make a stupid mistake. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? Because if you ask the stupid question, then everything is clarified and you know how to move on. If you don't ask the stupid question and then you go and make a stupid mistake, well, people are going to remember that way longer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you might as well just ask and voice that you feel lost and voice that, you know, maybe you feel like a fish out of water and let somebody help you. And if somebody, if the person you're asking makes you feel less than, that's on them. That's unfortunate. That's a shame for them because we're all learning and we all don't know everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so if if they do that, that's not on you. That's that's again. I said stupid not to say it's a stupid question, but I put it. I'm putting it in context. So just to say that, ask the question so that you don't make a mistake that is way, way more costly than the actual question. So ask the question and have somebody who can get you back on the right path rather than feeling like everybody has figured it out. Trust me. I've been in the room. I've been in rooms with people with PhDs, they don't have it together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They really don't. Sometimes when I'm, sometimes when I'm coaching, the clients are like, um, you know, especially like, because I have a program at my old university where I have a lot of people and they'll be like, you know, Oh, my supervisor is so brilliant. And they're always on top of this. And I'm just like,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've worked with your supervisor, are you really sure? I'm not really sure.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yes. Sometimes you're like, mm, I, I met these people you are talking about. They're not that impressive when it's, it's not that. It's not that. And you see, I I, I,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They're human. They're human too. Right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Exactly. I have to be careful with my words. They, yes, in, in some regard. They're definitely impressive, but they question themselves just like you are questioning yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Of course.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: They have to carry an air of, I carry an air of confidence because I'm like, why not? But I have questions, I get insecure, I experience imposter syndrome. We're all going through that and it's okay to, to ask the questions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And it doesn't mean you're not independent. Because that's the pushback I always get is students saying, but they say I'm meant to be independent. They say this is meant to be my project. I'm meant to be making the decisions. And I'm like, yeah, that doesn't mean you never ask for help though. Being independent doesn't mean you're just like an island that never can... in fact, the best independent researchers that I know are the ones that make the connections that you were talking about earlier and know how to like build on other people's knowledge and expertise is but while adding their own by, by like bringing it all together, so.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I could talk to you all day, but I know we are slightly tight for time. So if people want to hear the rest of these, and the rest of all this good stuff that you have for them, where should they find you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Yes, so if you go on YouTube, you can type in Dr. Gertrude Nonterah. You'll find my YouTube channel and this video is one of my most recent videos. I posted like maybe two months ago. So you can find that there. You can also go to theboldphd. com. That's my website. Um, it has all the links. I have a, I have a newsletter I send out bi weekly to about 2, 800 academics and I just write whatever comes to mind every every other week around life and around career, because I think they're intertwined right. I think if you want to build a good life you have to have a good career and I really believe in designing the kind of life you want and then fitting your career into that versus the other way around so that you can actually have a life that you enjoy. So I write about that in my newsletter, uh, every other week. So people can join that as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I'll put a link to this specific episode, as well as your website and stuff in all of the show notes. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I know this will have been super useful for all the listeners. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gertrude: Absolutely. I appreciate you too, Vikki. Thank you so much.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 13 Jan 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-19-secrets-we-wish-phd-students-knew-with-dr-gertrude-nonterah-of-the-bold-phd thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-18-how-and-when-to-change-your-plans-overcoming-resistance-embracing-flexibility-and-making-big-moves <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/23-how-to-make-decisions-that-you-love" target="_blank"> How to make decisions that you love </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-10-how-to-go-from-idea-overload-to-clarity" target="_blank"> How to go from idea overload to clarity </a> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and if you are listening to this in real time, welcome to 2025. This is our first episode of the new year. I hope you've all had a wonderful festive period and are feeling rested and as though you used the time period in the ways that you intended, mostly. None of us do perfectly, but that you mostly spent it how you intended. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this is the ideal time of year to be talking about the stuff that we're talking about this week. Because this is a time where we're all thinking about goals and resolutions and what we want to do more of, less of, or achieve this year. And often, we think about those new resolutions, but we don't think about the things that we might let go of. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I find that people get really, really caught up in this, that they don't know when to walk away from a goal. In psychology we call this goal disengagement where we decide that actually this goal that we were working towards we are not going to do for lots of different reasons and we're going to re engage with a different goal instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today we're going to think about why doing that feels so challenging, why it can be really important and some tips about how to make it a little bit easier for you to know when to and if to change your plans. I'm also going to use an example from my own life, which has a lot of relevance for many, many of you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can tell you a little bit about some career changes I made as we go along, that's fine. But towards the end of this episode, I am going to talk you through a big decision that I have made about the ways that I'm going to support all of you guys this year. So make sure you listen all the way to the end to find out what is going to be out there for you in 2025. And it's good news. I think you're going to love it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So why is it so painful sometimes to decide to change a goal? Sometimes this is because of something that you may have heard of before, which is called the sunken cost fallacy. This idea that we've put so much time and effort into something that it would be a real waste to move on and not achieve that goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So at its most extreme, sometimes this is is choosing to leave academia or choosing to leave your PhD, for example. Other times it might be a sort of smaller scale version of that, deciding not to pursue a particular research project that you thought you were going to do and move to a different one instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We often get quite fixated on the time and effort and money and emotional and cognitive effort that we've put into this already. And there's a real human tendency to tell ourselves that that would be wasted if we decided to do something else. The reason it's called a fallacy though is that what we do as humans is we often overlook the fact that all of that time, effort, money, cognitive energy, emotional energy is already spent regardless of what we do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not that if we continue down this path we somehow get that effort back, that's spent. It's spent if we go down that path. It's spent if we choose to not go that way and go down another path. And when we can look at it like that, that that effort is in the past regardless of what we decide to do now, then we can be a little bit more logical looking forwards as to which would be a better path for us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead of sort of relating it to, I need to keep going in order to make that effort worth it, seeing that as something that's spent, that's gone, which is the better fit for me moving forwards? And often the truth is that the time, effort and energy you put into one thing may well set you up to do something different anyway. So I had two major pivots in my career. So I went into a sort of standard academic job, I guess, started out in postdocs and then got a lectureship. Um, all at the same institution and it was around then that I decided that I didn't like research anymore, but I loved reading other people's research and knowing about it and I love teaching people about it, but I didn't enjoy the actual doing of it anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I decided at that stage to pivot to a teaching career. Now, it would have been very easy to sort of lament all of that time and effort that I had spent building up a research portfolio and a research reputation and a network of people around the world who knew my research and knew me and where I felt part of that community. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I could have spent quite a lot of time feeling like that was wasted and that I could have gone into a more teaching oriented career originally. But I think what I was able to do was two things. One was to accept that that was spent, as I said, and accept that whatever I decided at this point, that effort was done. And I now got to choose, which was a better path for me. And for me, that was a very straightforward decision. The teaching career was the one that I found myself doing. You know, people were telling me, you need to spend less effort on your students and your teaching and stuff because you need to do the other stuff for your career. And I just couldn't persuade myself to write my papers and write my grants and things, especially grants. I like writing grants, but I didn't want to get them. That was the real deciding factor for me was when I don't want to write this grant because if I get this grant, I'm going to have to do this grant and that's another four years of research and I don't want to. That was when it was like, oh, okay, this is, this is time for a change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one thing was that I was able to quite easily put behind me the fact that this effort was already done and that I now needed to make a decision for future me looking forwards rather than being quite so caught up in past me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason that I think can be really useful for all of us is I really recognized how all the time and effort that I put into becoming the researcher that I was would also help me in my teaching career. And I think sometimes we underestimate this. Those of you who might be considering changing your research project, or even leaving your current position, you will have learned a whole load of stuff through the process of the effort you've put in so far that will stand you in great stead whatever you go on and do, even if it's something completely different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I was doing psychophysiology. I was doing stress immunology. So I was doing lab work in a kind of cardiovascular sense, electrodes all over people and all that jazz. And I was doing lab work in a kind of wet lab environment. And I was doing sort of psychological assessments and manipulations in a variety of ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I was learning all these research trainings that I was not going to use in my teaching. And I wasn't even teaching that stuff a lot of the time, right? I was given other modules to teach. Yet the skills that I developed as a person and as a researcher made me way better in my teaching oriented career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So remembering that that time and effort is never wasted. It's brought you to where you are now, and now you get to make the decision that's right for you going forwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second reason, and I think in our kind of world, this is even more pressing than in most situations. The second reason I think people find changing their plans so difficult, is that they make it mean something about them. They make it mean that they failed in that goal. They make it mean that they made the wrong decision back then when they decided on the original goal and that that's bad and that that means something bad about you that you made that wrong decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we make it mean that we don't have discipline or we don't stick to plans. I have people, clients, people in my membership who come to me quite regularly and they proudly say, Oh, if I commit to something, I am definitely going to follow it through. No matter what, I am someone who always follows through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they say that very proudly. And there are some, you know, I think this comes like from childhood and stuff as well, but often people present it that way, right? You know, we as a family, we stick to our goals. Even when the going gets tough, we stick to our goals. And there's something beautiful about that, but there's also something that makes me a little bit worried because there does sometimes reach a point where sticking to your goals is not in your best interests. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For example, you know, many of you will know I'm a sport scientist. I don't watch that much sport these days, but I, you know, I kind of love that stuff. Quite often in these sort of endurance events, you will see people who are finishing with horrible injuries, finishing where they're so dizzy they don't even know where they are, they're getting dragged across the line by competitors, and it's held up as some heroic thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm a bit like, no. There's pushing through uncomfortableness, there's trying to have a commitment to something that was important to you, but if it's either no longer important to you, no longer good for your physical or mental health, or no longer looking in any way plausible, It's okay to let it go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's okay to decide I'm not doing that anymore. I'm going to do something different instead. And if we can separate that from our sense of self, if we can separate that from our sort of perspective of ourselves as somebody who does the things they intend, it's so much easier to make that decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because suddenly you're making decisions about things that are just, I might do this or I might do that. I might not do that anymore. I might do this now. And it becomes so much lighter than if I choose to leave my PhD, all my friends will think I'm an idiot, my family will be so disappointed, it will mean I made the wrong decision joining in the first place, it will mean I failed, I will look back on this moment and regret it for the rest of my life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we make it mean all of our stuff, It's virtually impossible to leave, or without, certainly without, you know, trying to leave without a whole lot of unnecessary pain and awfulness. Whereas, if we see it just as a different task, a different goal, saying, you know what, I thought my PhD, my academic career, whatever it is, was going to be this, and it's not, it's not worked out like that, that's not how it's gone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then, then we get to decide that something else might fit us better. And other people, they might be disappointed. They might not, that's their prerogative. They get to have their thoughts and feelings, but we at least get to tell ourselves that it doesn't have to mean anything about me. It doesn't even mean it was the wrong decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It means it was the right decision at the time. You thought what was going to happen would work for you. And now you know more. Now you have more insight. You have more experience, you have more wisdom, and now you know better what's a good fit for you. And you get to make that decision. And this goes all the way down to like study designs and all of that sort of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often we think, oh, I've put loads and loads of effort in here. I've already interviewed 20 people on these topics and whatever. I've already collected this much data, this many samples, da da da, I have to keep going this way. But if you're learning that the analysis isn't working or you're learning that actually this isn't getting to the crux of the research question that you're trying to answer, it doesn't mean you were wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It just means you know more now. It just means you're more experienced and you get to pick whether you want to keep going or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember the other big pivot point in my career was obviously leaving academia to start doing this full time. And I don't know, I feel like I'm not good at change. I was about to say, I feel like I must be good at change. I never changed universities. And that's, that's a whole other conversation for another day. We're not going to get into that one today. But when it came to major decisions about my career, I feel like I was pretty good at separating it from my sense of self. When I came to tell people that I was leaving academia in order to set up this business and coach all of you guys. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember so many people being like, you're so brave. You're so, like I was going off to do this, like terrible. Like I was going off to war or something. It's like, it's not brave, it just sounds loads more fun than the thing I'm doing at the moment. I've achieved what I wanted to achieve over here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've done what I wanted to do, and now I want to do something different. And I think it's important, I think people will pay me for it, and I think I can make it work. And I remember laughing because I remember thinking, I don't think this is brave. I don't quite understand. But I think for a lot of people, they're so wedded to that identity of the previous plan, that identity of being an academic, and they would make it mean something about themselves if they chose to leave.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, as usual, caveat. The one caveat I would put in here is in both cases, when I pivoted to a teaching focused career and when I pivoted to leave and set up the PhD life coach, I was leaving from a point of success. And I do think that made it easier for me. I wasn't failing as a research , member of staff. I had, I'd got grants. I had good publications. I was successful. I'd just been promoted to senior lecturer. So it wasn't that I couldn't make it as a researcher. And similarly, when I left academia entirely in order to do this work. I'd been made full professor two years before, it was all going well, my career was on the up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I do have to concede that I do think that helped. It made it easier for me to feel like, right, I've done that, I could keep doing that, but I choose not to. So that did make me feel a bit more empowered, I think, as I, as I went through my career. I do think it's more challenging if you're leaving because something hasn't worked out for you, because you're not succeeding in the ways that you wanted to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But even then, you get to choose whether that Fail, in inverted commas, is a fail of that specific goal and that specific task, or whether it's a fail of you as a person in some sort of kind of stable and ongoing way. Those are very different things. You cannot achieve a goal and one that you really wanted to, that you really thought you'd be able to, and things like that, you cannot achieve that goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you can be specifically disappointed about the fact that that didn't go the way you wanted it to, without that kind of generalization about what that means to you as a person. We don't have to be like, Oh, I learned so much, it was worth it, da da da. No, you can be super disappointed. Be frustrated, be pissed off, it's fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? Have all the emotions about that goal that didn't work for you. Just be really careful that you're not generalizing it to mean that you're a failure, that you're a terrible person, that you let people down, blah, blah, blah. Okay? We can be sad, we can be disappointed, frustrated, but it doesn't have to mean anything about you as a person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, hopefully that's kind of dealt with some of these reasons why it can be quite difficult to even consider changing your goals. Then the next question is often how do you choose? And here I am going to touch on this lightly, but I will also refer you back to my podcast about how to make decisions that you love, which covers this in much, much more detail. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But essentially my go to always is to think about what would be my reasons. What would be my reasons to stay? What would be my reasons to go? So I'm going to give you one quick example from my career turning point, and then I'm going to tell you the new and exciting news, where I've made a change decision of my own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in terms of my career, when it came to leaving academia, I did this. I was thinking, what would be my reasons to set up my business, to leave academia and set up my business. And my reasons were people really need this. PhD students and academics really, really need the support that I know I can offer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I definitely felt like It would help people. I definitely felt like I was able to do it. So another reason was like, I think I can do this. I think this uses the bits of me that I like most and the bits of me that come most naturally to me. Whereas the more I progress through academia and the more it became kind of strategic and data informed and long term planning and consultative and all these things, the more I found it out of my comfort zone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I felt like it used the best bits of me. Another reason was it seemed fun. It seemed fun and exciting. It felt like I would learn a load of new things. And then the final one was a personal one. Leaving the university enabled me to also leave where I had been living previously and move closer back to my aging parents and my sisters and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there was kind of a personal reason there too. And those were my main reasons why I would choose that move. Now when I then think about why I would have stayed in academia, at that stage I would have stayed in academia because I like the people. You know, I still miss wandering across campus and bumping into my colleagues and stuff, so I would have stayed because I liked the people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would have stayed because it was a stable income, a good stable income. I would have stayed, I don't even know, I don't think I would have stayed because it was what people expected because I quite like doing what people don't expect, but you know, there was a career path ahead of me that would have led to lots of influence and quite a lot more money. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I would have stayed for that career path, I guess. There were reasons to stay in Birmingham, but that was a separate decision, you know, I had all my friends and hobbies and stuff in Birmingham. But, but yeah, those were my most, my main reasons. And what you then do is you look at those reasons and you say, which of these reasons do I like best? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Which of these reasons can I stand behind? If this all goes wrong, which reasons am I willing for it all to go wrong for? And I knew for me in particular, I know this is different for different people who are in different environments but for me I would far rather regret doing something than regret not doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would far rather have failed by trying to set up a business that was going to help people. That was going to bring me a working life that I really liked that enabled me to be near my family and that was exciting and learning new things. If that was going to go wrong, I would far rather go wrong doing that than to go wrong by doing another 10 years in a career that I was increasingly not enjoying. You know, which would I regret more? I would hundred percent regret more having allowed another five, ten years to pass without making the decision to move on. So you get to look at those reasons. And it's like, which version of you do you like best? Which of these represents who you want to be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I knew that the version that chose to leave was the version of me that I liked best. It was the, you know, I would have stayed through some sort of risk aversion more than anything else. And I don't want to do that. And I have to say two and a bit years later, and again, I'm biased because it's all working really well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm getting good clients and it's all beautiful. Um, so I am maybe a bit biased, but I am so glad I made this decision. And I just decided if I'm deciding to do this, and I love the reasons, then I'm just going to have to make it work. You know, have a vague agreement with my husband when our mortgage is due. If I'm not making enough money by then, I'm going to have to do something else, but that's fine. And because I'm, you know, It's not, it's not going to happen because I'm going to make it work. So I decided these were the reasons I like best, and I decided that I would make it work. And that's what you get to do too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this is where I want to share with you the more recent decision that I've been making that... I'd already planned to do this episode, but then this just fitted. beautifully into it. And that is around my membership. So those of you listening will know that I have a membership program for PhD students where you get access to online group coaching, regular workshops, a Slack community where you can ask for advice, self paced courses, all sorts of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's amazing. And I truly believe that as it stands at the moment, it is also amazing value for money. It's £97 a month and you get all of that from it. When you compare it to any of the other membership programs on the market, across the general population, it's very affordable and great value, in my opinion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, I was also getting caught up in whether it was too expensive for PhD students. There's a difference between not believing something is good value. I, a hundred percent, you get a lot for that money. But that is not the same thing as can the key people that you want to help afford this product? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I had a couple of people who'd been super engaged members tell me that they weren't able to carry on with a membership because they couldn't afford it. The monthly payment, it was too much to commit to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then I had one or two people that were saying, you know, can I leave for a month because I don't think I'm going to use the sessions too much this month and then come back in a month and that kind of sort of slightly in and out. And at first I told myself, don't panic. You're getting lots of new members. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's fine. And I wasn't concerned that I couldn't recruit people at that price. I absolutely could. I already have one to one clients who are paying me more than that. And so I know some PhD students can afford this. So, I sort of checked in with myself and I was like, Are you just panicking that you're going to lose some people? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because it's normal. You're going to lose some people, you'll gain some people, it's fine. So, it's normal. And I realized that wasn't it. The reason I was feeling uncomfortable was because the students that were telling me that they couldn't carry on because it was too expensive were exactly the sort of students that I wanted to be helping and exactly the sort of students that I had already seen gain so much from the membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I started having this sort of, dilemma of should I drop my prices? And I could hear my brain chattering in both directions about this sort of reasons why I should, reasons why I shouldn't, and all of this. And I didn't spin very much but I started to spin a little bit on it. And I sort of took a deep breath and was like, right, let's practice what we preach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's think this all through. And I actually used my voice note technique. If you haven't looked at my episode about what to do when you've got a overwhelmed brain, swirling brain, can't remember what it's called. I'll link to it in the show notes. The one where I talk about using voice notes. I use that to talk through what I was thinking about this decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then from there, I started to sort of parse out what would be my reasons for reducing my price and what would be my reasons for retaining my price. And I realized my reasons for reducing my price were mostly things to do with being accessible to a wider range of students and I love that reason. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was talking it through with my sister and she said to me, if you could have. 50 students playing less or 25 students paying more, which would you want? And in my membership, that's a no brainer. I want 50 students paying less. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, I want to help as many people as I can in the membership. One to one's different, right, because I've only got so many hours in the day, so in one to one I'd rather have fewer students paying more. But in terms of the membership, I have capacity for more people in my sessions at the moment, and I'd rather help more people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so then I was like, well, hang on, then why isn't this an easy decision? Why haven't you just made this decision already? What would be your reasons to stay as you are? And one reason was, I already think it's good value. Okay. I quite like that reason. That's a reasonable reason. It's already good value. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I stand by that original decision. My second reason was immediately thinking about my existing clients. What am I going to do with the people that have paid these higher prices? Because I said like, if I drop the price, then they're gonna be like, hang on, how did they suddenly get it for that much when we paid And then the third reason was you guys. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third reason that I was thinking that I wouldn't do it was the thought of telling people that I was dropping my prices and you guys potentially thinking that that was because I couldn't get enough people or that I was failing, I was getting desperate, or any of these things. And those were my main reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so for me, it was a dead simple decision. Once I sort of pulled that out of my brain and that always takes a little bit of wiggling, you know, to figure out what you're thinking. Once I pulled that out of my brain, dead easy decision. I love the reasons to make this cheaper. And I do not love the reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I love the, it's good value already. That one I stand by. Other than that, the worrying about existing clients, that's fixable. I like it that I'm considerate of that, but it's fixable. I can talk to them, not a problem. And the idea that I was sort of a bit embarrassed to tell people I was going to do it, didn't like that reason. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's not who I am, how I want to be, how I want to do business. And so from there it became this, okay, I want to do this, so how, how do I transition? And that's the point you then need to make if you decide you're going to change your research project, leave what you're doing, set a different goal, whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You then get to think, okay, how do I transition from one to the other in a way that makes the most of all the benefits that you want? Plus any additional benefits that might come from it that you haven't thought of yet, and that mitigates the stuff you're worried about, i. e. your reasons to stay. And for me, what that looked like was making a decision about the price going forward, which I will tell you in a second, making a decision about the price going forward and the structure of the membership, I started with that and then deciding how I was going to mitigate the things that I was worried about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The value, I am happy if it is now even better value than it was. Happy days. That's fine. I'm down with that. If in terms of my existing clients, you will know who you are. You know what we've already agreed. I've made arrangements with them where they will get some special bonuses for the fact that they have paid more for this pro, this process than it is going to cost in future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I have sorted them all out. You do not need to worry. We're in the process of giving them all those special bonuses. And then in terms of telling people about this, I thought, well. You value transparency, you value openness, clarity. Why don't we not just tell them? Tell people the process that you went through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tell people why you made this decision. And I had actually already got scheduled in a How and When to Change Your Plans podcast episode that I hadn't written, but I knew I was going to do that topic. And it was like, you know what? This is a perfect example in real time of me deciding to change plans. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's what this episode is. It's me mitigating that final concern, the sort of public perception of this decision. I mean, as if you guys spend lots of time worrying about this stuff. I am self aware enough to know that's not true. But I thought, actually, this is a really nice opportunity to be able to talk through a real life case study. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, on to the details before we like wrap up. The details are, the one additional change I've made is that we are now going to operate in quarters. So you are only going to be able to join the membership four times this year. It's going to open at the end of January and it will open every three months after that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you want in for this first quarter, you need to join at the end of January. The reason for that is because behavior change takes time. I don't want people dipping in for a month, disappearing for a month, dipping in when they can, da da da. I want people to come in and have sustained support for 90 days, on a specific goal that you're trying to achieve at the moment in your PhD, and to get the support you need to actually see tangible changes in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that takes a minimum of three months. So, It's going to open at the end of January. We're going to have a three month quarter. There'll be like a startup call where we identify our goals, things like that. There's going to be an instruction to the membership for new members. There's going to be all the weekly. So there's three group coaching sessions a week. There's workshops every two weeks where you get more kind of tangible tools and things like that. You'll get access to all my online courses immediately. Previously, we had this kind of two tier system where monthly members got access to some of it. Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And people that paid for six months got more. Now, everyone pays by the quarter. Flat rate. Exactly the same. Everyone gets access to everything. So whether it's be your own best boss or what to do if you've got too much to do or have to make decisions and prioritize, all that good stuff is all just there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And part of what I will help you do is identify which bits you want to work on, which bits are priorities at the moment, so that you don't feel overwhelmed and that you can kind of systematically work on the things that are going to help you to achieve your goals. So it's three months, it's going to open at the end of January. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It previously cost 97 per month. Or, 475 for 6 months. Now, it is going to be 147 pounds, Great British Pounds, per quarter. 147. So it is virtually half price. Okay? If you're not in the UK, you'll need to translate that out into yours. It'll be a subscription, so once you've signed up, It will charge you again in three months time unless you choose to cancel. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's sort of encouraging people to be an ongoing part of this membership. It hopefully moves it, it's still money and I'm still aware there'll be still some PhD students who can't afford it, but it hopefully moves it into a more sustainable, ongoing choice for people to make. So that's my big news. If you're sitting there going, yeah, I still can't do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's cool. No worries. I gotcha. That's why this podcast will always remain free. And it's why there will still be one workshop per month. So a one hour coaching session where there's going to be this, this year, there's going to be a specific topic and some coaching that is completely free for anybody on my newsletter, anybody that signs up for it in advance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're somebody who's like, I am never able to pay for this, You get my podcast, you get my newsletter, you get one free seminar per month. Okay, if however, you want more sustained support, you want more contact with me, you want more interaction, you want a community around you, you want co working sessions, we're adding those as well a couple of times per month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want all of that stuff, you need to make sure you go to my website and click on the waiting list button. Putting yourself on the waiting list doesn't have any obligation, anything like that, but it does mean that once we're getting ready to open and once we're open, you will get all the information you need about exactly what you get in the membership and exactly how much it costs and what you will get out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For my existing members, this is going to be a change for you too. There's going to be more in it than there was previously because we're adding these coworking sessions. We're adding the introduction to the membership. We're adding this kind of quarterly approach where we'll have an opening session and a closing session where we really kind of set our goals over that quarter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So any of you who are in already are going to get even more than you were getting previously. And this for me is that kind of final example of how to change your plans. When you then change your plans, when you decide what it is you do want to do, I want you to make it a complete no brainer. That this is the best decision you've ever made. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am super excited. My membership is going to be twice as good and half the price and I can't wait to meet all of you who haven't yet made it to any of my live sessions and who would love to get the support that you need to succeed in your PhDs. So I am making this the right decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I really hope that if you are trying to change your plans at the moment, or you're considering changing your plans, that this episode has helped you do let me know if you're on my newsletter, just drop me a reply, let me know, what decisions you're making at the moment, how you might change your plans, see if I can help and, go get yourself on that waiting list. I hope I see all of you in the membership at the end of January. If you're not listening to this live, by the way, and it's not January, just have a look on my website. It will tell you exactly when the membership is due to open next. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can just jump on the waiting list and then as soon as it's open, come on in and let me give you all the support you need. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 06 Jan 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-18-how-and-when-to-change-your-plans-overcoming-resistance-embracing-flexibility-and-making-big-moves thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-17-overcoming-overwork-and-overwhelm-in-the-final-months-of-your-phd-a-special-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This week, for the first time in absolutely ages, we have a coaching session. So in this episode, I'm talking to a final year PhD student, Swagata, who is struggling with overwhelm and with kind of the relentlessness of having this large chunk of work to do before she hands in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We recorded this back in November and I'm scheduling it now for you to listen to over the new year period. This is going to be perfect if you ever feel like your work is endless, like you desperately need a plan but you don't have time to stop and do it, or if you find yourself being more self critical than you'd like. So, in short, all of us. Hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think. And if you ever want to be coached on a future episode, do get in touch. You can contact me through my website or by pressing the Ask Vikki a Question button on your podcast and we can get you booked in. It would be fun to chat.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: I actually need help at this moment is really to change this mindset, to keep pushing in the last few months. And there are like a lot of blocks and overthinking of what is preventing me to do that. So I want to focus mainly on, on that. And I understand there are external factors. There are, there are things that have happened, but really what would really help me in these last four or five months that I have to really have the motivation to keep going because it's also a tiring process, but, really to get out of this, almost the dread of going to the, to do the PhD because of all of these things and the, like the overwhelm. And I want to focus mainly on those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Perfect. So you use the word dread there. Tell me more about this dread.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, it's um, so when I started, it's four years ago, a little over four years because I extended a little bit. It's my own project. It was not, uh, like a project that I applied to, so I made up the proposal. I applied for the funding, so it was all hard in the beginning, but I did it because I really wanted to do a PhD on this topic. So I had to manage everything by myself because I wasn't part of a PhD team. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was my project that I brought to the supervisor. I applied for funding, of course, with the help of everyone. So I really started with a lot of enthusiasm and it was also validated, because of I got a good funding, so it meant that other people thought it was, the university thought it was worthwhile, and also throughout the PhD, it seemed like it was going quite well, because I was  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> doing well. I don't know what that meant to the PhD, but of course, like I was, whatever deadlines there were, whatever presentations, I was very, let's say, intuitive to what was needed in the presentation. And so in my head, I have the impression that it was going okay. But now that I'm trying to end it, there is a lot of pressure because it's kind of ending something that I made up and I was trying to prove. So ending, I had to end in this spectacular way because I brought it. No one else told me to do it. And like constantly working continuously for four years, I'm tired. I am also overwhelmed with, I think the scale and I think the scale of the PhD is something I'm realizing now that I have to finish because earlier I always had to make a presentation for a specific part, whether, so let's say a 20 minute presentation or like a progress meeting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you always have a little bit focus or so I can leave out other things and really prepare it. But now everything has to make sense. Everything that I did has to come in it. And I have to link it properly. So that the scale of the whole manuscript is, you know, like making me a lot overwhelmed and because I think of the way I was working, I'm also constantly tired. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So my brain, let's say it's not at the best where I really needed to be at this sharpest, because now I need to critically make these links and come up with these arguments and also make my own position more clear, which is something I'm really struggling with. So there is this constant dread of doing something that. is not good enough. So over the last, let's say one year of the PhD, I have been working, but there have been these difficult decisions I have to make, and I kind of have been procrastinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I leave them and then now I have to deal with all of them together because I have to make it. Okay. So that becomes very difficult for me. And now it's becoming like this dread to go back to the table to work because I feel like like these old habits that I want to procrastinate and do something easy, but I do have to do the hard things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I really then hate the feeling that I'm not enjoying the PhD or, so it's like this constant thing. I know that I'm dreading it, but then I'm like, Oh my God, but I did this. So in my head, there is another voice that's saying that, I enjoyed it. I used to enjoy it. I should enjoy it. This is like the final thing that's coming out of this four year thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there is this negative thing, which I'm also judging myself for dreading it. So it's like this continuous loop happening and which is, which I'm really, really struggling at this point.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I think there's going to be so many people listening to this who empathise with that completely, and especially this idea that we're kind of not showing up exactly how we want to, and then we're judging ourselves for that, and then we know we shouldn't be judging ourselves, so we judge ourselves for judging ourselves, and it all becomes this big, like, inception type situation, where it's just, yeah, just a lot of thoughts and a lot of drama, for sure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want to get clear on some of the facts. So one of the things that often happens, especially at this stage of a PhD, but to be honest, at any time in academia, is people can get very caught up in their own story. And you've got this big story around, there's a lot of it, it's big scale. It's got to connect. It's got to be spectacular. Um, you know, it's got to prove all of these things. There's a whole lot of stuff. And, you know, I'm not being disrespectful when I say story. Anything like that that's not just factually true is story. And what can be really useful is just to sort of separate that out a little bit before we start dealing with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So my first question for you is where exactly are you at? In the writeup process. So where are you at with data collection? Where are you at with analysis? Where are you at with your chapters?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: So at this point, I have kind of written a draft of all my chapters. So I'm so I'm doing a more qualitative research. So I don't have experiments, but then I do have field visits and stuff. So all of those things are done. So I just have to write everything and I have written like first drafts. I just have to write my conclusion chapter and but I, as of this week, I just need to revise them and I have received comments which are helpful, but they also need major revisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that would also mean that I would have to do a lot of these. Like the basic what you call experiments, not really experiments, but I have to rethink them how they fit. So I have to make a little bit changes in my basic analysis thing. So they need major revisions. But it's also at this point that I don't want to keep doing it again and again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's what this has been happening. I want to do a good draft and be done with it. Because this is also the time, uh, because I have been writing for a long time, but it was really like unfocused and I was really like more describing things, but not critically making links. And so now I really want to do one version and okay, that's it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's really interesting this notion of, not wanting to do things again and again. So, what is wrong with doing things again and again?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Because I feel like I'm okay with doing things again and again, and the way in our discipline, it is actually helpful to keep drawing and redrawing things. But what I mean by Doing it again and again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what I have an issue now is the way I have been doing it. I wasn't clear on what I wanted to say. And that's why whenever I was writing or doing something like in the chapter, I was getting lost in details. And then I find that I can't get back to the main thing I was saying and because I wasn't getting like clear in the beginning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's why I had to redo things again and again. And it wasn't in a very like in one direction. So I was like, Oh, this is interesting. Let me do this. And then you spend your time doing these different things and you have work, you have experiments in these things, but at the end there, you have to, of course, leave something out to make the bigger story. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So redoing in the sense I meant, like, I didn't, didn't know in my head or I didn't make the decision what to keep, what not to keep, so that means maybe I also redid a lot of things that over two, three times I went back to the first thing because I hadn't thought it through and I was constantly in this rush to get done and I'm half tired, but still pushing myself. So that was something I really need to be able to make decisions so that I am like, okay, this is so I'm clear with the things that I'm doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Because I think the reason I ask about this is people often talk about how they want to be more efficient. They want to not be kind of going down dead ends, going around in circles, and they want to feel that they're moving, like you say, in a linear way towards the conclusion. And I think it's really important for us to separate out a normal research process, from something that's driven by unhelpful levels of self doubt. Because I think there's some bits that you've picked out that are super, super useful. So recognizing that sometimes you maybe rushed because you wanted to get it done, or you kind of questioned your right to a certain point or whatever, you know, that whole imposter syndrome thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so you ended up second guessing things that you could have just stuck with. I think that is absolutely worthless, thinking about and thinking about how we can make sure you can, not necessarily avoid, but minimize that stuff. at the moment. But I want us to think about the normal research process and whether you think it's reasonable for the normal research process to go in this straight line. Because I think there are things you're beating yourself up for in the past.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That sound to me like entirely normal deviations that happen as you learn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, I think like I have kind of accepted that, that it's not a straight process. So I feel like the acceptance is also two levels for me. So overall, I have accepted that the research takes time and you know, like that it's also an iterative process. And every time I do it, I do it like there is something else that I figure out. So I do accept that thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I feel like when I'm doing it in the process, so when I'm planning it, I do understand it. I understand everything that I heard, I read to help the PhD, but I felt, feel when I'm in the middle of it, like really implementing it when I'm writing the chapter. This overwhelm takes over and somehow, even though I know that it has to go this way, and there is this overarching thought that I understand at the moment, like this day to day, it's really becomes overwhelming. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's where, even though I remember it, it becomes difficult to connect to it. And then I, and I think it's also this habit of just pushing myself. So this way of working that I have developed over the years, so at that moment, it becomes like, even though I know it, even though I remind myself, then it becomes this thing, come on, it shouldn't take so much time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Come on, let's, it's, so I look at the plan. Okay, it's, it's not so much. Come on, why are you overthinking it? Just do it. So it's, I feel like a disconnect between these two kind of acceptance where, over the long term, I can accept, I can even accept that I am taking time to extend it, and I know the reason, but when I'm actually working on it, it feels like a waste of time to slow down and connect back to these bigger reasons why I actually convince myself that I should slow down, make it more like a understanding plan of myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's something I'm still figuring out how to, how to do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And those of you watching on YouTube will see me smiling because this is just so, so common, so normal. Okay. And, and we can, we can do stuff about this. It's brilliant. I want you to notice that, you were talking about one of the things you wanted to avoid doing is rushing to conclusions without thinking it through fully. But what you're doing at the moment is telling yourself you have to go straight to the conclusion because you don't have time to go around all the wiggly roads. And so we have to try and be cautious of this bit where we're actually telling ourselves to do the thing that we're also beating ourselves up for having done in the past, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think the only thing that's happening here is totally, totally normal to cognitively understand that something's meant to be difficult, that something's meant to be iterative or whatever, and at the same time to not want to do it that way and to think you need to do it another way. That's completely, completely normal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the bit that people struggle with, the reason this kind of crashes in your head and feels like there's a problem is because we think that because we understand it cognitively, it shouldn't be uncomfortable. Yeah, and it's the same with any of these things, it's the same as if we get negative feedback from supervisors, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You just talked about having major revisions back from your supervisors and things. And we cognitively know they're trying to help us, this is going to make our thesis better, all of those things. But a lot of the time emotionally. It's like a little, you know, punch in the throat and it feels awful and we make it mean stuff and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we're like, but, you know, I know it is helping, but it doesn't feel like that. And I don't understand why my brain doesn't match up with my body. And it's because the bit we underestimate is this is also uncomfortable.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: To stay in this place where you're not quite sure and you don't know what decision to make and you're figuring it out and you're trying it this way and trying it that way. It's meant to be uncomfortable. Just because you understand that's part of the process doesn't mean that it shouldn't be uncomfortable. Now, I'm not saying that we should just tolerate loads of discomfort, because actually what we end up doing is we make this way more uncomfortable by telling ourselves it shouldn't be like this. And if we were cleverer, we'd just get straight to the thing. Or if we were more disciplined, we'd get this. Or if we'd been better before, we'd have already written this, or it would be in better shape already. We make it infinitely more uncomfortable by layering all this judgment on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yep.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It can just be that sort of uncomfortable you get when you're trying to do like a difficult puzzle, you know. No one does an easy crossword or an easy wordle or whatever, do they? You know, you do one where it's like, Oh, I can't quite work this out and it's a bit annoying. And then you figure it out. And that kind of uncomfortableness can be okay if you know it's part of it. I think a lot of what's happening here is you're judging yourself for just experiencing some of this uncomfortableness of not quite having decided what way round or how exactly to argue things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yes. I, I really, I understand. And I feel like it's also, I have always judged myself too harshly, but it's also like really exactly what you said, like, I feel like, Oh, I have put in like, okay, I have identified the issue. I have identified that. Oh, I have listened to podcast. I have done this. I have seeked help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So now it should be okay because I have put in the work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've done all the things. God damn it. It should be easy now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: So now I expect myself to be magically able to just sit down and write because I have done the work. And, uh, I have, I know that I shouldn't feel this way. I know that it's meant to be difficult because cognitively I have understood it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I feel like now magically, I should be able to go back to this version where I'm like in one month I'm done, and because also I'm overwhelmed and tired. So there's this constant, I have to put in work. And there's also like these thoughts that how long do I have to do it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, it's also because when, when I identified or accepted that I am where I am. There was also this hope that this process will make it easier. That's why I'm doing it, but I'm still doing it. And it feels like I still have to keep doing the difficult bits. So that's where, like, there are days where I feel like I see myself where I have come a long way from, let's say last year where I was completely drowning, but still to see that I have so much more to go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And maybe it won't be the version of the manuscript that I envisioned, or I have to make changes, and so I do understand that it's never gonna be, it's never like a I understood it. I'll go back to the way I was excited about it four years ago. I do cognitively, as you said, understand it, but realizing that I still have to keep working on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it just becomes like, even, let's say, taking a break because I'm overwhelmed and I, I, I talk to other people and even supervisors or let's say even colleagues and, and they're like, yeah, you have to take a break. And everyone I talk, you have to take a break on the weekend. So taking a break also becomes like a pressure. Because then my colleague, like, they meet me on the, uh, on let's next week and like, are you taking a break? And then I, I become like, oh my God, I didn't take a break. So it becomes like an extra pressure that, oh, now I have to take a break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when I take a break, I constantly am like spiraling into the things that I still have to do. So it becomes like this taking care of myself also becomes like another task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because you know, that's not a break, right? If you stop working, you're still thinking about your work and telling yourself you should be working and that that's just not a break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: So I have tried to take a break, where, which you mentioned wasn't a break and I didn't realize it. And now I have realized that. I can't just take a break just to take a break and chill. I have to plan something to do. So I try and plan something that I enjoy, which is outside, whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But then now I really make sure in the weekend, let's say I have one activity that I planned that I really want to do. So that also keeps me away from spiraling. And let's say if I want to take like a longer hike in the forest. So I really make sure I plan it on a Saturday. And that means of course I'm taking a break, but then I'm also doing something because just in the beginning when I was planning to take a break and just relax, it just didn't work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, it can so one of the things that you can do, and you get to take whatever breaks you think feel rejuvenating for you, because sometimes what we need is actual physical rest. Often what we need is kind of rejuvenation and recuperation, and sometimes that can look like things that are quite energetic or quite social, depending on what you're like and what things kind of replenish you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the key is, whatever you're doing, you need to decide what you're thinking during that time. Now, that obviously doesn't mean that you're gonna be able to just, like, uh, think exactly what I'm telling myself to think at all times, but you need to have your kind of go to thoughts that you kind of pre plan so that when your brain goes I shouldn't be in a forest. I should be working. I've got so much to do. How did I think I had time to do this hike? Or whatever. Or you're just sat on the sofa having time off saying, I shouldn't just be sat here. I should be working. I'm not even doing anything useful. You get to plan in advance how you respond to that voice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because it's completely normal to have this voice. You and everybody who'll be listening to this are super high achieving people. You've probably judged yourself through to lots of really nice high grades over the years and everything. These are very long standing habits. We're not going to stop your brain saying, Oh, you should probably should be writing your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's, you know, it's going to offer that. What we don't have to do is take it so seriously. And we don't have to just go, Oh, you're right. We should. Oh my goodness. We get to go, no, no, no, it's okay. I know you're worried about your PhD, but remember we planned this. Yeah. This is all part of the plan. Yeah. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we get to reassure ourselves that this is the plan. Now the only way you can do that is if you actually intentionally plan that rest. Now that doesn't mean it has to be an organized activity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You could intentionally plan that this evening at 5 o'clock you're going to stop work for the evening. And you're going to make yourself some lovely food, and then you're going to sit on the sofa and watch terrible television for two hours. And when I say terrible, I love terrible television. You know the kind of telly I mean, like, watch Selling Sunset or something for two hours, and not feel bad about it, and have an early night, and it's going to be gorgeous. It can be that, but you intentionally decide so that you're not sitting there going, once I've watched this episode, I'm going to go and do some work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh, well, maybe one more episode. I'll just do one more episode because I don't really feel like it yet. And I'm kind of tired. So maybe I won't do it now, but I will get up earlier than I planned. And you're not doing that. You're going, I love this rubbish television and I love this food. And this is so nice just sat here. And tomorrow I'm going to smash on with my PhD exactly as I planned, but I'm so glad I'm having this evening. It's completely different if you intentionally plan it ahead.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How does that feel to kind of, and we can think about what thoughts you might have to manage in order to be able to do that, but how does that feel to kind of intentionally look and go, okay, on that evening, on that weekend day, I'm gonna intentionally decide that I am definitely not working and I'm gonna tell myself, reassure myself that that's all part of the plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, that's really different than how I have been functioning. And that's what I said. It's, I do plan it, but then constantly in my head, I already know what I need to do after this thing. Or if even I'm having a dinner with friends, in my head, things are running. So it's, I think it's also like how I have like these habits that have formed where I'm always doing the thing that needs to be done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one after the other. So also throughout the last four years, even though it's also working on the PhD, but it's also like what presentation needs to be made, what the next meeting I need. So everything has been directed towards what needs to be done. And then it becomes this whole thing like, Oh, I have so much work, so I have to be efficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's also, if I'm watching something, I'm already planning. I felt like I'm quite good at planning, but apparently I wasn't because I was constantly thinking like, Oh yeah, I, this is the time I'm at my, my brain is good in the morning, I'll work on this. And at night, uh, maybe I will watch this thing and on the side, I will do this thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I was constantly trying to be more efficient and it becomes this habit where I'm If I'm watching something, I'm thinking that maybe I could also get done with something and now it becomes such a habit. And I understand it's, it's not the best because I'm constantly trying to like divide my attention and it becomes like this habit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it's also like, I think what, what you said, like, it's, it would be amazing to do this, like really figure out because I tried. Let's say, for instance, I, I'm saying, okay, today at five o'clock, I will see how far I get, I will stop. Then I will make something. But then of course the work spills over and then I find it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, no, no, no. Don't. Let's not. Just don't. Talk about the work as though it's some like, sentient being that just like, of course the work spills over. No, let's at least frame that in a way where you take, and I don't mean this in a blame way, this is just in a kind of self responsibility way. It's not the work spills over. I reach the time where I said I'd stop and I choose not to stop.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's what happens. The work doesn't spill over. You make a decision not to honour the time that you said you were going to stop and to keep working. Now that's fine. If you want to do that, that's absolutely fine. But let's own it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because the work doesn't just magically keep going.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: But it's also like immediately there is this kind of guilt that I planned for it. And I should have been done because when I planned it. And like, at that point, it's also the two minds, I know why it has, why I wasn't able to finish this part because something else came up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I had to do, like, this was the part I intended to do, but it opened up this whole other thing. So I cognitively, I do understand why I wasn't able to round up and I had to do other things. But there is, I chose to do other things, but there is this guilt that comes with it. And then also it links to next day's plan that I already have to do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I keep this, it will affect that plan. So I'm constantly like, my head is like this. I have so many timetables that I have to keep up with and somehow it's, it's also one of maybe a personality where I, I just hate being late to things. And, and it's gets into the work thing. And sometimes it's okay if I have a genuine reason, but I feel like it's, I will make myself crazy trying to just be on time, send the thing on time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's like this kind of personality thing, which really in these situations make it very hard. Because I know I decided that it's five o'clock, but it seems like, because it's on paper I can't extend it. So I have a kind of this. thing in my head that I, no matter what happens, I can't, it has to finish by today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this really spills over very badly in the work where I'm really putting too much pressure to really get it done and really in like these very unachievable ways. Just so that I'm on time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I don't think the issue then is actually the, that kind of pressure to get it done on time. I think you need to take a couple of steps back because I think the challenge here is more that you are allowing these tasks to expand. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, because if you think about it like, I don't know, putting water into a balloon, yeah, you're making water balloons for a fight. And, um, you've decided, I'm going to see where this analogy goes, who knows, um, you've just, you know, you've decided what size water balloons you're using, i. e. what unit of time you've got. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in theory, you put that much water in that much balloon, and you've got a water balloon, happy days, ready to throw it, whoever. And Yours keep bursting. You keep going over, you know, time and saying, Oh, I should have got a bigger balloon. I should have got a bigger balloon. You know, I need more time. But I think the problem is just that you're pouring all this water in, just way more water than fits. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, you're deciding I've got two hours to do this piece of work and partway through it, you're noticing a couple of other references that might be useful or whatever. So you're wandering off to read them and to check that out or to actually, if I'm changing this bit, I need to go back and change all those things too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you're doing that now in this time slot that was originally allocated for the initial task. And then you're wondering why it doesn't fit. But it doesn't fit because you're doing more than you said you were going to. Or to a standard that's greater than fits in the time. Or a level of thoroughness that, that then fits in the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There was, I might have mentioned this on a previous podcast, but I think it's a really, really useful one. There's a coach that I really like, um, called Karin Nordin. And she said that the amount of time you have to do a task is the parameter by which you decide how you're going to do it. Okay? Usually, we have a fixed scope of a project in our head, or a fixed quality of a scope, of a project in our head, and then we see how long it takes us to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where in reality, how well you do it, or what it looks like, is entirely dependent on how much time you give it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And if we want to have control over how long things take, we need to decide how long they take and then do it to the quality you can do it in that time. And sometimes that means doing it a bit rougher, but often it definitely means not going off on tangents. Making a little note of the tangent for another day perhaps, but not just going, Oh, and I'll just check that now. And then wondering why it doesn't fit at the end of the session.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, yeah, that does make sense because yeah, I do understand and I do realize, and that also causes some of the frustration when I'm making a plan that, oh, I don't know how much it will take, I will, and that's why all my future plans, I'll just put a rough number, because from the past plans, I have never, never been able to stick to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I have went on tangents and I think like, okay, this was what was important. I have to do it. But then it also means that I can't make a precise plan, which really frustrates me more that, Oh, now I can't even make a plan. So it's really becomes. Then I, I'm like, yeah, so at first I was at least not sticking to a plan. Now I can't even make a proper plan.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. So then it becomes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then we either don't plan or we plan in a really flippant, like, Oh, do this then this, then this, whatever. Cause I never stick to it anyway. Doesn't really matter.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. A hundred percent. So normal. What we want to try and do is we want to try and plan a plan that feels doable, like at the easy end of doable, like, yeah, you know, I can definitely do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we need to try and make as much of that happen as we can. Now, no one ever sticks to plans. Perfect. I mean, some robots do. I never stick to plans perfectly, but having them, in fact, the podcast, by the time this one comes out, it'll have been a little while ago, but the podcast that came out today was about imperfect planning, so do definitely check that one out, um, So, it's trying to remember in that moment when your brain goes, oh, I just need to To have a system where you can say, no, no, that that's a job for another hour. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'll put it over there. My job is this bit. And we do that bit to the best of our ability without the other thing we need to check. Yeah, and it might mean you need to put add, reference or a little, you know, a little note saying, make sure, this is actually true later or whatever. Another episode that might be useful if you haven't listened to it, is the one about why you shouldn't read when you're writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like during writing sessions. So you make a note for yourself of what you need to go check, rather than going off to read during a writing session, cause that's how we get off track.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, I feel like, yeah, it becomes all of these different things. It just comes at the point where I'm actually doing the work. And as I said, like, really makes me less enthusiastic about the work. And it's, I understand, like, if maybe I also have to go back to these one by one, because there is a lot of things happening, but then it becomes really overwhelming because constantly I'm thinking, yeah, but this is time I'm not spending on the PhD, but I know it will help me in working. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What sorts of things do you mean when you're saying I need to go and do those things, what sorts of things do you mean?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Like for instance, with the planning thing, I'm, um, because my head is like, there are a thousand different things coming. Like, let's say now, for example, after this, I try and plan tomorrow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I would make a plan. I would be like, okay, I have to do this. So I want to spend a little bit more time to really understand what I have to do. And because earlier that was also one of the issue where I was just make a quick plan because I don't want to waste time in planning, but I want to actually do the work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And now I would really try and understand how much work I have to do and really see, okay, then this means this is where I'll take a break and this. So it takes me longer to plan now, which I think is useful, but in my head constantly, I'm thinking, yeah, but I'm spending so much time in making the plan, it will not work out. So it's really like these silencing different thoughts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Only you know, with the planning, for some people planning can be procrastination. So sometimes people are like, you know, as long as, if I had a perfect plan, then all this would just work and people can spend too much time in planning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other people just avoid planning entirely and would actually benefit from some. So sort of, it does vary a little bit from person to person. What I would say, Always, if you're in the midst of overwhelm, that's not when to plan. So, if you're in a massive overwhelmed thing, I would just pick chunk of work that definitely needs doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, not silly, we're not talking references, we're not talking typos, like a chunk of work that you know needs rewriting or something, where you know roughly what needs to be said but you haven't done it yet. And just do one thing. Yeah. Yeah. When you're in the midst of, oh my God, I've got a thousand things, I've got our head's going like this. It's spinning. Just all these things. This one, I'm just doing this one. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And as long as is, as it is an important task, it doesn't even matter if it's the most important task, as long as it's not silly little organizational tasks. Yeah. Because that sense of just going, I've got a thousand things to do, but this one, this is the one I'm doing, allows you to start that one thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And every time your brain's going, but there's these other things, it's like, yeah, there are, but we're doing this one. We're doing this one. And you just pull yourself back. If you can get an hour or two hours into one thing that definitely needed to move forwards. It can just start helping with that kind of sense of calm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then once we've made a bit of progress on one thing, we're in a much better frame of mind to then be like, okay, I need to, I need to sort out time. So for example, after this, I wouldn't go plan after this. I would pick one thing. And make an hour or so's progress on it and then plan after that. Yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah. But that's exactly like I, my main planning is when I'm overwhelmed. That's always,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and then you make overwhelming, overwhelmed people make overwhelming plans.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: And then also the plans are quite unrealistic because I'm overwhelmed. So I already know the 10 different things  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and I'm trying to put all of them in, in a way that you know, doesn't fit, but if it looks like it does, it will be fine for now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. We just pick a thing. Cool. What I want you to think about through this time is I want you to imagine that you are an athlete going into a heavy season. Yeah? So, you are coming up to the Olympics, you're coming up to like the busiest part of the football season, whatever sport resonates with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, They have got lots to do. Yeah, they've got all these matches, these races, whatever, they've got the training in between, da da da. So they've got lots to do. And what that means is they've got people around them, often we have to now do this for ourselves because we're not elite athletes, but they've got people around them whose jobs are supporting them through that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah? And creating an environment around them that means they're ready to do that heavy period of training and performance, okay? So, if we sort of lift ourselves for a second into you being your own boss What sort of environment do you want to create around yourself if you were your employee? What kind of environment do you want to create around you that's going to make this heavy period easier for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: I think really creating like these periods where there are no distractions. Where I can really focus on writing and thinking critically, like really, I don't have to do anything and no emails, no other, nothing. And I really have a space, preferably in my home rather than in the office because other people can drop by. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really having these chunks of really focused work I can get done, which gives me the confidence that I'm making progress. But also at other points really have some kind of, I I don't know activity, something that gives me energy because I would, during these very focused, I would, I like my, I would be drained from really working hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, and preferably some activity, which is not related to the PhD. Which means that I'm not thinking about it. And I, when I come back, I get a fresh perspective on things, but then also some kind of activity, which is something I have let go over the years, because I was constantly, I used to do a lot of other things that I used to enjoy and I was good at, but because as the PhD progressed, it began to take up a lot of my time and I shifted countries. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that also meant, you know, a change of environment. And I wanted to fit in. So I have given up a lot of these activities, but I felt feel like in between having those activities would really give me the energy, distract myself from these hard things so that when I come back, I really look forward to coming back. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because now these extended period is happening. What I said that I don't look forward to it in the morning to come back to the PhD because I'm constantly draining myself and it becomes this whole, I'm working on something. It's not. getting over, I'm not able to do it. So there is, I'm constantly in the same, doing the same thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what would you want to say? So you've talked about having periods of no distraction in an environment where you won't get disturbed. You've talked about having energizing activities that are nothing to do with your PhD. What sorts of things would you be saying to your employee as they go into this type of a phase? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: You mean when I go to the phase when I'm working on the PhD?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Through this whole, so you've got this like four or five month heavy performance environment, yeah? So if it was an athlete, it's coming up to this really heavy training period. For you, it's this like thesis writing period. And I think thinking about it, in analogy can really help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So thinking about it as what would you say to an athlete? So they've got match after match after match, training session after training session after training session. It's going to be tiring. It's going to be hard work. it's going to be a lot of pressure. What would you say to them to help kind of as they go along? What sorts of things might you say?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Well, I think something which I'm reminding myself, also the motivation I have, I ask why you want to do it and also as things are getting difficult and I feel like, oh, for how long do I have to keep doing it? Something that one of my colleagues told me, and it's really, I'm thinking is they really said that this is, Maybe the last chance that you would have in your life to do something that you made up entirely, whether you are in an academic, later or you go to industry, it would probably be the first and last time where you decided to do something and you get the opportunity to go into the depth and make up stuff and do things the way you want and PhD is probably the one and only chance, which is actually helping me now, like since the last few days that I've started looking at it like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So where I'm rather than trying to finish it and pushing it to finish it, I'm thinking like, somehow, when you feel like something is going to end, it gives you like this, almost a kind of nostalgic thing that. Yeah, I'll miss this  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> for me, that is really helping.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. There's a technique called savoring, which is where you really consciously notice. It's almost like sort of gratitude in the moment where you kind, you know, if you were eating something amazing that, you know, you've only got one off or whatever, and you just like savor every bite of it, you can do that with anything. People often talk about it in the context of babies, you know, babies are such hard work, they're exhausting. Dang it. feel endless, all of these things. But one of the things that can help with that is really savoring those moments of cuddles and sniffing them and all that stuff and remembering that one day you'll miss this, even though it feels utterly relentless at the moment, one day you'll miss having, having that little baby in your arms. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think the same is true with your PhD, that you can savour these quiet moments. And you can't expect to feel like this all the time, don't get me wrong, there's still going to be bits where it's just hard, but taking moments every now and again to be like, what a privilege, what a privilege to be sat at this desk writing about stuff I made up, that I care about, that some experts are going to give me their opinion on, and I get to talk with them about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is amazing. And you created it, right? You taught yourself. That's the other thing you can remind yourself in all of this, is you are in a period now that you dreamt of when you were applying for your PhD and when you were getting it started. You've done your fieldwork. You're writing your thesis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is literally where you wanted to be. And just that kind of reminding yourself. That you're living past you's dream right now. This is, this is exactly what they wanted to be doing. And future you will look back on this with nostalgia. Be like, oh, that was so nice. I wish I could do that again. Yeah, and you can generate, you can like actively try and create those things to remind yourself of that stuff. And that makes it so much easier to be like, yeah, it's hard at the moment. Yeah. Look at this, look at what I'm doing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: And also I feel like you said it, like, it's supposed to be hard. Like at, at the moment that I'm doing it and there are moments where I'm trying to solve something like this, believe that. Yeah, but I'm a smart person. I should be able to do it, but I think like what would help, which I'm also struggling is really telling myself, as you said, it's supposed to be hard. You are making up new knowledge. It's supposed to take time and not getting caught up in the being efficient and planning and really trying to put it more in practice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think it's also, it starts with what you said, like, what would you say at that moment? And that is. What, what I'm struggling because at that moment, although I understand it at that moment, I don't say anything like that. So I would get overwhelmed, but really at that moment, saying to myself that, okay, it's, it's hard, but it's supposed to be hard and you have done hard things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. You've done hard things. You're gonna figure this out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: There are evidence of it. I don't, sometimes I don't believe that I can do it, but I have done harder things. I have moved countries, so this is something I can do it. And also if I can't do it, it's okay. It's just a small part of the other things. I will do other things. So I really need to remind myself at that moment to tell myself these things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: because when I sit back and think about it, I do remember it. But at that moment of. Overwhelmed. I just, it's, I, I'm just too hard on myself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And it's so common. And when we're saying it's meant to be hard, I just want to be really clear for you and for everybody else, when we say it means it's going to be hard, it means it's It's meant to be difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're meant to grapple with these things. You're meant to be unsure. It's not meant to be deeply unpleasant and beating ourselves up and being horrible and all of those things. It doesn't have to be any of those things. When we're saying it's meant to be hard, it's not you're meant to be dreading it, suck it up and get on with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like, no, it's meant to be challenging. One of the things I quite like online, you can often find, um, stuff that like past geniuses have written so people that have written like classic novels or philosophers of old or whatever, and they're talking about like wrestling with key ideas and that they you know they just can't figure this solution out and whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you can just imagine yourself like, being like one of them. You're like somebody who's trying to work out Fibonacci's sequence or whatever it is for the first time. Like, I can't make this work, I don't understand. And that sort of staying with it and being like, Urgh, this is so annoying, I can't decide whether to write in this direction or that direction, but I'm gonna work this out, is such a different vibe than, this is awful, I must be stupid, I'm never gonna do it. It's totally different than, Urgh, wrestling with it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, I think like, as you said, like separating it for me, at least now that you are talking like separating the two things that first it is a difficult thing, but then the dread for me is coming out of what I make out of it. The dread is coming out of, I'm not dreading the work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's why I was for the longest time very confused that why am I dreading to go back to the PhD that I love. I have made up. I am here because I decided, but the dread was more because I made it about me about I'm not good enough. I am never gonna finish it. My supervisors are going to hate me. Everyone that over the years thought I was good enough now would suddenly be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's also linked to the imposter syndrome, but. I do, I still want to work on the work. I still want to complete it because I think there is, it's amazing the way it has turned out. But I think separating the two things where the dread is coming from is not from the work itself. So even like subconsciously I know that even if I can't, um, let's say figure out this particular problem, okay, this is a hard thing. I want to do it. Worst case scenario, I won't solve this problem in this PhD. I'm okay with it. I have done other things. I will put my stress on, on other things that I have done well, and this is something maybe I'll have comments. I'll try to do it then. But I am okay with not being able to solve each and every problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the dread is not out of not being able to do it. The dread is out of what I make it about me. And I think separating that, like, as you are saying now, it's, I think it helps me and I think I should remind myself to, to do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because when you're trying to solve something, if you can't solve it, you can talk about ways that you might be able to solve it in the future as well, right? So if there's bits of your thesis that you're like, I just don't even know how to do this bit, you can talk about those in limitations, you can also talk about them in future directions, right? You can say, I don't think my data actually enables us to solve this problem. But you can speculate about what might in the future and if you haven't made it mean something about you, that you're finding this difficult, it's so much easier to then be kind of curious and be like, Oh, I don't think we can solve this from the data that I've, I don't think this is something that, this isn't me. This is a, I think this is actually outside the scope of my thesis. In which case we either don't talk about it or we talk about the fact that we haven't got the right stuff and that actually maybe we need access to that field site or we need access to these people or that type of data or whatever it is, um, but that kind of curious openness comes when we know it doesn't mean anything about us that we're finding this difficult, that this is just a difficult thing and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yes. I feel like, yeah, there are certain things. It's also, I feel the way I have been working. So it's also out of habit. I do a lot of things and now that I'm kind of dissecting it and I'm understanding, I do understand. And I do also understand that why I find I'm finding it difficult has a lot to do with these very unnecessary thing, which is actually not helping me. So if I am saying I want to do a good PhD and I want to do it within this time, all of these other things are basically just wasting my time, because I'm just getting caught up in it and eventually I am not going in the direction that I wanted to go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's also reminding myself that. Maybe it's okay. Maybe if I won't be able to solve these things, maybe the PhD won't be as good. So it's all of these other things which are kind of wasting my time basically, but I'm not able to like get away with it. And it's kind of this circle. And if I can just think alternatively, yeah, those things are there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then let's, let's focus on this, which is actually helping me in the direction. That I actually want to go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because some of those things are unknowable at the moment, right? How long it's going to take you to finish, whether you're going to solve all the things that you want to solve. They're not knowable right now. And a lot of the pain I think is coming from wanting to know that you can definitely do those things. If we take it back to the sports analogy, right? If you think about you as a footballer, for example, you've got a whole load of matches this season. And if you're going, I don't know if I'm going to win the league. I just don't know if I'm going to win the league, but what if I don't win the league? Then if you're in that mode all the time, it makes it incredibly hard to do your training. And if, when you're turning up to play Arsenal, you're thinking, but next week I need to play Chelsea. And the week after that, I'm playing Manchester United. And I mean, I don't even know what I'm going to do there. Duh, duh, duh. Then you're not thinking about your Arsenal game. Right. Um, and I think we do that with our PhDs. We're like, Oh yeah, but I don't, I'm going to have that bit. And then there'll be this bit and there's that bit and it's relentless. It's like, but we're not doing it all at once. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. We're just doing this bit now. And that's where the planning intentionally can be really useful because then when your brain goes, but we've got to do this bit, and it's like, yeah, That's December me's problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: November me's problem's this section.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah. This is the only bit. Yeah. I've got four months of this. That's fine. I'm gonna look after myself, but right now it's just this bit. And today it's just this little bit. It's not even this whole section. My job for today, write three paragraphs on this, read that article to find out this. I can do that. And then your brain goes, yeah, yeah, but if you don't get that done, we'll worry about everything. It's like, it's okay. We're just going to get this bit done. Okay. Don't need to worry about the rest of it right now. And that's where often when people start to have coaching, start to think about this stuff, they think that stuff will happen automatically, that, you know, you'll come to a coaching session, you'll realize, Oh, it's my thoughts, right? Okay. I just won't have those thoughts anymore. You will, you're going to have all of these thoughts and that's completely normal too, but you just get better at noticing them going, yeah, yeah, I know. It's okay. You're freaking out about that. It's fine. We don't need to think about that. We don't need to know if we're going to do this on time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we need to know is what today's task is, and we do today's task. Yeah. Just keep doing that and we're going to be fine. Yeah. You're worried about all that, but we're going to be fine. And we generate that kind of very pragmatic, very kind self talk, where it's like, we know this bit, so we do this bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The rest is for another, another day's me, and we'll get there too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah, I think that's the hardest, hardest for me. Like also this lack of control over. Just letting it, even though I leave it, I have to plan it, you know, even if I'm like, okay, today I'm not going to do this, but I need in my head, I need to know when I'm going to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Otherwise it will go away. So this lack of control when it's over this extended period of time where I, there is this, I'm not able to control the end when or how, and that constantly plays in the mind and it, it, kind of hinders the day to day, my ability to do day to day things properly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you lose control now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's the bit I want you to remember and to remind your brain, is every time your brain is going, but I need to know when we're going to do that chapter, because otherwise I'm not in control. You need to remind your brain, by trying to be in control of the whole four months, I'm not in control of the next hour. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As long as I'm in control of the next hour, And yeah, there'll be times when we step back and we do that planning and we have to have faith in that bit. This is why I quite often talk about separating boss you from implementer you. And only spending some time in boss mode because Boss mode is the version of you that needs to have an approximate plan of, I'm going to focus on this stuff in month one, this stuff in month two, just very notional kind of rough plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Implementer you just needs to do what she's damn told on the day she's told to do it. And she doesn't need to, it's almost like, not your job, not your pay grade implementer. Boss is going to think about that. Boss will think about that next Monday when we're planning again. Right now, your only job. Is write bullet points on this page and do the edits that my supervisor said on those two pages or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you have to actively talk back to yourself. Hey, I know, I know you're worried about that. We're going to look at that when we're planning. Right now, this is our job. We're in control of, if that notion of control resonates with you, then use it. We're in control of what we're doing now. And what we're doing now is this task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yeah. Okay. I think like constantly reminding myself, as you said, because at some point it also felt like, I won't say failure, but also like, why do I have to keep reminding myself, like, I'm also judging myself  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: because we're human beings and we all are going to have to manage this actively forever. Um, and that's fine. Cause we get better at it, right? And we make it less of a big deal if we don't, you know, I have my little meltdowns about things, a hundred percent, but they're less intense than they used to be. They happen less often than they used to be and they don't last as long. And I know how, they just don't feel as dramatic because You know how to get yourself out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, it's like, if you have, you've been, there are people who've got like chronic health conditions and stuff. And so, you know, you get a really bad headache, headache or something, but you know, you have migraines. And so it's like, okay, this is not my favorite thing in the world, but I know how to look after myself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know what it is. Whereas somebody who has that for the first time might be like. Oh my God, there's something terrible happening here. This is awful. I was like, no, it's fine. This is just what happens. We can get like that with our own, like, overwhelm and stuff. I am much more now like, yeah, I'm overwhelmed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know I'm overwhelmed. I know what happens when I'm overwhelmed. I know what goes wrong. I can't make this go away, but I do know what things help. And so I kind of recognize it much less dramatically. And. I'm not perfect. I spend some time wallowing in it, but I'm much quicker and more skilled at going like, okay, yeah, you're all overwhelmed because you've been telling yourself this, this, and this is fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're just going to do this next thing. We'll do this thing. It's fine. And kind of, you get to learn to look after yourself. And that's why with, you know, with all the work that I do, anything, having things like the membership and the regular community coaching and stuff that you can come to. to keep reinforcing this stuff becomes so helpful because it isn't the sort of thing that you can just have a one off workshop and suddenly you've changed the way you think and if you think that's going to happen then you start beating yourself up about that, right, you're like i know these thoughts are stupid and i'm still having them this is so silly It's human. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. It's just human. It's completely, completely normal. Okay? Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much. I really hope that was useful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Swagata: Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was also nice to actually talk certain things because many times I know these things but talking it out, you really focus on specific things. So it was, it was very helpful for me. Thank you. Thank you very much.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 30 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-17-overcoming-overwork-and-overwhelm-in-the-final-months-of-your-phd-a-special-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-16-why-im-banning-highlighters <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Cage podcast. Now, I'm gonna preface this episode with a bit of a disclaimer. And that disclaimer is, I love stationery as much as any of you. You leave me unattended in some fancy stationery store or art supply shop or anything like that, and I'm going to make bad financial choices. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have cupboards full of stationery and craft supplies, beautiful things that are either going to make me organized or are going to be beautiful and I'm going to use them and I love them. I love stationery. However, however, massive however, I am also your academic coach here. I am also here to make sure that you're not wasting your work time doing things that aren't helping you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's why this is a pretty short episode. It's nearly Christmas when I record this. Nobody wants to be listening to me whitter about work for 45 minutes. It's going to be pretty short, but I'm here to deliver some bad news. I am hereby banning highlighters. No more highlighters. All of you who are reading and highlighting key passages and telling yourself that you're working. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm banning them. I'm not usually very dictatorial. People who come to my membership, who come to my coaching sessions, know that I do a kind of non directive form of coaching where we figure out what you're thinking and what you're choosing you want to do. Here, no. I'm just banning them. Ban highlighters. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can use them to decorate around the edges if you want to, but that doesn't count as work. Okay, I'll give you that much. Beyond that, banned. I'm going to give you four reasons why I'm banning highlighters and then you can let me know whether you agree or not, whether you are going to abide by my new ruling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So. First reason is that it is way too easy to highlight way too much of the text. There's something very satisfying about going zzzz, zzzz, across and highlighting things. It's going all in a pretty colour and the pen feels nice and everything. And before you know it, you've highlighted four paragraphs without really fully processing why they're important to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Okay, there's no barrier to how much you highlight. Whereas if you're taking actual notes, and I'm going to say at the end what I think you should be doing in those actual notes. Whereas if you're taking actual notes, it takes a bit of cognitive effort. It takes a bit of physical effort, especially if you're handwriting it, which I would recommend a lot of the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it means you kind of have to be selective, because you can't just write about every single bit of it if you're actually writing it out, or at least there's a kind of time and effort penalty to choosing to do that. When you just highlight, you can highlight way too much, and doesn't force you to be selective, and that is a problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we want you to be doing here is prioritizing. We want you to be thinking. We want you to be choosing which elements are most important, not just willy nilly turning all of it purple without really thinking about it. So that's the first reason, it's too easy to highlight too much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The second reason is that when you're highlighting it, you're not processing it in any way. You are merely putting a coloured strip over the top of it. What we want to do with reading is we don't want to just take it in and go, Oh, that's useful. We want to read it. We want to check our understanding. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We want to kind of know what it means, summarise it. But we also, really importantly, want to connect it with other things that we already know. Other things that we've read. Other things that we're planning to do, for example. Okay? And highlighting doesn't do any of that stuff. In fact, maybe this is just a me confession. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can tell me whether you do this as well or not. But when I highlight, sometimes I start reading a paragraph and I think oh, this is going to be useful and I highlight the whole paragraph and I don't necessarily read the last few sentences because it's like oh, this whole paragraph is useful and you're almost kind of marking it in some way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not helpful. Much, much more helpful to be writing those notes and actually processing it through your brain, connecting it to the other things that you know, and kind of registering it cognitively, rather than almost just marking it for future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third reason is that when you see highlighting in the future, you have no idea why you highlighted it. Okay, it's orange. Maybe some of you have a fancy colour coding system which perhaps works to some extent, you know, blue for methodological and green for whatever else. But most of the time, you don't really know why you highlighted that thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this notion, ooh, I'll be able to find it later. It's just completely misguided. You'll be able to find it, you'll be able to see that it was highlighted, but you won't know why. You know, it's like when you find a random phone number on a piece of paper and you're like, I have no idea who that is or whatever, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just because it's highlighted, it doesn't tell you what you were thinking when you read it. It doesn't tell you why it was important, which bit of your work it was important for, whether it's still important. It doesn't tell you any of those things, just tells you it's green. Green's not helping.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's the third reason. And then the fourth reason is that when you re read that article at some point in the future, you may and probably should be reading it for a different reason. The first time you read something, maybe it's just to get a feel for what the article's about. Maybe it's to get an understanding of the background of the area you're looking at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But maybe the next time you read it, What you really need to do is really understand their methods, because you're going to use methods that are similar to this, and you need to really pick apart exactly what they did, and what controls they used, or what, you know, what ethical considerations there were, or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you've got an article that's got loads of orange highlighting all over it, That was from when you were reading it to understand what they found and what the kind of background is. But now you're reading it for methods. Those orange bits aren't relevant anymore. You need to be in a different section and those orange bits, they're going to draw your attention. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's the point of highlighters. And now, they're just a distraction. They're pulling your eye over there when you're reading it for a different function. And, most importantly, even if you're reading it for the same function, you're reading it to fully understand their argument, for example. You are now not the same. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Stuff that was important to you when you first read it is not what's important to you now because you know more, you understand more. So those bits that you highlighted because they helped you understand the basics are not going to help you understand the nuances that you're now trying to pull out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Highlights become a distraction as soon as you have moved on from the point at which you initially highlighted them. Highlighters are not useful research tools. So what do we do instead? You write. You write stuff. And you don't just summarize what they're saying. That should be a tiny bit of your notes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They did this, they found that, they argued this. That should be a little tiny bit of your notes. I want you to write about what thoughts are you having. What thoughts do you have when you read this? What are you confused about? What doesn't make sense to you? What has it reminded you of? What gaps have you spotted? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where does this connect to something? Where could this influence future work? Where do you wish you'd read this before? You're writing those sorts of things. Almost like a little diary of reading it. Those are the notes that are useful. You're processing it cognitively. You're connecting it together. And when you come back to those notes, you will be able to see what you were thinking then. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so it will be much easier to then interpret it and then to see how different it is from what you're thinking now. That's what we should be doing. It's more effort. Definitely. But it is so much more productive. You won't end the day feeling like, well, I've read a load of stuff. I've highlighted a load of stuff, but I don't feel like I've got anywhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Cause that's the worst feeling. There is nothing wrong with hard work. All of us came into our PhDs, academia, knowing that we were going to do hard work. The problem with hard work is when you work hard and you can't see an outcome from it. You can't see what good it's and that is what highlighting will do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am getting very strict. So take your highlighters, do something beautiful with them. That's fine. Create art in your spare time that uses the highlighters that you are no longer using for your research. Let's leave highlighters in 2024 and move on to much more effective ways of reading and note taking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm being slightly flippant in all of this. If you like highlighters, figure out a system, but that system needs to have recognition of the fact that you need to process it. It needs to have recognition of the fact that when you come back to it, you want it to make some sense and that you will be a different person coming back for a different purpose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you can figure out a way to do that with highlighters, Happy days, you go, you do you, but I would suggest ditching them entirely. The one form of highlighting I do allow, and for those of you who are on YouTube, you'll see me holding them up, are these little, tiny, transparent Stickers. So for those of you on the podcast, there may be five centimetres long, something like that, half a centimetre wide, slightly translucent, and mine are blue, yellow, pink and green. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These I use not when I'm reading articles, but I do use them to pick out key items in a list. If I've got a list of five things I want to do today, I might put one of these over the top of the one I'm doing right now. And the joy of that, it picks something out specifically, but when it's done, I can take it off and move it somewhere else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, not as part of the research process as such, but for highlighting specific things, I highly recommend these little stickers. You can find them from all good stationers and the big bad capitalist delivery place that I'm sure most people actually get them from. Thank you so much for listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are listening in real time, I really hope you have a wonderful Christmas and any other festivals that you celebrate. Make sure you have planned some time off, check out my how to rest over the holidays podcast, which was really, really early on in season one, like episode eight or nine in season one, make sure you check it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Make sure you have decided intentionally when you are working, when you are not working and that you love your reasons for those choices. There are going to be podcasts all the way through the Christmas period. That is not because I'm working. That is because I have planned ahead and got them booked. We have got various guest episodes. We have got a coaching session coming up and then some very important announcements at the beginning of January. So as they pop up, do not fear, I am not working. They are entirely automated at my end. I will be enjoying time with my family and my friends and my good old dog Marley. And I hope you have a wonderful time too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you in a scheduled podcast next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 23 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-16-why-im-banning-highlighters thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-15-creating-positive-academic-environments-insights-from-sports-psychology-with-dr-andrew-dewar <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewdewarphd/?originalSubdomain=uk" target="_blank"> Dr Andrew Dewar (LinkedIn)  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.oxygenconservation.com/" target="_blank"> Oxygen Conservation </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.oxygenconservation.com/podcast/e72-andrew-dewar/" target="_blank"> Andrew’s podcast episode – From Hire to High Performance </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.radicalcandor.com/" target="_blank"> Radical Candor by Cal Newport </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/1455509124" target="_blank"> So good they can’t ignore you by Cal Newport </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-1/" target="_blank"> Stephen Covey’s Circle of Influence </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And we have another guest with us this week. And I'm always excited to have guests, as you know, but this one is particularly fun because we go way back. We came through the same PhD program, although not at the same time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm much older, but, it meant that we've been through the same department and things like that. And I even supervised my guest's wife, which is very exciting. So my guest is Dr. Andrew Dewar from Oxygen Conservation. So welcome, Andrew. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Thanks, Vikki. It's one of the first times I've been described as particularly fun, so this is going to be interesting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Don't do yourself down. Amazing. Right. So, now, the reason I found you and the reason that we kind of got back in touch to do this was obviously I saw you on a podcast that you did for your organization where you were talking about creating positive environments for your employees. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it was one of these things I just randomly, I think it was on LinkedIn, I just kind of randomly came across, and decided to have a listen, because I knew you, and it sounded interesting. And so much of it, I thought was applicable to academia. And that was why, as you know, why I decided to get in touch and ask you to come and talk with us today. And for people listening, maybe you can tell them a little bit first about your background and how you got to doing what you're doing now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, of course. Well, thank you for listening to the podcast. It's always good to hear that people enjoyed it. My kind of root or career history has been quite a jumble really. So you mentioned that we met at the University of Birmingham where I was doing my PhD and I back then thought like that was me, I was going to be an academic and I did a year as a research associate, a year as a teaching associate and then I went for a job and didn't get it and that made me think, do I love academia? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do I love it enough to move away from family or to live in a different city from my then girlfriend now wife? And I thought, do you know what I don't. I felt relieved when I published a paper, but it didn't really spark like joy and loads of pride. And so I started looking for other jobs and there was this one job that said something about qualitative and quantitative data analysis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was like, Oh, I can do that. And we turned up at an interview and they saw something in me and I worked for a social integration charity and I was leading a team of basically sales people trying to offer this National Citizen Service program to young people. And it was really awesome. The people were great, but it was that first step out of academia was just great to see how, gosh, you can take these skills, transfer them into another situation and really do some awesome stuff. And that just led me to sort of move into different places. You know, I think I'm quite an ambitious person, so I'm always looking to learn and improve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that took me to the public sector to do a few different bits and bobs, including business improvement, which I was really fascinated in. That then took me into an engineering consultancy firm to work on megaprojects, to do business improvement, and then cultural work with big programs, which was fascinating. And then that took me into being the Head of People at Oxygen Conservation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. I had no idea you worked for NCS. I volunteered with NCS one summer.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Oh, very cool.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We have listeners from all over the world, but so National Citizen Service probably sounds a little more military than it actually is. But National Citizen Service is a charity that takes young people and gives them experiences during their summers, doesn't it? That they wouldn't otherwise get. Amazing organization. Um, tell us a little bit about what Oxygen Conservation do just to put us in the picture. Because I think it's always interesting for people to know, you're a sports scientist like me, how far and broad you can go with quite a specific background.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if you think of the starting point was basically sports science and for me, you know, sports psychology. What I now do is support an organization who's looking to scale conservation. And by that, what we mean is, acquiring large sections of rural land and then doing environmental restoration. And that's so wide and fascinating as a concept, but it's things like woodland creation, peat restoration, river restoration, there's some regenerative agriculture in there, there's properties on these big rural estates so people live there long term. We offer some cottages to people or opportunities to come and stay in the more short term so people get to experience the rural environment, and anything else that you would imagine is associated with these rural places and sort of bringing them back to what they were in the past and what they maybe should be in the future, but doing it in a way that's really right for the environment. So it's all focused on having a positive environmental and a social impact. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So the reason we got you here was to talk about this kind of positive environment. So what do you mean when you talk about creating a positive environment for the people that work in this organization? What does that look like for you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, so at its best, it's that people wake up and they think about starting their work day and they're excited to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They believe they can do something really great. They think they're part of something that's bigger than themselves, but they also have that opportunity to improve and deliver really interesting work that they love. As well as working with colleagues that challenge them, that have a laugh with them, that they really enjoy being around. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and we're all moving in the same direction to achieve the same vision and ultimately help, you know, in our case, it's the fact that climate and biodiversity crisis.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what, this might sound really obvious because all those things sound great, they sound exactly what you'd want from a job, but what benefits do you see when you do create that sort of environment? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: I think, yeah, it sounds really obvious, but I think it's really tricky. But the, the benefits that we see are like that spark of creativity between people, you know, when you've got colleagues that you really love working with. I think there's lots of support between people. And I think that ultimately you can achieve really amazing things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think more than you could achieve if it wasn't such a positive culture. Um, but there is a big part of performance and maybe we'll get onto that because there's a big positive and like, this feels great. This is a genuinely amazing feeling thing to do, but there's also a performance element around delivery and impact. So you get that, that positive piece as well as enjoying the journey that you're on with people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So let's think about how it applies to academia. So obviously, you know, it's been a while since you were in academia, but you did postdoc roles and things after your PhD, as you said. So what do you think academia could learn from all of this stuff?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: I think, so it's really interesting because people ask me like what can you apply from sports psychology into other settings and I think there's actually very little that I found over my probably last decade doing that that you can't take from sports psychology and apply into business and I think it's a similar concept with business and into academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think I would start with the relationship between a supervisor and a student, be that a PhD student or maybe it's a postdoctoral researcher. I think that in business that relationship with managers is so important. Like have you seen all of the research and all of these concepts basically that you join a company because of the vision and the brand and the work that you're going to do, but you ultimately leave a bad boss and your line manager has such an impact on the experience that you have day to day because they can be the most amazing, support and source of motivation and inspiration and, you know, they've got a plan for the future and you want to do that with them. Or they can be uncommunicative, they can put their own interests in front of your own and all sorts of other negative behaviours. So I think the heart of that for me starts with the relationship and I think it also starts with... there's a great concept from Radical Candor, the book by Kim Scott, which is about this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a high care for the person and there's a high care for performance. And I think once you've got that relationship at the centre of that, you can then start to, you know, show that you care for that person and also that you want to drive performance. And I think that in academia it is a performance environment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it's a really demanding and tough environment. And I think by putting those two things together, then hopefully would help how you will feel the day to day experience. It would alleviate stress, it would, you know, more positive emotions, more excitement, and ultimately probably leading to better work performance in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And for listeners, we've mentioned a couple of things. We've mentioned the podcast that Andrew was in before, we've mentioned Radical Candor, the book, I'll link these in the show notes, so you'll be able to find all those things afterwards.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: And just on Radical Candor, I say this to every line manager, If you've got folks working in universities and you've got students or you've got people reporting to you, you might shy away from like in a more popular literature, you might be more comfortable with journals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you read one book of such, make a Radical Candor. It is basically like line management, you know, the root essence of it, the real stuff that you ought to get right in one book. And it is my go to recommendation for people who start that, or if you've been doing it 10 years and you realize actually nobody's ever trained me to do this, to be a line manager. Read Radical Candor. It's got stuff about individuals, it's got stuff about the wider organization, and some of it's corporate America, which may or may not apply to individual situations where people work in academia. But the vast majority of it's so helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's so good to hear because often, you know, there's, there's quite a lot of these books that people talk about and stuff. And coming from the sort of background that we come from and that the listeners come from, you always query how evidence based is this? Is it grounded in something? Is it just waffle that some dude made up. So, yeah, that's a reminder for me, because Radical Candor has lived in my Audible library for quite a long time and hasn't got listened to yet. So I'm going to bump that to the top of my list now. That's amazing. So some of my listeners are academics, so we're going to start there. What are a couple of things that they could do to be that sort of boss that you're talking about?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: I think co creating a vision with the people that you're working with, I think that's such an important part of leadership. Over the years I've been sort of exploring this and thinking about it and the way that I like to break it down is like, an organization defines why you're doing something. Essentially by wanting to be part of that, you join up to that. But the leaders in the organization essentially decide what you're going to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, what are the objectives and what does the future look like? And then other people who are working with you deliver the how, and you give them that autonomy over the how. So in that, what's the why of the organization? Why does it exist and what are we ultimately trying to do? And what's your piece in that why? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you have a compelling vision for the future? I mean, there's like so many things like In academia, the forefront of knowledge, delivering something incredible, like that's an awesome vision, but I wonder how often, again, this maybe you can guide me here is how often are people coming back to that and reminding themselves of, actually, this is the kind of big questions that we're answering and this is the work that we're doing and moving the world forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I don't think they do enough. So I have this, I have a course called how to be your own best boss, and it's all about self management and I talk one section of it is talking about 10 different qualities that you need to be a good boss and keeping that big vision, that sort of why is one of the things that we talk about and then I think you're right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think in terms of how academics support their students, but also how students manage themselves, it's something we don't do enough. I think we get bogged down in the day to day, I need to read this and analyze that and da da da. And we almost start to take for granted, I think, the thing we're doing, of course, that's what I'm studying, it feels mundane to you in many ways. I see lots of students query whether their research is ever actually going to be useful anyway, you know, because you feel like it's such a small piece of the jigsaw and all of those things, that I think reminding yourself that you are still part of a jigsaw, even if it feels like your bit is small and your bit isn't progressing as fast as you'd like it to , I think is super helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, it's really funny because I do a lot of recruitment, screening a lot of CVs and somebody came across, they had a PhD and I don't know why, but I was like, well, I'll look at like the impact factor of their journals to see, you know, was this a kind of a big deal? And they had a number and I was like, well, I've got nothing to bench that against, that's their number. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I looked at my number, it was significantly lower. I was like, okay, so this person's, their research is well read. That's fantastic. That's really good to know. But like that's the only time I've ever thought about what my research did. However, almost every coaching engagement I have with somebody, I can take the central concept of my research, which is about, which was about defining success as improvement and mastering your craft, as opposed to how you perform relative to other people. And that, that the former definition of success has a positive impact on your emotions and how you think you're performing. I can use that with everyone because you can always get better by improving and I always see people comparing themselves to others.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so. In an academic world, like, I didn't think it was particularly groundbreaking myself, but over the last decade, like so many times I've been like, oh yeah, and like I was a part of that. So that's the other thing to think about is like that perspective over the longer term.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, 100%. Just a shout out on impact factors, though. Remember, impact factors are massively disciplinarily influenced. So, sports psychology impact factors are always low, even for incredibly eminent academics, because sports psychology is a relatively small field, whereas I was publishing in biology journals or something like that, they automatically have much higher, so don't use it as a marker, maybe as the size of the kind of reach, but not as the quality of the work, just a little shout out for everybody listening.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, so one thing I think is different about academia compared to other organizations, and I'd love to hear what you think about this, is you're talking about kind of organizations having an overarching mission, as it were. And universities do, for sure. But I always think that academia is almost like a whole bunch of self employed people who have been forced to work in an organisation. Because they've all usually got their own little visions for success, their own areas that they want to work in, and some people's research will fall very clearly within the university's priorities, and it'll get lots of attention and promotions and all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other people will find that they're studying something that's, you know, maybe not fashionable or not big at the moment. And then you've got that dynamic between the supervisor and the student as well, where the supervisor kind of wants to set the direction of the PhD, but they also want the student to take real ownership and make decisions and it to be their independent piece of work. So how does all this stuff work, do you think, or have you got any tips for where it's a much less kind of single vision hierarchical setup, as you might see in a company, where we're almost all individuals who are in this big messy place.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, really interesting. question and really interesting thing to think about. Let's start with the supervisor and the student and let's come back to the wider piece. But with that, I think that's, for me, that's my language about what and how. And so from the supervisor perspective, I think it's their role to sell the vision, to, you know, to explain the impact, to explain the future, what it would like to get the person excited about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Particularly if they have a strong vision. I think the other thing that's really good for supervisors is around expectations and clarifying while you're building a really strong relationship, what do you expect and how's that going to work? And part of that is going to be, well, what's the expectation on the student to set the direction, or where are they getting their choice in decision making? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that was something that my supervisor did a great job of, was giving me choice about certain things. Like she recognized the importance of autonomy and, you know, she would hold the line and like really clear about, no, we really ought to do it this way. And these are the reasons, but there was a lot of choice involved. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So where is the supervisor? Are you saying, I think this is the direction for us to go. And when are you giving that person the choice about the route that you take, you know, if it's an analogy of an actual journey and if you're not giving any choice, like how are you sparking their motivation? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you understand motivation? You know, you really ought to because you're going to be working with this person for at least three years and they need to be motivated in that time. And yes, they have an individual role to play, but I think choice about what they do, is really, really useful for how they do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That would be the other place. So you might decide that, you know, our project is going to be on this topic. You might give them choice about the methods that they go about or some of the individual decision making pieces because that then creates that sense of ownership.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other more complex thing is what happens when you're part of a research group and when that project is part of a larger piece, then how do you then communicate what everybody's doing, because if you're making that relationship as a payer, if actually that supervisor is supervising five people, how do those pieces fit together and how do you ensure collaboration? I think that's where you've got to get more of a team emphasis. So does everybody understand everybody else's role? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does everybody understand what they're trying to achieve and how those pieces link together while balancing the competition between people and trying as much as you can to avoid that and make it an environment where people are celebrating other people's success and lifting them up without feeling a sense of jealousy because people have the ability to deliver good work themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think that, the kind of individual or kind of smaller group level, I think those things would help. When it gets to the wider university level that becomes a lot more complicated, I think.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And I think even within PhDs, because you and I have a similar, you know, background in terms that we're in slightly different disciplines, but similar background in terms of what we're used to. When I work with my clients across different disciplines, it varies so hugely. So I have everything from clients whose supervisors have got a grant. These are the projects. This is what you need to do. And there is, you know, a little bit of wiggle room in terms of exactly how you analyze it or exactly how you write up the data or whatever. But mostly, here you go, funded position, off you go, all the way through. So I have a lot of clients who usually in the arts and humanities, social sciences, that sort of end of the world, who they're self funding, they've come up with a project, they've proposed it to an academic, and the academic has gone, yeah, I can probably supervise that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah. All right. You tell me what you want to do. I'll put in some effort from time to time and everything in between, right? And I think thinking through what that kind of vision for the future looks like and how you create that environment where you both feel like you're moving in the same direction and you're supporting each other and you've got the kind of, I don't know if it's the right amount of autonomy, but like a good amount of autonomy. I think across that continuum is such an interesting challenge.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: I think so. And I think the advice that I would give would be probably completely different either end of that spectrum.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: So on the end of the spectrum when it's set, you're right, you've got a lot less autonomy, but that's not the only driver of intrinsic motivation, which is really what I'm talking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The kind of competence or mastery is another key piece. And then I guess relatedness would be my third key concept. So relatedness, we think we've covered with the relationship we talked about. Can we give them choices? Can you encourage them to be on the path of mastery? So if you've got a very set idea of what it looks like, then I would be reinforcing this idea that the person is gaining skills, learning, improving, moving forward, because you want to be building that as a source of confidence. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you're meeting them once a week or once a fortnight, which if you're not doing at the very least, Do it. Pull your socks up, because it gives you that opportunity to build confidence, you know, know what they're doing and even just say, Oh, that's good. Well done. You know, thank you for doing that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's tiny little nudges that help somebody build up that through positive feedback. I think that's so useful. And then on the other side, when you've got no structure, very little structure, I think that is on the student to be engaging and selling the vision to the academic and saying, okay, we need to be bought into this because this is what you're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it starts as a relationship of the supervisor helping the student. You need to get them drawn in and it become at least a partnership. If not, then realizing that you're helping them as well so that they can invest the right amount of time and support that you need to be flourishing. And I think also like having the open conversation when you feel comfortable to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I would think probably within the first three months of What level of support do you think you need at what stages? What do you do when you have disagreements? You know, those kind of conversations to really understand how you're going to work together and how do you know when it's going to go well and what happens when something doesn't go well, because you're going to work together for quite a long time. You're not always going to agree, but to be able to talk it out is just so helpful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now I know an awful lot of my listeners are PhD students who are on the kind of receiving end, as it were, of a lot of the things we've talked about, and you've started to touch on it there, but if people are listening and they're thinking, I don't think the environment is exactly how you say it is, what can they do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What can they do from their side, assuming they can't change their supervisors, what can they do to change their experience of it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: So I'm going to give you one concept which I'm going to just going to put my cards on the table. I've never looked into the research behind it so you can like contact me via LinkedIn and fact check me and tell me I'm wrong, I would love that, that would just be the best. But I take people towards this concept of circle of influence, have you come across that before?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, Stephen Covey, yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: There we go, yeah, which, you know, um, Cal Newport is doing a pretty good job of unpicking all of Stephen Covey's work, but that's, but the concept is good, which is that at the centre, if you imagine a diagram at the centre, you've got the things that you can control, your thoughts, your actions, your effort, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's another slightly bigger circle outside that where it's things that you can influence. You know, other people's perceptions of you, some things that have, you know, um, things that can happen in your life. And then you've got things you can't control, such as the weather or, you know, big geopolitical events. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For the people listening, this is coming out probably January time, something like that. We're recording this on the day of the U. S. presidential election results, so Geopolitical events are out of our control, especially as people who aren't American and can't vote.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Exactly. Very much right outside of that. Um, bring it back and focus on what you can control. This is an old sports psychology trick because you are going to feel... like it's anxiety in sports settings, isn't it? If you're a part of a team, you don't know if you're going to win the league, and actually your level of ability to control that is pretty limited unless you're a star player who can somehow win the game, all the games by yourself, but I was never that person, I was very much a small cog. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what you can do is focus on your piece, so am I putting in the effort, am I focused, am I doing the right things? So I think that's the first thing for people. The second thing I would say is just some really simple interventions. Like, okay, are you starting your day with a clear picture of like, one thing that you want to get done today? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or at the very least, even if it's a couple of things, it's not like 20 things that you're never going to get done. If you were honest with yourself and looked at, And then are you ending your day by looking back at the things that you have done? Like, how simple is that to do? I think if everybody paused at the moment and said, Are you actually doing it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, the vast majority would be like, No, no, what I like to do is set a massive to do list that I think I can get done, but I know deep down I never will. And then at the end of the day I take all of the things I haven't done and I put them into tomorrow on top of another massive list of things to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I don't look at any of the good things that I've done, because why would I do that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: While beating myself up about the fact that I didn't finish this unreasonable list.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Exactly. It's not, to make you feel better, if you're doing that, you're not alone. People do it in business. I'm coaching a lot of people with the same thing. So I'm really trying to flip that dynamic of saying, actually, What's the most important thing to do and do that once you've done that big tick well done Recognizing you did that and then you get to a few more things great and then at the end of the day actually looking back and thinking I did some good stuff today. Like it's not gonna be perfect It's not gonna have changed the world in a day But every day that you look back and think Yeah, I did some good things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's building the confidence when, you know, great things happen and not so great things happen. So that's another thing. And then the other one is, I just mentioned Cal Newport in passing, and he's jumped back into my head. He's doing some really interesting things. Started with a book, Deep Work. Now, Cal Newport is an academic. He's a computer scientist. So he probably is pretty well researched, but he writes books on productivity. He's also got a podcast. Something around his work would be really helpful. He talks about lots of ways of planning time, so multi scale planning, how to be productive, and he is a professor in an American university, so he knows the demands during term time, he knows the demands out of term time when it comes to writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if people, like, this is something that I don't think people tell you is, you can be more productive, you can stop berating yourself for not achieving things, and you can learn ways of doing more. And actually, when you learn those tools and techniques, your life becomes a lot better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. There's another book that he wrote, and I'm looking over there because it's my books, but I don't think  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: There's Slow Productivity, that's his recent one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There was one earlier than that that was, So Good They Can't Ignore You, I think it was called? Yeah. Was that called? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: He also wrote books on like, how to be a grade A student. That's how he got started. Yes. He came up doing his degree.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That one I haven't read. The So Good They Can't Ignore You, I love. It's all about, I'm 90, I will double check and make sure it's in the show notes. I'm 90 percent sure it was Cal Newport. If it wasn't, it's a good book anyway. It was all about, rather than necessarily following, like, your passion, you know, when people don't know what they want to do. It's like, oh, follow your passion. I was like, what's that? Um, his argument is get really, really good at something. And I think, I mean, you're a really good example of that, right? You went and you did your sports psychology PhD. You got really good at understanding what motivates people to do things and what motivates them in a healthy, sustainable way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And now you're off, you know, you might have thought that your passion was applying that to sport originally, I assume, as you came to the sports science department, but now you're off applying that in so many different settings across your career. Um, that's a really good one. I love those really tangible tips for what people can do. And I want to, I mentioned the course that I run, Be Your Own Best Boss, which is like an online self paced thing that people can work their way through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one other thing, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. One of the things I love to, recommend to my clients and that that whole course is about is the notion of if you think about what you would want from your very perfect boss, how they would treat you, how they would organize your time, how they would keep you motivated, how they would help you feel engaged, all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You kind of invent that boss. And usually when you ask somebody to do that, they don't come up with a boss who's yelling at them and berating them and reminding them of all their failures and those things, but they equally don't come up with a boss who's like, Oh, it doesn't matter. You can do it tomorrow. It's fine. It's no big deal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They can usually come up with, it varies a bit with different people, but something in the middle where that person kind of believes in you is ambitious for you, but is also compassionate and understanding that everything's not perfect, like you say. And what I try and encourage people to do is channel that boss for themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because often we have some control over who our bosses are. You know, we can move, we can change supervisors and things. But especially if you've started a PhD, you're often wedged into a relationship for a few years. You can't necessarily control, maybe influence, you can't necessarily control what they do, but what you can control, what is very firmly in that circle of control, is how you treat yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think that giving yourself clear guidance of what's an appropriate amount of work for today, recognizing when you've done it, all of those things, for me comes into that being a really good boss to yourself so that you can succeed and you speak to yourself in a way that you would want a boss to speak to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, I think that's a really useful concept. I think that, you know, would you speak to your friend the way you speak to yourself? Sometimes it's a good prompt. And I think, I think you're right. I think that what would be those expectations because you're ultimately trying to do something and achieve something really big and being held to that is really important sometimes, but also being like knowing it's okay to make mistakes or it's okay to get things wrong is absolutely critical as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's the other thing about, I guess, cultures that's important is you can have a really high expectation of performance, but you can't drive a perfectionistic culture, because you think you should, like, and we see things. If you watch Simone Biles at the Olympics or some, like, other elite performer, you think they're perfect. But if they're, if you are trying to constantly be perfect, it actually moves you further away from being any good. So like recognizing that you can make mistakes and giving yourself a break. And then the other thing is what you spoke there for me, Vikki, was it's sometimes difficult to know how much to work because that's quite an endless, you know, challenge and there's always things that you can do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes I find it better to think about, well, how much time do you need to recover? And almost this sports psychologist coming at me again, like if you just played a game of tennis or you just on a big weights workout? You've just done whatever your sport of choice is. How much time do you give yourself to recover until you do it again? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what are the things that you do when you're recovering? So do you sleep and eat? And maybe sit and watch Netflix? Or sit and do a puzzle, like whatever that thing is? Well, what's your recovery at the end of your work day? Yeah. You know, what do you, what do you do? What brings you, what fills your tank and gives you energy? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I, I went through a period of burnout at the end of 2023, was it? Yeah, 2023. And I really had to do a lot of thought about like, is this what I want to be doing with my life? Is this giving me that positive environment and sustaining me and giving me energy at work? And it was like, no, this is pre Oxygen Conservation, just to make that very clear. But then I had to get really good at, well, what am I doing? What, what gives me energy? And what are the things I do that I think I do for fun, but actually take an energy in a weird way, in that either mental, emotional, or physical sense. So that'd be another thing for people to think about is like, how are you recovering? And like, If you can't stand reading at the end of the day because you've spent your entire day reading and writing, don't do it. Just like put on Netflix or go for a walk or whatever it is.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I love that. That is such a good way of framing it. And now I feel like this discussion is going on forever, but I wanna share with you one other thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I took part in like an online retreat thing for solo business owners that was run by Karin Nordin, who is a coach that we've talking about before we came on recording. Wonderful coach, people listening, follow her on Instagram. She's amazing. I love her. She has a PhD in behavior change as well and in this teamless retreat, one of the things she said is that the time that we allocate to tasks is the parameter that determines how we do them. And I loved that because so often people ask me, I don't know if I can get this done in the time. I don't know how long this is going to take. All of these sort of slightly vague questions that imply there's an amount of time, that is the right amount of time, to get this task done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And her argument was that you decide in advance how much time you have to give this task, and on the basis of that, you decide how you do it. So if you only have a short amount of time to give it, it's going to be limited scope, so it's going to be focused on something quite small, it's going to be quite short, it's going to be a bit rougher than perhaps you would intend, it's going to not have as beautiful slides or whatever it might be, you decide what bits you prioritise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But by deciding how long you have to do it, you then decide exactly what end product you're expecting to get during that time. And it works so much better than having a kind of endless, I'll see how long this thing takes, and then realizing that you can't get it done. I love that. I thought that was so useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, that's a brilliant concept. I think I've used something similar in my working life, which is when somebody asks something of you, I generally want to say yes, because I want to perform and you want to be, you know, seen as being doing good work. But the trick is be like, if you want that tomorrow, I can get you this, maybe an outline. If you give me to the end of the week, I can give you like a full PowerPoint presentation with beautiful photos and the whole thing's done. Which would you prefer? Oh, I'll take it at the end of next week. Thank you. And like, so that's much better. So it's that piece of it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Establish the time and then when you've got the time, then you can work as, you can work really hard in that time and get it to the level of quality you get it to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there's also an element of realism in that, isn't there? Because, you know, you ain't writing a paper in a day, like a fully formed, completely high quality paper, unless you're amazing at it. I mean, I certainly wasn't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, well, um, yeah, absolutely. But that's when you then decide, if I've only got a day to give myself, then I'm not writing a paper. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Exactly. And that's where you might get an outline or you might get a paragraph.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Thinking of it like that, the realism then forces you to actually make a decision because that's what I think all of us do. And I do think this connects with the kind of positive environment because it's a problem when supervisors don't make decisions either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think what lots of us do is we sort of vaguely look at our tasks, vaguely think they don't all fit, tell ourselves they kind of have to all fit, And so just start work. And we avoid the uncomfortableness of having to decide that something definitely doesn't fit, and we're going to have to either tell someone it doesn't fit, or we're going to have to deal with our emotions about the fact that we'd love to do it but we're not going to be able to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so yeah, it's absolutely not about just going, oh I've got four hours I can write a lit review, happy days, let's go. It's, if I literally only have four hours, I can't do a lit review. I could do a blog post about this and talk about one or two articles. I could, you know, happy days. Let's do that. You know, it can be a little bit research informed, a little bit informal, go up on the internet, happy days, but I can't do a lit review because I've only got four hours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yeah, I think it sort of encourages you to make decisions that can feel uncomfortable, but it will need to be made at some point when you realize that you can't do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: And it's, it's such an important life skill, the ability to make those decisions. Because ultimately what we're talking about is most often not the things at the really top of your to do list, the most important things, it's the things at the bottom. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what are the multiple things at the bottom that I can either stop doing or delay in order to allow me to do the really important things. Learning that skill early in a career is brilliant because it sets you up for success in the future. But a question for, for you and the students out there, if you've got a supervisor who's setting a task and the timeline doesn't be realistic, Do you think that they know, the supervisor, knows how long it will take you, the student, to do that work? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, do you think they've gone through the cognitive processing of, Okay, this needs to be done, but, you know, my student will probably take, hmm, eight hours to do that. So what I'll ask them to do is do it in four. Like, I just don't, I don't think people know.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I don't think they do. And this is, this goes back to the whole thing about universities being a performance environment. One of the problems I see is that because universities are so pressured, um, time pressured, money pressured, all of those things at the moment, um, supervisors are often, and I say this with love and respect having been one, um, because it was definitely true for me, supervisors are not showing up as their best selves all the time because they're under pressure for 47 other things other than your projects. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so sometimes we simply don't have either the time or the cognitive capacity to go through and go actually, I don't think they can write a lit review because they've also got that teaching they've also got this da da da and that's where I'd say to students One way to push back on things like that is to say, can we just take a minute to go through what the steps involved in doing what you're asking me to do is just so that we can clarify, how long it's likely to actually take and whether it is that much of a priority. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember doing this and I won't name anyone. I think they were around your time. I'll tell you when we stopped recording. I was second supervising with a member of staff who was quite enthusiastic, shall we say, on what he wanted done and had lots of ideas and things. And he'd be like, yeah, yeah, just run that analysis again doing this. And he was doing like lab work stuff. Um, and I remember sitting there as a second supervisor with relatively terrified looking students and I'd be like, </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> that's probably four days full time work. Do you care about it four days worth? Oh, no, no, definitely not. Don't, ignore that. Forget I said it. And I think sometimes it was easy for me. I was the same level as this person. It was easy for me to say that. It's harder if you're the student in that situation. But being able to go let's break that down and work out what the steps involved are because partly supervisors, when it comes to the practical side of things, it's a long time since most of them have done it. Whether that's accessing archives, whether it's collecting data in the laboratory, running biochemical tests, whatever. It's a long time since they've done it themselves and often they forget how fiddly and how long these things take and when things go wrong and all that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  But also I think they forget that, you know, you and I could knock up an introduction to a paper, if it was on a topic we'd written about before, we could knock up an introduction to a paper relatively straightforwardly. It'd take a bit of thought, but it wouldn't be that big a deal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because even if we weren't up to date with the literature, we'd know roughly what people we needed to be looking for, we'd know what keywords to search for, we'd be able to understand them quickly and put them in context when we read them. And I think the other part of it is the supervisors often forget that what they could do in that period of time is not necessarily how long it will take somebody who's got less context, less skills, less experience, less confidence often. You know, when you're experienced, it's easy to say, you know, Oh yeah, I think that covers pretty much. The key points. I think we're good to go. Let's go. And so I think remembering that when they're setting goals is really, really important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, I totally agree. I think them not knowing the time associated. I think also if you could approach that with the genuine, as the student with a genuine curious mindset and you can go to somebody and say, they asked you to do something and you can say, right, well actually I've probably got about, let's say 12 hours this week because I've got these other things on my to do list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think what I should do is prioritize X and Y and drop this. What do you think? That's such a good discussion because it shows, you know you're on top of your time, it shows you know what you're supposed to be doing. And it also then you offer some element of prioritization. And then the supervisor can then be like, Oh, why are you doing that? And you're like, I would hope it's in a very gentle way. Talk to me about this. Why is that important? And then you can realign on priorities because if you haven't done this, like you will be drifting. You won't know about it, but you might be drifting on what's important. So taking things and maybe presenting them in that kind of way, I think really allows for a positive discussion, you kind of lead the supervisor to what you're seeking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That is brilliant advice because I think so often students think that the way to impress their supervisors is by being able to do everything and being able to be on top of it and not worrying and not being anxious and all of those things. And I think it's a huge sign, like you say, of confidence and maturity and all those things to be able to go, okay, I have this many hours this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does this fit? Is there anything I should be doing? And there are times, you know, I've had people in the past when I was supervising them that would have that sort of conversation and they'd say, you know, and I spend eight hours, I don't know, updating my reference manager or something and I'll be like, Oh, okay. Let's have a conversation about that because if that's what's filling up your time, we can, there's ways I can help you. There's ways we can make this more streamlined for it. And we definitely don't want to be spending that much time on that. Or you go, Oh yeah, if you're spending eight hours doing this really important thing, whatever it is, then I understand why it might take a month to get this piece of writing done because you've only got this much time to give to it. That, that makes sense. I hadn't thought about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah. I will have a say. My supervisor gave me one of the best pieces of feedback that I think I've ever got, which was probably in second year. She sat me down and she was like, do you want to finish on time? And I was like, yeah, of course. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like I have no money, like there's no option. So she was like, you need to work more. And I went back and I said to Jo, my then girlfriend, now wife, I was like, how could she say that? I'm working nine to five. I'm doing all this kind of stuff. I had a bit of a rage. And I was like. Oh, she's, she's right. This takes more and it did towards the end. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if I was doing it again, the more sustainable version would be to work on productivity to really like really prioritize and to put in a lot of work and recover really well over the time. But there are times you just have to put in the work, like you have to do that a little bit more. But again, those skills that you've learned about recovering and prioritizing are going to help in that regard because that's what's going to get you through that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, we're saying this, and yes it has to be realistic, but don't be concerned if your supervisor pushes back and says there's a time to push. Before a conference, for example, and you haven't written your presentation, that's a time to push. You might have to do a bit more.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I think even within that, I agree completely. And it's something I coach a lot of write up students. And it's something we talk about that yet you're not necessarily aiming for a work pattern that is sustainable year in, year out, you're looking for a work pattern that's sustainable for the period of time you've got left. Um, and one of the things we talk about then is, okay, if you're going to work more hours, A, how are you making sure that those hours are useful? So the productivity piece that you're talking about, but B, how are you going to speak to and look after yourself during that? So if we go back to your sports analogies that you've talked about before, if it's a period of heavy competition, then those athletes, yeah, they're training really hard. They're competing really hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're very physically, you know, Busy, for want of a better phrase. But their team are going to wrap around them, things that help quicker recovery, support, you know, psychological support, all of those sorts of things, so that if you are putting in tons of hours, let's at least sort of cushion that around with sleep and very easy to grab healthy food. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So like not just having pizza, but equally not deciding that you're going to start some new regime where you're cooking from scratch and blah, blah, blah. Easy stuff that you can grab. Um, what things can you drop from your life for a little while? Take the pressure off you and say, you know what? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's just not space for those right now. I'll come back to it. Um, and how can you, you know, going back to your thing about how you start and finish each day, how after those long days, can you be congratulating yourself about how hard you're working and how I'm not sure how proud you are of how much you're doing and how you, you know, you're really pushing on rather than ending your days going, oh my god, I'm working so hard and I still don't think I'm going to get there. I still don't know this is possible. I'm not. It's probably not good enough. They're probably going to tell me I'm rubbish and all these other things. Because I think often we add a whole load of baggage on top of the hard work. that just make it really, really unpleasant.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so recognising the positives is really key in that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that I did as well, I played a lot of music growing up and music really changes my moods and I can use it to manipulate how I feel. So I had certain albums that I would put on at the start of a day to get me into writing. And I knew that , literally to get you in that right mindset. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's another sports psychology trick. It's almost a pre performance routine. It might not be music for everybody, it could be me like brewing a cup of tea and just taking a mindful moment to enjoy that or having a lovely coffee or whatever. But something that gets you into that mindset and then just getting moving can be really useful too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Love that. So, for me, one thing that's been really useful in this is, obviously there's all the advice that people can use to create their own positive environments and to create positive environments for other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I think there's a bigger piece here about using research to optimise environments and performance. in universities or, or any other organizations. And I think we're often quite bad at doing that. We sort of talk about research led in terms of the teaching that we do and perhaps our impact on the outside world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I don't see lots of evidence of universities using research, like you're talking about sports psychology research, to guide how we actually work. And I just wonder what views you've got about that, whether we should be doing that more, and if you've got any ideas why people don't at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: I think, I think there certainly should be. I think if you move outside of academia, There's some more barriers to getting that research, like, you know, paywalls and such, but not massively, so there's more and more that's freely available, and there's loads of other things online. But I think universities and other big organisations are difficult to change, you know, notoriously so, and if you think about big change projects in terms of reorganizing, like 20 percent of them are really ultimately successful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, what we can be looking to do is like, what are the incremental improvements that we can make? And so that starts with understanding really what you're trying to achieve, I would think, and then trying to look at ways of doing that more effectively, most likely through making small incremental steps that people are going to be more likely to be comfortable with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think that's the other thing is that I guess humans are ultimately pretty self serving in an extent. Like we can be, there's amazing capacity to do things for other people, but if you want to get somebody to change the way that they're working, you have to make it better for them. So I think that's something I, I honestly don't know how you do it at the big, Institutional level because partly because it's a big organization to change, but partly because I don't understand like what is most important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What are you optimizing for as a university? Is it student experience? Is it academic record? Is it something else? Is it profit and loss? Like, what is the driver? And it's probably all of them. And how do you make and square that circle of it? How do you do the research and the student experience incredibly well, and then drive the positive outcomes that you want? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, that's essentially what we're trying to do at Oxygen Conservation, which is why we're leading with quality environmental improvements done in the right way to deliver social impact. We think by doing those things really well, we will generate profit as a result down the line. Whereas if we flip that situation and say actually we want profit and we want to be an environmental company, you wouldn't do it right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'd end up sacrificing your quality and your decisions, and then ultimately you wouldn't make any money anyway. So I guess that, from a very naive perspective from the universities is, what are you trying to optimise for and how can you do it in a way That gives you positive outcomes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I love that. And the reason, if people who are watching this on YouTube will have seen that I was smirking while you were saying that. That wasn't me smirking at your naivety. Because I think what you've put your finger on is the absolute essence of the problem. And it's not that you don't know that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's that the vast majority of universities haven't decided that. The vast majority of universities still think that they can be sector leading in research, sector leading in teaching, sector leading in student experience, da da da. And those things do and should relate to each other. Um, but any change project is usually run by Pro Vice Chancellor for research, for research, Pro Vice Chancellor education, for the teaching ones or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so they're very siloed within one of the aims of the university. And often they don't take into account, not in any meaningful way anyway, the kind of trade offs between well actually if we're putting all this effort into performing well in the research measures, how are we gonna relieve pressure a little bit on what we're doing on the teaching side or the student side or vice versa, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And some universities do it better than others but I think that is one of the massive things is that when you refuse to make a decision, going back to the things we talked about at an individual level, when organizations refuse to make decisions or don't see the need to make decisions about if we prioritize this, that means something else steps back, then you end up in that position that we've all found ourselves, where you're trying to do everything and everything has to be great. And that's just a recipe for burnout, as you say.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Well, absolutely. Because, you know, academics by nature, just have like, far too much to do. And across, are they still working with those three main elements of research, teaching and administration? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Uh, yes, but then people have then thrown in, obviously there's much more on impact and influence now. So that knowledge transfer, that side of things is a much bigger thing now. So certainly in the UK where we have the research excellence framework, something like 10 percent of the score is to do with, with your impact. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's all that side of things. There's a much bigger, understandable, I agree with it on principle, emphasis on outreach and trying to inspire people to come to university who wouldn't otherwise necessarily consider themselves a university person and all that stuff, so schools outreach and all that good work, and then obviously all the kind of, there's the administration of the doing of the jobs but also the kind of broader leadership and strategic leadership, and um, Yeah, there is a huge issue with universities and academics, feeling like they should be able to excel at all of those, all the time as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Whereas, if you take it into an organisation, let's say you take it into a random business doing whatever, what you'd be talking about is a senior person in a business, a manager, a head of, maybe a director, depending on if we're talking about lecturer, senior lecturer, professor, reader, whatever. And what we're saying is we want you to do all these things is really important for the business. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't really have anyone to support you or to delegate to you. Like, yeah, you've got some people supporting you with research, but who's supporting on teaching and on outreach and all these other things. And let's be honest, like the admin probably isn't very fun. So you don't want to do it. I mean, have you ever been taught how to do outreach? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's all sorts of challenges there, but I guess that's an opportunity for the students is to offer to support in those elements, because if that's your career path and you want to be doing that in the future, that's what we do in organization. We pair them up with somebody and say, right, well, you supervisor teach the person how to do it and then they'll take some work off your plate and then they can not do some stuff that they didn't think that they, like at the bottom of their to do list and everybody gets freed up a little as a result. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah for sure and that opens up whole other conversations about how then the academics have to make time to support the students so that it becomes a learning experience and not just a dumping experience and all of those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: We should do a part two where we have an actual academic and we can put these ideas in and they can tell us that it's terrible and it'll never work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: They'll tell us why it will not work. But I think my take home from that is not so much, it could be a really depressing take home that higher education is fundamentally broken, which I do think to some extent it is. But. What I think is really important for our listeners to take from that is that means if you can't do it all, if you are finding that you're having to do some things to the best of your ability, some things a bit shoddily and other things you just forget entirely, it's not about you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is not a personal failing. That is an inevitable consequence of the way academia runs at the moment. And yes, we can try and change academia, but as you say, that's a really slow moving ship, but what you can change is how you manage yourself within that. Stopping expecting yourself to have to do all these things, even if the university is telling you that you have to do all these things, in reality, no one is doing everything brilliantly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so what we can do is sort of, try to make some decisions for ourselves about at the moment, I'm putting my foot down on this thing and trying to push that forward. These things, I'm just going to take over and maintain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So a colleague, ex colleague of both of ours, Jennifer Cumming, who's a professor still in Sports Science at Birmingham. She had a brilliant rotation of how often she would update her courses, for example. So some people would never update their modules. Other people think they have to update every lecture every year. And she would have a brilliant, she had kind of brilliant structured rotation of which ones she would redevelop in which years. So that it all got refreshed at an appropriate rate, but she didn't try and do everything every time. And that freed her up just enough that she had a bit more capacity for her research work or for other commitments, which is just, you know, it's those sorts of things is thinking, okay, what's on maintenance mode? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What's on really pushing forwards on this mode so that you accept that you can't be a hundred percent on everything all the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: But you just, you just can't. And if you try and live at that absolute, you'll just become nihilistic and you'll get really sad because you won't be successful on all those fronts, but that's a great example of being practical about what can I do and what am I focusing on? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the other things can be done quicker or a little later in some way, make it manageable, because then you get to focus your essentials on what you're trying to do, not berating yourself for the things you don't do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Love it. That has been absolutely amazing, even better than I'd hoped for, so thank you so much. Whenever I have somebody on who has a PhD but who's working outside of academia, I ask them to tell us a little bit about their route. You've obviously told us a little bit about how you got to where you are now. Maybe just take a moment to tell us what you love about what you're doing at the moment and how it's different to academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just in case there are people that fancy that sort of thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: Yeah, very cool. So I, I really love the teamwork. I think we've got this amazing group of people. I'm fortunate to lead on recruitment. So I get to meet everybody as they come in and offer a bit of a perspective. So I love that. I love that we're working together towards something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think I've got this great ability to build things in terms of processes and ways of working, get some good challenge and feedback on those, and then make them a reality and then run them. That to me just is, is really exciting because and you don't always get that in bigger businesses. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes you're given things. And I think that's one of us being, I would call us a scale up. So we're 32 people now. So we're not quite scrappy startup. We've matured beyond that, but we're still at this position of how do you want to measure performance, Andrew? Oh gosh, I don't know. Okay. Go away, have a think, do some research, put something together, get some ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we do, and we do it. And When it gets positively received, it's a, it's a great feeling because you know that well, I got to take my knowledge and apply it to something and it is having this positive impact on people that I work with. So yeah, I just think that's awesome.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And I just love how you're using your academic knowledge completely out of its academic context, but in such an effective way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think, I think that can really hopefully give hope to lots of people listening that the skills they're developing, even the specific knowledge they're developing in a very niche area could well be applicable across lots of different places in the future.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: It so is. Every time I see a CV and I've seen over a thousand if not more now if I see somebody with a PhD I know it's not going to be in our like if somebody if they did have a PhD in environmental restoration fantastic but we've just hired somebody who had a PhD in like Butterfly behavior, and they work in Wales doing a really practical role. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The PhD's great, they did loads of good work on it, but the transferable skills are the thing that's really important from an employer perspective. So yeah, loads of hope in that regard.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Fantastic. Now, if people want to find out more about Oxygen or even get in contact with you, what's the best places for them to look? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andrew: So. If you want information about the company, the website's fantastic. There's a LinkedIn page as well, and we've got newsletter, we've got the Shoot Room Sessions podcast. To start with the website, it'll direct you towards all of that awesome content, which our marketing team and others do a great job with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want to get to me, probably LinkedIn's the best place. I'm going to be honest, I'm not a massive fan of the feed of LinkedIn. So I don't see that all the time, but I do respond to messages and requests for connections. And if you just want to ask questions, then reach out to me there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And thank you everyone for listening. I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 16 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-15-creating-positive-academic-environments-insights-from-sports-psychology-with-dr-andrew-dewar thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-14-why-word-count-goals-don-t-work-for-phd-writing-and-what-to-do-instead <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-37-why-you-shouldn-t-read-when-you-re-writing" target="_blank"> Why you shouldn’t read when you’re writing </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-32-how-to-plan-your-academic-writing-special-episode-with-guest-jo-vanevery" target="_blank"> How to plan your academic writing (with special guest Dr Jo Van Every) </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-30-how-to-break-your-work-down-into-chunks" target="_blank"> How to break your work down into chunks </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. Do you have a word count goal at the moment? Whether you're a PhD student or academic, do you have a notional idea? You want to have 5, 000 words written by the end of the year or a chapter finished by the end of January? I'm here, not to tell you you're wrong, because we all have those goals, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But to help you shape goals that are going to help you way more than simply using word counts. Now this actually came from a question from one of my members. She was talking about having a word count goal, but how some days she's doing stuff that feels important, but that doesn't progress her towards her goal. And she asked me, Vikki, should I be using word count goals? Is that the best way to do this? Cause it doesn't seem to be working for me at the moment. And as you know, I have episodes where I go through client questions, but this one was such a cracker and so important for so many of you that I decided to make a whole episode about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's start with what's wrong with word count goals. Now, before I tell you why you're wrong, it's completely understandable that you have word count goals. And actually, I think they do have a really important place. But there are a number of problems with them. The first one is it doesn't tell you anything about the quality of those words.So do you mean 6000 words of polished, virtually finished, ready to submit chapter. Or do you mean 6, 000 words of a rough first draft just so that the whole thing exists? Or do you mean something in between? We rarely specify what we actually mean. And actually at times like this, so I'm recording this the end of November, it's going out early December, often we start to kind of change what we mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe when we first set the goal, we meant 6, 000 words of polished, finished chapter, and now we mean probably 6, 000 words of rough draft, if we're lucky. So rarely do we actually specify the quality and the number of words doesn't tell us that anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing is my client recognized is that word count goals don't recognize all the different elements of writing that there are. Now I teach these in my workshop about how to write when you're struggling to write in lots of detail, but essentially we all know that there's the kind of planning phase. There's the fleshing out your plan phase. There's the turning it into a rough draft element. There's the checking structure, reorganizing things. There's the checking for flow, checking for accuracy, all of those sorts of large scale editing stuff. There's the, does it all sound nice and academic- y stage. There's the proofreading stage. And often, we don't follow that as a linear process, right? We're kind of going backwards and forwards between these chunks. And there's some of those tasks that will contribute to a word count goal. And there's some that don't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so you can finish a day feeling like, well, my word count didn't change at all. Okay. Or, on some days my word count got lower, right? And unless you're really kind of conscious of what you're doing, it's hard to tell the difference between days where you were doing things that were absolutely what you should have been doing, that were appropriate to moving this piece of work forwards, It just didn't change the word count. Or days where actually you got distracted faffing about with your references or diving into articles that you were panicking that maybe you should have read but maybe you didn't need to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we only have word count goals it's really hard to differentiate between those things. To think what we should do instead, we need to really understand what the purpose of these goals are. Now, goals, in my view, should help you recognize progress. They should inspire action. And they should tell you when you have done what you said you were going to do. Now, I think a word count goal at a kind of macro level is a really good way of knowing whether you've done what you said you were going to do. So when we're looking at planning for a month or planning for a quarter, which is something I teach in my Be Your Own Best Boss course, then having a word count goal for those kind of large scale goals can be really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, I always argue that goals should be something you are producing, not just something that you're doing. So a goal isn't to read for your thesis, a goal is to screen these 10 papers to see whether they are worth reading in lots of detail for the chapter I'm on at the moment, for example, and to produce a list of which ones need to be scrutinized further. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so having a goal that is actually something you're producing, and a word count is absolutely something you might be producing is really, really useful at that kind of monthly and quarterly level. However, this is where it's simply not enough, and where it will rarely be the only goal you should have when we're thinking about it in a daily and weekly level. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I want you to think about is taking that macro goal of writing 6, 000 words in the next month or whatever. That may sound like loads or not and much depending on what stage you're at and how that process is going for you, but insert your own numbers there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we now want to do is think about what interim goals, what micro goals we need that will actually reflect the different steps that are taken. And I don't suggest that for a monthly goal or a quarterly goal, you work out every single micro goal you're going to need to get from where you are now to there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's simply not necessary. But what you can do is think about some sort of midterm goals. So ones that, you know, where you need to be, this week, next week, in order to stay on track. So if you've got a goal in the next month of having 6, 000 words of polished draft, when do you need to have 6, 000 words of rough draft, if that doesn't exist already, for example? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can start breaking down that, and then you can start thinking, okay, so this week, what does that mean? And this is where we get to think about the whole myriad of goals that we could set that would actually reflect the tasks we need to do. So instead of saying, right, if I'm going to get 6, 000 words by the end of this month, then I need to be doing, what's that, do the maths quickly, 200 words a day in order to do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, that doesn't allow for planning. That doesn't allow for redrafting, restructuring, shortening, polishing, editing, all that stuff. But instead we can say, okay, if I want to get to 6, 000 words polished draft by the end of this month, I want to get to 6, 000 words of rough draft by two weeks time, what do I need to do to get to that rough draft? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, one goal might be to produce an approximate outline of what the major sections need to be. One goal might be to turn one of those sections into a more detailed paragraph plan. One. My goal might be to put bullet points into each of my paragraph plans to show what roughly needs to be covered in that paragraph. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A goal might be to produce 200 words around that paragraph plan to flesh it out into a rough draft. Okay? And there's so many good things that happen when you break down the work like this and you have goals that are much more specific to what you have to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Firstly, it recognizes all these different sorts of work that you need to do. You might, for example, decide that in order to produce 6, 000 words of polished draft, you need to produce 8, 000 words of rough draft. I always recommend overwriting at the rough draft stage. It's a little bit like, I always used to tell my students, it's like if you're trying to produce a good pasta sauce, right? You don't start with the volume that you want your sauce to end up being. You start by making something that's bigger than that, yeah, that's got more juice in it than that. And then you slowly simmer it and the rubbish bits steam off so the water disappears and you end up with a really lovely concentrated pasta sauce by the end of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the same is true with writing, so you may decide actually I need to produce 8, 000 words of rough draft and then actually part of my goal for that later period is to take this section of two pages and bring it down to one page, or bring it down to a page and a half by taking out repetition, by taking out unnecessary sentences, by changing my sentence structure to make it more elegant and efficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then actually on those days, your goal is to go from having 800 words to having 600 words, for example. Okay? So, giving yourself a much wider range of types of goals, especially these micro goals, can enable you to recognise the different things there are to do when you're writing, get much more specific about what your tasks are, and to also then recognise progress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because progress is doing what you intended. Progress doesn't have to be generating new words. Progress can be completing the tasks you said you were going to do on that day. I talk about this a little bit. I have an episode about how to break your work down into chunks. And it goes through why you might find that challenging, and why it can be super beneficial. But this is an example of how you can do it when you're writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Setting these interim goals, these micro goals that are more specific than just producing wordcount can also help you to finish a day and know exactly what you did. There's nothing worse than that feeling that you did a load of work and you're not really sure what you did and your work counts no bigger than it was. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it enables you to finish a day going, yeah, I plan to take that from 600 or I plan to write three bullet points under each section, or whatever it was, and look. there it is, check me out doing exactly what I intended. So it can allow you to reinforce when you did do what you planned.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also makes it way easier to decide what you're going to do tomorrow to actually go, okay, that's my job. Let's crack on because you're not having to kind of go, well, 200 words Goal, because that's what I said I'd need to do every day to generate my 6, 000 words, but really I feel like I probably should edit what I've done already, but then I won't generate that. It enables you to go, Okay, that's my goal. Do my goal. Boom. Did my goal. Check me out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then it becomes this kind of self fulfilling thing where you become someone who plans what you're doing, does what you planned, and then rewards yourself for it. So that's why word count goals are crucial. We've got to produce work, but they are not sufficient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are necessary, but not sufficient. And hopefully in this pretty short episode, you can see the benefits of having a far wider variety of goals than that. Let me know what you think. What sorts of goals do you set yourself when it comes to your writing? How do you know that you're making progress? And how do you know that you've done the things that you intended. Today is quite short because it's the 9th of December that this is going out. Americans, you'll be coming off the wave of your Thanksgiving. Anyone who celebrates Christmas will be building towards that, and most universities will be having a winter break for all the different festivals that are happening at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're busy, you've got lots going. I want you to just Pause listening now. Go double check your to do lists. Have you got word count goals? Have you got other sorts of goals? How can you make sure that your goals are realistic, the things you want to get done before that winter break, and so that they're actually recognizing the tasks that you're doing to move yourself in that direction? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Use this extra time to go check your goals and tweak them so that we can really recognise all the work that we do between now and the winter holidays. If you didn't sign up for my membership, by the way, it's okay. I want you to love on that decision. But if you were telling yourself that, you know, maybe in the new year, don't need it right now, but maybe in the new year, I want you to go to my website and jump yourself onto my waiting list. It doesn't commit you to anything at all, but it does mean you get all the information about when the doors will open, what's coming up in that month, and give you the opportunity to answer any questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So by putting yourself on the waiting list, it doesn't mean that you're definitely in, but it does mean that you'll get the information that you need if you're telling yourself that you might join in January or February. So make sure you are on that list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Let me know how you set your goals, whether you use word counts or some other mission, and maybe I'll share some of your expertise in future episodes. Thank you for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 09 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-14-why-word-count-goals-don-t-work-for-phd-writing-and-what-to-do-instead thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-13-client-q-a-motivating-yourself-in-your-final-year-achieving-post-phd-goals-and-effective-podcast-listening <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <iframe> </iframe> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-10-how-to-go-from-idea-overload-to-clarity" target="_blank"> How to go from idea overload to clarity </a>   <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-27-how-to-plan-when-you-hate-planning-special-coaching-episode" target="_blank">   </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach podcast. We are doing more client questions this week, where anyone who is a listener, who's on my newsletter, who's one of my members, for example, can submit questions about things they're finding challenging at the moment and I will try and answer them for you. This week I've got three questions that I think are going to resonate loads with all of you. And make sure you stay for the third one because the third one is 100 percent relevant to all of us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, first up, have you ever had that sense that your PhD is just not working out quite the way you thought it was going to? Maybe you're in your second, third, more years along and you had all these high hopes at the beginning of your PhD as to what you were going to achieve and what you were going to do, and things are just not quite working out the way you thought they would. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you're kind of ready to write up, or you're in the process of writing up, and it just all feels a bit disappointing. Well that was the situation of a student that I met at a workshop I ran in London for the Wellcome Trust, which was amazing, really, really able, motivated students, we were talking about career decisions and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And she asked me afterwards, how do you stay motivated to write your thesis when you're a bit disappointed that you didn't do all the things that you intended to do? And she explained that this was just making it really hard for her to sit down and do the difficult work of writing when she was managing all these frustrations and disappointments with it not looking the way that she had dreamed it would look when she first started. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I just thought this was such an interesting question and you can hit this kind of disappointment at any stage in your PhD. So don't worry if you're not as far along as she is at the moment, you might still be experiencing this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I answered it for her there in the workshop, but I thought it would be useful for all of you to hear this answer because she found it really, really beneficial. And that is that you have to remember that the reason things are disappointing or frustrating now is not because your PhD is bad and it's not because you've let yourself down or any of these things that we often tell ourselves it means.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What it means is that you know more now than you did when you started. When we start our PhDs, we are necessarily optimistic and excited and hopeful. If we weren't, we wouldn't take on a 3, 4,5,6, year project. If we weren't experiencing those sorts of emotions and having those sorts of thoughts, we wouldn't even begin this thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  That period running up to the PhD and in the first bits of it, we need to be really hopeful and excited about what we might achieve. We need to be dreaming big about the impact that we'll have and the discoveries that we'll make and all of that stuff, because that's what gets us through the application process, that really uncertain period at the beginning where you don't really know what you're doing. You kind of need to believe that it's going to go somewhere afterwards.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, that past you that was hopeful and optimistic was super necessary to get you going on the PhD journey. However, you are now much more informed, you're much more knowledgeable, and you're much more immersed in what you've done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's a wonderful thing, but it has some negative effects as well. One of the negative effects is that we have, by necessity, had to reduce the scope of what we'd hoped to do. We've realized how over hopeful, over optimistic we were at the beginning. We've learned more about the details of the research process and how complicated some things can be. And we've necessarily had to change our project to accommodate that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those are all exactly right. Those are exactly the things that you should be doing as you develop into becoming an independent researcher. Taking big dreams and turning them into something that you can actually achieve and managing the disappointment that that might not be everything you thought, this is a sign that you know so much more, that you have learned so much more during this period, which is a wonderful thing. It just makes you super attuned to any of the flaws and the kind of reduced scope of your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing is that you are more immersed in and kind of focused on this piece of research than you ever will be with anything you do in your life again. Because if you go into universities, carry on as a researcher, go into lecturing and all that stuff. You'll have multiple research projects. You'll have your own students. You'll have your teaching. You'll have your leadership, your admin. But while you're doing your PhD, you are fully immersed in this thing. And the downside of that is it also comes super mundane to you. Anything that we do every day, we can take for granted and not realize the wonderful things that we're doing because it's just normal. It's just what we do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember being at a conference once and some students from an American university were like, Oh my God, it's Doug Carroll, your supervisor. Oh my God, you'd introduce us? Because he was quite a big dog in his field at the time. And, I was like What? Him? Doug? Yeah. Fine. Whatever. Come on. I don't understand why this is exciting, but sure, we can talk to him. Because for me, it was completely normal. I mean, don't get me wrong. He was a great mentor and I really enjoyed working with him and all those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not to criticise him, but it's like, you don't get excited about your own parents, right? You know, your own supervisor. Pretty dull. See him all the time. But! For them, he was this big academic and they were really excited to meet him. Familiarity had made it mundane.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the same is true when you talk about research. In the workshops that I run from universities, I always get people at the beginning to tell me about their research. And it all sounds so amazing. It's one of the reasons I love to work with PhD students and academics. You're all doing such cool stuff that brings so much interest to the world or solves big problems. Yet to you it can feel really mundane because you've been doing it for the last three years.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, how does this help? Well, the first thing is to recognize it, because often we think that because we're disappointed and frustrated, it means our PhD is bad. It means that we haven't fulfilled our promise. And I want you to see that it doesn't mean any of that at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What it means is that you have hugely progressed since that hopeful, optimistic first year that started off. You know loads more, you've done it so much that it's become mundane, and all of this is exactly how it should be. Final year PhD students are a little bit like older teenagers, where like, they're ready to leave the house, okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're at that stage where their parents are annoying, everything they're doing is annoying, they're ready to move on to the next thing. And that's what final year, whatever age you are, that's what final year PhD students are like. You are ready to move on. So this does feel a bit mundane and a bit just boring and long. Okay, nothing broken here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other perspective that I want to bring to this is the perspective of future you. Because future you is going to know more than you know now. And future you is going to have a perspective on your PhD that you don't have right now. They are going to realize what a big deal it was. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are going to be so proud of you for completing it. And so all we have to do is look after ourselves in this moment, this moment between the kind of hopes and optimism and dreams of past us and the future perspective where we will look back on this and realize what an achievement it is. We need to look after ourselves here and that means saying things to ourselves that reminds us why it's important, reminds us why we're capable of it, reminds us why we wanted to do this in the first place and really recognize the progress that we're making. Let's not make these worries or concerns into anything they don't need to be. They are just a sign that you are ready to finish your PhD. Let me know if you're, if that resonates with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's move on. Question two. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We often think that when we finish our PhDs, it's going to be like this wonderful moment of clarity and confidence and suddenly sure that we can take on the world because we've actually done this huge thing that we've been working for all this time. And the reality is the other side of thesis submission, the other side of your viva, you're still the same person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might be pleased. You might be happy that you've done this. You might be proud of yourself to some extent, but we then start to worry about other things. We start to worry about what we're doing next, whether we're well set to get a job either within academia or beyond. And I see this in my members. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So some of my members have actually stayed on post PhD for me to support them in that kind of postdoctoral period. And so I got a question from one of my members who is post PhD. She is now a doctor, and she was asking how does she apply all this stuff when she's trying to write up papers so that she can apply for jobs. She wants to be an academic. She doesn't think her CV is quite ready for that yet. And so instead of getting a job at the moment, she's using this time to try and improve her publications. And what she's finding is that without that kind of external accountability, without deadlines set by other people, she's really struggling to get on and complete that piece of work. She's finding herself setting targets and then when the day comes to work on it, talking herself back out of it again. And we've all been there, right? I want you to think about the last time that happened for you. I think it's really, really common, especially in anything where you're trying to work independently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have a few tips for this. The first is to really think about what sort of boss you want to be to yourself. So some of you may be familiar with my Be Your Own Best Boss course. There we really talk about how to provide yourself with the support and structure that you need to succeed. So in this sort of a situation where you're trying to work even more independently than you were during your PhD, I would really take some time to sit down and say, Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What do I want this to look like and how can I try and set it up for myself in a way that feels good, makes me want to do this, makes me want to live these days rather than filling it full of I should be doing this but I don't want to. So spending a little bit of time in boss mode, just kind of planning how to make this work, is really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes this is around time blocking and deciding in advance exactly when you're going to work, but a lot of it is about self talk. If you're spending your time telling yourself that you should have done this before, you should be further along by now, it just becomes this painful thing that nobody actually wants to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to decide when we work, what we work on, and how we speak to ourselves about that work. Now, whenever we're trying to motivate ourselves, you know, people tell me they want more motivation so they'll get on with things. And, like to say two things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One is, one of the best things you can do in the world is learn to work when you're not motivated. And that is that you choose to work because that's what you said you'd do and no other reason. You don't need to want to, you don't need to feel like it. You don't need to have deadlines. You're just doing it because you said you would. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And trying to cultivate a sense that I'm doing this because I wrote it in my diary and I want to be someone who does what she said in her diary can really, really help. We don't want to be kind of pressuring ourselves and kicking ourselves to do it. But just reminding yourself I'm someone who does what they said they'd do can really, really help in this situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing is we can try and increase the motivation, right? And what people often do is they either remind themselves of the big picture, you know, I'm doing this because I want to get a job or whatever, or they promise themselves some sort of reward immediately after it. Now I've talked about this in a past episode, but what I would encourage instead is aiming for proximal, intrinsic motivation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do I mean by that? Intrinsic motivation is to do with the enjoyment and motivation by the task itself. So rather than I'm going to complete this piece of work because then I get to spend the evening with my friends, or I'm going to complete this piece of work because it will get me a job, we try and channel a sense that I'm completing this piece of work because I value this piece of work and because I enjoy the process of writing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is especially true if you want to be an academic, writing these papers is going to be a part of your life for the rest of your career. So we need to channel a sense that we actually like doing this. Because if we don't like doing this, we might want to reconsider that whole academic career thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. Now for most of you, I think you do actually like doing it. You just don't like the negative self talk and the judgment and the pressure that comes along with it. So we get to remind ourselves of all that intrinsic motivation. How lucky we are to be able to write this stuff that's about something we care about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's about something we chose, for reasons we want to, for the benefits of our own career. And we get to delve in and be an academic and sit at our desk and do our thing. That can be hugely, hugely motivating. So remind yourself of those intrinsic reasons why the actual process of doing this thing is so nice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reason I'm saying proximal rather than distal, distal would be things that are important to you in the future. Proximal are the benefits you get right now. So an equivalent here in exercise is a distal motivator to exercise will be so that you're healthier in old age. Now, I'm getting to an age where that's starting to feel proximal, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, that's starting to become a key motivator. But for many of you, it won't be. It's something that's too far in the future to make you want to do something that feels a bit uncomfortable now. A proximal motivator for exercise would be something like, I always feel better when I move my body. It's such a nice sensation to have been outside running and to come back in and be all warm and cozy. The mental health benefits of exercise are another one. I always feel much clearer in my mind after I've exercised, for example.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this is where, again, you're reminding yourself of the benefits you're going to get from this immediate piece you're going to do. Oh, I'm going to feel so good when this bit's written. It's going to be so fun to really straighten out what I'm doing in this part of the task. So try and make your motivations proximal and intrinsic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing to say is, if you are repeatedly telling yourself that you want to do something, and you are not doing it. There is another decision. You can just decide you're not going to do it. If you actually just don't want to write this paper, don't. Apply for jobs without the paper. Will it make it more difficult to get the job? Maybe. But you're not writing it anyway, so you may as well just decide you're not going to. And you're going to put your efforts into applying for jobs and making yourself marketable in other ways. Same for exercise, to be fair. If you're repeatedly telling yourself you should be exercising and you're not exercising, you might as well just not decide to exercise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now often we respond to that with horror. It's like, no, but I really want to. It's like, okay, why? Why do we really want to? Then how do we make it happen? But it's when we're in this murky middle where we're definitely not ready to say we're not going to do this thing, but equally we're not doing it either, then it's just unpleasant. You're not getting any of the benefits of doing it. And you're getting all this extra self judgment. Because you're not. So you can just decide not to do it. If you decide to do it, be your own best boss. Structure it. Speak to yourself well. Be proud of yourself when you complete things. Recognise the stuff you are getting done. And chip away and get this done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then question three is the one that I promised was relevant to absolutely everyone. And that's because it's about listening to podcasts. I got contacted by one of my regular clients who's finished her PhD and she sent me a message saying, this is going to be a bit meta Vikki, but how would you recommend that people listen to your podcast? Because she likes to listen while she's doing craft or something like that, because she finds that if she's just listening, then she ends up picking up her phone, looking at other things at the same time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Not offended, Sophie. I get it. I get a bit like that with podcasts too. I'm not very good at just sitting listening either. But then she finds that she doesn't make notes and she feels like she's not necessarily getting maximum use out of the podcast. And so she asked whether I had any tips about how to listen to a podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, there's many, many different ways you can do this, but I'm going to give you some tips that I have found useful for me. I have a bunch of podcasts that I listen to regularly. And I think there's a few things that are useful here. The first is don't overthink this. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have some podcasts that I listen to because I find them broadly interesting, broadly motivational, and I always end up feeling like I want to get on with things afterwards. Does that mean I implement the exact things they talk about? Often no. Often it's just like, Oh, that's an interesting idea, but I don't actually do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there's something about hearing them talk it through that just puts me in a frame of mind that I like. And for many of you listening to this podcast, that might be it. Maybe you just like listening to me, wittering away, sounding vaguely motivational, making you feel like you can actually do your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Perfect. If that works for you, that's enough. Do your crafts, walk your dog, listen to me while you're driving, whatever it is. And don't worry too much that you're not implementing everything that I say, if you're still getting benefit from just listening to me witter, okay? Don't overthink it. However, if on occasions you're like, you know what, there are some of these things that I actually want to try out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't want to just be consuming these ideas anymore. I want to actually make sure that I'm trying them and practicing them in my life. And, to be honest, if you want to change your behavior, that's a really, really sensible thing. Then the first thing to say is let's get specific with that. Let's not try and implement everything I talk about in every single episode. I don't implement everything I talk about. I try to, but all at the same time, it's too much for my little brain. I can't implement everything all at once. You definitely can't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're kind of going, you know, I find Vikki's podcast really useful, but I feel like I want to move to the stage where I implement things. Let's just pick one. One episode. What is the biggest pain point in your life at the moment? What's the one thing that if you could make some progress on that, it would really, really help? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then, go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com, and go to podcast, and you'll find all of my episodes there. I am soon going to have some better kind of tagging system, but at the moment you can just scroll on through, okay? Find an episode that answers that pinch point, and side note, if you notice that there's no episode that answers your problem, let me know. I want to record that episode. I want it to feel like when you go there, there is everything you need to succeed in your PhDs in academia. So, have a look, find one, and then you've got three different choices of how you consume it. There's video, if that helps on YouTube, there's the podcast version, and there's a full transcript on my website. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you are somebody who is better when you're wanting to implement things, better off just reading it, it's right there for you. Word for word transcript of everything I say in the podcast. So just pick one episode, go to the website, consume it in the way that you find best, and then do it. Pick one thing from it that you want to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If this is something you want more support with, make sure you're on my newsletter. I know my client already is on my newsletter, but if any of you aren't, if you're on my newsletter, you get a little summary of the podcast. So you get three take home messages. You get two reflective questions to try out that are connected to that topic. And you get one specific action to take. So if you're a bit like I want to implement from this episode, but even looking at the transcript feels a bit overwhelming, make sure in your newsletter, you will get those week by week. Now, secret for you. I am currently looking at a way to create a repository of all those newsletters and to go back and create them for old episodes so that we end up with like a summary bank of all of those things. It hasn't happened yet. It's the middle of November right now. Who knows whether it will exist by the time you listen to this. If you listen to it live, it does not. But it is on my agenda. So keep an eye out for that because I think it would be super useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  My final thing connects back to an episode from a few weeks ago where I talked about using voice notes to kind of capture your ideas. And I tried this one out the other day and it was amazing. A little bit disjointed, but amazing. So I like to listen to podcasts while I walk, because I'm similar to Sophie. I'm not very good at just sitting still and reading these things. But there are sometimes, not necessarily even things that they say that I want to implement, but that while I'm listening to them, it made me think of something. And so what I did the other day, I was listening to a book because I have an author coming up on a future podcast. Uh, he's going to come out in January. I think it is. I recorded it last night. He's amazing. You're going to love it. But I was finishing up listening to his book. And it was making me think of loads of things that I wanted to ask him and talk about. And so what I was doing was I was walking around my village with my headphones in, listening to my book, March, March, March. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And whenever I had something that I wanted to remember, I paused my podcast, I opened my Otter. ai, I whittled into my phone for a minute. Stop, go back to the podcast, do, do, do. It's actually quite similar to how my husband and I listen to podcasts in the car. We'll listen for like three minutes and then one of us will pause it and we'll talk about something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we'll go again and then somebody else will get another idea and we'll press pause. And for anybody else quite annoying. We love it. Um, so that's another way that you can do it, is either having a notebook with you, or using voice notes on your phone, so that as you're listening, even if you're doing crafts or you're walking or whatever, you can just pause and add notes into that. Obviously it doesn't work so well while you're driving, but hopefully having the transcript and the notes in the newsletter will enable you to return to the things that you want to return to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> On that, if you find this podcast useful, I have one request. One teeny tiny request for you. Send it to somebody, find an episode that you think is particularly useful to something that one of your friends has told you they're stressed about and send it to them. Send them and say, I love this podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This will really help you listen to it. Now, call me when you've done it. We'll have a chat about it. Make sure you listen. Or, suggest it for one of your university, like, journal clubs or something like that. Suggest, everyone listen to this episode and then we'll talk about how we can implement it and how it could change the way we do things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please, please, please share this. When people listen to the podcast, they tell me so many nice things about it and I just want to make sure it's getting to all the people that could benefit. I really hope today's been useful. I feel like those were three really, really insightful questions. So thank you to the people who sent them in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have questions, there's a bunch of ways you can get them to me. You can send them on Instagram through messaging. I am at the PhD life coach. You can reply to my newsletter, if you are on my newsletter. If you're listening on podcasts, then there's a send Vicki, a question button on all the places you get your podcasts. So you can press that, just send them through. If you do that one, make sure you tell me your name. Cause otherwise I don't get your name. Just let me know. I want to answer any specific challenges that you have at the moment. Let me know what you think of the episode, what things you might be implementing and thank you all so much for listening. I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-13-client-q-a-motivating-yourself-in-your-final-year-achieving-post-phd-goals-and-effective-podcast-listening thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-12-why-perfect-plans-fail-embracing-imperfection-in-academic-planning <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking" target="_blank"> How to use role-based time-blocking </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-27-how-to-plan-when-you-hate-planning-special-coaching-episode" target="_blank"> How to plan when you hate planning  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I often notice patterns when I'm coaching when many of my clients are coming up with similar issues at the same time and what I'm seeing a lot in my membership at the moment is this feeling that they're really bad at planning. They're bad at planning because they don't always make a plan, they are worried that they're not very good at judging how long anything's going to take, so their plan kind of goes wrong, and then they don't follow their plan, and then they beat themselves up for not following their plan, and so they then avoid making plans for a while. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or when they do, they end up making unrealistic plans and the cycle starts over again. And if that feels like you, don't worry, you're in exactly the right place. I was like this for a really, really long time. And when I tell people that things are different now, they usually think that that means that now I make perfectly realistic plans and implement them exactly as I intended. And anyone who knows me knows that's a really long way from the truth, okay? And what I want to say in this episode today is I don't think that's even the goal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of the most important coaches in my life who have really brought me to where I am today do emphasize that that's how you do it, right? That you only put things in your diary when you're sure you'll do them, and then you absolutely robotically do everything in your diary, and that as long as you do that, you'll be fine. And whilst I've learned a lot from these people in other areas, this is one that never landed with me, because I'm like, well, I don't see that's ever going to happen for me. And that made me feel like I didn't really have any options for to feel better than they did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I've realized instead, and what I work with the clients in my membership on much more, is how we can accept imperfect implementation of our plans, how we can not only accept it, but expect it, plan for it, and not make a massive drama out of it when it happens. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you might think that that will make you really bad at planning. But actually, in this episode, I want to really convince you that planning for and accepting imperfect implementation will make you a way better planner than expecting perfect implementation and getting upset when that doesn't happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, before I get into that, I do want to say I'm recording this in November. It will be coming out to you on the 25th of November 2024. If you're listening to this live, you have got one week, one week till Saturday night to get into the membership if you want in before the end of this calendar year. The membership is going to be open until midnight UK time. GMT, American listeners, please notice. Midnight GMT, November the 30th. The membership is going to close until the end of january. It will reopen again and then next year it's only going to open in the final week of each month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm introducing some new sessions which will take place at the beginning of the month, welcoming new members, teaching you the self coaching model, getting you up to speed with how all the membership stuff works, and because of that you're only going to be able to get in at certain times of the month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you've been umming and erring about whether the membership is right for you or not, now's the time to join if you don't want to have that whole fear of missing out thing. If you're not sure what the membership's about, you can check out on my website, thephdlifecoach. com. If you click on the membership at the top, it will tell you all about it, but essentially, it gives you access to three sessions a week of online group coaching. Some of those are open coaching sessions where you can bring any topics. Others are around specific topics that are really relevant for PhD students. You get access to two workshops a month, on all sorts of things. Like this afternoon when I'm recording this, I'm doing one on what to do when you've got too much to do. Next month we've got one on how to manage your time and energy. We've got one on imposter syndrome. All sorts of really important topics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a lovely community. Everybody really looks after each other. Get the support you need from me and from the other people around you. So definitely make sure you check that out if you're not a member already. You also actually get access to some online courses, one of which, Be Your Own Best Boss, covers a load of stuff about planning. Gives you some really specific tools that allow you to practice some of the stuff that we're talking about today. So check it out for the end of November. Perfect.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now back to the topic, imperfect implementation. Well, let's start with what's the problem with expecting yourself to implement things perfectly. Now, the first thing that's a problem with that is that if we expect perfect implementation, then it makes us much more likely to make unrealistic plans. Because we're looking at going, well, okay, as long as I do all the things I said I'd do at exactly the times I said I'd do them in exactly the amount of time I said I'd do them, then all of this fits. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So having this kind of belief that you're going to be able to implement them perfectly and that you should be able to implement perfectly can tempt you not to leave any wiggle room in your planning. And I see this all the time. And the reason people don't want to put wiggle room into their diaries is because they think it means they have to accept that they're not good enough, you know, they should be implementing perfectly. So why would they plan to be less than perfect? It also means you have to make some difficult decisions, right? Because if you've realized that not everything fits into the time you've got, then you have to choose what things you're not going to do, who you're going to have to disappoint, whether you're going to have to disappoint yourself, what you're going to miss out on, because you can't do everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so instead of making those difficult decisions, instead of accepting that we're not going to implement this perfectly and we can't fit it all in, what we do instead is kind of avoid those decisions, jam it all in anyway, expect perfect implementation and then don't implement perfectly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reasons we don't implement perfectly are partly stupid plans that don't allow for breaks, that don't allow for transitions, that don't allow for unexpected things to come up, that don't allow for us just not being on top form that day. But I think it's also driven in large part by the fact that although we told ourselves we should be able to implement this perfectly, we also told ourselves it probably wasn't reasonable to implement this perfectly. So it's almost like there's two different voices in our heads. I have to plan it like this because I should be able to do it, and this is the only way it all fits. And a voice that says, yeah, but you're probably not going to stick to it, are you? Because this looks exhausting, and you never know how long things take anyway. And then we're almost starting it with an expectation that we're not going to do it like that anyway. So we don't go at it a hundred percent because we think, you know what, this probably was never going to work, which makes it really hard to go at a hundred percent. And then when we do miss something, then I don't know about you, but me and my clients then often end up really beating ourselves up about it. We failed again. This plan was pointless. This plan didn't get implemented. It was useless. I'm useless. We're never going to finish. And then we have end up avoiding the entire plan, avoiding our tasks and then until we get so frustrated that we start saying, we'll try again, we're just off plan. And I think this will sound really, really familiar to lots of you. And that's okay. This is really, really common. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing that doesn't happen when we assume we're going to implement something perfectly is any strategizing about how to make this plan robust to non perfect implementation. Now what do I mean by that? When I used to do my GCSE revision back in the days when I was at school. I would make super perfectionist plans and they would be really unrealistic about what I would fit but they'd also be super specific so in this hour I would cover this topic and this topic and in that hour I'd cover this topic and that topic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it meant that if I ever missed an hour, I had to reshuffle the rest of the plan. The plan didn't work anymore. Suddenly I was trying to jam in extra hours, or I was having to move things down, and then I was spending more time reorganizing my plan than actually doing the work. And I hadn't thought anything about what would happen if I didn't do these things in those hours. Whereas if we know we're going to implement something imperfectly, then we're much more likely to say, I'm going to try my best to implement this as close to what I planned as possible, but on the basis it's probably not going to be bang on, how can I make this more robust to imperfect implementation? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that might be things like making sure you have a system for knowing what you have done and what you haven't done. Maybe it's things like prioritizing more clearly so that you know which things you would drop if you are then running out of time. It might be using a more role based approach rather than a task based approach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you want to know more about that, I talk about it in my episode about role based time blocking. But essentially, instead of blocking in, in this time I am going to do this specific task. You instead say, I'll be in operations mode and you then look at the operations part of your to do list and choose the thing that's most urgent, or you'll be in writing mode and you'll then decide which bit of writing is most urgent or the highest priority and you do that rather than specifying the exact thing that you will write weeks in advance. I usually recommend picking maybe the day before or that morning so that you're not having to decide in the moment, but not deciding so far in advance that if you then miss a session, it messes everything up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everyone's built a Gantt chart, right? That you then get off track with, and then instead of adapting it, you just delete it or shove it in a drawer somewhere and never look at it. Again, that's what happens when we make plans that only work if we turn up as perfect humans, which we never do because we're humans. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, what do we do instead? How do we make plans if we accept that we're going to implement them imperfectly? Well, the first thing we do is we think about the quantity of work that we're trying to do and we ask ourselves, does it still fit if I implement this imperfectly. If I only did 80 percent of the time that I said I was going to do, would this still work? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if the answer's no, then we get to make some decisions about which bits of it we are going to do, which bits of it we need to do first, which bits are the highest priority, so that if it does slip, we know exactly what we need to change. And it makes it much more likely that we're going to start with a realistic plan in the first place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we're also going to do when we plan that we're going to be imperfect, or that we're likely to be imperfect, we also start to let go of the idea that anything less than perfect implementation is a fail. Plan is useful if it inspires action, not just if we follow it perfectly. If you make a plan and it gets you going on something that you really want to do, it was an effective plan, even if you didn't carry out every single thing that you intended to do within the time that you had available to you. Planning is at best guesswork. Even when we're really good at it, we're never quite sure exactly how long things will take. Obviously, we can adjust the quality to fit in the time we get it, but even within that, we don't always know or decide in a way that we're happy with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, sometimes, we do underestimate how long things take. I still do, even though I try to get it done in the time I said. Sometimes, that's just not possible. To be honest, I planned to record this this morning. I didn't record it this morning because it took me longer than anticipated to edit the last podcast that I was doing. You know, we all get it wrong sometimes. It doesn't have to mean that there was a fundamental flaw. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The joy is that by making a plan, It means that you've sat down and thought about what your intentions are for the week. What are the things that are most important to you this week? What's top of the agenda? What's got deadlines coming up? And even if you don't follow that through to perfection, you're still aware of those things in a way that you wouldn't have been if you hadn't made the plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I very rarely stick to my week plan perfectly, but if I don't stick to the plan but I have planned, then I'm at least aware of what things were important that I haven't done, and I'm aware of what I was doing that wasn't what I'd planned. And that gives me a whole bunch of information that you simply don't get if you don't plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My weeks that get away from me are the ones where I decide that I'm too busy to make a plan, I've just got to get on and do some of the things, and then I usually end up three quarters of the way through the week going, I don't even know what I've done this week and where I'm at. When we plan, we identify that framework and then how we deviate from the framework can be really, really informative. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It might start telling you that you're not allowing enough time for routine tasks, for example. It might tell you that there are things you're avoiding. If you notice that there are tasks you keep putting on your list each week and then not doing, we get to look at those and go, I wonder I wonder why I'm not doing that? It gives you a load of information that if you just do what comes top of mind all the time without planning, you never ever get to find out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Making a plan and knowing that we'll stick to it imperfectly also helps us appreciate the things we do do. So I want you to think of the last time you made a plan and then didn't stick to it, especially if it was a time that you were beating yourself up a lot about that. What usually happens is as soon as we fall off that wagon, we now hate the plan. We now hate ourselves. And therefore we just go back to doing whatever comes into our inboxes, whatever people shout for loudest, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When in reality, if we have a plan and we know we're going to fall off it occasionally, we're not going to do it perfectly, as soon as we realize we have, we can nudge ourselves back to doing the plan, without judgment, without making a massive drama about the fact that we missed some stuff, and then we can recognize how much of the plan we did do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if you sometimes fall off it, don't do exactly what you thought you were going to, but then you nudge yourself back onto it. By the end of the week, you might find you followed 40 percent of your plan or 60 percent of your plan. Now, if you hadn't got a plan, or if you'd got a plan that was only acceptable if you do all of it, you would never have recognized all that stuff that you got done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas if you can look at it and be like, look at me. I got 60 percent of my plan done this week, that's awesome. Check me out. Okay, we need to look at the bits I didn't do, why I didn't do them, how I can make them easier, all that stuff. We're going to strategize for that. But part of strategizing for that, for anything, is recognizing what we are already doing well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And having a plan, knowing you're going to implement it imperfectly, and then recognizing the extent to which you implemented it, can really help recognize what you did do, as well as notice what you didn't do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, none of this means that we're going to just let ourselves off the hook, make unrealistic plans, know we're not going to stick to them anyway, dick about, and then moan about it later. That's not what we're doing. Our goal. is to still stick to a plan. Our goal is to still design a plan that makes it as likely as possible that we can do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A plan that feels like it might be fun to try and do, that's kind of challenging but achievable. A plan that's designed to kind of structure our day in a way that feels nice and feels like we'd want to live it. And then during the week we want to look at that plan in a kind of slightly eager teacher's pet sort of way and be like, oh, I wonder if I can do this bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh, I think I can do that bit too. Oh, I missed a bit this afternoon but I reckon I could catch up and do this bit this afternoon and then I'd have done most of it. We want to channel that kind of eagerness to do our best to hit the plan by making it much less important if any of that goes wrong. Okay, so this isn't about just going, oh, I'm a little bit tired today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't think I'll do it. It's about going, okay, I'm a bit tired today. Might not do all of this, but I said I was going to spend an hour and a half working on this piece of writing. How about we do 45 minutes and see how we go. And then at least I've stuck to 50 percent of my plan. If after that I'm feeling really rough and I'm not getting anywhere, we'll call it quits. But you know what? Better than nothing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rather than if we have this kind of black and white, yes or no, did or didn't approach to whether we completed our task or not, as soon as we know we're not doing 90 minutes that we'd planned, might as well not do it, right. Might as well just not bother. So by cultivating your kind of, eager to please, trying to do the bits that you set yourself, then we sort of scurry to catch all the bits we could do and just accept the bits we didn't get done, and we learned from those. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think this episode actually even fits really nicely with last week, so if you haven't listened to last week's, do go back and listen to that after this. I was talking about using voice notes to capture ideas, because one of the things that my members have been talking about that derails their plans is when they suddenly think of or remember something else that they needed to do other than the thing they'd planned. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So they'd put aside 90 minutes for writing perhaps, and then they remembered that they needed to look something up, they remembered they needed to do something for their supervisor, and they're so worried that that thing's more urgent or that they'll forget that thing. The, they sort of go, Oh, I'll just do that now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, sometimes that's true. Sometimes they're worried they're going to forget it. Sometimes we have to concede it's because that other thing is a lot easier than this difficult cognitive task that you're meant to be doing right now. But I think if you use this in combination with that voice notes episode from last week, that can really help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that if you're, you know, you're in your 90 minutes, you're working away. Do, do, do, I'm doing my writing. You think of something. You can grab your voice notes. Whatever system you're using and just say, need to remember to talk to my supervisor later, record it into, your voice notes, jot it down in the notebook, if that's the approach that you prefer, but do it more as a kind of memo, knowing that you're going to go back to that tomorrow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, if you look at the system I talked about last week, knowing you are going to look at that tomorrow is much easier to kind of, okay, I'll dump it over here, back to this thing I planned. So that's another kind of approach when we know we're going to get distracted, we plan for us being imperfect, we then start to put structures in place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like, it's okay, my brain is going to come up with some random stuff that either I'd rather do, or that feels more important, or that I'm worried I'll forget, that's okay, I can plan for that. I can have a system for that because I know it's going to happen because I'm not perfect. I'm planning for imperfect implementation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love to hear from you what you think about this episode. How could it change things for you to plan for someone that you know is going to be imperfect? It kind of refers back to this whole notion of being your own best boss, right? If as a boss you give your employees a plan that only works if they're perfect, it's not a very good plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not a very motivating plan. Whereas when we remember, when we're being good bosses to ourselves, we're planning for the real and authentic version of ourselves. Not the version of ourselves that turns up at its very best, but the kind of normal day to day version of us. We're planning for that version. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're making it as easy as possible for them. We're trying to make it as clear for them as possible. We're trying to make it so they want to try and implement this plan because it looks achievable and great fun. And like, it will take them all the places they want to go. Then we get to create this kind of motivating work environment, even when we're working on our own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let me know what you think. Let me know what things have helped you to implement imperfectly but better than you ever imagined. I have certainly found that since I've accepted that I am never going to implement this perfectly, I get way more done than I did when I was making unrealistic plans. I get more done. I feel better about it. And I make the difficult decisions about what I'm not going to do. And to be honest, I always feel really good about them. So let me know what you think. I really hope you found this useful. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 25 Nov 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-12-why-perfect-plans-fail-embracing-imperfection-in-academic-planning thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-11-navigating-ai-during-your-phd-an-honest-conversation-with-dr-jessica-parker-of-moxielearn <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://moxielearn.ai/" target="_blank"> Moxie </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://moxielearn.ai/research" target="_blank"> Moxie's Research  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicaparker/" target="_blank"> Dr Jessica Parker’s LinkedIn Profile  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.oneusefulthing.org/" target="_blank"> Ethan Mollick's Substack "One Useful Thing"  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-See-Curiosity-Exploration-Discovery-ebook/dp/B0BPQSLVL6" target="_blank"> The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI  </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxFMMw1QZX0" target="_blank"> Dr Sarah Eaton – Six tenets of post plagiarism  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach. And this week I have another guest with me and I think this one is going to be super fun because it's quite controversial and interesting and very, very topical. So welcome. We have Jessica Parker here from the AI company. Moxie. Welcome, Jessica.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Thank you, Vikki. I'm excited to be here. You know, I listened to your podcast several months ago when you met with Alison Miller, who was the owner of The Dissertation Coach and now runs The Academic Writers' Space. She's a really close friend and colleague of mine, and I really enjoyed that episode, so I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Fantastic to have you. So we're going to be talking today guys about AI and AI's use in academia and the controversies and the misconceptions and essentially all the things that academics need to know, but before we get into that, maybe tell people a little bit more about you. Obviously you've got this connection with dissertation coach and the Moxie company as well, so tell people a bit more about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, so I will just put this out there as a disclaimer. I am not a computer scientist. I am not an AI expert. I think of myself as an advocate and a skeptic. So my goal is to really try to understand AI, in terms of its capabilities and limitations and helping guide my students and my clients on how to use it ethically and responsibly. Uh, but I started doing generative AI research about a year ago, and before that, I was a health care researcher. I worked in Boston for two large universities managing some large scale inter-professional health care grants. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I got pretty burnout on academia. My dad got sick and I came home to take care of him. And I thought, you know, what can I do to try to bridge this gap in my career? And I started a consulting company, Dissertation By Design. And that was in 2017 and originally it was just me working with all the clients and I primarily specialized in working with health care disciplines and really just giving them guidance on research design and data interpretation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then my team grew and that's how I ultimately met Allison Miller, the owner of The Dissertation Coach. And we really bonded so when she decided she wanted to retire from The Dissertation Coach and focus on The Academic Writers' Space, it just seemed like a natural fit for me to take over. So that happened in January of this year, and that was big. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I still manage both of those companies, but from an AI perspective, like most of the world, I started using chat GPT three, in like March, 2023. And I will never forget the moment I first started using it. I was just in shock. I could not believe how well it approximated like human like conversation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I had both awe and then just, I felt like I had an existential crisis. I immediately thought about like, well, what does this mean for research and my industry and learning and society and just all the things. And so I'm very curious. So I set about learning. I just immediately dove in to YouTube videos and LinkedIn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I started trying to find thought leaders and just teaching myself as much as I could to understand it. I also supervise doctoral students at a university in Boston still and so I wanted to think about how they might be using it and how to guide them. So one of the first things I did, uh, last summer was I started trying to create my own generative AI tools. And that's kind of what sparks this whole journey. Like I never set out to found a tech company. Um, I'm a very non technical person up until recently. And so I think this has been as much a surprise to me as anyone else who knows me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. I love that. So then I just decided to build one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: You know, naivete is a good thing. I think if you had told me then all the challenges I would run into, I might've thought twice, but here I am navigating it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One of my recent episodes, I was thinking about the 10 different qualities that I think we need to be good bosses to ourselves and ambitious was one of them. And I love that just getting immersed in something and seeing an opportunity and going for it, regardless of kind of what your original background was, building on the expertise that you've got now. I think that's amazing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, I think it can be like a curse and a superpower. It's like, I'm really good at focusing and solving problems. And then sometimes I can get like completely immersed in something and lose myself in it. And you know, so like my family checks in on me and they're like, we haven't heard from you. And it's usually because I've just discovered some new capability and I'm like building some new application or something like that. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, so tell us about what you've been building.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, so Moxie, we started out really focusing on using generative AI for formative feedback, and I wanted to solve a problem. I'm a very pragmatic person, but the first problem I wanted to solve was a problem I have with my doc students and my clients, and it's this need that they have where they want feedback on really long academic texts. You know, we think about 40 page lit reviews or 100 page research proposals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And typically they haven't planned ahead and they need it last minute. And so I'm limited in my time and resources. And I thought, you know, can generative AI provide some sort of formative feedback on aspects of their ideas or their writing? And it can. And that was the first research study I did with an applied linguist. We evaluated chat GPT's capabilities and limitations for automated writing evaluation and we looked at complexity, accuracy, [00:06:00] and fluency of the writing. And we came to a conclusion then, and it's evolved, but we've kind of stuck to it, which has been interesting given how much we've learned, which is that we already have these tools available before generative AI that are really good at looking at accuracy. So you think about rule based systems like Grammarly or the spell checker in Microsoft Word. So those are rule based systems that are good at looking at accuracy. Whereas generative AI, what we found, if you use it appropriately, so it's not going to immediately do this well, it can really help with complexity and fluency of the writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I believe, and what I've seen, and I know to be true, is when you give it enough context and you're using your critical thinking skills when you're engaging with an AI chatbot, you can increase depth and complexity in your writing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so that's really what we set out to do. And so the first suite of AI tools we created were tools I was using with my doc students. So I did a study alongside of them, a participatory research study to understand, like, their experiences with it, and it was wonderful. I made it clear that the generative AI was not grading them. It was not a summative assessment. It was just meant to help them get some preliminary feedback from something that I created using the same criteria I would be using to evaluate their work and try to close the gap on their own before submitting their work to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so they loved that. They felt like it gave them a bit more autonomy in the learning process and I noticed that it was reinforcing learning because it was using that criteria I provided it, that I was teaching the students. So Moxie is really mostly about formative feedback. So we don't create tools to write for the user. Like people don't come to Moxie or if they do, they quickly realize we're not for them to like generate their lit review or something like that. It's more like you have to bring something to the table. And then Moxie acts as like a collaborator or a thought partner with you to develop your work further. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And you said that the students liked that and they found it useful. Tell me a bit more about what they kind of got out of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, so, some of the things I heard early on, and I'm now on my 4th semester with this. So every time I'm sort of tweaking and experimenting, but what I started noticing in the discussion boards and the students weren't aware of it. I became aware of it. And then we did a focus group. So then they became more aware of it is, I noticed more, metacognition. So they were thinking more about their process and I had intentionally built the chatbot to do that to force them to think about the process, not the product and to recall concepts like these students, and this was an academic writing course. I was exposing them to new concepts, such as anthropomorphism or precision or coherence and writing. And these were concepts that they were not familiar with. And so getting that feedback, maybe 10 times from an AI tool before submitting it to me gave them ample opportunity to like, see those concepts reinforced. And then I would develop the tools to encourage reflection. And then I required reflection in their papers to understand how they used it. So I started seeing these signs of metacognition and cognition where they're recalling and using the concepts that they're learning in the discussion boards, and normally I would see that much later in the semester, so that was a good sign.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what the students liked about it is, it was available any time of day, never gets tired, uh, and they, and they're not afraid to ask them questions. So sometimes I don't know a student is struggling until I see their 1st assignment or until they reach out to me, but the students through interaction with the chat bot, and they don't have to admit what they don't know or come to me right away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because maybe, you know, there's that power dynamic. So they appreciated that they sort of had the opportunity to ask the dumb questions that maybe they're too afraid to ask me. That was something that they liked and, but the biggest thing that they appreciated was feeling like they could try to improve their work well before they submitted it to me. So it gave them like a bit more control over that process.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm. I love that. So one of the things I've noticed with AI, so I've only used the kind of the bog standard commercial free chat GPT, and I've used it for a few worky bits, and liked some bits of it, not others. We talked a little bit before we started recording that I've used it to develop some examples to use in a workshop, for example, but then I haven't liked it when I've, I've tried to do like summaries of summaries of my podcasts into short articles and things, and I didn't like the way that worked. But one of the things that I noticed is that I learned a lot about my own thinking by thinking about how to give it enough instructions to do something well, if you see what I mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because we all hopefully know by now that if you say in chat GPT, you know, write a paragraph on photosynthesis, it'll chug something out. But if you say, write a paragraph on photosynthesis that's at the level of a graduate student, including, I don't know what recent research there is on photosynthesis, bad example, but you know what I mean, you know, giving it more and more context and more and more instruction, the better quality output you get, and for me, I think a lot of the benefit is in actually learning what you're exactly asking for in the first place. And I wonder whether that's something you see with the writing and the feedback.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yes, you have to have an order to, so there's this age old computer science principle that I learned, which is garbage in garbage out. And that still holds true for generative AI. [00:12:00] So the more you give it, the more likely you're going to get what you're looking for out of it. And I was actually reading something recently that I think captures this really well. So. All the frontier models like ChatGPT by OpenAI, Clod by Anthropic, Gemini by Google, Llama by Meta. They're trained on everything in the internet. And the internet is a decontextualized and frictionless environment and these are general purpose tools. And so they're good at doing just a little bit of everything kind of okay. But when you give it all of that instruction, so like my prompts are sometimes a page long. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like I was just working on one of my prompts for synthesis and it requires me to have a lot of clarity about exactly what I want to evaluate. And so it's interesting through writing the prompts actually have improved my rubrics and my evaluation criteria, 'cause it's helped me see what's unclear. And that's one of the ways I use generative AI a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just as an educator. So this is just not even with Moxie, but I will take an assessment criteria or rubric or template, I'll feed it into say Claude, and I'll say What's unclear? Imagine you're a first year PhD student who has no knowledge of these concepts. Which of these instructions might be a bit vague? How do I need to elaborate? Should I give some examples and sentence starters? And so it just helps me really improve a lot of those instructions and templates and rubrics for my students.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also use it as a thought partner, and this is what I encourage my students and my clients to do. You know, we as humans have a lot of assumptions and biases. I mean, writing a positionality statement is a common assignment for a first year Ph. D. student because they're learning about positionality. Well, you can brainstorm and thought partner with a chat bot and have it like point out what some of your assumptions and your biases may be by having it role play. It doesn't mean that you take everything for truth and at face value. It gives so many more opportunities to do those things where maybe before you had to have a human available and not everyone has that human available to thought partner with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. My brain is now pinging in about 50 different directions, but I feel like for the purposes of me fully understanding and everyone else fully understanding. Can you just tell us a bit more about how it even works and therefore, you know, what it's good at and what it's less good at? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, no, that's a good question, especially cause I think with the news hype and the media, I feel like expectations are not aligned with reality. And so a lot of people do not understand. They just think it's magic. I think the easiest way to explain what a large language model does. So I'm not talking about an image generator. In particular, I'm talking about text content. It's like a mathematical model of communication. So we have artificial intelligence is like an umbrella term that encompasses machine learning, deep learning, which includes neural networks and large language models and generative AI are grouped together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ultimately, these models have been trained on vast amounts of data, so much data, it's hard numbers that you've never heard of, crazy amounts of data, everything on the intranet. Through learning and seeing all of that data and seeing how words are paired together, it creates a database and we call that a vector database. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so a word like apple could be the fruit or it could be the company. And the way it knows the difference is based on the words that are surrounding it. So when you ask a question to chat GPT, if you say, tell me about Apple's products, it's going to know that the word Apple by product means that it's a company. So it just puts words together in a vector database and it uses numbers. So it's just a mathematical model of communication. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what implications does that have? What people should be using it for in academia?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Well, the first is that it's not rule based. So up until now, we've all thought of technology in terms of software. Software is programmed and it's rule based, so it's predictable. We can identify where something went wrong. We just go find that code and we fixed it because it's not following the rule we gave it. Generative AI is not rule based. It produces something new and original, even if it's slightly different every time. So it's not pulling complete sentences from somewhere, so it's not paraphrasing or plagiarizing. It's generating something new each time. And it's not following rules, so it's less predictable. That's why you and I might ask ChatGPT or Claude the exact same question, and it might give us a slightly different response, which is why context is so important. I use the example of, if you were to go into ChatGPT and say, What color is the sky? Just leave it at that. likely to predict that the word is blue. It's just a prediction model. But if you give it context and say the color of the sky is blank, it's raining today. It's going to predict a different word, like grey. And so that's where the context is important, but it's still not predictable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like the more you add on, the more complex the task is. So that's why they call it a black box. It's really difficult to trace any issues or like, I was recently reading a study where they looked at, um, I think they use chat GPT. They use it to evaluate different essays by students who were white, black, Asian American, and it scored them all very differently and it was stricter in its grading for Asian Americans compared to black and white students. And you [00:18:00] can't go into the system and figure out like exactly why and how that happened. That's very different from a software. And so everything we know about the software paradigm, which we're all used to, does not apply with generative AI. And that's really hard, I think, for people to understand. That means it's not a hundred percent accurate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not a fact checker. So I. I hear a lot of people using it like they would Google where they go to Google and ask a question that you expect to link to a source and get a fact from. That's not what ChatGPT is made for. It might get it right, but it's not a fact checker. It's just predicting the next word. It doesn't have Truth. So I think that is important for people to understand. And I think that's really challenging to wrap your head around because it's so good. It's so confident in its responses. It uses a lot of, when you look at the language, boosters, which makes it sound even more confident. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for someone who's not an expert, it comes across as the truth. And unless you question it, even then it's still predicting the next word. It's not thinking about your response or your question if that makes sense. So people using it like Google for fact checking is, I don't like to say right or wrong, but that's not the best use of a large language model. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What's also challenging is what we're starting to see is this idea of summarizing. For instance, now you've probably noticed in Google, when you ask a question, it does use Gemini and it'll summarize and attempt to answer a question for you at the top, and it will link to its sources. But large language models are not the best at summarizing. Like, if you just tell a person to summarize, that person is going to choose what they're going to focus on in that summary. You think about summarizing a whole research article, I might really value the methods and put more emphasis on the methods. So unless you're telling it exactly what to focus on in that summary. And so what we start to see is this simplification bias, which is really problematic in research. And I've been cautioning people about that quite a bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> An example of simplification bias would be if you, especially these AI research assistants, if you ask it a question, like you put in your research question, it'll summarize maybe the top 10 papers and attempt to answer that question. If you really go through each of those sources, a lot of times it will get it wrong. And that's because it's not great at knowing what to focus on. It's not a human. It's not looking at that research through the same lens that you would. based on your experience and your perspective and maybe the theory that you're using. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I, I feel like people are going to get in trouble with this simplification bias and that's something that concerns me quite a bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And Yeah, and you see people on Twitter and things talking about tools that, you know, this will take the 50 articles you need to read and put it into tabulated form. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you don't, you know, they don't usually say the words, so you don't need to read the original, but it's kind of inferred sometimes that that's why this will save you so much time and That it is really concerning that it doesn't have that element of having gone through your brain and been filtered against the things that you think are important or the things you're focusing on this time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Well, I want to touch on that because I think you're hitting on something important and It bothers me that the marketing language that we're seeing is all about speed and efficiency. I don't know if Microsoft still uses this language, but when they released its 1st, like generative educational product, they use the phrase teaching speed, which is really interesting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To me, it seems obvious, but I do find myself having to say this, like, as a researcher, when you get, when you're an expert in something, or you're becoming an expert, you don't go get your Ph. D. for speed and efficiency. There's friction in learning, doesn't mean it has to be more painful than it needs to be, but I do worry about this focus on speed and efficiency because it does send the wrong message. I don't think that I'm conducting research any faster than I was, but that's wasn't my goal. And I think that surprises people when I talk about it, like the goal, the way I see it, isn't. To do your research faster to your lit review faster. I think you can do it. Maybe more a bit more efficiently manually, I used to build out literature matrices and word. So now I can speed that up. I can, you know, use it in a way I could just make that table, but I'm still having to read every article. So it's not saving time. It's just shifting my time. It's like, I'm just spending my time on different things. And I think if people can think about it that way, then that would be, I think, a healthier way to approach it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I see what you mean and I hear it all the time. And I think that's where sometimes expectations are not aligned with reality.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. But there's two different versions of reality as well, isn't there, in the sense that there's the reality of what it's actually good at and what it should, in inverted commas, be used for. But there is also the reality, and maybe this is worse in undergrads, one would hope, but I'm sure it filters through, there is also the reality of what people will actually just use it for. And sort of believing the truth of both of those I think is actually really challenging because we can say, you know, it's the same as we'd say to undergrads, you know, things a lot easier if you turn up to lectures and you talk to your tutors and da da da, and then they try and do it from the video recordings and blah blah. Um, we can say it [00:24:00] works a lot better and this is what it's intended for. But if it roughly does that, then there's going to be chunk of people for whom that's very attractive and that kind of tempt them over, even if they know it's not perfect, it's, it's done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: I mean, we're seeing that. I have mixed feelings on this. So on one hand, like I've been in rooms where there's conversations about how all the admissions essay now is our essays now are AI generated. One part of me, it's like, I want to give humans the benefit of the doubt and say that I think that's a sign of low AI literacy. I also believe that as long as the focus is on the grade and there's deadlines, there's always going to be cheating. What I think is great about this moment for educators. And I try to talk to faculty about shifting our focus from A. I detection because they're very unreliable to instead rethinking, which is a hard discussion because it requires a lot of effort and work rethinking, like, how are we evaluating learning? And personally, you know, for me, it's been a big shift to process over product has helped me address some of these issues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I would not want to be an English comp professor at a university. Like, that's a whole other thing to tackle that I think is really challenging, but I do like to remind folks that, writing technologies have been around for a long time. There's been concerns like with the printing press and with the development of phones and text that we would lose our ability to write. And we've navigated that before. And I think we will again. We're just still very early in the process, and there's a lot of education that needs to happen in terms of just AI literacy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I think one of the things that it, one of the positives is I think it is going to teach, it's going to force us to teach things that were perhaps kind of expected to just implicitly pick up. Because when I think about novice academics, I'm thinking about sort of, you know, the end of undergraduate, beginning of postgraduate, that sort of level where they're doing, you know, they're doing their lit reviews and things, but they're still at the kind of beginnings of knowing how. When they're doing that in a beginnery way, it's not that different than what AI does, in my opinion. You know, they're reading stuff, and they're kind of trying to say what they say in slightly different words, and like, summarize what was in that more or less accurately and combine it up with summaries of other articles and try and smush that into something vaguely coherent. You know, this is with all respect. We've all been through that stage. And I think we've sort of, I don't know, maybe we've been lazy with just how things have been taught, but getting people to understand the difference between that and filtering literature through the particular lens that you're trying to look at it through and bringing your perspectives and comparing things that aren't usually brought together and whatever, and all those interesting things you can do to produce a good piece of work are the bits that, AI at the moment, at least, are less good at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But in order for students to see, or academics to see, what it can't do, they have to understand that actually the way they're doing it, isn't the kind of advanced version either. Does that, does that make any sense? Because I think like with reading too, you know, I spend my life trying to share with people that if when you read an article, you start at the beginning and you read to the end and your goal is to read it. You've missed a trick here, you know, you need to be going into it with why am I reading this? What is the purpose? Am I looking at the methods? Am I trying to understand the take home message of it? Am I trying to see what argument they're making? Which bits of it are going to give me that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yeah, you'll read the whole thing at some point, but I'm a big fan of getting people to jump around in an article, reading all those things. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether you think there's a role in when we're understanding the limitations of what AI does in better understanding the limitations of what we as humans do in, in the sort of beginnings of our academic careers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And you're on to something. For example, I think back to when I was the first research study I ever did was as a graduate student. It was my senior year and it was like abstracts. I was reading abstracts because it was like so overwhelming. I started with too broad of a search. Like, how am I supposed to get through all these articles? I wasn't searching appropriately. And then it was just like reading abstracts. And that's what I see now when I look at simplification bias with AI systems is a lot of the information it's pulling is from the abstract of the article, which is what we know that a lot of students do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And so I, I see the point that you're making and this is where I have a hard time answering because my answer kind of depends on the context with the student. So some of it is like the level of expertise. I'm going to go back to a discussion about writing and try to, like, connect my ideas. I do this webinar that students really like, and I talk about a top down versus a bottom up approach to writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: And experts typically have this, like, top down approach because we already know the field. We come to the table with a thesis, an idea, an argument, and we go find what we need to build that argument. And therefore, our voice tends to come through more in our writing. Whereas a student who doesn't yet know the field, they kind of have to [00:30:00] go from the bottom up and look at all this evidence and then the pressure to like figure out what is the gap and what is the question and they don't have their voice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then there's levels like, you don't just go from like novice to experts. Like we think of Bloom's taxonomy and you gradually improve your expertise over time. When I think about a first year PhD student, first semester coming in, like, I don't know that I want them using AI for any of these things, but if I have my student who's gone through their coursework, they've demonstrated their ability to synthesize literature, critique literature, choose an appropriate research design, then I think that's a really good point to introduce them to these tools. Now, does it mean that the 1st year 1st semester PhD student isn't using? I feel like those are things that we just to some extent we can't control other than just trying to educate them and helping them understand how that might be hampering their ability and their skills later on. If they're using AI shortcuts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think a really interesting conversation that I'm starting to hear that I don't have any answers for. I mostly just have questions at this point. Which is around, like, what are the skills that are going to be needed? Because Anthropic's Claude, they just released a video, if you haven't seen it, it's called Computer Use Capability. It's a full AI agent system that can run on your computer where you give it a goal. You could tell it to conduct an entire lit review for you, and it'll go find all of the literature, it'll execute all the tasks by going online, locating it, storing it where you want it stored, Putting the information in Excel spreadsheet, so it is able to work across software platforms on your device, and it can execute all of these tasks in a row. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's already here. So we have agents already and then how advanced are those going to be? And the questions I'm starting to hear and with faculty and higher at, or some of them are big questions about, like, how are we going to keep up with the workforce and stay relevant to make sure that we're producing students who have skills that are valued by the workforce when this technology is evolving so quickly, what does research even look like in 5 years? If A. I. Is able to really accurately conduct a thorough lit review and come to the same conclusions as humans what is the role of the researcher then? Are we going to have fewer experts? Will it free up our time for more creative problem solving? Will writing even be the medium for expressing these ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I mean, notebook LM already has the ability to turn an article into a conversational podcast. So those are such interesting questions that I do not know the answer to, that I feel like everyone is just speculating on. And I think anyone who claims to have all the answers is not being honest because the reality is, is even the top AI experts who are building these models still have a lot of these questions and we don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. So with the formative feedback, because I think that's fascinating. How do you balance up the added kind of benefits that brings. And I don't think anyone listening will underestimate how useful that is. One of the biggest issues I deal with with my clients is their frustrations over not getting feedback. And when I coach academics, their frustrations with the requirements to be giving feedback for everything and one of the things that I coach on quite a bit is how can, particularly when I'm working with students, how can students generate their own ability to evaluate things and their own ability to reassure themselves without seeking approval from their supervisor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I'm never discouraging them from getting feedback. Obviously, feedback's the fastest way to learn, and we'll talk about that more in a minute. I do see this sort of dependence on if my supervisor tells me it's good, I'll believe it, rather than being able to, like, reassure themselves or to troubleshoot their own work in a meaningful way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'd be interested to hear your perspective on whether the AI stuff helps them to develop that skill to do it themselves, or whether it just makes them dependent on a bot to reassure them instead of a tutor to reassure them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, that's a good question that I get a lot. And I think we're still figuring out the implications of over reliance, using it as a crutch. This is where I think AI literacy becomes so important. Part of AI literacy is functional, just understanding capabilities and limitations. Critical AI literacy requires the user, in this case a student, to not just take all of the feedback. Sometimes it gets it wrong. It's maybe 95% on point. Sometimes [00:36:00] it leaves things out, it focuses on the wrong things. Again, it's not a rule based system. The way I train my students to use it. And when I talk to educators about having their students use AI for formative feedback, I talk about teaching the students right away to not believe it all to be true. So they have to critically think about what that feedback is. So it's not the same as getting feedback from me where they take it all to be a hundred percent truth. Like they know exactly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, not if I coach them, they don't. I teach them to read supervisor comments critically as well!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, my doc students is more what I'm referring to, like they really value. So that's like an interesting question that I was wondering in the beginning is like, are they even going to value this feedback because it's not me? And I found that because I had designed the tools and they know that I added the criteria that I was using, they trusted it more than just, trying to go to chat gpt and say, give me feedback based on this rubric. But that's more of a trust issue. Not so much how they're using it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> With critical literacy. It involves. Not just uploading your paper, getting the feedback, and then walking away with that initial feedback and trying to implement it. The real value, and I just published an article I could share with you to link, with my students, is meaning negotiation. So meeting negotiation happens with second language learners, and I have had this theory about academic writing is that it's a non native language for everyone, and so there's elements of second language learning that we can see in those who are learning academic writing for the first time. And that's something that we noticed when we studied my students chat conversations, because they shared them with us, that the students who are getting the most benefit out of it, follow up. There's lots of turn taking, asking for clarification. Can you pull another excerpt for me? Can you explain that for me? Can you create an analogy to help me understand that a bit more. Just like you would if you were learning a language where you're asking lots of follow up questions and for explanations? Having that meaning negotiation with the AI is a part of critical AI literacy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't think all students are going to do that, but I think that's part of our job of teaching them how to use it responsibly, is helping them understand what it means to like, have a conversation and negotiate with it, not just take it all to be true and then do it. You also have to use your brain, I mean, that's why I think there's this expectation because of the media and how it's reporting on AI that it's some quick fix and that it's going to require less effort, but. I mean, we're dealing with PhD students, and these are really complex problems that are being solved. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so there's no shortcut around using those critical thinking skills. And so if a student is going into it thinking, I'm going to write this paper faster, you know, I say, it's actually probably going to take you longer because I'm going to make you reflect on how you use this tool. But hopefully you're learning more and you have a higher quality product at the end where you thought through all of the ethical considerations that maybe you would have missed in that first draft or, um, done a more thorough critical appraisal of the evidence than maybe you would have done in that first draft for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Have you seen any differences in the emotional responses to feedback from the, um, bot rather than from people? Because one of the things. I see a lot is clients who procrastinate submitting something to their supervisor because they're worried their supervisor is going to tell them it's rubbish and all those things. Is it just as bad? Do your students worry about the bot criticizing them or do they care less because it's not you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, that was one of our findings was that they, and this is a small sample, but we have seen validation of these findings and the literature elsewhere. But that was one of our findings is that the students described, they didn't realize they were describing it, but that was part of my role as the researcher is teasing that out, is bypassing that, like, affective state where you can shut down because the feedback is personal. On the other flip side of that. Sometimes the AI would validate their ideas and so that would stop them from ruminating and second guessing. Like if enough times they've gotten the feedback that this is coherent, they've achieved paragraph unity or whatever it may be, then they stop ruminating on it and their confidence increases and they move on. Yeah, my students viewed it, and we hear this all the time, is like, it's this neutral, Thing machine that's giving me something valuable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not all 100 percent true, but it's there's something I can take away from this to improve my work. And sometimes it's validating your ideas. And sometimes it's giving critical feedback, but you don't have that emotional shutdown that you have when you get it from your advisor because you feel embarrassed or ashamed that you produced work that got that type of criticism.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I want to take you back to something you said earlier about the biases that there can be in anything that's based on stuff from the internet, right? How do you, how do you manage that in the context of giving formative feedback,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, we as humans have a lot of biases, so of course, these models are also going to have biases. Um, but yeah, when you're not aware of them, there's a lot of dangers there. There is. There's more like medium and small language models that are coming out for specific use cases to try to address some of these issues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  It's complicated, but I'm encouraged by the growing field of research. That's. happening to try to understand the biases and teach others how to mitigate them. But the first step is understanding that the biases are present and reflecting on your own biases and how that might be reflected in the output. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Cause I mean, it's not like, you know, when a human does feedback on a work, that it's not biased by many of the same things. We may tell ourselves we're trying not to be and everything. So it's not like [00:42:00] there's a kind of gold standard. I think sometimes when people are talking about all of this, there's this sort of inferred gold standard of human marking where it's, you know, it's accurate and replicable and all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Which we all know isn't true, but I think sometimes when it's, maybe it is the lack of AI literacy, but when it's coming from a machine, you almost, if you don't know these things, you can sort of assume that it's being more objective than it is being.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: For sure. And I think that like what you just asked is that I see a lot of different sort of debates taking place and I sort of sit in the middle where, no, I do not believe we should be using AI for summative assessment and grading students and having that final say on a student's grade. And some people will use that argument to say we shouldn't be using it at all. And then I come back and say, well, as humans, like, are you sitting down and grading the student and thinking about cultural differences in writing styles, or are you just grading according to the rubric? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's not a binary response. It really depends on the learning outcomes, the level of the learner. I mean, I think what's amazing is we're starting to see AI products come out that help neurodivergent learners with dyslexia, ADHD, and so there's so much potential there and it's not like a, should we do it or should we not? It's more of like a how, how, and first we have to understand the capabilities and limitations before we make that decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I think I've mentioned on one of these before, but there's several tools now for people with ADHD where it'll break tasks down into its constituent parts and things. And, that's a model of it that I think can be really, really useful because it's not actually doing any of the work, but it's helping you to take what feels like an insurmountable task and break it down into chunks, which I know is something that even people who are neurotypical can, can find really challenging too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think, I think that's one of my take homes with AI, is I actually think that the skills we'll need to develop to use AI well are skills that would make us better academics if we never used AI. So, when hearing you talk about feedback, one of the things my clients and I often discuss and I do this inside, I do supervisor training as well as coaching people, and I think this is done badly on both sides, is that students say, can you give me feedback on this 40 page lit review, and the supervisor tries to give feedback, whatever feedback is, on a 40 page lit review. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I get so many students who tell me that their supervisors will only read a polished final draft. They won't read anything before that and things, which I think is ludicrous. Sorry, supervisors, but it is. Um, and well, when I say, what feedback are you looking for? They're saying, I want them to tell me whether it's good enough or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And. we often talk about all the different levels of feedback you can ask for in terms of, you know, am I making a argument that broadly sounds like it makes sense with some evidence to back it up? Um, does it feel like it's in the right sort of order so that it follows one from the next and all these sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so the stuff that you've had to put into designing and that your students are now having to use in order to ask it the right questions, feel like things that would be really useful for students to ask their supervisors that specifically and for supervisors to be as focused because presumably when you ask Moxie, do the paragraphs flow coherently from one to the next, it doesn't start correcting typos and things the way that a supervisor often gets distracted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Every student is different. So I don't want to generalize, but I did find that instead of those vague requests, give me feedback or can you pregrade this? Can you just take a look at this really quick before I submit it, you know, in six hours for grading. A lot of times they were coming to me and they actually already had an idea of what they were struggling with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I kind of expected that, but I wasn't sure. Um, and, and so when you're using, and this isn't just Moxie, like if you were to create your own tool using a rubric and you were to consistently have that criteria, you start to notice patterns like I consistently struggle with passive voice in my writing. My hope is that if students are starting to see that feedback again and again from the AI, it'll help them ask more targeted questions to their supervisor, versus just this generic, but I understand what you're saying. I do that all the time too. I don't consult with individual clients anymore, but that was one of my approaches is I'd say, you know, you can't just ask me to read this whole thing. I need you to tell me what were you struggling with? What's top of mind for you? and I do think AI can come in handy that way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm going to also take you back. So you started to talk about it, but I think it'd be useful to go in more depth in terms of when it's useful for people to start using AI, because one of the times where I've tried to use AI and found it quite limited is where I really wanted it to sound like me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I have my podcast transcripts. Everyone listening, there will be one of this. I have all my podcast transcripts and I'd love to turn them into. Short articles. And I started doing it myself, but I'm coming up to my hundredth episode and a podcast ends up being about 8, 000 words. So it's, it's a substantial body of work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I messed around with quite a few different versions of AI. And I even try, you know, you see these guidelines online where you're like, here's five [00:48:00] pieces of my writing. Try and edit this one into a short thing in the same style as that. And maybe I'm not giving good prompts, or maybe I'm not finding the right AI models, but In my experience, it made me sound very, I call it kind of generic internet y. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Very sort of, this is a game changing fact, kind of thing. Um, and so I've sort of, at the moment, at least divided my life into things that I can ask AI to do. You know, I've got these four things in my fridge. Are there any recipes that build from that or whatever? Happy days. Fine. I can do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Versus things that at the moment I won't, and writing my emails, writing my podcasts, writing anything that I want to sound like my voice, I won't. And one of the things that made me reflect on is that that entirely depends on the fact that at the moment I am capable of writing in a voice that feels like my voice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's true, whether I'm doing this more kind of chatty stuff or, you know, I've got tons of academic publications and stuff in my academic life, I know what I sound like too. Um, and I just wondered what that's like for people who are at the beginnings of their career and whether, will this stop them learning what their voice is if they've only ever had a AI voice, if you see what I mean.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, I've heard there's this debate going about, it's like, am I starting to sound more like the AI or is it starting to sound more like me, like, which is it, uh, from a, from the perspective of, let's talk about low stakes tasks. So, and in your example, you know, you're summarizing transcripts, one of my most common low stakes tasks is maybe I'm creating notes for a LinkedIn post where I'm bringing together, you know, a lot of different ideas and I'll make like a long bulleted list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's low stakes. There's a lot more editing involved. So I find that instead of spending all that time on the writing, I'm now doing the editing. So I don't expect it to produce something that I'm just going to copy and paste into the YouTube description or my LinkedIn posts. So for those low stakes tasks, it's like shifting my time from where I was doing a lot of the writing to now I'm doing a lot of the just quick and dirty drafting. And then a lot of my time is spent editing. So I let the AI put together all of that, like connective tissue. And sometimes I edit a lot of it out. Um, then I think about high stakes tasks in terms of what are the boundaries of when we should use it and when we can't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm just going to use some examples because I, I don't have any sort of rules of thumb, if you will, other than if you don't know how to do it yourself, like analyze data using a statistical test, then please don't use AI for it. Cause you have no way of evaluating whether it's accurate or not. So that's kind of a rule of thumb I have, especially if it's high stakes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But from the perspective of you have a novice, let's say researcher who maybe doesn't have their voice. I think about different scenarios. So fear of the blank page. Now you can just put in your ideas into AI and, and, and brainstorm with it. You know, I think about lit review outlines. Um, what are potential outlines of this is the argument I have- problem, cause solution, you know, thematic, whatever it may be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you can sort of take those suggestions and instead of starting on a blank page, you have some headings to start with. Like, I don't think that that is problematic or cheating. It requires you to have some clarity about your problem, going into it, to ask the right questions, to get what you want out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it is problematic to rely on it to like identify literature gaps for you or choose your research design or develop your IRB application and then you don't have to think about informed consent. Like, these are really important decisions that we make in the research process. And if we want to protect the integrity of research, I think the human has to be steering, we have to be in control and the AI is just sometimes our copilot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When it's appropriate, but I tend to, to just tell my students, like, do not use it if you don't know how to do it yourself. if you have no clue how to select a research design, please do not ask chat GBT to select a research design for you. On the other hand, if you've selected your, you feel confident you've selected it, but maybe you don't know if you've justified it well, and you know how to ask that question, I think that's perfectly appropriate because you've still made those decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those are still your ideas. Now, that is very different than saying, here's my entire lit review, edit it for grammar, spelling, punctuation. Because what's likely going to happen is, well, it's unpredictable, but usually what happens when you ask that is you don't get just your lit review edited for grammar. There's going to be changes, there's going to be shifts in language that you might not notice unless you're reading every word. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hmm. Yeah, and I think it's really, you know, you were talking about affect before, I think just remembering the role of emotions in all of this is super important because I think for us at the kind of career stage we're at, what you just said makes absolute total sense. There's things I know how to do, it's fine, I can tell whether it's done it well or not, I can tweak it, da da da. Other things, more of a copilot, totally get that. My concern, I guess, is that all of that makes absolute sense, but when a student is panicking and doesn't think they know how to do any of it, and it has to be done because there's deadlines coming and all of those things, I worry that it becomes self reinforcing, right, that because they ask too much of AI, but they [00:54:00] kind of get through, right, they're not going to get amazing anything, but it's, it's all right, it gets done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They go to the next milestone in their PhD or whatever, but now they're even more sure they can't do it for themselves. Um, And I'm just, I just think it's going to be really important, and it sounds like you are doing this, it sounds, I think it's going to be really important to remember the, and I say this with due respect to the students because it's true of all of us, the kind of lack of rationality sometimes in the choices that we make when we're feeling pressured or when we're feeling unconfident in our own abilities to analyze these things. It's not just a kind of really cognitive cost benefit analysis that people are making decisions from with these things. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah. Ethan Mullock calls it like the temptation of the button. And I think it's so true. If you haven't read it, whoever's listening, he, Ethan Mullock is a professor at Wharton Business School here in the U S and he's like a thought leader on generative AI and innovation and higher ed. And he has a sub stack that I love. Comes out every week. I read it. One of his subsects that resonated most with me was called the, like setting time on fire with the temptation of the button. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, are we going to have a crisis of meaning? And right in the beginning has a screenshot of Google docs They were in beta at the time where there was a little button that just said, like, help me, right? And I was like, what are we going to value now? Are we even going to value writing anymore? And that's when I felt like I was having an existential crisis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Cause I'm like, I don't know. I mean, it is tempting to push the button if you haven't done any work and it's due at midnight. And it's either that or an automatic zero. We're already seeing it. We're already seeing evidence of that. And I don't know that there is a way to prevent it because AI detectors don't work. They're not reliable at all. If you haven't used one, just try putting in some of the work that you wrote well before AI existed and you'll see that they're not reliable. So AI detectors are not the way. I think it's going to cause a real shift in how we think about how we're evaluating learning and it's not going to happen overnight and it's going to be really rocky. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's going to be implications that we can't wrap our head around. Just like we had no idea what the implications of like social media would be on, you know, mental health and isolation. I think there's a lot of implications. We don't, we have no idea. I think what's scary is that it's out there. Students are using it. More students are using it than faculty are using it. And then how do we navigate that? And I don't have the answer. I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, I still have deadlines. I still expect my students to write their own work. I still know that they're going to be tempted to press the button because it's there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's very tempting. Um, but again, and maybe this is like, overly optimistic or naive, but I do feel that as we learn more about this technology, then it'll become a lot more clear how to manage those concerns. I mean, I do believe knowledge is power. I mean, that was why I said about learning about AI is I felt honestly, my first thought was I felt very threatened by it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, am I going to have a company? Are my doc students are, are they even going to be writing dissertations in 5 years? what does this even mean for my entire professional life? And I've come a long way since then. Um, but I think there's a lot of faculty and a lot of folks who feel very threatened and it's leading to just a shutting down mentality sort of ostrich head in the sand. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, um, and we know that that is not going to work. But I think just to kind of try to answer your question, we need to talk to students. Like, I think a student's voice is really important in all of this, um, and helping us understand how to address these concerns that we're having.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. One thing it made me think of, and this is, you mentioned interdisciplinarity before, and I come from a, very interdisciplinary background. So I love pinging off into different disciplines. Um, one thing it made me think of a lot is all the research around, um, illegal drugs in sports. So I was a sports scientist in my, my academic background and, um, there were Couple of people there, um, Professor Maria Kavussanu, Professor Ian Boardley at my old university, who do a lot of research around the decision making process that athletes go through at the point where they decide whether they are or aren't going to take illegal drugs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So these performance enhancing drugs we're talking about here. And there's some really, really interesting stuff around the sort of moral disengagement that's involved in believing that other people do it, too, believing that your reasons for doing it are sufficient to justify the breaking of the rules. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I know AI isn't always breaking the rules, so I'm not, like, doing direct comparisons, but I think there's some really interesting stuff there around how people go from being sure that they wouldn't do these things to kind of maybe sometimes to now actually being regular users and relying on it for performance enhancement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm sure I'm less familiar with the kind of criminology literature and stuff, but I'm sure there'll be parallel literature around how people make and justify those sorts of decisions. And. I wonder whether it would be interesting to look at parallels between, because we make decisions around where boundaries sit as to what's acceptable and what's not, and in what circumstances, because what they're doing with the performance enhancing drugs work is seeing [01:00:00] if they can identify young athletes that they need to intervene with earlier, try and figure out which are the ones that are heading that way early enough that you can intervene and sort of, scoop them up and bring them back to safety sort of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, I mean, I would imagine I went down this rabbit hole a while ago. It's not fresh in my head, but I did start looking at the literature on plagiarism. Dr Sarah Eaton is a scholar in Calgary in Canada. She's done a lot of work on academic integrity and plagiarism, and she has this post plagiarism framework that I find to be really fascinating, and she asserts that, at some point soon human AI hybrid writing will be the norm and that our standard rules of plagiarism will no longer apply and that just got me interested in plagiarism. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I went down this rabbit hole into trying to understand plagiarism and some of the things that I learned were around. I mentioned earlier around cultural differences, so there's like inadvertent plagiarism. There's mosaic plagiarism, and then cheating overall, a lot of it does come down to circumstance. It's very situational. And then, yes, you like get away with it and then you sort of push the limits the next time, but ultimately it comes down to our incentives and our rewards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like if the focus is on meeting the deadline and getting the good grade, and that's what we're rewarding, then that is more likely to create that situation where you're tempted to cheat or plagiarize. And so it causes you to question the systems that are in place that are reinforcing this behavior. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that makes me just think about like institutions and ethical guidelines. So what does our community, our academic community accept or reject? And I don't think we know right now. Like we've saw, I think the NSF or maybe it was the NIH originally said absolutely no generative AI can be used to develop a grant proposal, and then they shifted it to acknowledgement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would imagine that given some time, we'll have more institutional guidance on what the standards are, the ethical standards for the academic community. Um, but I think you're right. I think there are parallels, but in some ways, like, I feel that higher education is due for a closer look at how we are incentivizing students to get the grade or actually learn. I mean, in the US our standard grades are abysmal. Like reading comprehension is at the lowest ever. And um, so in that way I think it's good. It's forcing us to really rethink some of these systems that are in place.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Raising some really important, big issues. . Thank you so much. This has ended up being a monster sized episode, and I love it, and I could have carried on talking to you for so much longer. But thank you so much. You've mentioned a couple of things already that I will link in the show notes, so listeners, look out for those. but if people want to know more specifically about you and Moxie, where can they look? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: Yeah, so Moxie, our website is moxielearn. ai. I'm on LinkedIn as Jessica L. Parker. I do most of my thought leadership on LinkedIn, but we publish our research on Moxie's website. And I also have a ResearchGate profile for Moxie in our lab, because we are actively studying generative AI in research contexts, so. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And spell Moxie for people?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jessica: M O X I E.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Moxie. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming. It's going to be so much food for thought. People listening, let me know your thoughts. You can reply to my newsletter. If you're not signed up for my newsletter, make sure you are. You can just go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com, or you can find me on Instagram at the PHD Life Coach. Tell me what you're thinking. Are you using AI? What scares you? What do you want to know more? And who knows? We might talk about it in a future episode. Thank you so much for coming, Jessica. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.  </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 18 Nov 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-11-navigating-ai-during-your-phd-an-honest-conversation-with-dr-jessica-parker-of-moxielearn thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-10-how-to-go-from-idea-overload-to-clarity <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-7-how-to-plan-your-week-with-ex-client-and-phd-student-marie" target="_blank"> How to plan your week (with special guest and ex-client Marie)   </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking" target="_blank"> How to use role-based time blocking </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-34-how-to-manage-your-tasks" target="_blank"> How to manage your tasks </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/" target="_blank"> Second Brain by Tiago Forte </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://zettelkasten.de/overview/" target="_blank"> Zettelkasten Method </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://obsidian.md/" target="_blank"> Obsidian </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This week I'm going to share with you something that is so hot off the press. I can't even guarantee that it works long term, that I'm going to keep doing this for ages, but I'm so excited about it and it's potential that I'm going to share it with you guys today. The other bonus of me doing that is you can tell me whether you do anything like this and whether there are things that I should know about that will make it even better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, with that mysterious start, I want to tell you the problem that I'm trying to solve. I have a brain, as many of you know, that comes up with far too many ideas. Tries to think everything through, usually inside my head, and kind of seeing all the connections between the different things, but I can't decide that until I've decided this, and what if I did that, and da da da. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, I am blessed with a memory that works very well for exams, but very badly for keeping track of these multitude of ideas and thoughts, and kind of ponderings. And I've always told myself and other people have told me that I should journal, that it would be good for me to journal, that I would slow down and record my ideas and think them through and all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, the whole self coaching model that I use in my coaching, in my membership program starts with a thought download where you write about what you're thinking. Yet, I have always struggled to build this into anything close to, not even a routine, but anything close to even vague consistency. Like, every few months I'll think, oh yeah, I should probably journal, that'd be nice, do it for a little bit, and then don't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm past the beating myself up for that, but it has always made me wonder why that is. And whilst I do buy into the idea that it's the people that struggle with journaling or with meditation who need it the most, I also feel like there's only so many things in my life at a time that I can consciously really try and work on when they don't feel very natural to me and journaling has never come to the top of that list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I do have some hilarious teenage diaries. Maybe one day I will tell you about some of the junk I wrote when I was 16. I know my sister listens to this, one of them, and she's read quite a few of these diaries and will concur. They're hilarious. But anyway, enough of that. So, I've always struggled with journaling and that sort of thing, and I also have a habit still where when my mind is racing, I put on some form of content to calm it down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now for some of you, especially if you are neurotypical, you don't have problems with racing thoughts particularly, you aren't anxious sometimes, any of those things, that might sound really weird to you. Why, if you've got too much going on in your head, would you put on more stuff to listen to? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I find, generally, that when I've got too many thoughts going around in my head and they're not particularly, you know, I don't suffer with anxiety. They're not particularly, like, intrusive thoughts. It's just like, oh, what about this? And I remember that. Like, whizzing rather than anxious thoughts. Um, I find if I put on a podcast or a TV show or something, then it gives my brain one thing to think about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's fine. I don't mind that in small doses, but I have realized for quite a while now that I'm probably plowing too many things into my head. And especially when I think listening to podcasts that are telling me the sort of exercise I should be doing and the sorts of things I should be doing in my business and the sorts of things I should be doing in my coaching and all of these things. It becomes, I am still, even if it quietens my brain down in the moment, I am still just filing stuff on top of stuff. And so I was thinking about all of this, and I was thinking what would be useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I was thinking, I even got myself a little notebook out. I didn't buy a new notebook. Good, Vikki. I got a notebook I already had. And I did one day where I was writing down what's in my thoughts. And even having done that, I was like, I'm not going to stick to this. I know I'm not. Because for me the moments where I most need to do this are the moments where I am least likely to have my notebook with me, the right notebook with me, and where I'm least likely to want to slow my brain down to write it out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I was thinking, well, what would be better? And two things kind of conspired to put an idea in my head. The first is that I just recorded a podcast with a woman called Dr. Jessica Parker, who runs an AI company. And her company is about feedback on writing. The podcast is going to come out the week after this, um, so do keep an eye out for that. It's a bumper episode. It's like an hour and a bit's chat. Um, she's brilliant, really, really interesting. I'm a bit of a skeptic about a lot of uses of AI, so we had really, really good discussion. She's really sensible and interesting. Anyway, so I'd had that stuff in my head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was also very aware that for various other reasons I'd started paying a subscription to Otter. ai because I thought it might be useful in transcribing some of my coaching sessions and I hadn't really implemented it. A few of my clients hadn't been interested and then I just kind of hadn't carried it on. And I had also in the back of my mind that I should probably cancel my subscription. It's not loads of money, but I should probably cancel my subscription if I'm not going to use it. And both of those [00:06:00] things bumped into my mind while I was thinking about this problem of trying to capture my thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I realized that when I very first purchased Otter. ai, they had this Do you call it a widget where you get like a big icon on your iPhone? I don't know. I think it's a widget, that kind of thing. Anyway, like a big icon that's like the size of four of the usual ones that puts you straight into its record and transcribe function. So you can just press that, do a little voice note, stop, and it will transcribe Otter. ai system. I thought to myself, I wonder, now that would be a really interesting way of just wittering away whatever is on my mind. into something where I can then look at it later. Because that's my other problem with journaling, is that I never had a system for going back and looking at it, for collating it into something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am a good typist, but I didn't like typing journals. It didn't feel proper somehow, even though I don't actually believe that. And I didn't like the idea of just emptying my brain never to see it again. Then at the same time, you guys are getting like a proper insight into the ridiculous loops my brain goes through, but this is good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're seeing my thoughts in action. Um, then I was also thinking about my morning routines and I'm in a perpetual search for morning routines that feel authentic and easy, but also move me towards my goals. And I quite enjoy, I don't get stressed about it, but I quite enjoy sort of experimenting with different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And just by chance, the day after I had been wittering some stuff into Otter. ai, I was making lots of decisions, by the way, about next year. So thinking about what's going to happen in my membership, some exciting, I'm going to say the word festival type things. I'm going to say online festival "situs". </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, I'm starting planning for all of that stuff. And so I was on my phone. I was like, wittering into my Otter AI like, this is so good. I can really kind of talk things through, just chuck it all out there. It was great. And then a couple more times that day, I suddenly had an idea or something that I wanted to remember to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I whipped out my phone, voice note, witter, witter, witter. Happy days. The next morning, I thought, you know what would be amazing? Would be actually just to start my day, instead of filling my head with social media, which unfortunately is how I usually start my days, I could start my day by reading through yesterday's thoughts and trying to consolidate them into something that looks a little bit more summarized. That looks a little bit more kind of processed, not necessarily decided on, but where you sort of spot themes, clarify ideas. If there was anything that was a don't forget, I could shift over to my to do list, that sort of thing. And I did it. And it was amazing. And then, I was wittering away the next day, into my Otter AI, happy days, all good. And then the next day, when I was processing those thoughts, I processed them into the summary document from the day before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it was like, Oh, this is so good. Cause I could already see how I was starting to reconcile some of the things that I'd wittered about the day before and other places where I'd added things that now came together and made more sense and places where I still needed to make decisions. And so I kind of created like themed categories of the things I was talking about and just shuffling it out like that was just an amazing way to start my day. I just loved it. I was so energized by it. It was like, this is something I'll actually at the moment, at least, look forward to doing it. Who knows? Maybe the novelty will wear off and I won't want to anymore. But the good thing is, if you miss a day, they're all still there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just going to take a little bit more processing. So, what types of things did I witter about? I wittered about ideas. Um, so, ooh, we could do this, type things. I wittered about stuff I wasn't yet clear on. So, I was making some decisions about what I might focus on in which parts of the year next year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Really important process, by the way. Sometimes it was things I just wanted to remember. Sometimes it was where I'd noticed a connection between things that I hadn't thought about before, or I'd remembered something that I thought about a while ago, but that I hadn't recorded anywhere. So it was those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also want it, and I haven't used it for this so far, but I also want it to be where I can say, like, my thoughts and feelings. Where I can say, I'm feeling really stressed about this, where I'm worrying about that, and I'm scared that people will think this and that kind of more. [00:12:00] Like, emotion dumping. I want to put that stuff in there too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And my goal at the moment, and from what I'm about to say, you are going to see quite how new in this process we are, what I want to do is then on a Monday morning look at my summarised notes from last week and kind of consolidate it into something that leads me into my action plan for the next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So some of it will be, yeah, that's an idea. Put that on the future idea pile, but sort of work it through into something that then informs the weekly meeting that I already have with myself. Now, if you haven't listened to that episode, I have an episode where we talk about having a meeting with yourself on a Monday. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was in collaboration with one of my old clients, Marie, and she talks about the way she does it, I talk about the way I do it. And even though I've modified it a little bit since then, how I do it, I think you'll find it really, really useful. So do make sure you go back and check that one out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to build these documents into that Monday morning. And even just in this short amount of time that I've been doing this, I've already found that sometimes I look at a note and I'm like, I don't even remember saying that, so yes, excellent, I'm so glad I recorded that. And then in time, as these build up, many of you will know I have a monthly review process and a quarterly review process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I feel ridiculously smug telling you that because I've always wanted to have a process like that. And I've never, ever, ever stuck to it in my past. But I now have a process that I love, that I actively look forward to. And I actually teach it in my Be Your Own Best Boss online course that is available to buy. If you're already in my membership, check it out. It's module four, I think it is and everyone in the membership has free access to it. So make sure you have a look. What I want to do over time is figure out how I'm going to use these documents then in their kind of shrunk down again, shrunk down again form to really like inform my monthly and quarterly review process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I hope you can see this is something that I'm super excited about, but that I'm also at the kind of early stages of developing. I would love to know whether this is something that any of you guys do already.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before I invite that, there are a few kind of cautions I want to put around it. The first is that I am consciously keeping this super simple. I am aware that there is a concept out there called Second Brain that was developed by Tiago Forte. That is a much more complete system where it's about all the knowledge that you take in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am consciously not making this a note taking system, where I'm going to try and record everything that I ever learn or any of those things. This is not a full Second Brain. Could it become that in time? I don't know. Possibly. I'm aware that I'm somebody who has a tendency to overcomplicate and a tendency to want the perfect system right away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The wiser and more experienced version of me, though, knows the best way for me to do these things and to develop these things is to start with the real basics, embed that in my practice, and then look at ways to extend it or automate it or any of those things in the future. So if you're going to tell me that it sounds like these, like a commonplace book or a Second Brain system or, um, Zettelkasten and Obsidian and all these things, thank you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please do let me know how you use that. I am not looking for those tools at the moment. This is not a knowledge management system for me, and I definitely don't want to use this to automate these processes. I am very consciously using the transcript that I get from Otter. ai, not the summary, because I want to filter it through my priorities, my brain and my thoughts, and not just sort of accept what Otter. ai is presenting to me as the interesting things. I want to choose the interesting things for myself. So who knows in due course, but at the moment that feels really, really important to me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There is an example of where I've done this before. So many of you will know that I developed my role based time management system, and I developed an Excel file to manage my tasks to use within that role based time management system. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can look up the, there's a whole podcast episode about how to use it. Again, if you have my Be Your Own Best Boss program, or you're a member, you have access to how to do that in that course, and I developed a Google Sheet that I used to manage my tasks in that context. In fact, if you're on my newsletter and you message me, I can send you a copy of that Google sheet. It's a great place to start with all of that stuff. What I really resisted the temptation to do at the time was to find some fancy app or program or whatever that would do it in like a pretty format. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was like, nope, Excel, print it out. Happy days. That works. I've now, having been using that for over a year, I now have found a task management system that I now put it into instead, but all the principles are exactly the same as what I developed in that Excel. And starting with that basic system is I believe why my task management system now works. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The only reason I changed it over was because I'm now collaborating with somebody. I have an assistant that helps me with some of my administrative work and we needed a way to, have tasks that we could both access them in a meaningful way. And she [00:18:00] uses ClickUp and that is what I've started using too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I am loving it, but I am loving it because I know exactly how I want to set it up because I want to set it up exactly the way I was able to use the Excel document that I used initially. So I guess today's episode has got two take homes really. One, here's a fun and exciting thing that you can experiment with alongside me. You can tell me how you find it, how you're modifying it, so that we can learn together better ways to capture and straighten out the thoughts that whizz around in our heads. And two, as a reminder, that sometimes when we're trying to solve these problems, the simplest, easiest way of doing it is King. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Here, literally all I'm doing, talking into an app. Next day, take those transcripts, turn them into something that vaguely makes sense. Takes me about 20 minutes while I'm having a cup of tea in the morning. And so far it's been amazing. Let me know what you think about any of that stuff, or if there's any problems that you've come up with a sort of quick and dirty solution for that's actually working for you really well. Who knows, maybe I will even feature it in a future podcast.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This has been one of the more kind of pragmatic episodes that I've done recently where it's a simple tool. I try and mix these in with the more coaching y thought work type episodes, as well as the guests and the client Q and A's. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The one I haven't done for a while that I want to do is another coaching one. So if any of you would like an hour's free coaching in exchange for it being available on the podcast for other people to listen to. Get in touch. I would love to coach you on any issue that you think would be relevant to my audience of PhD students and academics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I keep saying get in touch. The best ways to do that is to sign up to my newsletter and then you can reply to those or you can contact me through Instagram messaging. I am at the PhD life coach. Keep sending me any challenges for my client Q and A's and let me know what you think of this episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-10-how-to-go-from-idea-overload-to-clarity thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-09-client-q-a-post-deadline-slumps-uncommunicative-supervisors-and-judging-your-own-work <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-22-what-to-do-if-you-want-more-reassurance" target="_blank"> What to do if you want more reassurance </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-3-how-to-manage-your-supervisor-or-boss" target="_blank"> How to manage your supervisor or boss </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/18-how-to-have-a-great-relationship-with-your-supervisor" target="_blank"> How to have a great relationship with your supervisor </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/19-what-to-do-and-think-if-you-have-a-toxic-relationship-with-your-supervisor" target="_blank"> What to do and think if you have a toxic relationship with your supervisor </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-20-how-to-improve-your-writing-with-guest-dr-katy-peplin" target="_blank"> How to improve your writing  </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and this week we are doing client Q&amp; As again. So you guys may have heard my episode a few weeks back where I answered three questions from listeners and I got some really good feedback on it. People seem to really like it and so I am going to do these regularly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I have three questions today that have come from a kind of combination of existing people in my membership who've contacted me separately from the main coaching sessions and people who have been in my workshops who dropped questions in the chat that were maybe slightly outside of the kind of main topic of the workshop and so we didn't get to them in lots of detail, but that I said I would answer in my podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So all of them this week are anonymous for various reasons, which you'll see as we go through, but there's three quite different topics and I think all of them are going to be super relevant for you guys. So keep listening and let me know what you think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Question one today comes from a student who had recently handed in a major chunk of draft to her supervisor. So it'd been something she'd been building towards for quite a long time. She'd handed in and she asked me to speak about post deadline, post accomplishment lethargy. That she said, "I always feel like I lose my flow so badly after having been in a deep flow of draft writing. It's worse because, when I've been in flow, I've often thrown out my routines and structures and I don't know how to get back into it."  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I thought this was just a fascinating one and one that people often don't talk about, right? Often we focus on how can I get the thing done and we don't spend quite as much time thinking about how do I kind of transition out of getting that thing done and into doing something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Now, my first recommendation here is really often the first recommendation for pretty much anything you guys ever ask me or I ask myself, which is acceptance. This is really normal. It's really normal to have a little come down after any accomplishment, any period of long work. This is not a sign that anything's gone wrong and it isn't a sign that you are like not getting back into it, that you're being lazy or any of these things. Often it's completely understandable and it might even be beneficial. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where this sort of thing becomes a problem is when instead of accepting that this may well happen, we kind of should on ourselves. We tell ourselves that we should be able to continue working at this pace. We should be able to get straight on with the next thing because there's so many other things to do. We should be able to get back on top of routine tasks quickly because they've been mounting up while we've been working on this other thing. And none of those things are true. As usual, when we find ourselves kind of feeling guilty or feeling shame around not having done these things or not being able to do what we think we should do, we actually end up making it worse. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We actually make it harder for us to transition. Because now we've got the kind of come down from having handed in the piece that physical tiredness, cognitive tiredness that comes from doing that. And we're adding on top of it a whole bunch of negative emotions. It's pretty unrealistic to expect ourselves to work really hard towards a deadline and then not have any period of transition before we start on something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Now you might be thinking, okay, that's all very well, Vikki, but I have got a ton of other things to do. I can't just arse around for a week because I haven't, you know, because I've had to come down after handing that piece in. I've got stuff to do. But the joy is, firstly, when we do take away some of that guilt and shame, or try and like dial it down, try and dilute some of that, it actually usually lasts less time. Because it's usually the unpleasantness of feeling like we should be doing something and that we are not, that makes it last for as long as it does. Work becomes something to avoid because we feel guilty that ironically we haven't been working.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Secondly, when we can accept that this happens, it becomes something we can plan for. Now, that might involve working fewer hours, it might involve accepting that we're going to work more slowly, or it could mean accepting that maybe we're just going to do some of the little fiddly bits rather than anything that takes really big cognitive effort. We can plan for the fact that this will probably happen, and therefore we're not sitting there telling ourselves that we should be getting straight on with the next thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can tell ourselves, I've planned this. I plan to have a gentle day today. A gentle two days, whatever you decide. That all becomes part of the plan. Now when we plan for it, we leave space. So we don't end up getting behind because we've kind of made unrealistic plans and then not stuck to them. We've literally planned to do nothing much in this space. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when we plan, we can also start thinking about a reintroduction strategy. So if we know that after a deadline, we find it difficult to get back into work, if we accept that and plan for it, We can also plan for when am I going to get back into work and how am I going to do that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for example, are we going to have one day completely off where we allow ourselves to recover from what happened before and then the next day we're like back on it, normal schedule, normal intensity, pace of work. Or are we going to do something that's a little bit gradual? That, you know, we'll have one day completely off, we'll have one day where it's sort of lighter tasks, and then by the third day we'll be back to normal. What is going to be that transition? And when are you expecting yourself to get back on track, as it were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because the difficult thing, if we don't plan and we just wait for when we kind of feel like it, feeling like it can take a while. Okay. Because feeling like it often comes either from active management of our thoughts or from starting doing the thing, even when we don't want to and kind of realizing that we can actually get on with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I would really encourage you to plan ahead for this. Decide what that kind of post accomplishment period looks like, for how long you want it to last, and what exactly you expect of yourself during that time. And if we can make it as achievable as possible, then, when the time comes for us to start working again, it's easier to tell ourselves, yeah, I've had my rest, I've had my come down period, I'm getting back on it now, I've had my great gentle break in, now we're working. And it's easier to then implement, rather than trying to implement when part of your brain is saying, oh, you really should be doing this, and the other part of your brain is going, but you really deserve a rest too. We can kind of bring that all into agreement, then it's much, much easier.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing I'd say, and this is stimulated by the last part of the comment that I got from this person, which is, when I'm in the flow, I've thrown off my routines and structures and getting back into them is hard. I would also encourage you, if you're listening and for everybody else, I would really encourage you to consider the extent to which you throw off your routines and structures. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To some extent, it happens for all of us. If we've got a period of intense work, maybe we're not spending as much time on kind of self care or organizational tasks. I've had clients who often let some of the admin stuff slide when they're on a big mission to get stuff done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would really encourage you, if you know that it's hard to get back into your routines after a period of hard work, I would really encourage you. consider how you can keep a version of your routines during that period of hard work. Now, I don't mean stick to everything as normal, because then it may well be hard to put in the additional work that's needed to complete the task, but spending a small amount of time each day, just firing off a few emails to stay on top of your inbox or putting aside just an hour or two a week to do some of the more mundane tasks that keep things ticking over. What we can do then is we can try and sort of minimize this transition, partly by planning the transition out, but also like, minimizing how different this period of lots of work was compared to the period afterwards. So it's kind of reducing that gradient of transition. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my tips. If you experience this kind of post accomplishment lethargy, there's some things I think you can think about. Let me know what you think. Have you ever experienced this? What makes it harder? Is there anything that's ever helped you transition that that I haven't mentioned? Let me know and I can talk about it in a future episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the second one comes from a regular member of mine, but I'm going to keep it anonymous because she's talking about supervisors here, and so I want to keep it all as confidential as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And she's asked, how can I improve communication between myself and supervisors? And in this particular case is one that we've coached on in my live membership sessions several times before. And it sort of falls into two issues. It falls into issues of supervisors not responding to emails. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not responding to messages. This is a distance learning student. And there's also issues around Perceived, from her side at least, uh, big personality differences between her and the people that she's working with, with her supervisors, whereby she doesn't always feel she can bring her whole self to the meetings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm going to try and address both of those. But I am also going to refer you all out to, I have, I think it's, Four, yeah, four episodes where I talk about supervisory relationships previously and you may well be able to draw out things from those that are useful as well. So there's one about where to, if you want, what to do if you want more reassurance, one about how to manage your supervisor, one about how to have a good relationship with your supervisor, and one about what to do if you've got a toxic supervisor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'll link to all of those in the show notes. I'm gonna do my best not to repeat stuff that's in those, um, but do have a look at those. 'cause they may well help too. But in terms of lack of replies to emails from supervisors, the first thing we have to is get super factual about what we're actually saying here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How often are you messaging? How often are they replying at all? How long on average is it taking to reply? The reason that's so important is that sometimes it feels like your supervisor, inverted commas, never replies, but actually when you look at the facts of it, they do reply to some things, but not to other things. Sometimes it's a couple of days, sometimes it's a little bit longer. You know, it's a bit mixed as to how in contact they are. And the reason that's important is there is a really big difference, in my view, between annoying and unacceptable.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So supervisors and any academics that are listening will be right here with me on this, I am sure supervisors are pretty stressed. They're pretty busy. Pretty busy. Very busy. They've got a ton of stuff on, they're getting far too many emails, and sometimes it is easy to procrastinate replying to students. And ironically, just as with students, this is affected by their emotions too. If they're already feeling a bit guilty that they haven't replied to you, or they're feeling a bit frustrated about how many questions they're answering, or whatever it might be. If they're experiencing big emotions, they might procrastinate responding to students the same way that students procrastinate responding to them. That is not in any way to justify the unacceptable. But if what we're looking at is sometimes they reply, other times they're a bit slow, sometimes they forget, but usually when they reply, they're reasonably helpful, then we might want to categorize, and you get to decide where your boundaries are with this, but we might want to categorize that in the kind of annoying territory.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in the annoying territory, I would always take two approaches. My first approach would be in my own thought work, which is really trying hard not to spin this into a story that it isn't. So often students spin this into, my supervisor doesn't like me, my supervisor doesn't value me, they don't think I'm good enough, all of these things. And a sort of periodically unresponsive supervisor almost always doesn't mean that. It almost always means it's something about them rather than about you. Okay, so we can be really careful what stories we're telling ourselves about what this means.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also be really careful what stories we tell ourselves about what this means about our prospects, because sometimes again we can spin these stories that and if they don't answer then I won't have time to do this and then if I don't have time to do that then I'll never finish. We can be really careful about that. We can get really specific about what exactly do we need and where can we get what we need, whether from the supervisor or from somebody else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other part when we're in this kind of not ideal but annoying category, is working with the supervisor to see if there are ways that you can make this more straightforward. So sometimes people don't respond to emails when they perceive you're sending too many. So you can discuss with your supervisors, would it be more useful if I collated my questions into a single email rather than sending a message every time I think of something? Or would it be easier if when I ask you a question, I reattach a summary of the piece of work that I'm doing at the moment so you know exactly where I'm at? What would make it easier for your supervisors to respond to your emails more quickly? One for me is changing the subject line of the email. Often people just end up doing re, whatever the original email was, and I've got no idea what's coming up. So trying to make it so that your emails are super clear about whether it needs a response, super clear exactly what it is, making sure the supervisor's got all the information that they need to be able to respond and so on. So, spending some time figuring out either on your own or with your supervisor, whether there's anything you can do to make it easier for them to respond more quickly. Okay. So that's on the kind of not perfect annoying, but Okay. It is what it is, side of things. And that's gonna be useful skill learning, right? Because if you are gonna carry on academia or even go into other industries, you are gonna get people not replying to emails. It's just, it's a thing. So learning those skills can be really useful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, there is then a side at which this strays into unacceptable. And it's always difficult for this specific student, and for anybody else listening, experiencing this, to decide where that boundary sits, as to when this moves from being annoying to unacceptable. For me, unacceptable is where it's happening almost all the time. Where it's happening and it's taking upwards of a week to respond to messages and where you don't get the answers in the end. So it's not just delayed, they're just not answering some of the things. For me, that's where it errs into unacceptable. But different people will have different perspectives on that and it will really differ. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I came up through a science program where we really had pretty close contact with our PhD students, well with my supervisors when I was a student, and then with my students when I was a supervisor. We have pretty close contact. In arts and humanities subjects where especially if you're a distance learner, things like that, then the regularity of contact may well be different. One way, if you're unsure, is at any of your schools or departments, there will be people who are responsible for postgraduate research. They'll all have different names depending on your university, where you are in the world. You can have conversations, not complaints, you can have conversations about what's happening at the moment and whether they would consider that to be acceptable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, often what happens is people think I've got to tolerate this, tolerate it, tolerate it. And then they get really, really cross and go straight to sort of complaints and that sort of thing. I would really encourage you to have conversations with people who are outside of your supervisory relationship, who have direct experience of and direct responsibility for postgraduate studies, to say, this is kind of what's happening at the moment. What do I do? Is this normal? Should I just be managing this or should I be expecting more than this? If they think you should be expecting more than that, that is a really good opportunity for them to give you advice about what that might look like in your school. Sometimes it can look like them giving you advice about how to broach it with the supervisor. Sometimes it can be them broaching it with the supervisor. Because remember, what most students don't know is whether there's any history of this stuff with their supervisors.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So sometimes you might go and talk to somebody about this and they'll be like, oh, that's really unlike him. Okay, that, yeah, I think there must be something going on there because that's very strange. Okay, let me have a quick chat, we'll see. Other times you might go and they'll be like, yeah, this is always an issue. These are the ways people have handled it in the past. Universities aren't always the best at dealing with long standing issues with supervisors, which I think is a problem in the sector generally. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, so speaking to somebody else is the only way of knowing and really finding out what, what is going on here. They will then be able to advise you about ways of addressing it, whether you want to bring on other supervisors, whether this person can just be supported to respond more quickly, or to find ways that it's easier for you to communicate. So always use those structures. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even more complex, to be honest. So this notion of not being able to show up as your true self in the supervisory relationship. And I actually think this is one that I would like to do a full episode on at some point, but I want to bring on somebody who's got specific expertise in this field. Because whilst this isn't the case specifically with the student who's written this particular inquiry, this often happens where people are being supervised by people who come from a different racial or cultural background from them. And particularly where the member of staff, the supervisor, comes from a racial or cultural background that is kind of in the mainstream, common within their organization. So, you know, in my situation, white British people supervising people who are from different racial and cultural backgrounds. And there's a whole thing around something called code switching, where people behave differently in order to fit in with what is perceived as being the social norms in their department. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's one of those really complicated situations where, in many ways, it works, in inverted commas. There's a lot of evidence that people who code switch to fit in with the kind of the hierarchy are more likely to be successful, are more likely to be perceived as professional, to be given opportunities and so on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But at the same time, research shows that it comes at considerable personal cost, both in terms of their relationships with their own cultures and in terms of their relationships with themselves, physical or mental burnout and so on. And that side of it is something that I think I would like to discuss in more detail with somebody with specific expertise in that area and or who has direct lived experience of those sorts of things. So I think we'll go into that in more detail in a future episode.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this case, there is a nationality difference, but it's not a racial or cultural difference that we're talking about here. So when we're talking about personality differences, I think really we exist on a bit of a continuum here, where at one end, we can decide to show up as what we perceive as our authentic, typical, everything about ourselves, and they just have their response to that, and that's their problem. All the way through to we dramatically modify our personality and authentic self in order to fit in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think the first thing to say is there's probably not a correct place to be. on this continuum. But I would encourage you, wherever you are on it, to make a decision for reasons that you like, and do your best to accept the consequences that come with that decision. Because there's consequences on both sides, and probably In the in between as well. So on the side of showing up as your true authentic self, which seems very different from the people you work with, the consequences there are that they are probably going to have an opinion about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we can make a lot of big drama about them having an opinion about that, whether it's them making snippy remarks or whether it's them not wanting to spend time with us. If we decide that that's how we want to show up, then we get to manage our thoughts about their responses. They're adults. They get to have whatever responses they have. We get to manage our responses to it so that we're not turning up as our true authentic selves and then beating ourselves up for saying the wrong thing or for them not liking us and all of those things. We have to own that decision and manage the thoughts and emotions that the consequences of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Obviously, as usual, caveat, I'm not talking about them having unacceptable responses to us. I'm talking about them just perhaps not meeting us with the warmth and enthusiasm that we might like, for example. Okay, so we can accept consequences on that side. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other side, if we decide that we're not going to show up as our authentic selves, we are going to mimic however we think people should behave in this setting, or we think they want people to behave in this setting, the consequence of that is that we may feel that they don't really know us. We may feel that we're not bringing our true selves to work. And again, we get to manage our thoughts and emotions about that decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I believe the worst thing you can do is be at one or other end of this continuum, but beating yourself up for the consequences of it, showing up as your true authentic self, then telling yourself that you shouldn't and that they should respond differently and that it should all be different to this, or turning up in the way that they expect you to turn up that's more compatible with them, and then beating yourself up about the fact that you're not being authentic at work. Whichever way you go, and there's not a right answer to this, trying to be compassionate to the fact we've had to make a decision here because it's not as straightforward as it could be, and that those decisions have consequences is really, really important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is going to sound like maybe a cop out compromise, but I'm a big fan of trying to find an authentic middle ground. We all, no matter our personalities, no matter our cultural backgrounds, we all have a range of versions of us. People who have seen me in an escape room will have seen a version of me that I don't show everybody because I can sometimes be a little obnoxious. If I'm in a competitive environment with people that I love and that I know love me, I get very overexcited, slightly bossy. For slightly, read very, and just generally threw myself into it at a very high speed and volume, and it's a whole thing. However, there's also a version of me when I show up in a coaching session, for example, where I very much focus on listening, on understanding, on really trying to engage with and connect with the person I'm listening to, and both of those genuinely feel like authentic versions of me. Neither of those are play acting, and both of them are very different. In my day to day life, I'm probably somewhere in between with sort of fluctuations depending on what we're up to and who I'm talking to. But I want you to think about the range of versions of you that feel authentic. There will be a bunch of different versions and that gives you options as to how you show up in your supervisory relationship. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'd actually really discourage people from saying, I'm just going to do the minimum and that's it. Because I think often it then becomes a bit self perpetuating, they start to see you as distant as well. And I think sometimes in an attempt to protect ourselves, we make the situation a little bit worse. I would really ponder on what is an authentic version of you that comes out in some situations that you could use, in order to have a connection, maybe not the connection you envisaged, but to have a connection with these people that are very different from you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, though, if this reaches a stage where you cannot connect with your supervisory team, you feel you cannot be open or honest or authentic with them in any way, this again is an opportunity to talk to the people that oversee postgraduate research at your, your school, your university, wherever level um, to chat with them about whether this is something that could get resolved in more structural ways. So bringing other supervisors on, on board, for example. I hope that is useful. I think this is one of the really big issues in academia at the moment. And those of you who are at higher levels, those of you who are supervisors will recognize the supervisor side of it, but you may also recognize it between you as an academic and the senior academics that are ahead of you. And if anybody wants to come on and talk about the difficulties of code switching, and what we can do in those very challenging situations, then do get in touch. I would love to have a guest with expertise in this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final question came up in a workshop. So I do workshops that are for my membership, but they're also open to universities to book as one off workshops. And this was somebody who'd come as a one off workshop, and I was asking about what's challenging at the moment in their lives and they said that they lack the knowledge to assess their own work and that meant that they were really struggling to know whether what they were writing is good enough. I just thought this was so important that I decided to like grab it out of the chat from the workshop and respond to it here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because when we realize that we lack the knowledge to assess our own work, we often think that's a problem. That you should be able to assess your own work, and that if you can't assess your own work, then you can't do it. And when we think of that as a problem, it can be absolutely paralyzing. It's so hard to get on and do anything when you don't know whether it's good enough, and crucially, you believe you should know that it's good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My first response to this is, you don't. You don't have the knowledge to assess your own work. If you're a first year PhD student, second year PhD student, even more senior than that, or if you're a more senior academic doing grants and things like that for the first time, you probably don't have the knowledge to assess your own work accurately and thoughtfully.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The only bit that's a problem here is you believing that that's a problem and believing that it's an irretrievable problem. At the moment, you have a pretty limited understanding of what people are looking for in this piece of work. That's why you're at the beginning of this academic journey. That's why you're working with people who know more than you do. Not being able to tell whether it's good enough or not, or handing it in thinking it was good and then getting a bunch of comments back telling you it's not as good as you thought it was, is exactly what should be happening. You're in this messy grey bit where you're becoming your next version. You're becoming an independent researcher if you're a PhD student, you're becoming a senior researcher if you're an academic, and you're meant to not know. And it's okay. It's nothing about you. Everybody has been in the position where they don't know whether what they're doing is good enough, and they've got insufficient skills to figure it out on their own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do we do? Well, first thing is that whole acceptance thing. This isn't a problem. This is exactly where you're meant to be. What you can do on top of that is start to think about, well, what do you understand? What do you know about how it should, inverted commas, be done? So that you can start from that understanding, so we know there's lots of nuance of how to make it a deep argument or how to be critical or whatever that we're finding really, really difficult, but there are elements that you do understand based on your previous education. Get really clear on what those things are and learn to check your work for the things that you do know need to be there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is being really systematic. Often what happens, when we're at the beginnings of learning how to write a paper, for example, we kind of expect our first drafts to sound a bit like an article, because we don't really understand how many iterations they go through. And so we actually end up spending less time iterating our work than people who are much, much more experienced, much more knowledgeable than us. We need to accept that this is going to go through version after version after version after version, and that is okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can be systematic in terms of only looking at one thing at a time. If you know roughly what structure it should be, then let's only check the structure. If you know roughly what should be in a paragraph, let's only check the paragraph structures. If you know roughly what an academic tone might sound like, only check that. Okay. We can do one thing at a time. Experts might be able, I mean, I still don't think it's a great idea, but experts might be able to edit for lots of things at a time. But if you're a relative beginner in this, you won't be able to and that's okay. We can do this systematically. We can work through it ourselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next thing is this is a great opportunity to try and get quick and dirty feedback. Now, some supervisors do not help here, and I apologize for any academics who are listening, but I stand by this, so I'm gonna say it. Supervisors who want polished drafts before they give any feedback, just stop. It's not helping you. It's not helping them. It's such a waste of everybody's time. What that doesn't mean is that you should be reading drafts. Like, every week, and you shouldn't be expecting your supervisors to be reading hundreds of drafts. But, what you can do, is ask your supervisor to give quick and dirty feedback to a short extract. Because the way we learn is by getting quick feedback, adjusting. Quick feedback, adjust, learn. Quick feedback, adjust, learn. We don't learn by huge protracted periods of time where we're stressing out about whether it's good enough or not. No one's giving us any feedback. And then at the end, well, we've polished everything, they've told us we focus on the wrong thing. That's not how we learn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really encourage your supervisors, and if you're a supervisor, please do this with your students, really encourage your supervisors to allow you to send in 400 words and just ask them to only give you comments based on the academic style of the writing, for example, or ask them to be able to send them like a paragraph outline where you've got in this paragraph, I'm going to say this, this paragraph, that, da, da, da, where it's a line for each thing and ask them solely for feedback on the structure or solely for feedback on the argument that you're making. Try and use any opportunity to get quick and dirty feedback.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even if you've written more, one thing you can do is to learn to extrapolate from feedback. So if you've written four pages of a lit review, give one page to your supervisor, ask for feedback on it, then apply everything you've learned from that one page to the other three pages before you send that to your supervisor. So that way, if your supervisor in that first page has said, um, you know, too much passive voice here, um, try and go into more detail here or you've got repetition here. You can then go through the other three pages, looking for passive voice, looking for repetition, looking for where more depth is needed. It reduces supervisory workload because they're only reading one chunk of it instead of all of it. And it's giving you an opportunity to actually practice assessing the quality of your work, because that's what needs to happen here. Not having the knowledge to assess your own work, isn't a fixed state. It's just your current situation. And the way you learn, the way you get the knowledge and skills to assess your own work is by practicing doing it with prompts, with support. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another tip, and I'm going to confess to being a massive hypocrite here because it's not one I've ever done, but I still stand by the fact that it would be really useful and I kind of wish I did and had, is keep a journal. So when you're thinking about not really understanding what good quality looks like, try and write about what you think at the moment and what bits you don't quite understand or what you do understand and try and keep that up over time. When you get feedback from people, try and write in your journal about what did they change in your work? What is this telling you about what you should be aiming for in future pieces of work? Because I promise. I promise one day this will all feel second nature to you. You will understand what good feels like for your field, your discipline, and you won't remember that you didn't used to. And when you have your own students or when you're a senior academic supporting more junior academics, you won't understand what they're not seeing. You won't understand why they just can't see that this isn't in the right order or whatever. If you can keep a journal so you can see how your own understanding is changing over time, you'll get that sense of making progression and it will help you much more appreciate your understanding when you have it and you're taking it for granted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because what's going to happen is you're going to start out at a place where you don't even really know what good looks like, and you don't have the knowledge and skills to assess your own work, but you're then going to move to a place that I've discussed in a previous, episode where I was interviewing Dr. Katie Peplin, who's a writing coach, where she talked about the taste gap. And this is an even more painful place, so if you're worried about not knowing how to assess your work at the moment, got a more painful place coming, I'm afraid, which is where you know it's rubbish, but you don't know how to fix it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? This is where I'm at with the art things I do at the moment. So, I have a bit of an arty hobby, and I'm at the stage where I know it doesn't look as good as the stuff I look at on Instagram or whatever, but I equally don't know how to make it better. Now, Katie called that the taste gap. And that, again, is another developmental stage that feels very uncomfortable, because you know your writing's rubbish, but you don't know how to fix it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, again, We work through that, we figure out what bits we do know, how we can change things, and in time you will get to a place where you know what good looks like and you know how to fix your writing so that it looks more like that writing that you want it to. Understanding this is a developmental process rather than as a sort of innate fixed failing in you can help take some of the sting out of that uncomfortableness and help you see how you can start taking steps towards being able to assess your own work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope those three questions were useful. Please do keep them coming in. You can use the send Vikki a question button in the podcast or you can drop them as a question in my YouTube or reply to my email if you're on my newsletter. However you get me questions, ask me in a workshop, ask me in community coaching, whatever you like, but get me some questions and I will answer some more for you in the future. Let me know what you thought of today's episode. Thank you all for listening, and see you next week!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 04 Nov 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-09-client-q-a-post-deadline-slumps-uncommunicative-supervisors-and-judging-your-own-work thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-08-how-to-be-more-patient-and-realistic-part-of-the-be-your-own-best-boss-series <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode  </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-45-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-intentional-and-resourceful" target="_blank"> Why we all need to be more intentional and resourceful </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-41-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-encouraging-and-accepting" target="_blank"> Why we all need to be more encouraging and accepting </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-38-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-compassionate-and-curious" target="_blank"> Why we all need to be more compassionate and curious </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-04-how-to-be-more-strategic-and-ambitious" target="_blank"> How to be more strategic and ambitious </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This is the final session of my how to be your own best boss kind of mini series that we've been doing here. Regular listeners will know that over the last couple of months, I've had episodes where we talk about all the different qualities that you need to be a good boss to yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we thought about being Strategic and ambitious and curious and compassionate and all of those things. And today is the final two qualities. And there's a certain irony to this because the two that I have made you wait the longest for are patient and realistic, which are both, I think, really important qualities and today we'll think about why. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before we get into the details of it though, I want to remind you that these episodes are all part of my Be Your Own Best Boss online course that is available for any of you to purchase. And in this course, we really think about how you can be a better boss to yourself, how you can change the way you speak to yourself, how you can change the way that you organize yourself, that you manage your tasks, that you plan and strategize and review so that you keep all the things that you're already doing well and develop some better habits that will support you to succeed in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, most podcast listeners will know by now that I also put this on YouTube. Hi everyone on YouTube, if you're the ones watching this there. I'm going to highly recommend that everybody whips over to YouTube this week because I am going to quickly show you what the be your own best boss program looks like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm doing the old share screen. Here we go. So in be your own best boss, you get the introduction to the course. You've get this first module. Like I say, this is about being the boss you need. It's got self assessments, figure out what are you doing at the moment that's working and what is holding you back. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's going to teach you all about the self coaching model, which I talk a lot about in these episodes, how you can use it to coach yourself to achieve your goals. It's going to think about why we need to be compassionate, how we can choose thoughts that are going to serve us and really focus on being the boss we need in our own lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We go back to modules. Module two is much more organizational. So here it gets much more pragmatic. I'm giving you specific tools that you can use to organize your time and help you think through why tools that you've discovered in the past don't work just haven't stuck and why they haven't helped you. We think about your dream week. We've got sections in there about how you can start your week that in a way that will set you up for everything else you want to do. And it teaches you, in detail, my role based time management system. which many of you will have heard me talk about here on the podcast before, but this is where I give it to you step by step, including a document you can use, to manage all of your tasks if you want to use the role based time blocking system. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Module three, which I'm clicking onto now on YouTube. You can see it's all about figuring out why you do and don't follow your plans. We think about the difference between boss you, who does the planning and the strategizing, and then about implementer you, who's the one that has to do the work. And we figure out, there's some diagnostic tools in here for you, to figure out, is the problem mostly with the boss version of you and how they're planning and strategizing and decision making, or is the issue more with the implementer version of you, not following those plans? Usually it's a bit of both, but what we do here is it's a whole array of different options. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If the issues with the boss, there's a bunch of different tools you can use. If the issues with the implementer, there's a whole bunch of different tools. So here we're really getting into the kind of nitty gritty of making through, making sure that we follow through. through on the things that we want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Section four, start looking longer term. Here, we're thinking about how we plan our months and how we plan our quarters. Often outside of the kind of university requirements, whether that's your sort of progress reviews or whatever you call them, and your university at your stage of your career, outside of that, people often find it difficult to kind of plan and figure out what systems to use that will actually work. Often we end up just making a bunch of goals, not sticking to them, beating ourselves up next time and then doing it all over again. I'm going to teach you a really specific process in this module that you can use to plan and review your months that takes into account the fact that we're driven by our thoughts and feelings. So instead of just ignoring that, instead of focusing only on what actions we need to take, we're going to think about what thoughts and what feelings we need to have in order to take those actions, in order to achieve our results.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then there's also a whole quarterly planning process that takes you through that sort of slightly more macro version, okay, where we think about what do we want to actually exist at the end of the three months? What process things do we want to change at the end of the three months? And then finally, and this is brand new, there is then module five, which covers the stuff that we've done in these past podcast episodes, but in much more detail. So, thinking about the 10 qualities that you need in order to be an effective boss to yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, it's taking you through, just as I do in these episodes, what we mean by those qualities, in what circumstances they're useful, what thoughts might help you feel useful feelings, what feelings you might want, what actions you might want to take, what results those will help you achieve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So make sure you check it out. It is the perfect sort of entry level version of the work that I do. If you've been wondering about the membership, things like that, this is a brilliant way to get some self guided stuff. If you think you haven't got time for the membership at the moment, you're not ready for a long term commitment, you can buy this as a one off. You will have it for as long as it exists. If I upgrade it, there'll be additional things added. You'll get all those as they go along. So you can go to my website thephdlifecoach. com and click on the bit about self guided programs and you'll find the Be Your Own Best Boss program. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's where this all comes from. It's all part of that program which I think is like the foundations of how to be a successful PhD student and academic. By the way, if you've been wondering about the membership and think you might jump into the membership, you get that for free in the membership. If you're a bit on the fence and you're thinking, oh do I buy that or do I go into the membership, get this with the membership as well. Plus all my other self paced courses too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, that's enough about that. Let's get on to the last two qualities that I want to discuss. So, realistic. is quality number nine. And this sounds like a funny one because often, you know, I've talked to you about being more ambitious, about setting your sights high, believing you can achieve all the things you want to achieve. And I stand by that, absolutely. But we also need to be realistic too. People listening to this will laugh. This is one I've had to really, really develop and I still have to actively manage and actively kind of keep an eye on. This is probably the one I find hardest because there is a substantial chunk of my brain that believes that if I just get on with it, I should be able to do all the things. It's a kind of mix of delusion, arrogance, and ADHD. Who knows? But anyway, so I have actively channeled my realistic boss. And what we're really thinking about here is being realistic in terms of the scope of projects, for example. So if you're designing a research project, what will the scope of that be? What's in, what's out? And how can you make sure that you are realistic about that? We can be realistic about quality. of the work that we're producing. Sometimes, particularly quality of first drafts, right? A lot of my clients have unbelievably high expectations of how something should sound when it comes out of their head in ways that are completely unrealistic at any stage of an academic career, let alone towards the beginnings of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, realistic about the quality of the work that we produce. We need to be realistic about the amount of work we can do, particularly in relatively short periods of time. We tend to underestimate what we can achieve over long periods of time and overestimate what we can get done today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If any of you have ever had that thing where you've got like, I don't know, a weekend where you're gonna work or, for me, it was a train journey a couple of weeks ago. I was convinced I was going to sort my entire life out on that train. Uh, being realistic about what you can do in short periods of time. There's also being realistic about how much recognition and reward and praise and reassurance we can expect to get from other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often people think that if I was doing well, people would tell me that all the time. If I was doing well, I'd win awards. If I was doing well, I'd get recognized for my skills. And that's simply not true. Often there's a limited number of places where you can get recognition and reassurance. And often the people that divvy it out, your supervisors, your bosses, your heads of department, etc, are often just really busy and doing that's not necessarily the top of their priority. So we get to be realistic about those things too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also have to be realistic about the scale of our impact. So often we go into academia because of the impact we want to have on the world, whether that's kind of intellectually or practically, theoretically, whatever it is. But then we realize that we're just a tiny cog in a big machine and sometimes it can be hard to see how this little bit of work that you're doing is going to lead to something meaningful in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's that saying that originally comes from like social action. I think it was Margaret Mead saying that never underestimate the impact of committed people making small actions. It's the only thing that's ever changed the world. That's a horribly paraphrased version, but you know the one I mean. The same is true in academia. Committed people making a series of small academic realizations is also how the vast majority of huge leaps of understanding have ever happened. So being realistic that we're a small part doesn't have to take away from the ambition that we can also have for the change we want to be in the world.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what circumstances is it useful to be realistic? I think it's useful to be realistic when we're planning studies, when we're planning our schedules, when we're submitting stuff or entering stuff. So if we're submitting grants or papers or entering competitions, you can be realistic about your chances of winning while also being ambitious about how much you will get out of participating and attempting to win.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay? So this is how I see realistic and ambitious living next to each other. Winning something, being awarded something, whether it's a grant or a paper acceptance, or whatever is out of your control, somebody else is making that decision. So we get to be realistic about how likely that is to happen. But the bit that's in our control is how much we get out of it. And we can be as ambitious as we want for how much we will learn through this process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth circumstance I can think of at the moment where it's useful to be realistic, is when we're judging what we've done that day. One thing I've noticed in myself and in loads and loads of my membership clients, my one to one clients, is that they, no matter how much they've done in a day, they get to the end of the day and think, oh, I didn't get done everything I would have liked. Now, in reality, everything they would have liked was an unrealistic amount of stuff. Hopefully made a little bit better if they'd been realistic in the morning. But regardless, if at the end of the day, we're unrealistic about what it was reasonable to have done today, then we end up beating ourselves up and being really critical of ourselves, or we can, when we're thinking, ah, you should have done more. If we can be more realistic, kind of goes along with compassion, I guess, but be more realistic when we look back and review about what was it reasonable that I could have got done, then we can also recognize much more effectively what we have done. So those are the sorts of circumstances, the sort of situations in which I think it's useful to be realistic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The thoughts that I think help are things like, I can do what I can do. You know, it sounds very pragmatic. It's like, yeah, I'll do what I can do. I have this amount of time. I have that much stuff. I'll get done what I can get done. I like to remind myself that I'm part of the jigsaw. You know, I would love to help every PhD student, every academic in the world to enjoy their careers more and get the stuff done that they want to get done without sacrificing their health and well being. I'd love to help every single person. But I also know I'm only a small part of the jigsaw of people who are looking after PhD students and academics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And thank goodness, because realistically, I can't do it for absolutely everybody. So thank goodness I'm part of a jigsaw. So thoughts that help. I am part of a whole jigsaw of people that are trying to achieve this. And I value my bit of the jigsaw and I'm grateful for all the other pieces.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> An old favorite of mine that you will have heard me talk about before, but one step at a time. When you're being realistic about things, you can see that you don't have to and indeed can't do all the things at once, but actually you can see realistically I can do this element now. And I'll do that element next. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thought I like, particularly in those situations where we're being realistic about whether we're going to get the job or the promotion or the award, is this is worth doing regardless. And that's a question I want you to ask yourself while we're being realistic, is Is doing this thing only useful if I win or get the promotion? Or actually, could it be useful? Can I realistically expect it to be useful to go through the process? And if you've gone through that decision making and you've decided, you know what, yeah, I am doing this, then you can remind yourself, this is worth doing regardless of the outcome. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This final one is, It is a thought. It's also something that I saw somebody talk about on Instagram, actually, and I can't remember who, so I'm not going to be able to credit, all apologies to them. Cite your sources, people. But I really liked it, and so I wanted to share it with you guys, which is that your best is what you can do without sacrificing your health and well being within the time that you give the task. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to say that again. Your best is what you can achieve in the time you give it without sacrificing your health and wellbeing. I would really encourage you all to sit on that thought and to really kind of ponder, because so often people beat themselves up. This isn't the best I could do. I could do this better if I have more time. Of course you could. But when we're being realistic, when we're being realistic bosses to ourselves, the version of best we're looking for is the best you can do in these conditions. And the best you can do in these conditions has boundaries around it. It has time boundaries around it. It has effort boundaries around it. And it absolutely should have boundaries around it in terms of, not eating into your health and well being, whether that's by stressing you out, by going into your relaxation time, your sleep time, whatever, your best is what you can do within the time you allocate the task without sacrificing your health and well being. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we've actually, here's a secret for you, I haven't told anybody. And I'm going to see if you can guess. In fact, you can message me on Instagram or through my website or whatever, my newsletter, if you can guess. I have got a author coming on to talk about their book. It's not a PhD book. It's a, like, out there in the big wide world for all sorts of people book that is about this very notion of how much health and well being you shouldn't sacrifice in order to achieve. See if you can identify what it might be. I'm really excited. I was reading it on a train and I just decided to message him and he said yes. So I'm really excited. That will be coming soon. See if you can work it out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so we're thinking these thoughts. I can only do what I can do. This is one, my piece of the jigsaw and I'm grateful for the rest of the jigsaw. We can do this one step at a time. This is worth doing regardless of the outcome. And I know what my best actually is. And when we think those thoughts regularly, we're likely to experience feelings like patient, calm, and determined. And when we experience those, and maybe even some pride in what we've already achieved. We're much more likely to focus on what we can do instead of what we can't do. To make progress without getting distracted, to work on through, make realistic plans and to see that longer journey. And when we do those things, we get done what is worth doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to move rapidly on to "patient" because I feel like patient is very related to realistic. Because I think we can't be realistic if we're not being patient as well. Because part of what stops us being realistic is this kind of scurrying towards I must achieve things immediately. But for me, patient is about being willing to take time over something. Willing to do something for a long time that feels difficult or that maybe you're not good at at the moment you're doing it. Again, this is one I struggle with. I, um, I love a new hobby, as many of you will know. I also expect to be good at a hobby immediately. I'm not good at most of my hobbies, but I do struggle to remember that I have to go through a learning process just like everybody else and that's part of patience, is being patient with yourself that you're going to take time to learn things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So part of being patient is tolerating that discomfort, is believing that if you give it time, if you put in effort, that those skills will develop. It's seeing that longer picture that we talked about with realistic and it's appreciating where you're at because one of the best ways to be patient is to be enjoying whatever stage you're at at the moment rather than quite such a hurry to get over there. And I think it's useful to be patient when you've got long term goals, whether that's completing your PhD, completing a grant, whatever level we're talking about. It's useful when we're doing painstaking work. I remember my laboratory days where you'd be pipetting for hours and waiting for incubations and all that fun stuff. Or when I was trying to recruit human participants to take part in my studies and it felt like it would take forever to get as many as I needed, or when I was getting people to do questionnaires. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All these things are long and painstaking. In fact, I'm not even going to talk about the cardiovascular analysis I used to do. That took hours. Clicking on the most old fashioned computer you've ever seen. Anyone who's doing their PhD now, who's 22, 23, whatever, you would be shocked if you saw the state of the tech that I was using to do this back in the day, being patient with that sort of painstaking work, repetitive work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's important to be patient when you see other people achieving things that you haven't achieved yet. Whether that's submission of articles, getting promoted, finishing their PhDs, any of those things. Often seeing other people ahead, in inverted commas, of us, can really test our patience because we're like, why aren't we there? But it's those moments where it's so important to be patient and to keep our eyes on our own journey.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what thoughts help me feel patient? I'm doing this for a reason, remembering why. This is worth the time, and something I think about, it's okay that this is taking me longer, because often I think we think it's a problem when something takes a long time, and when it's boring and laborious. But actually sometimes what can help us feel more patient is telling ourselves, you know what, this, this is how long it takes. And this is okay. It's okay that it takes this long. It's okay that other people have done stuff faster. But this is the pace I'm doing it and this is okay. And if we can think those, we're going to feel pretty similar to when we were talking about those realistic thoughts. We're going to feel patient and calm and determined and willing. Willing is one of my favorite emotions that you may have heard me say it before. Willing to do the boring thing, willing to wait for the payoff at the end. We're willing to do the boring cardiovascular analysis then we're so much more likely to take that laborious action. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we're more likely to keep doing the thing. We're more likely to make it worth the time we're putting into it. Cause often when we're impatient, we do it badly and then we have to come back to it, or we procrastinate it, in which case it takes even longer. in the long run.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we're thinking these patient thoughts, we're also less likely to criticize ourselves. Because when we're in a hurry, when we're impatient, we're often telling ourselves, you should be able to do this faster. It means something bad about you that you can't do this faster. Everyone else could do this quicker. This shouldn't be this difficult. It shouldn't take this long. When often the truth is it, it just does take this long. And that's okay. And therefore when we can remember that, we're much less likely to whip up stories about how it means that we're not good enough. So this is an action that we're less likely to take when we're patient. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And just as with realistic, we're much more likely, if we take all those actions, we don't beat ourselves up, we make it worth the time, we get on and do it, we keep doing it regularly, we're much more likely to achieve our important goals. So that is a pretty whistle stop tour through why patient and realistic are such important qualities to generate in our own bosses to ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As I said, some of these, when I look back over the 10 I've discussed with you guys, some of these I've always been pretty good at, strategic and ambitious, pretty good at those the whole way through my career. I've always been quite curious . Compassionate has taken a little bit of time, but I'm a lot, lot better at it. Realistic and patient, I'm still working on. Even in this business, I want every single one of you, I get like a thousand downloads a week at the moment, I want every single one of you to buy my Be Your Own Best Boss program because I know how much it will help you. And I'm a little bit impatient about making that happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I know that I am much more likely to keep supporting you guys and to keep producing more self paced courses for you and keep supporting all my members and everything else when I am realistic and patient for these things to come. You guys will find me at exactly the moment you need me. You will find this course at exactly the moment you need it. And I trust, and I keep reminding myself to trust, that you guys will make that decision when it's the right decision for you. But do have a look at it, because I think it would really help. And the little impatient part of my brain wants you to get that help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let me know what you think of this whole series. Also let me know what you're struggling with at the moment. I've got some more client Q&amp; A's coming up over the next couple of weeks, and I'm looking for either questions or just things you're finding difficult at the moment that maybe you don't know where to get support for. Let me know, either message me through Instagram or reply to my newsletter, which you can sign up for on my website as well. And I'll answer it in a future podcast episode and it'll be amazing. Anyway, all so much for listening. I hope you found that useful and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-08-how-to-be-more-patient-and-realistic-part-of-the-be-your-own-best-boss-series thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-07-how-and-if-to-work-when-things-feel-uncertain <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This week's going to be a bit of a heavier episode than usual. This is something that has been on my mind for a little while now, based partly on what I see in my coaching sessions with my one to one clients, with my membership students, and partly obviously my own experience of the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that is there's a lot of crap happening at the moment. There's a lot of really, really difficult, heavy things happening in a lot of different areas of the world. Some of them natural disasters. Some of them, unfortunately, man made. Some of them at a huge scale, some of them at a more personal, just family level issues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a lot of stuff happening. And there's a lot of times where I see clients or even find myself thinking, how do you get on with your normal day to day when all this stuff is going on around you, and by around you, I mean, either directly in your environment or within your sort of social circles or your cultural circles or your geographical areas, or just simply your humanity, to be honest. How and if do you get on with the things that you thought you wanted to do when your mind and heart and soul and everything's taking on all this really heavy stuff?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I often put little caveats flippantly on my podcast, but this one, this is a big caveat. I'm not a therapist. I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. I'm not, you know, I try to be trauma informed, but I'm certainly not a trauma specialist. And if this is something that is. deeply affecting you at the moment, whether it's in your personal circumstances or the things that are happening more generally in the world, I'd encourage you to reach out to somebody with specific expertise in helping people to identify when that's becoming a problem and how to look after themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the stuff I'm going to talk about today is coming from the place of somebody who's a concerned ex academic, who's a coach that can see how some of these things can impact on the things that we want to do and who knows that sometimes we have to change what we want to do. Um, but if you think you're in need of more specific support, I'd really, really urge you to, to reach out for that too. Okay. Nothing I say today is in any way intended to be a replacement for specific expertise.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For those of you who might be thinking, you know what? I'm pretty good. separating myself from what's happening in the news, and like my day to day. I'm pretty good at getting on. I'd urge you still to listen for two reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One, because I think you never know when something is going to hit you directly and your, your family, your friends, the people you care about directly, where this stuff will suddenly become relevant to you. Obviously, not wishing it on anybody, but you just never know. These things in the words of Baz Luhrmann from the 90s, these things happen on a Tuesday afternoon when you least expect it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But also because even if you are currently able to detach yourself from those things quite well, there's people around you who aren't. I guarantee that. There are people around you who are being deeply affected by the things that are happening in the world. And who might not be saying so, and might not be openly talking about it, and you might think that they aren't. But I promise, there are some people around you who are struggling with the things I'm going to talk about today. And so, if you feel like you don't need to listen for yourself, I'd really encourage you to listen for the people around you. So that you can just keep a little eye out, so that you can hear the things that people are actually saying and so you've got some ideas of ways you could respond if it does come to your attention that people are struggling. And this is relevant as usual for students, for academics, for everybody at any level of the academic world. We're all human beings trying to navigate this and this is all, all the same stuff for all of us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first thing I want to say is, it's okay. It's okay to find this difficult. It's okay to not find it easy to stay focused on things that you used to and maybe still do feel are important when there's so much other stuff happening in the world. It's okay that you're finding it difficult. And so if you're saying to yourself, I just need to concentrate, this is ridiculous, you know, these things aren't directly affecting me, I need to actually just get on with it. Let's give ourselves a little bit of compassion here. It is okay to find this difficult. The news is full of big, big stuff at the moment. It always is, but it feels more than usual, right? It feels more than it has. And it's okay that you have a whole bunch of emotions about that. You are not alone. Lots of people are struggling and it's okay. We don't have to not feel those emotions. We don't have to beat ourselves up for feeling those emotions. It's okay. You're a human being and this is tough stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Academic work takes cognitive effort, and it often takes a big chunk of emotional regulation, right? It takes managing the uncertainty and managing our insecurities and all of this stuff that we usually coach on week to week, right? When I'm coaching on how to get your writing done or whatever, we're regulating emotions we have about our writing. And if you are using all your regulation to cope with the other stuff that's happening, it's probably not a surprise that you feel like there's nothing left to regulate your academic work. There's nothing left to, you know, overcome the procrastination, to overcome the not wanting to get on with things the way perhaps you normally would. This is not a surprise. It's not your fault and it's not a sign there's anything wrong with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason that's so important to understand, the reason why I'm really laboring this point, that this is okay, is that when we judge ourselves, we layer on a whole other layer of junk that we have to deal with, and we don't look for ways to support ourselves. We don't look for ways to make it a little bit easier if we're just telling ourselves we should be able to get on. Please hear me say, it's understandable if you're finding it hard. And there are things you can do to look after yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first place we're going to start though, is whether you should be working at all. And this won't apply to all of you. It may not even apply to most of you, but for some of you, if this stuff is all feeling very close to home, or it is very close to home, I want you to consider whether you should be trying to work through this. Sometimes we don't even think about that as a possibility, right? We just, we're in it, this is what we're doing, it's just gotta happen now, we've gotta do it. But, if you are affected by the stuff happening around you or to you, to the extent that you cannot engage in your studies, and that it's not in your best interests to try and, force yourself to, try and encourage yourself to. If it feels like those things are not going to be good for your mental health and for your physical health, it is worth investigating how you can take a pause. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Now, sometimes there's practical things around that, those of you on stipends or with other responsibility and things, I know it's not always quite that straightforward, but a pause can be a short pause, a pause can be a weekend, it can be a week, a pause can be a month, two months, a pause can be deciding that, you know what, this just isn't what you need to be pursuing right now. You need to be doing something different.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of those things are there and you get to pick. Now, hear me when I say it, I'm not saying don't continue with your PhD, there's no way you can do it, none of those things, in a minute I'm going to give you a bunch of ways you can support yourself so that you can continue. But I want you to make sure you have all options on the table, because sometimes we don't even look at some of the options, because we consider those to be failures or to be letting people down or to be just not an option at all. Everything's an option. And I want you to look at each of the options and really consider what feels truly best for you at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because sometimes our best interests are to disengage from a goal. To say, you know what? Not now. Maybe never. Who knows? But not now. This is just not good for me at the moment. And you might think often I have clients say things like, yeah, but if I, if I take a year off, then, you know, next year I'll just be beating myself up for that wasted time. Or if I don't finish my PhD, I'll always regret it. And I want to offer that those things are optional. You could not finish and you could decide never to beat yourself up about that. And to remind yourself every time you think of it, how you chose the right thing. How you chose the right thing for your mental health, for your family, for your community, for whatever reasons it is, that you love those reasons. That yeah, it was disappointing, and we can be disappointed, and that's okay. But, we love our reasons and we did it for our best interests. Because often it's the fear of those things that we'll say to ourselves in the future that stops us from making difficult decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second part of this is really for people who have decided that, yeah, I'm finding things really tough at the moment. There's a lot going on, but I do want to keep going. I'm not going to make any changes to my registration. I'm not going to take a leave of absence. I'm not going to pause my registration, any of those things. I am going to keep going. But I want it to feel better than that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in those situations, what we can do is we can think about how can I make it feel easier by changing some of the assumptions I make. The assumptions about how much I should be working, the assumptions about how high level I should be working, when I should be working, where I should be working, what support I should be getting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We have loads and loads of assumptions about how we have to do it and lots of them aren't necessarily true. I'd encourage you to think about which bits you're finding really difficult. Is it that you're finding it difficult to get going? Is it that you're finding it difficult to focus for long periods of time? Is it that you're finding it difficult to do the harder cognitive stuff? Is it that you're finding it difficult to be in social situations? Which bits are you finding difficult?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And really think through how you can make those easier. Can you limit it down so that you're only really trying to do one thing at a time? So if, for example, at the moment you're trying to collect data for one study and write up another study, can you pause one or other of those so that you can really sort of slow down and immerse yourself into one element of your work for a while? So you're not taking a full pause of your PhD or your research or whatever, but you are reducing the things you're doing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Can you tell people that you're just not gonna do some of the additional things? We all know that there's kind of core stuff that we have to do, whether it's for academic jobs or whether it's for our PhDs, and then there's kind of the peripheral stuff that is either fun or impressive or will go towards our promotions or future jobs. Are there any of those things that you want to say? You know what? Not now, not at the moment. I don't need to. So there's that really kind of practical side of it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also really think about our expectations of ourselves and maybe our expectations are that we sit down and start working exactly when we said we would, and we work the exact time blocks or whatever that we said we would. Maybe we just need to loosen up on some of that. Maybe we need to just say, you know what, I will, I'll get three hours done. At some point today, it might not be exactly when I intended, but I will. And you know what? I'll be proud of that. And that will be sufficient. So it's changing some of our expectations. Some of the pressures that we put on ourselves unnecessarily by taking account of the fact that you're trying to do this in a really difficult environment at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also think about the things we say to ourselves, because when we're finding things difficult, we can use that as a reason to criticize ourselves. We can tell ourselves that we shouldn't be finding it difficult. We should be able to manage this. Or we can use it as an opportunity to like engulf ourselves in all the self praise in the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everything we do, we're so proud of the bits that we've done. We're so proud of how we're getting on, even when it's only tiny things, reminding ourselves of all the things we've achieved in the past, of all the reasons that we want to do this, all the reasons why it's okay if we're struggling. We can really create a sort of psychological environment through how we talk to ourselves, where we feel loved and appreciated while we try and do this difficult stuff. And that doesn't come naturally to lots of people, but it is something that gets easier with practice, I promise. So even if you can just do it a little bit in amongst everything else, then that can be really helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other ways you can try and make these things easier is thinking about the scaffolding that you have around you, right? If you were learning to ride a bike or something and you didn't know how, you'd have stabilizers, you'd have somebody supporting the back, you'd do it in a safe area, all these things we put around ourselves to keep ourselves safe when we're learning a physical skill. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this situation where things feel kind of wobbly like that, I want you to ask yourself what scaffolding you can put around yourself to make it feel a little easier. Do you want to have a conversation with your supervisor or your boss about the fact that you're struggling at the moment and that just a little bit of understanding would really help you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you want to reach out for more structured support in terms of things like writing groups or organizing co working sessions with your friends? If maybe you're struggling to get going on your own, would having that sort of support network around you make it feel a little bit easier? Could you ask support from somebody in terms of really breaking down your tasks into very achievable things so that when you are trying to do work, you make it as easy as possible for you to do it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Could you use tools like the Pomodoro Technique where you work for a very short chunk of time and then have a break. Maybe you use Pomodoro anyway, but maybe you could shorten the amount of time you spend working and increase the amount of time that you spend resting. So that instead of expecting yourself to sit down and write for two hours, you expect yourself to write for 25 minutes and then to have a break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are there certain environments that you find more conducive to focus? Do you want to work with your computer disconnected from the internet? So those of you who've listened to my episode about not reading while you're writing, one of the ways that you can kind of encourage yourself to do that is completely turn your Wi Fi off, turn your internet off, put your phone somewhere else, and then it's just you and your computer, or you even and a notebook if you want to go that far. Would detaching yourself so that when you have the urge to check the news or to look at social media or the other things that are going on, you're just that little bit further away. Would that help you to be able to put yourself in a little bubble for a minute in order to be able to do the things that you want to do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's also a bigger motivational element here, and this one we have to be careful with, because I don't want you putting pressure on yourselves. But sometimes it is worth remembering why you wanted to do this PhD, why you wanted to do the research you're doing at the moment, to do the work you're doing. Often when there's other bad things happening, it's easy to feel like everything you're doing is pointless, especially if you're doing a PhD where it's not got sort of direct application, right? So some people's PhDs, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, easy to see how that's useful. And other people are like, oh, I don't know. But there's a reason you chose it, there's a reason you thought it was valuable, there's a reason you thought it was interesting, there's a reason you cared about it. And we don't just have to accept that those reasons have gone away just because other things feel really important right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can choose to reinforce those reasons for yourself. You can choose to spend more time reminding yourself of that, giving yourself prompts, having notes, whatever it is that makes you think of the reasons that you decided to do it. So that when there's a whole load of stuff over here saying, Oh, I really, you know, I don't even know why I'm doing it. You can go, I do, I do know why I'm doing this. It's because of these things. And I can do a little bit of it now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We then get to think about how we look after ourselves around all of this. The first thing is keeping a little handle on what we're doing in our minds. Now, one of the very, very first self help books that I ever read when I was, I don't know, probably an undergraduate or early PhD, something like that, was Stephen Covey's Seven Habits. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Absolutely classic. Bits of it I'm not so keen on, but lots of it that I love. And one of the things that he talks about is the difference between your circle of concern and your circle of influence. Now your circle of concern are the things that you worry about, the things that you think about, that you care about, that take up space in your mind. Your circle of influence are the things you can actually do and have an impact on and change. And when these circles are different sizes from each other, in both directions, which I'll talk about in a second, when these circles are a different size from each other, then we get problems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now for a lot of you guys in the context that we're talking about here, your circle of concern will be much bigger than your circle of influence. You will be worried about the stuff happening in the world, the stuff happening to your families, that's way out of your control. And when we have a big circle of concern and a smaller circle of influence, we can feel very powerless. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we feel very powerless, we often don't take the actions that are within our control. Often we fixate on scrolling through news articles, for example, and make it very difficult to do small things we could do. that might help. Now the flip side is bad too, right? It's probably less of the issues that we're seeing here, but if people have a very big circle of influence and a very small circle of concern- often we see this in big, powerful people who have a lot of impact on people's lives, but don't necessarily care- then that causes problems too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what we're trying to do at all times is to try and keep our circle of concern as close to our circle of influence as possible. And that doesn't mean we can't care about things that are outside of our control, but it does mean we can think about what things within that are within our control. So, for example, if you are understandably concerned and upset and scared and angry about all the things happening in the Middle East, you're probably not in a position where you can do anything to change it. However, you might be in a position where you could offer comfort to somebody who is struggling in your own community. You might be in a position where you can write to somebody in power or whatever form of protest feels comfortable or appropriate for you. You might be in a position where you can amplify the voices of people who aren't being heard right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are things that whilst the sort of overarching issue is far, far, far outside all of our circles of influence, we have mini pockets. of influence within that. And if we can spend more time in those pockets of influence doing the things that we can do, and less time immersing ourselves sort of passively in the awfulness of things, in that circle of concern, It's much better for our own mental health and it benefits the world because we're then not just making ourselves feel terrible, we're actually doing the small actions that could make a difference in one or two people's lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The next parts are looking after yourself in all of this is remembering that when a lot is going on, you need more care for yourself, not less. Often what happens when we're struggling for whatever reasons is that we eat worse. We stop exercising. We stop seeing our friends. We stop going out. We stop spending time in the fresh air. We sort of hunker down. And sometimes maybe that's what we need. If we're hunkering down in a kind of supportive and loving way. But often what we're doing is actually neglecting ourselves when we really need that extra support.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think about how can you make it easier to spend a little bit of time outside? How can you make it easier to go to sleep at night? How can you make it easier to eat food that nourishes you? Without starting some big regime. This isn't a health kick. That's not what we're going for. But food that makes you feel warm and cared for. Okay, how can you give yourself these things? How can you nurture yourself while you're struggling with all this stuff? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you also to think about how you can give some of this stuff space because we don't cope with any of this by just squishing it down and telling ourselves we've got to go get on. If you've got these emotions inside yourself, it doesn't help to just say, Oh well, nothing I can do about it, let's crack on. Because these emotions are there and they're going to come back up one way or another. So giving yourself space where it's okay and safe to express your emotions. Finding people where you can express your emotions and it be okay is really important. Allowing yourself those moments where you can scream or cry or get angry and rant or breathe or give yourself a space where you can experience all of this. And you might think you don't have time, but the irony is if you give yourself that space, It gives you back time. If your mind and body is existing in a really tough time, let's look after that mind and let's look after that body. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that giving yourself space to experience emotions does is it enables you to defer emotions sometimes too. So if we're constantly telling ourselves that we shouldn't be upset, we shouldn't be getting this wound up, then we're sort of permanently squashing it down and then it will just burst free at some point. Whereas if we can say, you know what, at the moment I'm in work mode for the next 40 minutes. I'm in work mode. I'm going to keep my brain in this room. If I feel it drifting off to think about other things, I'm going to gently, gently nudge it back to my work, but I've got two hours clear this afternoon where if I need to get upset, if I want to actually think about this and wallow in this and be there with it, that's okay. I've got space for that. Right now I'm doing this. I am going to spend time just, just being later.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Knowing that you have put that time aside can really help most importantly with your own psychological health, but also with your ability to then focus in the moments that you want to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then I have one final thing, especially for people who perhaps aren't experiencing this strongly themselves, but know that they have friends and colleagues who are. this is a tip that I got from a friend who suffered a personal loss. I'm not going to go into the details, but a very, very difficult personal loss. And her tip was, ask me how I am today. Don't ask me how I am because I don't even begin to know how to answer that question. But if you want to express caring and you want to like, see how I am, ask me how I am today, cause I can answer that. I can tell you if it's a good day or if it's a bad day. I can tell you a little bit about how I'm feeling today. Make it really specific. Don't expect somebody to be able to answer the, how are you question, because if it's too big, they will just lie to you and tell you they're fine. But if you ask them, how are you doing this morning? You might just get an answer where they're able to be authentic and you're able to provide the support that they need. I found that tip really, really useful and have used it with several people that I care about who are going through difficult things at the moment. I hope you find it useful too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know this has been a kind of heavier episode than usual. I hope it has been of use to some of you. This is a little bit of me reaching into my circle of influence to say, what could I actually do in these situations that might be useful? Where do I have a skill set that might be helpful and making this is one of the things, one of the things that I decided that might be of use. And so I hope it has been for some of you. If anybody has specific things that you're struggling with, specific questions, please do let me know. You can either contact me on Instagram at the PhD life coach, or through my newsletter. You can then reply to that. You can sign up for that on my website. I'm still doing my client q and a podcast episodes. So if any of you have got comments or questions based on what I talk about today that you want me to go into in more detail or things you think I should have covered that I haven't, or anything where you think I was misguided in anything I said today, please let me know. Please let me know and then I will try and expand on and respond to those in a future episode.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To finish on a lighter note, it's been my husband's birthday this week, so I'm recording this the week before it goes out, and it's been my husband's birthday, and he's a massive child about his birthday. He has just turned 46 years old. You'd think he'd just turned six years old. He was so excited. He was running around like a small child. He couldn't sleep the night before cause he was too excited. He told everybody about it because he likes attention on his birthday. And so he tells everybody about it. He was fit to bust with every single present that he opened. And so to finish, my question for you is, I want you to think about what things did you get super excited about when you were a little child? What games, what toys, what activities did you adore when you were 10? And how could you bring a little bit of that into your life now? Because I think sometimes we focus on relieving the negative and that is hugely important, but sometimes it's useful to try and inject a bit of silliness, of play, of fun as well. So I want you all to have a think about how you could inject a little bit of fun and play into your lives this week and just lighten it all a little bit. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 21 Oct 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-07-how-and-if-to-work-when-things-feel-uncertain thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-06-how-to-inspire-the-next-generation-with-rosa-smith-from-the-brilliant-club <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And this week we have another guest with us. I am super excited to introduce Rosa Smith, who is from The Brilliant Club, a really cool public engagement organization in the UK. And she is going to talk with us today about inspiring the next generation. And, you know, Just tiny little tasks like that. So, hi, Rosa.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Hi, thanks for having me. It's lovely to be here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It is wonderful to have you here. Anyway, tell people a little bit about yourself and about the Brilliant Club.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: So, I'm Rosa. I've worked at the Brilliant Club for seven years now, which I can't quite believe, and my background is in secondary school. So before I joined the Brilliant Club, I was a secondary school English teacher and then a head of sixth form, uh, which led me to kind of being interested in, in access to university and I realized from that point, really how challenging it was for some young people to even get their foot in the door to get into university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, and that's one of the things that Brilliant Club tries to tackle. So my current role at the Brilliant Club is Tutor Engagement Director. All of our tutors are either current PGRs or people who've completed their PhD. So they're all researchers, and what they do is, is go into schools and share their research expertise with young people, which I'm sure we'll come on to later in the podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, but really my job at the moment is, is overseeing their professional development while they work with us. Making sure that we've got the right researchers in the right places to work with our schools and as a charity, and I think I alluded to this at the start, but our real mission is to support students from non selective state schools who haven't got the same advantages as other students to access university and to really thrive when they get there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you. And for our international listeners, state schools are public schools in the U. S., I believe. So state schools are our non fee paying, sort of bog standard ordinary schools.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, non fee paying and non selective as well. So, you know, we're working with students who haven't had the advantages of being in a more selective school. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And we were just talking before you came on, just to let people know a little bit about you as well, you have had a very productive weekend.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yes. Well, I don't know if it's very productive actually, because it stopped me from doing any other productive things, but I've just a lot of running. So I did a half marathon yesterday, so I'm a little bit creaky today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how was it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: It went well. Yeah, it was good. It was dry, which was a benefit because it's been so wet here recently. I'm in Shropshire. So I did the Shrewsbury half marathon yesterday, and it was long, but fun. Quite good fun. It was a good atmosphere. Um, and I had lots of lovely supporters.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And have you done it? Have you done this before? Is this a one off? Is this?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: I have done one half marathon before, but seven years ago. So it was, uh, yeah, quite, it felt like quite an achievement to finish it yesterday.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. So, and thank you for telling us a bit about the Brilliant Club. It sounds like an amazing organization. One of the things I want to say just for everybody in, if you're in the UK, this will be super, super relevant to you because you could engage potentially with the Brilliant Club yourself. If you are international, we have tons and tons of international listeners. There is also going to be lots of stuff in here that you can use when you're thinking about engaging with young people, helping raise their aspirations, outside of the context of the Brilliant Club. So there are different, even your universities may have these sorts of schemes going on and stuff. So if you're not in the UK, don't worry, there is still a bunch in this episode for you. So let's start by, let's start by thinking about what the actual students do, right? So most of my listeners are PhD students. I have some academics as well, who I'm sure will be interested for their students. So what do the PhD students actually do in this scheme?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: So our PhD students act as tutors, and they're trained by us to be tutors in school. And what that means is they are tutoring students in school about their specific research and their. area of academic expertise. So, in comparison to other programs, they're not going in and doing, say, for example, English or maths tuition. They're going in and teaching a program of study that they've designed based on their area of research expertise, and that could be absolutely anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as you can imagine, we have wild and wonderful courses created by our tutors that are based on whatever is their specialism. So we might have something, for example, about the chemistry of baking that someone has created and they've linked their chemistry research to what students might be interested. We've got courses that are about literary history. We've got courses that are about AI. We've got courses that are about climate change. Absolutely anything that you're researching, we can support you to create a course for young people based on that. Um, so what the researchers are doing when they create that course is setting up a series of sessions that they go into school to deliver over the course of a school term. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So they'll go into school once a week for, around seven, eight weeks, and they'll deliver their program and they'll support the students to work towards a final piece of writing at the end.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And why do you find it so important for them to do their own research? I've seen schemes before where either it's like a one off research talk or where the PhD students go in and, as you say, act as tutors on more kind of curriculum stuff. Why did you choose, I mean, I love it, but why did you choose to get them to teach their, their actual research?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, it's a really good question, and I think the answer is twofold. For the young people in school, it's very much about getting them to expand their critical thinking skills. And to, to really apply those critical thinking skills to something brand new, so something that's completely outside of their normal curriculum, and that exposes them to the type of study you might do at university that is completely different to what you might do at school. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's about exposing the students in school to new ideas, complex concepts that they might not have otherwise had access to, and really being inspired by the PhD researcher's passion for a particular subject. So I think that's the benefit for the young people and it, you know, it's supposed to really foster that love of learning and that curiosity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For the PhD researchers, we hear from a lot of researchers that they have got opportunities to teach, but very rarely have they got an opportunity to teach their own specialism. They might be teaching undergraduates, but convening on, on a course that's set up by somebody else. They might be doing other outreach, but it's curriculum focused, for example, or it's very much about information and guidance about university, but not sharing their research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for our PhD tutors, it's the opportunity for them to take their research and write it into a course that's really unique and bespoke to them. Um, and they tell us that that's a really beneficial experience. It helps them to really condense what is the most important thing about my research, that if someone couldn't learn anything else, this is what I want them to learn and to really get that experience designing a program of study, or, you know, a scheme of work that they might not otherwise get the opportunity to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Remind me, I can't remember whether you said this, what age group are they going in to work with?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: We actually work right from the top end of primary school to the top end of secondary school. So, the youngest students you work with might be 9 years old and be in year 5 or 6 in primary school, and the oldest students will be year 12, so the first year of their A level study. We do have pre designed courses for the very youngest pupils, so if you're working with students at the top end of primary or the bottom end of secondary school, we've got some off the shelf courses that our tutors can deliver, and for the older students, it'll be a self designed course by the tutor.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what do you see the PhD students get out of doing this?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: I think there are lots of things. I think, obviously the thing we talk about the most as a charity, externally really, is the impact that they will have on the young people, so that kind of opportunity to really change the lives of young people. And that might sound grand, but actually we've got lots of evidence that, I suppose both qualitatively and quantitatively, that this work that PhD tutors do really has a lasting impact on the outcomes of those young people. So they do better in their GCSEs if they've done the scholars program, even though it's not GCSE tuition. And we think that's because of those critical thinking skills and independent research skills they develop and that confidence they develop. And students are also more likely to apply to and progress to a more competitive university after they've done the scholars program. So a big one is that impact on those young people. And, you know, the young people say really wonderful things about how inspiring their tutors been and, you know, that they really set them on a path that they might not have otherwise been on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, but it's not just altruistic. We think there are lots of benefits for the researcher's professional development, really. So we see benefits in terms of their, I suppose professional skills. So things like resilience, you know, it's nothing like having to deliver your research to a group of 14 year olds to make you resilient, you know, lots of the sorts of questions they ask, the challenges they might come up with. The, the lack of understanding perhaps of one of your ideas and you having to think, Oh, how am I going to present this in a different way? How am I going to restructure next time so it goes better. So I think there's a lot of resilience built in, in working with young people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's also that experience of a professional work setting and having to fit into a school timetable. So that sort of time management and organization skills that you'll have to bring with you really and you'll develop over the course of working with a school.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Communication skills. It's another huge one. So again, communicating something that you've spent years probably thinking about, researching, you might know more than anyone else about this particular niche topic, but having to really go back to basics and think, how will I explain this and break it down for someone that hasn't got the base of knowledge that I've got and doesn't understand perhaps the particular terminology and doesn't have that, that academic background. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So yeah, excellent communication skills. And I think not just breaking down your research, but also just dealing with a group of students in front of you in a classroom environment. Um, there's nothing like that to develop your communication skills as well. Um, so that is a huge one. We also teach quite a lot of specific pedagogical skills. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's a chance to really hone those if you, you know, if you want to stay in academia, for example, or you already are post PhD and you're teaching at undergraduate level, for example, there's lots of transferable teaching skills and training that we offer that you can take to other, other teaching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even if you're not going into teaching in the future, those teaching skills I think can be really helpful in other jobs. I think in most careers you probably have to do some training and some presentation to colleagues. So, the sort of skills to structure a session, to break down ideas, to communicate them clearly, to anticipate misconceptions and tackle them. So lots of transferable skills as well as those benefits socially.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think we can't even, I mean, you talk about those social, the sort of social benefits as being a kind of purely altruistic thing. But one of the things I see with my coaching clients a lot is they've sometimes forgotten the excitement of their research. It's so standard to them and they're so aware of the things that they don't know and they're not good at and all these people in the world that know more about it than them. As a PhD student, you can feel really like the kind of bottom of the tree and that this is the most mundane thing ever and you've just, you know, you can, you can get kind of bogged down in that, , having something that you were really excited about first and then you can get quite, I've seen lots of clients get quite, quite bogged down in the like, oh, it's just really long journey now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think seeing other people being interested and excited and even impressed with you and what you've done and that sort of thing, I think can really give a boost that then makes it easier on those long days where you're just trying to get your analysis done or just get your writing done or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can give you a real boost to know that actually, people think this is quite interesting. This is actually quite cool. You know, when you get out of the kind of get your head out the weeds a bit and share it with people out there in the community, it's actually, it's actually really interesting and I think that can really help people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: I think you're absolutely right. And I think a lot of our tutors tell us that, that it, I suppose it forces you to think about why do I think this is so important? And why was I passionate about it in the first place? Because you've got to communicate that to other people. So I think you're absolutely right. And also, You might be surprised at the sort of questions that young people ask in a classroom that make you think, Oh, I really hadn't ever thought about it like that. And that might sound a bit mad, you know, given that they're 14, 15, 16, and you've been studying this probably for years, or at least a version of it for years, but actually, I think young people can really, um, I suppose, distill what you want to say with your research and get you to think about it in different ways and lots of our researchers tell us that yeah, young people, I suppose, reinvigorate some of that passion for their research.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Do you have any stories about, obviously anonymous, but stories about students that you've seen make big developments by being involved in the program?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: In terms of, of the PhD researchers? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. In terms, no, in terms of the PhD students themselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah. I mean we, we've definitely had researchers who've talked about, I suppose particularly if they, they're maybe coming into this in the first year of their research where they're still developing their, their thesis idea. Um, we definitely had researchers tell us that they've sort of shifted direction of their research and, you know, thought actually I had the kind of several routes this could go down, but I've really explored this one idea in my scholars program course, and that's made me kind of want to hone in on that area of research in particular.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We've also definitely had researchers who working with us has really ignited a passion for teaching in them that they perhaps didn't think they had before and made that, kind of, I suppose, consolidated that as being their career choice, which is wonderful. So we have, you know, some people who worked with us as tutors and then, and then gone into careers in teaching, which is always lovely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I guess the flip side of that is, what do you see the PhD student finding most challenging when they're doing it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, I think, great question and probably lots of things and slightly dependent on what your previous experience has been. I think lots of researchers find what I've just talked about as being a real benefit really challenging. So, actually, what do you choose? You know, you've only got, you know, We say sort of five sessions of content delivery on the scholars programme and then preparing for final assignment. So really, you've got five hours to teach something to a group of young people. So really distilling what you're going to teach in those sessions and what you want that final assignment to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how, how do you condense such complex ideas into something that's understandable for non experts? I think that's, that's a massive challenge for researchers. And, and linked to that, the sort of. the way you communicate with young people and getting that right, getting the pitch right, so that it is academically challenging, but it's not inaccessible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think that's a challenge for every teacher to an extent, but it's particularly difficult if you're bringing your research into a school setting. Another challenge, which I'm sure isn't unique to the Scholars Program or Brilliant Club, It's just the time management aspects of it and kind of fitting this sort of work alongside a really busy research schedule, often other commitments, you know, most people doing a PhD have got multiple other commitments as well. So fitting this in, in your schedule, I think those two things are probably the biggest challenges that our researchers face.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And there's such useful challenges to face that I'm sure they are difficult. They're the sorts of things, again, that my clients talk about it with other contexts, things they're involved with. But if you can develop the ability to condense down complex ideas to something achievable or something sort of understandable, it's such an important skill. Cause I see so many people who are trying to shorten work. It's one of the biggest things that people talk to me about in my membership sessions, you know, I need to shorten this piece of work and there's no way, there's no way I can take out any words. I need all of them. And it's like, well, how many words is in there? Like 7, 000 words. Like you definitely can. And that ability to go, you know what? Yeah. To talk about it in this much depth, maybe I need 7, 000 words. But actually, there's a 200 word version of this that tells you the key stuff. And there's a 1, 000 word version of this that tells you the key stuff and elaborates a little bit more. And then there's a 3, 000 word version that probably covers most of it, to be fair. And I think anything like this that helps students to develop that ability to see that whatever the topic and whatever the scale of the topic, you can kind of choose a level and choose a quantity and make it work. I just think sets them up for everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, absolutely. It's such good practice for condensing complex ideas in a work context or just sharing your research with maybe academics that are outside your specialism, for example. So yeah, definitely lots of transferable skills in doing that. And we don't just leave researchers to do that by themselves either. I think what they can learn from is the expertise of other tutors who've come before. You know, we've got lots of example courses where a tutor has done it really well. Yeah. We've also got a template, what we call what, what the tutors go in and deliver a course handbook and we've got a template for that. So in our training, we'll cover kind of how do you use an existing structure? How can you use these ideas of how to structure a lesson to break down your ideas? So our training will really help with that and in a, in a transferable way, I think.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Fantastic. And that was what I was going to ask actually, is what support, and I guess this is a two part question because some people will have access to the Brilliant Club if they're in the UK, and for everybody else, what support do you provide these students, and what support should, if people are looking for this in other countries or in places where you guys don't work, what sort of support should they be looking for? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: I think they should be looking for a structured program if they're going to go and deliver their own research in a context outside of an academic setting. So I think looking for things like logistical support from an organization, which we do provide. So support to make contact with a school, for example, support to schedule sessions, support to communicate appropriately with students and teachers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, you know, What we do on the Brilliant Club is allocate, the school allocates, sorry, a lead teacher and we allocate a program officer and those two people will liaise and then bring the tutor in when it's appropriate to organise what times to go into school, for example, and all the logistics of a placement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'd be looking for some sort of structure so that you've got support. in your very busy schedule, and you've got support about how to do a program like that in a way that's really professional and go into school and meet the school's requirements. I'd also look for training, you know, both pedagogical training and some training about the sort of expectations of a particular context. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're going into school anywhere, you want to know what the expectations of schools are. We have lots of international tutors working with us if they're living in the UK, who might not have gone to school in the UK. So we do try and cover kind of expectations of UK schools and things. So yeah, I'd be looking for training. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'd be looking for logistical support. We also pay our tutors and pay travel expenses. So we pay for, preparation time for training and for delivery, and travel expenses. You know, it depends what sort of program you're doing and, and how much time you've got on your hands, I suppose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you would at least want to find out what the remuneration is, and, you know, consider how you can make that work alongside your other commitments, but you know, it is a benefit of, of programs like this. I think if you, if you can be paid given, we know it's, you know, really challenging financial time for lots of people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, I'd also look to make sure that there's a really clear safeguarding policy that both protects you and young people. So we offer safeguarding training and we've got a really clear system. We've also got a very safe way to communicate with young people on a virtual learning environment so that it's moderated and protected.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think also you'd, you want to make sure that if you're working with a supervisor, if you're a current researcher, that you get their support as well and that they understand what you're about to do and how you plan to fit that around your research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I'm going to ask you about supervisors in a minute because that can always be a whole thing in my experience. But before you do, I just want to, I think the pay thing is so important. I mean, I am thoroughly in favor of PhD students volunteering and all that stuff. And there's a lot of good that can be done and can be got out of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I think properly recognizing what the PhD students are bringing, and the fact that you pay them for the preparation time as well as for the training, I think is huge, because so often you get a kind of like an okay hourly rate for the thing you're actually delivering, and you're like, okay, that's all right, but then by the time you've added up how much time you've actually spent getting ready for it, then suddenly is not looking like a good deal anymore. So I think that's hugely important, not least to make it accessible to more students. Cause one of the things I saw when I was an academic and now through, through my clients as well, is that so many PhD students are having to hold down other jobs just to be making enough money, particularly people that are self funding and all that sort of thing that you can kind of end up in a position where it's only a certain type of student that can afford to do these things. And I think the fact that you pay them so this can be a way that they bring in money that they can actually live on, whilst also getting all this training and support. I just think, I think it's brilliant. I think it's such a good model for how to do this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah. And it's really important to us that it's accessible for anyone doing a PhD. What we really want is role models going into school. So we want Our, our school students to see tutors that look like them or have come from similar areas to them and, you know, share some of their life experience and not in every case, you know, and there are benefits both ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We, we want everyone to, to think about coming to work with us if they're doing their PhD, but we do want a really diverse range of tutors to go into our schools and we don't want. kind of finances to be a barrier to anyone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So let's talk supervisors. How do you hear, so I'm presuming you don't talk to the supervisors directly, but how do you hear through your PhD students about supervisor opinions on all this stuff?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: So we don't work with supervisors directly, but we do often work with doctoral colleges or graduate schools who are very supportive of our work and generally very interested in seeing the sort of professional development outcomes for The researchers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we do report back to universities on the sort of professional development of a group of researchers at their institution if they're a partner with us. So we tend to get support from them, but they tend to also ask us, like, what can we tell supervisors? How can we, how can we promote this to supervisors and get them on board? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, So I think, you know, I think the age old concern of supervisors is that anything that isn't your core PhD research is going to be distracting. What I would really want them to understand is that actually it's, it's a benefit. Compared to a different part time job or even other outreach opportunities, doing something like the Scholar's Programme, where they're actually using their research and sharing it with the community, is helpful to the research itself. It helps to distill a researcher's thinking. It helps them to break down what's really important to them about their research. So we want them to understand that. And we also want them to see that, you know, we know that a really large percentage of PhD researchers do not go into academia and jobs are often quite hard to come by in academia, even if researchers want to do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So equipping them with the skills to explore a broad range of careers when they finish their PhD is sort of everyone's responsibility who's involved with that researcher at their institution. So we want them to be on board with the professional skills that can be gained through working with us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And also, most supervisors, one would hope, are interested in diversifying the future pool of researchers that they work with, and we know that, you know, the PhD population is not as diverse as it perhaps could be, and we think that putting a broad range of role models into schools and allowing researchers to really inspire young people that doing a PhD is amazing and exciting and something they might want to do one day will really improve the diversity of the future pipeline into postgraduate study. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, you know, we'd hope that if supervisors saw it through that lens, they'd be more supportive. So we'd encourage our tutors to articulate that to their supervisors as much as they can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. I've seen it from both sides, I think. I used to oversee the postgraduate training for one of the colleges at my university. And we'd really struggle with those supervisors that you talked about who are just like, no, you need head down in the lab, get the work done. Anything else is a distraction. So we definitely had to try and manage that side of things. But then we also had the other side, where you had the serial volunteers, where you had PhD students who were doing Brilliant Club, and they were doing three minute thesis, and they were a postgrad rep, and they were a ambassador on open days, and they were a this and a that, and they were teaching this module and that module, and it's like, when are you doing your PhD? I don't understand. So I think for me, I would probably with for the people listening, I would probably really encourage people to think about what are they actually doing at the moment? Where are they getting their money from? And what's their what's their focus of their PhD? And what are they doing kind of co curricular stuff, so stuff that's related to their PhD but not it directly. And to think about where are they full and where could they be doing more things, because I think something like this is an amazing way of gaining all this experience and all this money and all this influence and impact and all this stuff that we've talked about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it may be that for some of our listeners, now is the perfect time to do it. Get in contact with Brilliant Club, go do it. And for other people, it may be a case of, you know what, this is not right for the phase of my PhD I'm in right now. Right now I'm on, you know, I'm on the writing home straight or I'm on just establishing this study or whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have a past episode about working out what phase of your PhD you're in and how you can then use that to make decisions. So I think it's one of those things where it's really important to kind of look at everything you're doing and see where this fits. Does it fit now? Does it fit at some point in the future? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And then make the kind of decisions from there. And I think if supervisors see students doing that, then I think they're also much more likely to be supportive because they can see how you're going. Okay, we're doing these things this semester or this year. And then we'll focus on those things more next year, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And that in itself is a really transferable skill, like being able to navigate that and think through what is the best time to get involved in this when I can really commit to it. to it properly and I'm not committing to too many things that, you know, we do see researchers struggle sometimes because they've over committed and they say, yeah, I can do four placements in a term and then it's too much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So yeah, we want that too. You know, we want you to do it at a time that's right for you. It's also worth saying that it's never too late. You know, we've got people working with us who completed their PhD many years ago and have either been working in academia or not, you know, and want to come back to their research and use it for something later down the line. So we'll work with you at any stage post PhD too. Um, so it doesn't have to be immediate.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. I think it's always useful to remember as well that the supervisors aren't perfect at this stuff either. I coach all the way through to full professor and the tendency to overcommit or the tendency to put your head in your sand and say I can't possibly do anything else except this. If you don't get the sort of skills you're talking about or the sort of support that I provide, some supervisors never, never develop past that. So sometimes the, the lack of understanding from supervisors is from their own tendencies and their own kind of challenges in balancing all the things that academia asks of them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So yeah, I think these are making these decisions and figuring out how to balance things and how much you can do, I think is a huge part of all of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Just to finish off, what would you say to anybody who was considering getting involved in something like the Brilliant Club?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Obviously the first thing is what you've just touched on. You know, really think about what commitments have you got? What time have you got? How are you gonna fit this in really to everything else that you're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I would urge you to go for it at a time when you feel it's right. I think there's so many benefits to how the way you think about your research, but also to your future career. Working on something like the Brilliant Club or another outreach program, you know, if you're outside the uk. It's such a brilliant thing to put on your CV and to talk about in interviews. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can talk about the way you've navigated it alongside your research, the way you've built communication skills, the way you've navigated a really different professional setting than that of a university. Um, so my advice would be do your research. Find a program that looks and feels right for you. Have a good look at the Brilliant Club website. And if that doesn't feel right, there'll be outreach opportunities at your own institution, you know, that you can find out about. Um, so have a look what's available.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And just really think through before you apply. What skills have you already got? How can you articulate your communication skills, your passion for your research, and really why you care about the mission of that organization? What we're looking for in applicants is that they're passionate about their research and that they have great communication skills, because everything else, we can work on in training and communication skills are also something we expect you to develop over you over the course of your work with us, but we just want someone who can talk confidently and excitedly really about their research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And I remember you said, so mentioning the website, we're going to link to various different links to do with the brilliant club in the show notes. So for any of you listening, who desperately trying to grab pens or whatever, that will all be at phclifecoach. com in the podcast section but I remember like when we talked previously, that there were certain bits of the country that you were really keen to try and find more people. I know you want people all over, but do you want to give a shout out to areas that you're specifically interested in finding people or particularly interested to get more people to?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: So as I say, you can apply from absolutely anywhere. We're particularly looking for researchers at the moment in Essex and sort of Southend, Thurrock area. We have lots of interested schools there and you know, if you're a researcher that either lives in Essex or can get to Essex easily from London, that would be amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly Hertfordshire. and also kind of Bexley, Bromley, that, that kind of top area of Kent. So obviously some London tutors are easily able to get out to those places, but often our schools are somewhere, you know, as you know, schools are not always in the most obvious next to a train station place. So if you live in, in any of those areas, thinking about the South.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we're also very keen for more tutors in Coventry, Rugby, Stoke sort of area. So if you're there, then, then we'd love to see an application from you and then finally Bournemouth, we're keen for some more tutors there because we've got some new schools interested in Bournemouth, that we've not worked with before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And that list is obviously as of, like, the end of September 2024. So if you're listening at another time, because my podcast episodes stay up for do check the Brilliant Club website. I'm sure there'll be information there about what specifically places you're looking for, but it's good to know which areas you, you particularly need people at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And before we finish up, Rosa, one of the things that my clients and my listeners are always thinking about is the different careers that they can have after, doing a PhD. As you mentioned, lots of people won't go into academia and I think you've shown brilliantly how all this sort of work can set people up to do that. But maybe you could tell us a little bit about what it's like working for the Brilliant Club and what type of opportunities there are there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, I'd love to. So obviously my background is not in PhD research. I was a teacher, but I've got lots of colleagues who have come to work for the Brilliant Club post PhD. Several of them were tutors with us, a couple of people have done internships with us and then become a member of staff, which is also worth checking out. If you're a funded PhD through a doctoral training partnership, lots of those, as I'm sure you know, will fund a placement, and we offer a limited number of placements if you've already got funding. So do get in touch with us if you're interested in that and that applies to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The sort of careers that are available somewhere like the Brilliant Club are really varied. So there are jobs in any organization, in any charity that are HR focused, finance focused, those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Our staff who've done research often go into our research and impact team, for example, so we've got a team who really are solely focused on evaluating the impact of our programs and other educational interventions. So, Evaluation is really important to us, and making sure we're measuring impact is really important to us. So we've got quite a good track record of doing that, and now we do that for some other organisations too. So we're looking for people who are experts in analysing data, are experts in presenting data in accessible ways, I'm really thinking through, a small scale research project essentially. So those sorts of jobs are really appropriate for someone who's done a PhD. But also often people who've completed their PhD want to do something that is supporting other researchers. So the person in my team, Katrina, who is our head of tutor engagement on our tutor engagement team. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She is really interested in making sure that all of our PhD researchers are getting the best professional development, the best support, and, and she really advocates for her community really of researchers. So she's gone more into a support role, but I think she would say that having done her PhD has been really beneficial in thinking about what sort of support our tutors need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is why I always try to remember to ask this question of people who come on the podcast because I think so often people only see the route into a traditional academic role or kind of leaving it all behind and going off into some corporation somewhere. I had a guest on a while back, Holly Prescott, who talked about academic adjacent careers. So check out that episode, everyone, if you're interested in this stuff, and I think these are such interesting examples of academic adjacent careers where you're still working with research, you're still working with people from universities, but in a different context and with a different aim. And yeah, I think it's just really useful for people to know these sorts of things exist. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: Yeah, definitely. Do check out our website and have a look for vacancies, because things do come up and we're always interested to hear from people who've finished their research.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, thank you so much for coming in, Rosa. I hope that you have inspired lots of the listeners either to engage themselves or if they're academics to encourage their PhD students to engage. If people want to find out more, where should they be looking?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rosa: So first and foremost, look on the Brilliant Club website. There's a whole area there about being a tutor. There is a little video, there's some FAQs, there's lots of information. You can also sign up on our website for an information event where you can find out more and come along to a live session. We are on LinkedIn and X and Instagram, so do check us out on any of those platforms. If you've got specific questions, you can also email apply at thebrilliantclub. org to find out more. We'd love to engage with you and if you've got any questions, do just reach out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for such a useful episode. And thank you everyone for listening. I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 14 Oct 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-06-how-to-inspire-the-next-generation-with-rosa-smith-from-the-brilliant-club thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-05-client-q-a-getting-it-done-when-you-dont-feel-like-it <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/-how-to-write-the-thing-when-you-re-not-writing-the-thing" target="_blank"> How to write the thing when you’re struggling to write the thing </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-20-how-to-improve-your-writing-with-guest-dr-katy-peplin" target="_blank"> How to improve your writing with Dr Katy Peplin </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-32-how-to-plan-your-academic-writing-special-episode-with-guest-jo-vanevery" target="_blank"> How to plan your academic writing with Dr Jo VanEvery </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-46-how-to-work-with-the-version-of-you-that-shows-up-with-special-guest-dr-alison-miller" target="_blank"> How to work with the version of you that shows up </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This is a super exciting week because it is my first client Q&amp; A session. I should have some new theme for that. Anyway, we're not going to have a new theme for that. Stay focused, Vikki. Here we go. People can send me questions. You can send me questions and I will answer them on the podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I launched this last week and I already have three questions to answer so we are going to go right ahead and answer these questions and they are all clustered around a topic which is even better and it's a topic that comes up so much with my clients and members which is how do I get it done when I don't really feel like getting it done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are going to go through three specific questions that listeners submitted to me which are all about getting it done when the motivation is low. If you have questions you want me to answer, I'm going to give you all the details at the end of how you can go about doing that. But essentially get them submitted. I will answer them on a podcast for you soon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first question, question one comes from Gill, who is a PhD student in Canada. She is a part time distance learning PhD student. So shout out to all our part timers and our distance learners. And she asks, I struggle most with writing when there is too big a gap between where I am, sitting with my notes, and where I need to be, writing sentences. What do I do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I absolutely love this question, because I think it already shows quite a lot of insight and understanding. Often when people come to me, they say, I'm just struggling to write. I just intend to write, and then I can't write. And if that's where you're at, there's a bunch of episodes on the podcast already about how to write when you're struggling to write, which is one of my early podcasts, and then a couple of episodes, three episodes. Three different episodes with guests, with JoVan Every, with Alison Miller, and with Katie Peplin, all about, writing and getting going on writing. And I'll link those in the show notes for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, this is more specific. What I love about it is Gill is showing real insight into the problem here. She says she struggles most when there's too big a gap between where she is and where she needs to be. If you can get specific the way Gill is getting specific with her challenges here, you are already five steps along the way to solving this, even without me helping along the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So she's showing real insight. She also went on to say, and this is where she's already starting to be curious. She's already starting to figure out approaches for herself. So she says, what I'm slowly learning is that there are several iterations of working my notes to get them from high level sorting by theme down to I want this paragraph to argue point A backed up with evidence points B, C, and D.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And essentially here, Gill is answering her own question, which is amazing, which is that often, if we can notice what the real problem is, ie that there's a really big gap between sitting with your notes and having coherent sentences, then we can already start to speculate about what the solution might be and what's happening here is Gill is already recognizing that she needs to see that there are several steps. Often we think that if we've got our notes here, we should be able to write paragraphs there. And we get really frustrated when that's not possible and when we struggle with that. We make it mean something about us, rather than making it mean something about our technique. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the technique that we're missing here is this understanding that there's several iterations in between those two points. However, Gill is still talking about struggling with this, so she's gone a really long way to identifying the problem, but let's think about some additional suggestions. So the first thing is, if we're trying to identify these interim goals, we need to be really clear on what they are. So often you hear people say, just write something bad first. And the difficulty is, partly, we're all kind of high achieving people, we don't really like writing things that are purposefully bad. But also, what does that even mean? And how do you then turn something that's bad into something that's good? I think it works better, instead of thinking about it as a bad first draft, try to describe what it really is. So, for example, if you're starting from your notes, you might want to next go to having the one bullet point that sums up what that paragraph needs to say, the one point you want to make. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, lots of you will say, yeah, but I don't know, I've got all these notes and I don't know what point I want to make. Perfect. We've now identified a new problem. So what we now need to do is figure out what point we want to make. And so what we can then do is set ourselves a different interim goal. So a next step for you might be to write down what you are thinking. So this isn't even a draft to be a bad draft. This is a draft to get it out of your head. This is a draft where we're just saying, I kind of want to say this, but then I don't really think that makes sense. So maybe I should say this instead, but then I don't know whether that links back to blah de blah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you're literally doing sort of stream of consciousness of your thoughts about these notes. Because if we can get it out of our head and onto a piece of paper, it then is so much easier to do this next iteration, which is to start to pick that apart and kind of go, Oh, well, could be a key point, I suppose. And that could be, and maybe my next step would then be to decide which of those points I want to make, for example. But by really turning it into very tangible steps that aren't just, write the next sentence, write the next sentence, but instead identifying actually different steps that will move you from having your notes to having sentences.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You may have seen on my Instagram, if you're not following me, by the way, make sure you are. I have more people on my newsletter than I do on my Instagram, which is a bit strange. So make sure you're following me at the PhD Life Coach. I'm going to be posting much more regularly for reasons I'll tell you about at the end. Anyway, I said on my Instagram recently, a little quote that I came up with when I was coaching some people in my membership last week, which was, if you're struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel, shorten the tunnel. If you're struggling to think, right, I'm only going to celebrate when this paper's finished, for example, and that feels like a really, really long way away, we need to shorten that tunnel, give ourselves much smaller tasks to do and then celebrate the light on those tunnels. So in this case for Gill, when she's starting with sitting from her notes, that first light, that first short tunnel might be to get from sitting with my notes to writing two pages of whatever comes out of my head, including what I don't know, so that I've got something to work with. And then we celebrate, we enjoy that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then when we're ready to enter another tunnel, another task, we look at that and pull out, what are three points that I could make, for example. Okay, so we're sort of creating something where it feels like you're going through distinct steps. And many of these steps are just for you. These are not for anybody else to ever read. These are to get your head straight.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, one of the reasons that so many of you will find this challenging is because people very rarely talk about these steps. And the reason I think for that is partly people who are highly skilled don't understand exactly what they've done to get to be highly skilled. They kind of take it for granted. So have you ever been like taught to drive or anything by somebody who's really good at it? So my stepdaughters, one's just learned, one's about to learn. And my husband grew up on a farm. He's been driving tractors since he was nine. He knows exactly how to reverse a vehicle, reverse a vehicle with a trailer, all sorts of things like that. But he can't explain it to someone who doesn't know. Cause he's just like, well, you just back it up over there. Yeah. into the space. And he can't give step by step notes. And you will find that your supervisors are very similar. They often won't be able to describe the steps they go through in order to write a paper. In fact, especially if they often write on the same topics, they may not even go through all these steps because they can go from vague ideas in their head to a plan, to a draft. They don't need all those steps in between.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the people that are taking all these steps, the people that are doing postdocs, the people that are at the beginnings of their academic career, or people who are more senior but have always found their writing more stressful, they don't really have the platform to talk about how they do this. And often they do it in a way that's driven by panic and self hatred anyway. They haven't necessarily discovered sort of a fun, iterative process that you can go from notes to an okay draft.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's why if you're finding this hard, don't worry. No one really teaches this stuff, or very few people teach this stuff. Very few people know it themselves, and even fewer are telling you about it. So don't make it mean anything that you don't know this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing to say is to keep an eye on some of those thoughts. So often when we're describing this stuff, we're talking about things we have problems. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We, like Gill, we talk about it as being a struggle. I struggle with writing when there's a big gap. Well, of course you do. That's not a struggle. That's just the process. This is the route that people take to getting writing done, and the fact that you're wrestling with it means you are engaging in an academic pursuit. The fact that you're thinking, oh, shall I say it like this or shall I say it like that? means you're doing the thing. This is not a sign you're doing it wrong. This is the sign that you are an academic. So don't problematize the fact that it takes you a bunch of drafts to write something that sounds half decent. That is literally how it's done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, for all the rest of you, copy Gill, get really specific about which bit you're struggling with, And then, as I've demonstrated hopefully today, it's quite straightforward to identify steps that you can take to close that gap between where you feel like it's all difficult to actually doing the thing. Let me know whether that resonated with you. So when you send me questions, let me know how you feel about that one as well, how that could get you writing something you're finding difficult at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now my second question came in the same message from Gill. And this is, my other sticking point is when I feel that the task in front of me will somehow judge work I've already done. And she said yes, I know how that sounds. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Don't worry Gill, I totally totally empathise. So today I'm feeling resistance about reviewing my chapter structure because I'm afraid I'll discover I need to rewrite pages of it. Again, so, so common. I'm sure lots of you listening will resonate with that. Especially at the beginnings of our academic career, we really attach our work to ourselves and to our worth. And therefore, if the task we need to do is to pick holes in something that we kind of self identify with, that we think is part of us, that's not a fun job to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, anything where you're critiquing your own performance, isn't fun, if you make that mean lots of negative things about you. So, if by looking at a piece of work that you've done in the past and you're trying to pull it apart to improve it, the narrative that's going on in your head is, Oh God, you should have done this before. Oh God, this is rubbish. I can't believe you rate this so badly. We're going to have to do so much work now. This is terrible. Then of course it's going to feel awful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I want you to imagine an expert. I want you to imagine somebody who's a high performance in something you care about, so like an athlete or a musician or something, and they're watching their race or they're listening to their performance and they're almost gleefully looking out for things that they're doing wrong because they know if they can identify things they're doing wrong, they can make it better and making it better is what they want to do. I want you to imagine those people in whatever context works for you. That's the vibe we want to bring to analyzing our work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Not looking for mistakes in a kind of, I don't want to find any, because that means I've got to do some work. And that means I've been rubbish and I've wasted time and da da da. But I want to find things I can improve here because I'm going for peak performance. I want this to be as good and as clear and as articulate as I can make it. And it's fun to look for places that I can shave off a bit here and add a bit of nuance there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the first thing is really thinking about how we can change the way we're thinking about this as a task. The second thing kind of takes that on a deeper step. Why is it a problem if you find things wrong with it. And this will differ for different ones of you. Sometimes it's because it feels like a lot of effort. That if I identify that it needs restructuring, it feels like I'm going to have to do a whole load more work and that feels like a lot of effort. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times it's because we allowed ourselves to believe it was done and now it's going to be a bit disappointing if it's not. Or we're worried that however much we pick it apart, it's never going to be good enough. I want you to identify, really specifically for you, why it's a problem that you might find something wrong with it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this will differ a bit for all of you. And then what we do is instead of avoiding looking for those faults, instead of avoiding finding the problems, we look after ourselves through that problem. So if you know that it feels like a lot of effort, that's why it's a problem because it feels like so much work to do and that's a lot of time and effort, then you reassure yourself on that stuff. You reassure yourself that we don't have to do it all today, that we're going to support ourselves to get it done, that it could be fun to do a bit more. I remember I took part in a, like, I won a mentor award thingy for fiction writing, last, two years ago, and, um, maybe even three, three years ago. Three years ago. Blimey, time's running past. Anyway, and part of my sort of process through that, reviewing the novel that I'd written, made me realize... I may have told this story before... but made me realize that I needed to write it in first person instead of third person, which meant completely rewriting the whole thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I had a feeling that it sounds as though you guys have sometimes, where it's like, Oh, man, that's a whole lot of work. But I also knew it was the right thing. And so instead of avoiding it, what I did was I looked after myself while I did that. It made it easy for me to make the changes I needed to. I made it fun. I reminded myself how much better I was making it. And I actually plowed through it pretty quickly. So if you're feeling that judgment, totally, totally get it. Think about why it's a problem and think about how you can support yourself through that. What do you need to say to yourself so that it doesn't feel quite so bad to need to rewrite the things you've done? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Finally, just as an aside, let's just start from the place that you're going to have to rewrite this more times than you think. Because part of the problem here is when we kind of set ourselves up our expectations that a first draft, once we've done a first draft, all we'll have to do is tweak it and it'll be fine. Let's just not start from that place. Let's just start from the place that I'm going to rewrite this ten times and that's fine. Because actually, if we just get on with that, like I did with my novel, if we just get on with that, you can actually get it done way faster than if we're procrastinating even looking because we're scared of what we'll find. Let's just look. Get on with it. Look after ourselves as we go. Let me know what you think about that question, whether that's brought up other questions for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the third question came through on my podcast. So you may have noticed in your podcast app, I'm going to find it on my phone so that I can show people who are on YouTube. Cause if you don't know, these podcasts come out on YouTube as well. Anyway, if you go, wherever you get your podcasts. So here, I'm just showing you, um, on the screen, it says PhD Life Coach, it's got last week's episode up, and then it says, send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show. And if you click on that, then it takes you through to a form that you can fill in and it sends me questions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the only downside, and I have to apologize to the person who sent this, if you don't put your name in it, I don't get any contact details. So this is an anonymous PhD student who the app tells me is based in the UK, but beyond that, I don't know who you are. So, apologies for not being able to shout you out by name. In future people, if you want to get shouted out by name, you want to know it was you, then please do leave your name in the message as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, this person has said, I keep saying that I'll do the work when I feel motivated, so I keep trying to find ways to motivate myself. So, could you answer something like, how to get stuff done when you feel unmotivated? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this is a huge one, this one I actually have an episode planned for in 6 8 weeks, something like that um, but I'm going to give you some quick tips now. And the first one might sound counterintuitive. The first one is, why are you expecting Did you guys hear Marley shake then? That noise was my Labrador shaking because it is nearly an hour till tea time and therefore he's clearly starving to death. He'll be fine. Chill your beans. So, the first step might sound counterintuitive and that is asking yourself why you expect to feel motivated. Now, I remember talking about this recently, and I can't remember whether it was on a podcast, whether it was in a membership call, so do apologize if I'm repeating myself, but I think it's useful for everybody to remember this, is that motivation doesn't have to be feeling super excited and like really wanting to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often, I think people expect to wait until they feel motivated because on the times that they have done that, everything's felt so much easier. But I promise what feels enormously easier is to learn to do things when you don't feel motivated. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even just remembering that you don't need to feel motivated in order to do the thing can help in and of itself. Because when your brain says, I don't want to, you can go, okay, that's alright, I know you don't want to. That's alright, we haven't got to argue with that. We are going to do it. You don't need to want to. Okay, so even just remembering that there is no need to feel motivated can really help with getting on with stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another little trick, like mental trick that I use when I need to do something that I don't feel like doing is I remind myself what the genuine alternatives are here, because often the only two alternatives we give ourselves are I do this thing, which I don't want to do, or I don't do this thing that I don't want to do and I do something else instead. That's more fun. I eat, I scroll on social media. I go talk to my friends, whatever it is. Okay, so we let ourselves be in this world where those are the two options. Do the thing I don't want to do, or don't do the thing and do something fun instead. And in that case, with those two choices, obviously, we're going to pick don't do it. Unless you're one of these very disciplined people, in which case you're probably not listening to this podcast.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We allow ourselves to believe that those are the two options, when in fact that's not true. Our two options are do the thing we don't want to do, or sit here having a massive negotiation with ourselves about whether we're going to do it now, or later, and why we don't really want to do it now, but we probably should do it now, and have a massive old blimmin debate about it with ourselves. That's an option. Or we have the option, which is that we decide not to do it now, but we still need to do it later. And that option often comes with a whole bunch of self recrimination. Now, obviously, we can manage our own minds. We've been learning about this stuff for a long time now. And so there could be an option over here, which is, I decide to do it later, I'm completely fine with that decision, and when it comes to doing it, I then do it. We quite like that option too, if you can pull that option off. But what we want to do is be at one extreme or the other. We either want to be, we do it now, even though we don't want to do it, or we don't do it now, we don't beat ourselves up about it, we decide when we are going to do it, and when that time comes, we get on and bloody do it. Okay. Except most of us don't go for either of those. We go for the bit in between where we negotiate with ourselves. We argue with ourselves. We don't do the thing we don't want to do, but equally we don't do the thing we do want to do because we kind of half arsely sit around our desk as though that counts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or, we decide we're not doing it, but we beat ourselves up about the fact we're not doing it, we dread the day we have to do it, and we turn it into this bigger deal, so that when we are meant to be doing it next time, it's even harder to motivate ourselves to do it now, because not only is it a task we don't want to do, it's now got a whole bunch of shame and guilt thrown in for shits and giggles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Excuse my language, feeling feisty today. We'll go with it, this is an adult podcast. Okay. That's the bit we want to avoid. And so sometimes when I'm thinking, I really don't want to do this thing, I remind myself that I don't want to have not done this thing either. I really don't want to do this thing, but I don't want to have not done it either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't want the consequences. I don't want the stupid arguments in my head. I don't want the need to coach myself through the fact that I didn't do what I said I was going to do. You know what? It's less painful just to do the thing and I'm going to do the thing. When we remember that self negotiation is the most painful part of this process, it is often easier to just do the thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final tip is remember there is a difference between the energy it takes to do a task and the energy it takes to start doing a task. Often what we're lacking is initiation energy. Actually, once we start doing something, it often gets quite a lot easier. That's something else I want you to remember and I want you to remind yourself of. It's the initiation energy that's painful most of the time, that bit of energy that requires you to start writing, to think about what you're going to do and so on. But once you get going, it's usually easier. If you can remember that, it's a lot easier to then get started because you're reminding yourself it's actually only a short burst of willpower that's needed here. Only a short burst of kind of self talk and geeing yourself up to do it. Because once you get going, it's almost always easier to do it. Okay. Remind yourself it's only initiation energy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the longer term, we can think about ways to build your motivation, ways to make tasks more intrinsically motivating. And as I say, I am going to cover that stuff, but I want you to start, whoever sent this to me specifically, at the moment, I want you to start Forget trying to make yourself motivated. Try to work on doing things when you're not motivated. All the rest can come later.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that you guys found that useful. I loved answering these questions, so please do send more. You can do it if you're on my newsletter. You can send them in, just by replying to the email and I will always give priority to my newsletter crew so make sure you're signed up for that, but also if you're just a podcast listener, that's cool. I get it. You've got to get to know me first. Make sure you press the send Vikki a question button. Let me know your question. Let me know your name, maybe where you are in the world. What stage of your PhD you're at. That would be amazing. And I will answer all your questions in the future too. Anyway, let me know how you get on with getting things done when you don't really feel like it. Thank you all for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 07 Oct 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-05-client-q-a-getting-it-done-when-you-dont-feel-like-it thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-04-how-to-be-more-strategic-and-ambitious <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <div> <i> Links I refer to in this episode </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-45-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-intentional-and-resourceful" target="_blank"> Why we all need to be more intentional and resourceful </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and today we are back to our be your own best boss little series. So those of you who listen regularly will know that over the last couple of months I've been doing episodes where I think about what qualities we need in order to be better bosses for ourselves. This is all based on the notion that how we speak to ourselves and how we treat ourselves is really important, not just for what we get done, but also how we experience doing our PhDs and working in academia, and often we're not doing this well, right, often we're being judgmental bosses, we're being confusing bosses, we're being one minute very kind of indulgent bosses and the next minute very disciplinarian. And it doesn't have to be like that. We can learn, it is a skill and a practice to develop the ability to lead ourselves in a way that's more effective and that feels better. Now I have a whole online course about this to be your own best boss course which will take you through the whole process of identifying what sort of boss you're being to yourself at the moment, and then developing the habits that you want in terms of self talk, planning, organization, reviewing, and generally achieving success. Now I identified 10 qualities that I think all good bosses should have, whether it's your actual boss, or in this case, the boss you're being to yourself. And I've been talking about those in these series of episodes. So you may have heard me talk already about being more compassionate and more curious. There's another episode about being more encouraging and accepting. And then a third about being more intentional and resourceful. If you haven't listened to those yet, don't worry, you don't have to listen to them all in order, but I would recommend that you go back and find them. I'll link to them in the show notes on my website phdlifecoach. com.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Today, we're going to be thinking about two that I think link together really well, and that is being more strategic and being more ambitious. And if you hear those and go, Oh, no, that's not me. That's not my vibe at all. Please stay with me. Trust me. I am going to define strategic ambitious in ways that I think will feel good to all of you. And I hope by the end of this episode, you'll not only see why I think this is important, but also understand how you can implement this in your own life. I'm going to follow the same structure as before, where I talk about what I mean by strategic and ambitious, what circumstances I think it's useful to have these qualities, what thoughts you need to have in order to be strategic and ambitious, what feelings those thoughts will generate, what actions they'll allow you to take, and what results they'll allow you to achieve. And the reason I use that structure for those of you who aren't familiar is that's the self coaching model. This notion that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings create our actions, and our actions create our results. If you want to hear more about that, again, I will link to an episode where I talk you through how you can use that model to coach yourself and help yourself achieve any goals that you want to achieve. But I structure these episodes around that, so that we've got a really concrete plan about how we can implement this stuff into our lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's start by thinking about being more strategic. Now, one of the things we all know about academia is there's just too many things to do. There are so many options. You could do this study or that study. You could go to this conference or that conference. You could volunteer for this, volunteer for that. So many things. And often, it feels as though you have to do all of those things in order to succeed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we all know that what happens when you try and do all of them is that we end up exhausting ourselves and not doing any of the things as well as we could do. Now, in the last one of these, I talked about being intentional, and that was about choosing our behaviours as well. But the difference with being strategic is we're choosing our behaviours not just on the basis of what feels good and what aligns with what we want, but we're also choosing our goals and behaviours in terms of what aligns with the organisation or powers or people that can influence our careers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for example, when you're strategic, you're choosing which activities you take partly on the basis of which ones you want to do, but also on the basis of which ones are likely to be recognized by your examiners, which ones are likely to be recognized by reviewers, by promotions panels. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's understanding that whether you're a PhD student, academic, or a senior professor, you are part of an institution, of a discipline, of a sector that has particular priorities. And when we can understand those priorities, we can choose which things to spend more time on. Sometimes being strategic can sound a little bit self serving. It can sound a little bit like we're sucking up. We'll do whatever the big man wants us to do. And it doesn't have to be like that. It can be like that. Some people do that form of strategy. I like to think of it as a Venn diagram where you've got a circle of all the things that you care about and that you want to spend time doing, and you have a circle of all the things that the organization wants you to do, whether that's for your qualification or for your job, and what we're interested in is finding the places that overlap, finding the places where the things that feel good and important to you overlap with what feels good and important to your organization so that we can strategically put our efforts in those places most so that not only do we enjoy what we're doing, we value what we're doing, but that we get the recognition that we deserve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does it mean that you can't do some of the things that are just for you? Things that you think are important, but your organization, your supervisor, whoever it is, doesn't seem to value. No, of course not. You can do whatever you want, but choose it mindfully. Choose it knowing that you're doing those things because you think they're morally important or you think they're important to your discipline and you recognize that they're not things that shift the needle in terms of your actual career progression. That's fine. You get to pick that. We're people. We are not just career building machines. You get to do whatever you want here, but do it knowingly. Don't sit over there doing all the things for all people and then wondering why you don't get any recognition for it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you can be a more strategic boss for yourself or develop your understanding of strategy, then we start to recognize and understand some of the complicated structures there are in academia and then decide how and when our goals align with those and what we need to therefore do in order to achieve our professional goals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, in what situations, what circumstances is it useful to be more strategic? Well, I'm thinking about things like if you're asked to take on a new role, whether you're asked to be a postgrad rep, or whether you're asked to be a head of department, or whatever it might be. That sort of thing, where you're choosing whether or not to take on a role. I think it's important to be strategic when you're choosing which goals you're going to focus on. We get to be strategic when we're going to new events. Now again, this doesn't mean going and being that networking weirdo that only wants to talk to important people, not everybody else. But being strategic when you're choosing how many of the sessions you go to, which sessions you go to, whether there are specific people that you want to try and speak to for specific reasons, we can be strategic around all of that. And if you want more help with networking, again, I'll link in the, in the show notes, but I did a really good interview with Dr. Jen Polk about networking. So do check that one out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The fourth circumstances I came up with is when you're invited to get involved in a project. Whatever level of academia you're in, you might get asked to collaborate on something, to contribute towards something, and you get to decide. Often we don't see it as a decision, right? It's just like, oh my god, thank you so much for asking me. But if people invite you to do those things, it is a decision, and you can be strategic when you decide whether you're going to do them or not. It's those sorts of circumstances. That's not an exclusive list, but it's that kind of thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what thoughts would I try and generate if I was trying to be a strategic boss to myself? It's things like, I can decide where and if this fits with my other commitments. So it's that acknowledgement that there's choices to be made here and you get to choose. It's reassuring yourself. Things like, I don't have to do it all. I need to choose what things I do do, but I don't have to do it all. It's thoughts like, at the moment, I'm focusing on X, so that other thing can wait. And again, I feel like I'm sending you off to loads of other episodes here, but I think there's so much good stuff on here for you. I also had an episode about thinking of your career in phases and this can really help with this idea that I'm focusing on this thing now and I'm doing that thing later. That's a thing for after my PhD. That's a thing for after the teaching term's done or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thought that I think is really useful is accepting that sometimes we need other people to help us navigate this stuff. So it's thinking things like there are people that will help me understand what I need to do and how to take these next steps. Universities can feel like really complex, weird, arcane places, and understanding that there will be people, they may not be the people you're directly around day to day, but there will be people who can help you navigate that, is part of being a strategic boss. You don't have to know this all yourself. You just have to know that these things exist and that there are people who can help you figure this out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you think thoughts like that regularly, I think you'd end up feeling emotions like calm and committed and focused, and maybe even relieved because you're not chasing your tail. You can choose what you're doing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you're feeling all those emotions, I think you take actions like reaching out for advice, getting clearer on your goals so you can check you're aligning with them, getting clearer on the goals of your organization or your degree so that you can choose how much you align with them, saying no to things that don't align with your priorities or that don't serve your current goals. And doing some things well, instead of trying to cram everything in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think the results of those actions would be things like a streamlined work plan, a calmer work life, clearer progress towards goals that you actually know why you're pursuing them and getting advice that will actually help you implement all of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think, to what extent do you think you're a strategic boss already? Is this stuff that kind of comes naturally to you or it seems a bit of a mystery? If it seems like a bit of a mystery, don't worry. That's really common. Especially if you have any demographic characteristics that means that higher education doesn't reflect you as much as it could. It's not unusual to feel like you don't know any of this stuff. That doesn't stop you being strategic. I want you to identify ways that you're already being quite strategic. I know you all will be to some extent. And to think about things that you could do that would make it a little bit easier to be a little bit more strategic in future.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the second part of this is going to be thinking about being more ambitious. And again, this is another word that people can make sound quite negative sometimes. I remember once I got criticized for being ambitious. I was talking to somebody quite senior about some ideas that I had and there were quite a lot of things that I was keen to do, and he was like, You're quite ambitious, aren't you? And I was like, I don't know how to reply to that, because, I mean, kinda. But also, you make it sound like that's a bad thing, and I don't quite understand why. It was almost a, you don't have to worry about all of that, dear, sort of vibe. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it was definitely not how it was intended. The person who said it was very, very well intentioned. But it was still this slight negative, and I think particular sectors of society, women, people of colour, will experience being called ambitious differently than other people. Now, again, in this, I'm not talking about being ambitious in any negative sense. I'm not talking about being ambitious in the sense of squashing other people to get to the top or any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm talking about being keen to achieve the things that you want to achieve. To reach your definition of success. That you are someone who strives towards things that are important. And importantly, somebody who's willing to face proximal challenges. So stuff that's happening now. So feeling uncomfortable, working hard, feeling embarrassed, potentially all of these things, you're willing to risk those proximal challenges in order to achieve your broader goals. Those broader ambitious, that's what being ambitious means in this context.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Circumstances where I think it would be good to be ambitious are when you're trying to decide whether to do something that feels difficult. Often we allow the fact that it feels difficult to say, well, maybe I shouldn't, maybe I'm not quite ready yet, maybe later. When actually if we can be ambitious and we can be like, you know what, I'm willing to do something that's difficult in order to achieve these important goals, then that's us being ambitious. I want you to be more ambitious when you're worrying about whether you're good enough to do something or not. We so often compare our insides with everybody else's outsides and we say, surely there's somebody better for this role. Why? Why not you? In fact, that's a great thought to have. Why not me? Why shouldn't I do this role? I want you to be ambitious when you're thinking about middle to long term goals. Often we're over ambitious when it comes to what we can get done in the next hour or the next day, but we're really unambitious in terms of what we can get done in the next three months or the next year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Be ambitious when you're setting your goals, you're setting the things that you think you can contribute to the world, when you're deciding on your definition of success. There's uncomfortableness in any goal. If we pick silly little goals, there'll be uncomfortableness around, Oh, maybe it's not good enough. Maybe I, you know, maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I should have done more. There's uncomfortableness in going for ambitious goals. So if there's uncomfortableness either way, why not be ambitious? Why not set our sights high and try and make that happen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, there's a whole bunch of thoughts that you can have if you're being a more ambitious boss to yourself. And this is things like, I've done difficult things before. So this is about reminding ourselves of our capabilities. I have the capacity to learn to be good at this. We don't have to already think we can do it. So often people won't take on a role because they're not sure if they can do it. And I'm like, dude, if you can already do the whole role, don't take on the role. How boring. Do a role for the next three years that you're already sure you can do? Dull. Take on a role that you think you can learn to be good at by about the middle of your term. So at the beginning, you'll be a bit like, this is hard. In the middle, you'll be like, you know what? I think I can do this. And by the end of the three years, you'll be like, yeah, I'm kind of done with this now. This is, this is straightforward for me now. That's perfect. So I have the capacity to learn to be good at this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Remind yourself that you're willing to be uncomfortable. So that you can achieve your goal and remind yourself there's going to be uncomfortableness regardless of what you decide. So you may as well choose the ambitious goal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Reassure yourself, you have something important to offer. I saw a lovely interview with Kamala Harris, where she was talking to a young girl about public speaking. And she was saying, you might be scared. You might be nervous when you're public speaking, but the audience needs to hear your ideas. So we have to be willing to be uncomfortable, willing to have that period of time where we're doing something that makes us nervous so that people can receive our ideas. And I just loved that as an approach to nerves. It's not that you have to not be nervous and it's not that you have to make all of that go away. We have to be willing to experience it so that people can get the benefit of the things that we have to say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We have to remind ourselves that this thing, this thing that feels difficult, is the next step, is the next step to achieving the goals, the things that are important to us. And we have to remind ourselves that it is safe for us to put ourselves forward for it. And we can know it's safe by pledging that we will look after ourselves, that if we go for these ambitious goals and then we fail, we don't reach them in entirety, we will be kind to ourselves. We won't beat ourselves up for having attempted it in the first place. We won't tell ourselves we were stupid for even considering having gone for it. We'll be kind to ourselves, whether we succeed or whether we fail or anything in between, because that's what makes it safe to have ambitious goals, knowing that you will be okay, whatever happens.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the final thing is to have that glimmer of what could be. It's that whole cheesy, you know, the little motivational things you get on Instagram that are like, um, you know, yes, what if you fall? But what if you fly? I want you to keep the thought this could be amazing. Imagine, imagine if this all goes well, imagine if we achieve this goal, how amazing that could be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if we think thoughts like this, we might at minimum feel resolved. If we're thinking thoughts like I'm willing to do the difficult things, then we might feel resolved. And we might feel willing to do the stuff. But we might even get glimmers of excitement and hope and optimism and meaning by trying to achieve ambitious goals that actually we've selected intentionally, we've aligned strategically and now we're supporting ourselves to achieve. That might feel amazing, mightn't it, don't you think? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you're feeling excited, hopeful, willing, resolved, you might put yourself forward for a challenging role or opportunity that you'd perhaps been a bit worried about. You might make a suggestion for how things could be improved, step up to be the one that makes things better. You might start planning out a route that even if that goal feels like a really long way away over there, you might start planning a route to getting to it. And you might start visualizing what it would be like to actually be someone who can achieve those goals.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I want you to notice the two different types of results that are out here. One is achieving the goals. That is one amazing result. That you go off and do those things that you dreamed of. But the other result, and this result is even more important than the other result, is that you have become somebody who can do difficult things. By being ambitious and then putting in the work to try and achieve that goal, you become somebody who can do difficult things. Who can take steps towards an ambitious goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the one I love about that result more than anything is that it doesn't matter if you achieve your goal or not. If you set an ambitious goal, you work hard towards that ambitious goal, you coach yourself through that process, then regardless of whether you get to the actual specific ambitious goal or not, in the end, you have become someone who is willing to be uncomfortable, who is willing to do difficult things, who is willing and able to learn, who can take themselves through these things of believing that it's possible, even when it doesn't feel like it is, and who can get really close to achieving their goals. Becoming that person sets you up to do everything in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to think about yourself at the moment. How ambitious are you at the moment? What ways are you already ambitious and what tiny ways could you be a little bit more ambitious? Is there an ambition? Is there a goal that you've been worrying about or avoiding or thinking, there's no way I could do that? How could you make it a little bit easier to believe that it might be possible and to start supporting yourself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope you found today useful, been thinking about being more strategic and more ambitious. Do go back, check out the three others where we were thinking about those other six qualities. We've got two more coming in a few weeks time. If you want any more support with this, I have my Be Your Own Best Boss online course where I take you through all of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you're someone who's like, yeah, I could buy the course Vic, but I probably won't finish it, then maybe you do better in a community setting, in which case check out my membership program, because not only do they get all the coaching and the support, they also get access to all the online courses, so you would get Be Your Own Best Boss for free as part of that membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can find out all about it in the phdlifecoach. com. You can contact me through the website if you have any questions, you can find me on Twitter at Dr Vikki Burns, on Instagram at The PhD Life Coach. And if you already get my newsletter, you can always reply to that with any questions. If you're interested in the membership, I can set you up with a free seminar so you could come and see it in action. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let me know if you want to try that. I hope today has been useful and I've got your brain buzzing about what goals you could achieve this year. Thank you all for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 30 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-04-how-to-be-more-strategic-and-ambitious thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-03-how-to-get-started-on-a-task <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <i> Links I refer to in this episode </i> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-40-how-to-use-the-do-know-don-t-know-list" target="_blank"> How to use the Do Know Don't Know List </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-30-how-to-break-your-work-down-into-chunks" target="_blank"> How to break your work down into chunks </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking" target="_blank"> How to use Role Based Time Blocking </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I've noticed a lie that a lot of my clients are telling themselves. And it might sound a little bit harsh to accuse my clients of lying. I don't mean they're actively misleading me, but I do think they're misleading themselves. And maybe you guys are misleading yourselves too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The lie I hear is that I can't get into my work unless I've got a big chunk of time. It's the clients who are convinced that if they only have an hour, it's barely worth starting because they need to get into it and flow doesn't come unless they've got all day. It's usually the same clients who are struggling to find those big chunks of time because other things come up or get in the way. And the irony is that I also hear from lots of clients that when those big chunks of time finally come up and you're like, yes, I can actually get some stuff done. I'm going to get in the flow. Today is the day. That somehow those hours disappear and we don't do all the things that we said we would be able to do in those big chunks of time. And the reason I call it a lie is because even in those big chunks of time you're doing the work one block at a time. It might feel easier sometimes if you can hit that kind of magical flow where things come easily but an eight hour day is still a series of one hours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what that means is there's nothing except your thoughts preventing you from using these smaller blocks of time. Now. This episode is not about chunking your work. That episode already exists. Go back and check it out. I'll link it in the show notes for you, but instead it's about getting started. The reason I told you about this lie to start with is because this is one of the reasons why people struggle to get started. They struggle to get started because they're telling themselves that it isn't long enough, that there isn't a big enough chunk of time for them to do anything meaningful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just a really good example of how our thoughts sometimes prevent us getting started on the tasks that we want to do. So in today's episode, we're going to think about some other thoughts that get in the way of starting, and I'm going to give you three specific tools that you can use to get started. I'll also refer you back to some other podcast episodes that are going to help as well. There's tons of support for you here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode three of the third series of the PhD Life Coach, and we are talking about getting started on a task. As I said, first we're going to identify some thoughts that make it more difficult to get started, and one of them is that I don't have enough time to do anything meaningful. If we believe that, we make it true. We start slowly and indecisively. We warm up on things that maybe don't really need doing. And suddenly it's an hour and we haven't even got into it. And now we need to be somewhere else and we've wasted our time. We make it true by believing that it can't be useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was recently chatting with one of the clients in my membership about this and she really believed that she needed time to gradually warm herself up into working and that that meant these shorter bursts of time just weren't enough for her. And I can't remember how we... I love an analogy. I mentioned last week that I'm really creative. I love an analogy. And it made me think of tennis lessons. I want you to imagine that you went down to tennis lessons at your local sports centre and you turned up for the lesson. And the person said, Yeah, the thing is, we need to do backhand and forehand and serve, and we need to do ground shots, and we need to do volleys, and we need to do placement, and we need to do footwork. So I don't think it's worth us having this lesson. Um, come back when you've got a full day.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How, how would you react to that? I think if you were anything like me, you'd be like, well, we could do a bit of it, perhaps. You know, and it's not that they're lying, you know, to play tennis, you do have to work on all of those shots, but do we need to work on them all in this hour? Does that mean it's not worth working on any of them in order to have a tennis lesson? No. Obviously not. We would pick one bit and we would do that bit and we would come back next week and do some more and we wouldn't wait until we could play eight hours of tennis in one day.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we think of it like that, suddenly it becomes obvious, well of course I could just do a bit of it. We could get a bit better at one part of it, but somehow when we're thinking about our thesis, it doesn't feel like that. Now, the client that I was talking to, we were also talking about the need to warm up, that sometimes she likes to do some emails, do some reading, kind of get herself in the mode for writing, and that often by the time she's done that, suddenly the time she'd allocated to writing had gone away. And again, we went back to that tennis lesson and I thought, well, okay, what if you turned up to this lesson this time? They don't send you away. They're like, okay, you're here for an hour, but they tell you about the importance of warmup and they get you a bit warmer. And then we start doing something easy. We start doing a little gentle rally or something like that across the net. And And you just kept doing that until the end of the lesson. And you were like, well, hang on, what happened to the tennis? I came because I wanted to do some drills, I wanted to play some games. And they said, yeah, yeah, but we had to warm up. And you said, well, yeah, I know, but I came for an hour's session and we haven't done any of the things that we said we'd come for. And they said, yeah, yeah, but we have to warm up. You know, takes us a while to get into it. And again, I don't think you would be paying for that tennis lesson. I don't think you would be returning to that coach. Because we might say, well, yeah, okay, maybe I need a warm up, but maybe I need 10 minutes and then we get going anyway. Is it the most perfect warm up ever? No, but we could warm up by playing tennis. How about that? How about we do just enough warm up that we don't injure ourselves, we kind of get vaguely in the mode, and then we hone the rest of our warm up, do the rest of it while we're actually playing tennis, i. e. the thing that we came to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again, the same is true in writing or in any of your kind of harder academic pursuits. Sure, if you want to start by doing 10 minutes of reading, 10 minutes of editing, okay. But why are we allowing that to turn into 50 minutes? Because that's when warm up becomes procrastination. That's when we're not getting into it, we're avoiding it. And one of the things I suggest, if you're someone who feels like you need to break into it gently and you sometimes get sucked into, okay, I'll just answer a few emails to get in a work mode, and then suddenly it's two hours later. If that's you, it's okay. That's understandable. But I also have a suggestion for you, and it builds on that tennis analogy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm an ex sport scientist, and one of the things that we know is that the way you need to warm up for a sport is with movements that are relevant for that sport. You wouldn't warm up in the same way for a gymnastics meet as you would to play football, for example. That very first bit of just getting your heart rate up may be, but beyond that you want to be mirroring movements that you're likely to be making in that sport. But we do them more gently, we do them more slowly, and we do them so that they're not at the extremes of your range of motion. You can do the same when you warm up for writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Instead of warming up for writing by doing some other academic task, like answering emails or reading papers, warm up for writing by writing slowly, gently, and within the realms of what you know. i. e. not at the extremes of your range of movement, your range of knowledge. So instead of distracting yourself by doing something that maybe gets your brain going, but doesn't actually get you into this task, Write a gentle paragraph on something you do already know about, without worrying too much about whether it's good or not, this is a warm up after all. Just write a quick paragraph about the topic that you're about to write on. Give like a little rough introduction to what you're about to say. Warm up by doing the thing you came here to do. Warm up by playing tennis, by writing, rather than disappearing off over there and doing something that feels a lot more manageable but doesn't move you towards your goals. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other lies we tell ourselves are that we don't know where to start. Now, I've mentioned this in previous podcasts, but I'm going to reiterate now because I think it's really important. I want you to always be clear between the difference between don't know, i. e. lacking information, and don't know, i. e. haven't decided. And where you're starting on the piece of work that you're doing is almost always a haven't decided issue, not an actual I'm missing information issue. And that's because it doesn't really matter where you start, you just need to start somewhere. And that means you just get to pick. So again, if you're struggling to start and you're telling yourself you don't know where to start, Remind yourself that this is a decision to make, not something that you don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again, I was talking to a different client in my membership about this as well, this idea of making decisions. And her decision was around where she was going to go to work, whether she was going to work at home or work at the library. And she often procrastinated making the decision, wasted time, and then kind of didn't really do either. And one of the things that I reminded her is not deciding is a decision. So if you've got a piece of writing to do and you haven't decided yet where to start and you allow that to mean that you don't start yet, you do something else instead, that means you are deciding not to start. It's not that you haven't made a decision. You had a choice. You could start with this, or start with that, or start with this other thing, or you could not start. And at the moment, you're just not starting. That is a decision. Same as for this client. If you don't decide that you're working here, or you're working there, then you're deciding that you're not working. And that's not, again, not to beat up on you. I'm never trying to beat up on you. But I want us to take responsibility for lack of decision making being a decision in itself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing we tell ourselves that doesn't help is that I'm not ready to start yet. I don't know enough to start yet. Again, all lies. I want you to listen to my episode about the Do Know, Don't Know list as a tool that will help you with this if you're feeling like you don't know enough. That will help you get really specific about what you do know and that you don't know. And I just want you to be mindful of the fact that usually when we're telling ourselves we don't know enough to do it yet, it just means we're a little bit scared and we just need to be a bit more supportive to ourselves, not that we're not ready to start. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's probably a whole load of other thoughts. Tell me, let me know. You can either respond, if you get my email newsletter, you can respond by email or if you just listen to my podcast, if you go to the place where you get your podcast, you'll see a send Vikki questions button. Let me know -what other things do you find stop you from getting started on your work?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because what I want to spend the rest of our time on is thinking about what can you actually do aside from coaching yourself on those thoughts, which is a really important element of this, what tangible steps can you take in order to get started on a piece of work that you want to do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My first tip is to separate finishing what you're currently doing with starting on the task. Now, let me tell you what I mean by that. Often what I'll find is it's the morning, I'm having my breakfast, I'm scrolling on my phone, and what I need to do is I need to start work. And I usually know what my task is, because I've usually set that out in advance with my role based time blocking system. Check that out in another episode as well. Um, But I can hear in my brain, as I'm scrolling on my phone, I can hear in my brain, right, you really should be going and doing X now. You know, this is the time you've blocked for that. I can hear myself almost persuading to do it, but I'm still scrolling. And I'm still scrolling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things that I have found most useful is remembering that we've actually got two different activities here. First activity is stop scrolling. Second activity is start the next thing. This is true whether you're watching TV, whether you're talking to friends, whatever you're doing that you don't want to be doing anymore and you want to be starting work, experiment with stopping that first thing. We don't need to think about starting work yet. We just need to think about stopping scrolling. We need to put our phone down. We need to turn the TV off. We need to stop playing the computer game. Because it's very easy to stay in that kind of parallel world where we're doing the thing and thinking about the work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's the worst world because that means we're not doing the work and we're not really enjoying the thing we're in. But if you can separate it out, suddenly it's like, I don't need to think about work. I just need to put my phone down. I can do it. I can put my phone down. Right. Phone down. Let's go. Then suddenly you haven't got all that stuff going into your eyes, whether it's computer games or TV or scrolling, whatever it is. You haven't got all that stimulation coming in. And then it's easier to sit quietly and be like, okay, right. What work is it that we're doing? And again, our task is not start work. Our task is open document. Identify next step, for example. And suddenly when we break it down like that, actually it's much easier to get started. Because we're not thinking about everything at once. You can use this tool.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I procrastinate going to bed. I think I've talked about this before. I procrastinate going to bed because I think of it in a whole series of tasks. If you can break it down, put feet on the floor, walk upstairs. Clean teeth, wash face. Then suddenly, actually, if you're only thinking about the next one, it becomes much more manageable. This will be, some of you will be looking at me going, well, surely you just go to bed. Um, any of you , neuro divergent will recognize this. Uh, some of the others of you may as well, but the more you can break it down, the more you can identify stopping one task as one decision, starting the next task as another decision, the easier it is to get started on the next thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second tool I want to use, and this is a little mantra that we talk about a lot in my membership, is stay in the room. One of the reasons that starting a task feels complicated, Is because in our brains, we've connected it to 47 other things. I need to do this thing. And then you see that. And then I need to do that. And then I need to send it to my supervisor. And then my supervisor will give me comments. My collaborator will give me comments and I need to respond to those. And then you send them up. But I've also got that other thing and I'm teaching next week. So I need to do that too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And suddenly it's like, well, I can't start on anything because there's 400 things in my brain. We also sometimes spiral into, but if it's not good enough, then they're going to think this. And if, you know, if I can't respond to their comments, then they're definitely going to think I'm an idiot. Maybe I won't even be able to get onto the next thing after all. And we connect it to a load of things about our abilities, our future and so on is the, what we're making it mean. When I can see clients doing this, I can see them taking the one task we want to start and connecting it to all the other tasks and all the things about themselves. I often say, stay in the room with me, just stay here, stay in the room with me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's our little shorthand. Let's just stay on this one thing. We need to start this task. That needs to be the one thing. We don't need to think about all those other things. We don't need to think about what's going to happen if your supervisor doesn't like it. We don't need to think what happens if this grant is rejected. We need to stay in the room and focus on this one thing. This is an amazing strategy. If you hear other people spiralling, you can use it. You can use it on yourself. Just stay in the room. Take a breath. Stay here in the room with me. What do we need to do to start this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I find it super calming. I know my clients do too. It enables you to feel the emotions associated with this specific thing that you're trying to do without having to kind of connect it and fix absolutely everything else. We stay here, we start this one task, one thing at a time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My third one's a semi silly one, but I like it and I think it really, really helps. And that is, I think it's useful to have a theme song. You know how in like boxing or wrestling or whatever, I used to watch WWF. Did you guys used to watch that when I was like 16, 17 or whatever in, what would that have been, nineties. And it was Brett the Hitman Hart and Triple H and all that crowd. Please let me know, comment or something. Let me know whether this is just me being ridiculous. Anyway. WWF. They all had their theme music, right? When they came out, they had their theme music. And it like, got them in the mood and they came out all like, feisty. You know what I mean. They came out ready to fight. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think we can do this. I think we can identify songs, and it can be your very, very personal choice. I am going to share mine with you in a second. It can be your very, very personal choice, but identifying a song which is, uh, right. Let's go. Fight time. We're doing this piece of work. Music. And for me, I think I've mentioned the, the, the playlist before. I'm not sure I've told you the specific song. So, for me, it comes from the Selling Sunset playlist. It's drivel. I'm aware. Very excited. I think there's a new season out on Netflix. Gonna be checking it out soon. They're all like, Power ladies strutting around in their heels and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those of you who know me realize that I am very much a trainers and leggings sort of a girl. So it is not my vibe on any level, but there's something about the music that makes me like, yeah, I can do this. And there is one particular song. And for those of you on, YouTube, you will see me in just a second, share it with you on the screen. It's called Strut by Dita I'm now holding my phone out. Apologies for the terrible audio quality. Okay. And it keeps going like that. And so this is me getting ready to start working. I'm getting ready. I've got my document open. Now we start writing. Okay, so it has like a minutes build up into it and now we're going. Now if any of you are going i can't write with music on nor can i but this gets me going and then what happens is i'm typing, that starts to annoy me and i turn it off and i carry on typing okay so this is not me suggesting that you should write with lyricked music on But, choose your song. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Choose a song that kind of gets you in a like, yeah let's go, I can do this sort of a mood. Preferably one that builds to like a little bit of a crescendo like that one did, so you know your moment where you start. And let me know what it is. I have a secret goal that I'd love to make a Spotify playlist with all of your songs on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, if you think of songs, let me know. Either Instagram, PhDLifeCoach, uh, Twitter, DrVikkiBurns. Or, you can send it, where it says ask Vikki a question in the podcast thing, you can send me your song there too. Or reply to my newsletter, because hopefully you are all, all on my newsletter, because every week you will get summaries of these podcasts and loads of other good stuff that you'll have heard about. Let me know, what song gets you ready to get your writing done? Seems like a small thing, but it can super help you go from, uh, I should start, to yes. Let's start. I really hope that's useful. I really hope YouTube's not going to tell me off for having illegal music. So if that bit didn't work, then, ah, sorry. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's called Strut by Dita. Find it on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Check it out. Laugh at my taste in music. It is all good. I really hope that's useful. Have a think. What are you getting started on today? Which of these techniques are you going to use so that you can move even in maybe a small chunk of time that you have available today? Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 23 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-03-how-to-get-started-on-a-task thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-02-how-to-start-this-academic-year <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p>      </div> <div> I am just back from walking the dog. I am windswept. It is definitely autumn here in the UK. And that means it's the start of a new academic year. Last week I talked about all the ways that I can support you this academic year. So check that out if you haven't listened to it already. But now I want you to think about how you can support yourself this year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We are going to be thinking about how we can start this new year in the way we want to go on. And we're not going to talk about goals or target setting. Often we start new years thinking about all the things we're definitely going to achieve this time. But instead today I want us to think about some more positive and empowering ways to start a new year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are based on a workshop that I did last week for my membership students, so the clients that either are at the University of Birmingham or who have signed up as individuals to my membership program, they get access to two workshops a month. And the last one was about how to start as you mean to go on. There was a ton of stuff that we covered in that workshop, but there were some bits that people found really useful that I wanna share with you guys today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode two of season three of the PhD Life Coach, and we are gonna be thinking about positive ways to get this year started. The first thing I want you to think about as we start this new year is how can you harness your strengths this year? So often, and I definitely did this in the past, we spend more time thinking about how can we fix all the things we're doing wrong? How can we get up a little bit earlier, work a little bit harder, be more focused, be more disciplined, do things better than we're doing them at the moment. And very rarely do we stop and think, what am I actually really good at? What comes quite naturally to me? What have I been developing strengths in over time? And how can I use that stuff more?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If anything, before I started learning all this coaching stuff and kind of really embedding it in my life, if anything, I was running away from my strengths. Some of my strengths, things like being enthusiastic, connecting with people and stuff, I thought of, in some ways, as being weaknesses that actually they took away from my focus because I was so enthusiastic about stuff, I tended to take on too much, over commit, then maybe not deliver on everything, or at very least exhaust myself trying. And so these things that were strengths, not only was I not really recognizing them as strengths, particularly, sometimes I was thinking of them as weaknesses that needed to be mitigated for.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times I just didn't even recognize them as strengths. I'm quite creative. I'm quite good at writing in a way that's easy to understand and engaging that sort of stuff. And again, that stuff I didn't even recognize as a strength because I just couldn't see why other people couldn't do that. It felt so easy for me that it that I didn't particularly recognize it as something that I was good at. I want you to have a think about what strengths you have. Things that could help you in your PhD or academic journey that you're not currently using or not currently spending much time thinking about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now don't worry if this feels a little bit uncomfortable. We're kind of taught not to talk about our strengths. You know, no one wants to be the kind of boasting, big headed person who goes around telling everyone how great they are. But that doesn't mean we can't recognize our strengths. Some of you might even feel like you don't really have any strengths.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of my clients said in the workshop that the problem is, especially when you're doing your PhD or you're working in academia, is the things that you used to think of as strengths, being clever, learning things quickly, everyone around you has them, so they don't really feel like strengths anymore.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if that's you, if you're thinking, you know what, I don't even know what my strengths are anymore, let's just spend a few moments thinking about that. What strengths did you used to think you had? What strengths would your friends and family say you have? Really try and dig into it and identify some things, either that you feel like you're getting lots better at, or that you've always felt that you're quite good at, or you've always found quite easy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, even if you do nothing else at all, recognizing these strengths is super useful. Because one of the things we know is that what we pay attention to is what we notice. So if you pay attention to your strengths, you remember you've got them, you remind yourself of them, you're much more likely to notice the times when you use it. Whereas when we're constantly trying to fix our faults, we notice the times that we do things wrong. So even if you don't actively try and use your strengths more, just by thinking about what they are, you're more likely to notice them and more likely to recognize the ways in which you're performing well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we can go further than that. We can start thinking about how can these make us more effective in our lives at the moment. And effective you can interpret in any way you want. It could be effective in terms of getting more stuff done, being more focused, having a work life balance you enjoy, pursuing work that feels meaningful, however you define effective is completely up to you. But how does your strength and how could your strengths help you to do that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for example, for me, I know natural enthusiasm is one of my real strengths. It comes across when I'm teaching, comes across when I'm coaching, and it keeps me motivated to do lots of different things. Now I've mentioned it can be a weakness if I let it go kind of unbridled and I just get distracted by lots of things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when focused, what it can do is it can really remind me why what I'm doing is important and really encourage me to take my ideas through to fruitition. I was so enthusiastic about getting this membership site up and running for all of my members and all my potential new members like you guys, and for getting my online self paced courses all up and online, and my enthusiasm for that really drove me through what was a very busy time getting all the content ready for that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It could have felt like quite a trudge. It was a huge amount of work, but because I was enthusiastic about the topic, I was enthusiastic about how useful it was going to be. I was excited about the idea of you guys using it, then actually it's been really fun. Now I did have support for it and I'm going to talk about that in a future episode. I had somebody helping me with the technical side of pulling it all together. But from my side, I was providing all of the content, the shape of it, the structure, the exercises, everything. And harnessing my enthusiasm has really made this feel like a really positive experience and has got it done in a timeline that I, for a while, didn't think was possible.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another strength I try to bring is that I'm creative. I'm quite good at coming up with either analogies or new models that help people understand concepts. And again, I've tried to use that in the materials that I've been designing for you guys, so that the things I talk about are. are memorable, there's a structure for them so you can actually use them, and people seem to really resonate with that. So I've tried to bring my enthusiasm and my creativity to this work that I'm doing at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Think ahead to your term. What are you doing between now and December? What are the kind of tasks that are on the agenda? And how could your strengths help you to achieve those? I would love to know what strengths you've got. So if you want to share them with me, you can find me on Instagram or Twitter. I'm the PhD Life Coach on Instagram and Dr. Vikki Burns on Twitter. Find me there. Tell me what your strengths are. We are such a hugely talented community and it's amazing to know what strengths we're bringing to the world.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second empowering suggestion I want to make for this year is that we spend some time predicting the future. Now, I went through a whole crystal ball exercise in my workshop. If you're interested to know more about that, it will be available as a self paced course in the next month or two, depending on how my enthusiasm drives me through. We shall see. Um, so it should be available soon, but essentially this is about looking ahead and thinking about what's likely to happen and what we want to happen. And I took my students through a process to identify all of those things so that we can then strategize to maximize the things that we want to happen and to mitigate for or prevent the that we don't want to happen.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we do it with good, like, self insight. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean, you are probably going to be very similar this academic year than you have been in other academic years. And I hope that doesn't feel like bad news. I used to start every academic year, and every calendar year, and some terms, and some Mondays, telling myself that I was going to be different. This time, I was going to be new organized Vikki. I was going to do things on time, in a slower methodical way. I was going to carefully work my way through things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yeah, that never really happened. There were things where I improved in those directions, but that never happened because I was trying to be someone that I wasn't. When in reality, if we can look nonjudgmentally at what we're likely to do this term, and then from there, decide what we wanna do about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I know I'm likely to be enthusiastic, I'm likely to be creative. I'm probably likely to have too many ideas, more ideas than I can implement. I'm probably likely to get behind on some of my routine admin tasks because I do that, you know, it happens. I'm likely to procrastinate a bit. I'm likely to get some work done in a big burst of excitement and creativity.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And when I can look at it like that, without judgement, just as a, you know what, I know me. I've lived in this body and brain for a really long time now, and I'm pretty good at knowing how I'm likely to show up. Then we can plan for that version of us. Not changing ourselves into somebody completely different. The world doesn't need you to do that. The world needs you to show up as the best version of you. So then I can start thinking, okay, how can I support myself to use my strengths? Like we just talked about, but also how can I support myself so that the other ways I'm likely to show up, I'm likely to procrastinate. I'm likely to overcommit. I'm likely to get behind on admin tasks, how I can mitigate for those things. I mentioned that I got some support pulling together the membership site. Part of that was me mitigating for those things. It's much harder to procrastinate when you've got somebody who's expecting content from you. It's much easier not to get behind on admin tasks, if you've got somebody doing some of those basic admin tasks for you. So that was me mitigating, for some of the things that I knew I was likely to show up as. And that wasn't straightforward for me. I had to pay for that. And I had to manage my mind about the fact that there was part of my brain that was going, we could just do this. We don't have to spend that money. We were perfectly capable. If we just put our mind to it, we could do this ourselves. And the reason I dissuaded that part of my brain was because I knew that with all my good intentions and all my enthusiasm, technically I could do all those things, but I would probably be battling some of these ways that I was likely to show up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know for a lot of you, delegation is often not an option. There's not somebody that you can just pay to do things for you. So instead we get to think about other ways that you can mitigate ways that you're likely to show up. So for me, I'm likely to get behind on admin tasks. And one of the things I do to support that is I try and make it as simple as possible to do the admin tasks I need to do. So where I have a clear system. So when I take on new clients, I have an invoicing system, for example, although that's going to go in my new fancy membership site soon. But at the moment I have an old fashioned invoicing system. Because it's very clear, because it's very step by step, I don't actually, I'm perfectly on top of all that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I haven't set up my expenses system anywhere near as well, and I'm not so on top of that. So one of the things I know I need to do this year is set up my expenses system so that it's much easier for me, someone who doesn't particularly like having, is good at it when I do it, but doesn't particularly like it and puts it off and finds it boring and things, I need to make it easier for myself to do those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so how can you think about the way that you're likely to show up this year, and think about how you can maximize the ways you're likely to show up that you want, and mitigate for ways that you're likely to show up that you don't want.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing I wanted to talk about today is modifying your environment. Now usually those of you who have been with me for a while will know that I often coach around the self coaching model. And one of the key tenets of the self coaching model is that our circumstances are separate from our thoughts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that it's our thoughts that create our feelings, not our circumstances. So it's not the fact or truth of what's going on around us that influences our emotions, it's the thoughts we have interpreting those circumstances. That might suggest that I don't think modifying your environment can change the way you feel. And in many ways, I don't think it does. I see a lot of PhD students, academics, and I do it myself even now, but certainly in the past a lot, trying to get a sense of feeling calm and in control by tidying their office or coming up with a new filing system or a new task management system. And I know as a coach that the sense of calm or being in control doesn't come from a new tool, it doesn't come from a tidy office, it comes from the thoughts that you're having.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, as a human, I also know that sometimes it's a lot easier to have helpful thoughts if your circumstance, if your environment is conducive to it. So whilst I definitely don't suggest that you spend the start of this year starting completely new reference manager systems and learning, you know, new note taking systems and all of these things  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I do want you to think, are there simple and quick ways that you could change your environment that would make it easier for you to behave the way you want to behave? Whether it's having a nice thing of water so that you drink more fluid so it's right there and you can get it. I now have to remember to fill it. Those of you watching on YouTube will see, I just flashed my nice, beautiful blue decantery thing at you. That was part of my mission to drink more water. I'm actually not very good at filling it up, so I need to work on that, how I can modify my environment to make that more easy. But how could you change your environment to make it easier?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Is there a way to make it easier to find the documents that you need to write, to always know where you're going to start writing? I'm a big fan of the thing where you write at the end of your piece of writing exactly what you need to write next, so that when you come to it, you know exactly what you're doing. What could you change in the place that you work to make it feel more comfortable? Do you get cold and go off because you're cold? Do you need to keep a blanket in there? Do you need to have better lighting so that you don't get a headache? Do you need to arrange to meet with friends so that you get work done, sort of in some company? What can you modify about your environment that will make it easier for you to use your strengths and harder for you to sort of succumb to the things that you find more challenging.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to notice my phrasing there. We're not trying to fix anything. We're not trying to stop ourselves doing anything. We're trying to make it easier for us to engage in the behaviours that we want to engage in, and less easy for us to engage in the behaviours that we don't want to engage in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another example, on days that I want to walk on my treadmill more while I'm working, I work with my shoes on. Because if I've got my shoes on, it's a lot easier for me just to pick up my laptop, go over to my walking pad, and walk while I'm working, than if I have to go off and remember where I left my trainers and come back and then get on. It's a small thing, but it's an environmental modification that makes it a little bit easier to engage in that behavior that I want to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For some of you it might be choosing to work away from home, choosing to work in the library, choosing to work in a coffee shop, or it's about finding a place that's actually a dedicated little work spot for you at home, even if that's only a small zone in the corner of another room. What would make it easier for this year to feel like a good academic year?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we've thought about harnessing your strengths, we've talked about predicting the future and looking for ways to maximise or mitigate the things that we think we're likely to do this year. And finally think about ways that you can modify your environment to make it easier to support yourself, to engage in all these behaviors.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is all about being a good boss to yourself. You're thinking forward, you're thinking, how can I make it possible for the version of me that needs to do this work and the wants to have the life they want to have? How can I make it easier for them to do it? How can I make it feel more fun? How can I make it feel less effort and more engaging? We're planning strategically to make this all feel easier.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this episode is going out on the 16th of September, 2024. So if you are listening live, you still just, and I say , , have time to get into my membership before our quarterly planning session, which is on Thursday this week, Thursday the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, Thursday, the 19th of September.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you join in the next three days, you will be in in time for our two hour workshop on quarterly planning, which is all about deciding what we specifically want out of this quarter. So we'll do a little bit of this, how to make it easier for ourselves, but it's really going to be about decision making and prioritizing around what do we want to exist in three months time that doesn't exist at the moment, and what are going to be the steps to get there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Importantly, we're not just going to set goals. We're going to think about what do we need to think and what do we need to feel in order to take the actions that we need to take to achieve those goals. And it's that holistic approach that is what is going to make this session different from any planning session that you've been to before.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you want in on that, or if you're already a member, amazing make sure you're there. If you want in on that go to my website phdlifecoach. com Click on the membership at the top and join. As long as you are in by Wednesday you will get access to that on Thursday. There'll be an online self paced version for members only, if you can't make that session. Not going to sell that as a separate product, but it will be available there in the membership.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we're going to do it every quarter. So we're going to do it now planning for the next quarter. And then in three months time, we will do it again, looking back at the last quarter and forward to the next quarter. So if you need that sort of structural support from a live community, then do check out the membership.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope you found today useful. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm hoping to do episodes in the future where I respond to listeners questions and things like that. So you can either email back to me from the newsletter, or if you go to your podcast provider, there's a send Vikki a question button. Just click on that. Send me some questions. Let me know what you'd like me to speak about in the future. Hope you all have a lovely week. Thank you all for listening and see you next time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.  <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.  </span> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 16 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-02-how-to-start-this-academic-year thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-01-how-i-can-help-you-this-year <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p>      </div> <div> I'm going to guess how I think you're feeling right now. I'm recording this at the beginning of September in 2024. And that means in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, it's back to school time. And when you work in a university or study in a university, even though it's not quite the same as the school year, we still have that sense of starting a new academic year, getting back into something after the summer break.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've always found that time to be a bit of a contradiction. On one hand, there's this sense of new beginnings, new starts, new possibilities that this year things will be a little bit more organised, so you'll stay more focused, you'll get stuff done, this belief that maybe things could get a little bit better, that we could be a little bit better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> On the other hand, I often spent this time beating myself up about not having got as much done over the summer as I'd intended to and feeling a bit stressed out about what was coming, especially those of you who are teaching, but even if you're doing your PhD, that sort of thing of, right, I'm into another year now, I'm a second year now, I'm a third year now, I'm all but dissertation now, whatever stage you're at, there's often that sense that you're going into a new phase, and that can be both exciting and a bit scary. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how I decided to start this season of the podcast is to let you know all the ways I can help you. If you're worried that you procrastinate too much, or you're overwhelmed, or you don't feel like you're good enough, or you feel like you really need to pick it up this year, or something has to be different this year, or that everybody else is finding it easier than you, any of those things, I'm here for you. I've got a whole bunch of free stuff. So don't turn off. If you don't want to spend any money on this, I have got, let me look at my list. I have got five different ways, five, five different ways I can help you for free. And then I'm also going to tell you about a couple of opportunities, new opportunities, which I'm super excited about for us to work together a little more closely. I want you to finish this episode feeling like you're not on your own, feeling like there's somebody who gets it and can help you with this. And with an idea of which one might be a good fit for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's start with the free stuff. And to be honest, if after that, if you want to turn off at the end of the free stuff, that's up to you. I think it's worth waiting, but the other things I've got some low cost options too, but. If you want to stop after the free stuff, totally get it. Never going to sell to you without your consent. So let's begin with the free stuff. The first is this podcast. Hopefully many of you are returning people who were here for season one, season two. If you weren't, you're so welcome. So glad you found me for the beginning of season three. Make sure you check back through. All the things that I've covered before, one of the things I will put in the newsletter. So there's a newsletter that I'll tell you about in a second that goes out on a Monday. One of the things I'll put in the newsletter is my little handout, which helps you work out where to start with the podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're brand new and you're a bit like, Oh my goodness, there's 80 something episodes, where do I start? I have a handout for that, so you can have a little look. I suggest some episodes and tell you why I suggest those. If not, just dig in, scroll, see what you can find. There's an absolute wealth of advice, motivation, there's example coaching sessions where I'm coaching real people on the podcast. You can hear them talk about their challenges and think about how it can affect you. I've got interviews with amazing people who help you be a more effective writer or how to network or how to review and plan your year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All sorts of amazing guests, amazing episodes. Dig back in, see what you can find. So much goodness there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's also, the second thing is the newsletter. As I mentioned, I send a newsletter every week. It's not just me wittering on and it's certainly not me just selling stuff to you. What I do is I give you a summary of this week's podcast and I do that for a reason. Often we listen to podcasts and then we don't enact anything in them. We sort of go, Oh, that's pretty clever, and then don't do anything with it. And I don't want that to be you. If you hear me say something that you're like, Oh, that could be useful. I want you to use that. I want you to try it out. I want you to tell me how it went. Tell me what worked for you and what didn't work for you. So in the newsletter, you get three kind of take home messages from the podcast. You get two reflective exercises and one action that you can take right now to make everything feel a little bit better, whether you're a PhD student or a senior professor, it all applies for you. I also, in that newsletter, let you know about the other free stuff that you have access to. I'll remind you of other ways that you can work with me. But the main thing is that summary of the podcast to really help you embed all of that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing you can get for free is online group coaching for free once a month. And this is all in the newsletter. So if you want that, you need to be on the newsletter. You need to go to phdlifecoach. com and the very first big orange button that you see will show it will say, sign up for the newsletter and get access to free online monthly group coaching. You dial in, it's a webinar, you can only see my face, you're just lurking in the background, and people take in turns to get coached. You stick your little Zoom hand on, one of you will get promoted, you'll appear next to me as if by magic, and we'll have a conversation about something that's causing you problems at the moment. You'll get the benefit of some one to one coaching completely free from me and everybody else will get to see you being coached. Now we don't watch it like Netflix. We watch it with the intention of learning from it, from ourselves, because seeing somebody else have a challenge that feels a bit like one of our challenges is an amazing way to not feel alone and to come up with ideas that you want to try out in your own life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So make sure you come along. The timings change. They're all in the newsletter. You'll find all the dates so you can put them in your diary. I release the zoom details just before the session and we'll see you there completely free. And just to reassure you, it's not a sales pitch. I mention the ways we could work together in other ways, but you ain't gotta listen to like 10 minutes of coaching and 50 minutes of me telling you why you should give me money, that's not what it's there for. This is my contribution to the world for anybody who is never going to pay me for anything. It's also a wonderful opportunity for any of you who are considering paying me, but want to kind of check it all out a little bit first. So either way, come along, get your free coaching every month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth thing, I have a new thing on my podcast where my podcast provider has this like, ask me questions option. So if you check the place that you got this podcast, you have a look, whether you're on Spotify or Apple or wherever, have a little check in the blurb, there should be a button that says something about ask questions. If you ask questions on there, I will answer them on a future podcast. It's something I haven't done in seasons one and two. It's something I want to start now because there's this new facility on the podcast. And you'll ask questions, I'll answer them. So you'll get bespoke advice on the podcast to answer your questions. You'll be able to hear from other people's as well. So press that button. No one's doing it at the moment. It's been there for a while. So if you do it, you will probably get your question answered. You can tell me when you ask whether you want me to say your name or anything like that. So you're welcome to do it as a named person. You're also welcome to do it anonymously. If you don't say, I'll assume you want to be anonymous. So drop in your questions, anything you're struggling with, anything you think I haven't answered in the podcast, or at least you haven't found it, just ask a question and I will answer it for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth way I can help you for free is kind of an extreme version of that, which is, I mentioned that I sometimes coach on the podcast for a podcast episode. So these were real students who wanted support, and they got a free coaching session in exchange for me being able to use it in my podcast. So if you think that that's something you'd be willing to do, that in exchange for getting that help about your specific problem, you'd be okay with me sharing that on the podcast, just let me know. I want to line up a bunch of people for this year. I'm looking to do at least six or seven of these over the next year. I want every level of academia. So brand new PhD students through to senior, senior professors, everything in between. Just let me know if you fancy it and let me know what's challenging for you at the moment and we will try to make it work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's five different ways that I can help you completely for free to get over all the things that feel difficult at the moment. Let's get this PhD, let's get academia feeling a little bit easier without beating ourselves up, in ways that feel sustainable and fun so that we can get stuff done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, my next way I can help you is sort of free, especially if you're a student or a member of staff, which is that universities can pay me to put workshops on. So I have a whole series of PhD workshops on things like how to be your own best supervisor, how to write when you're struggling to write, how to start as you mean to go on, what to do if you feel behind, uh, how to overcome imposter syndrome. I'm trying to think of them all. There's so many. What to do if you've got too much to do. That's a classic. Everyone loves that one. There's a whole series of them, and your university can book them. If you think your university should book them, send them my website, phdlifecoach. com, tell them how amazing the podcast is, tell them how much you think it would be an amazing thing for your university to offer, and tell them to get in contact with me. Often universities like student led stuff, and members of staff, often you have access to people who make these decisions. So between you, I reckon we can make this happen at a load of universities. And the good thing with that is it means I get paid by the university and you get it completely for free. So it is a win win situation. They're two hours, they're online and they're good. They're really good. Get some really great feedback on them. So check that out. Make sure you encourage your universities to sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also run workshops for staff. So if you're an academic member of staff and you're feeling like, hang on, I need that stuff too. Any of them can be converted to staff courses. For example, I have a specific staff version of how to write when you're struggling to write, and particularly how to write when you're too busy to write that I ran for a couple of universities last year was super well received. Really, really good. And I also have a couple of courses about supervision. So I have a shorter course about how to have difficult conversations as a supervisor and I have a more extensive, how to be an effective supervisor course as well. So if those sound interesting, nudge your university, get them in touch. I can share with them all of the details. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now for the last few minutes of the podcast, I want to tell you about the two paid ways that you can work with me at the moment. So if you're convinced, you'll definitely never give me any money or certainly not at the moment, you can stop listening now. It's been lovely having you here. And I really, really hope that you engage with all the free stuff. I don't mind. So I love the fact that I can support people all over the world who will never ever pay me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, if you think that maybe you'd like a little bit more hands on support and a little bit more in detailed stuff, and if you feel like something needs to change, that it can't really carry on the way it's been. And that actually putting a little bit of money into it might just help you get where you need to be, then listen up, I've got two options for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first is my lower cost, more self paced option. I have an online course called how to be your own best boss. And this is based on a three month program that I ran earlier in the year with a cohort of students, but now you can do it on your own. If you're in the wrong time zones to work with me, or maybe you work full time and you can only do things in evenings or weekends, and you want a bit of flexibility of doing it yourself, then this is a perfect option for you. It's got about 60 lessons, so we go through, in fact, Those of you who are on YouTube, I'm going to show you. So I'm just going to share my screen here for a second. If you're listening on the podcast, check out YouTube because it's got all the details here. So you can see my website. This is where you sign up for my newsletter. If you go to self paced courses right here, it's going to take you through to this. And you'll see there's two here at the moment, be your own best boss and too much to do, too little time. That is coming soon. Keep an eye out. I'll shout out for that, but be your own best boss here. I will take you through. It's not just about time management. It's not just around bossing yourself to achieve everything. It takes you through exactly what you need from yourself as a boss. How you can organize your time. How you can talk to yourself. How you can manage your tasks. But all in a way that takes into account all the stress and thoughts and feelings that we have about this stuff that are why these techniques have never worked in the past. We have reflective activities.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's all designed by me. So not only am I a coach, I was a senior professor in the UK, before I did this, I've supervised PhD students to completion. I've supported even more. I know what stuff helps. And this is not just for PhD students, whatever level you're at, you will get what you need out of this course. So we have, module one is how to be the boss you need. This is really about how we talk to ourselves. If you're super critical, self judging, then that one is going to be amazing for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Module two is a bit more pragmatic. It's thinking about how you organize your time and your projects, but all the time thinking about how can we do that from compassion and curiosity, not just by learning a fancy new tool. Module three is for those of you who don't follow your plans. Okay. So if you think, yeah, I plan all that stuff, that sounds great, Vikki. I just don't do what I plan. And then I beat myself up for it, module three is the one we pinpoint here why are you not following your plans? And we have strategies to help you figure out in a bespoke way, how you can do what you intended, make plans that you can follow and then follow them effectively to the best of your abilities. Not perfectly, never perfectly, but to the best of your reasonable abilities and be satisfied with that. Module 4 is my planning and review process so we go through how you can review your months and plan the next one and how you can review your quarters and plan the next one. Okay, so we've got 4 big modules and there is a fifth module coming soon, and anyone who buys it now will get that one for free when it comes out. But at the moment, four big modules, about 60 lessons in all of it, and it's amazing. It's £47, it's a one off payment, and it's going to be really good for anybody who loves self paced stuff, likes being able to take themselves through it, like in their own time, who wants specific techniques, who wants reflective activities, and wants everything to feel a bit better than it does at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, some of you might be thinking, that be your own best boss program sounds amazing, but I keep buying things and then not doing them. So I'm really worried that I'll buy it and then I won't work my way through it. First thing, it's designed to be done in chunks. It's got tons of interaction in it, tons of activities to do. So you should hopefully feel more engaged and able to drop in and out of it as much as you can anyway. But, if you're somebody who responds better to having times in your diary where you're actually doing things, people to speak to, community to go through things with, and actual live interaction, then my membership is the best option for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to share my screen again for people who are on YouTube, there it is. Look, doing your PhD can feel so much better than this. That's like a little strap line on the video. The membership is a monthly membership where you get access to online group coaching sessions. If you're watching, there's my big face talking about how amazing it is. You get access to online group coaching, where you'll see people getting coached, like the free monthly one, but twice a week. You'll get access to workshops, those ones that I offer for universities. I do for you all the way through the membership. So you get all of those live throughout the year. We do two a month, they're two hours online, and you get self paced versions of them as well. You also get access to that whole, be your own best boss program too. So if you're thinking that sounded really good, but maybe a bit more support would be great, then you get it for free as part of this program. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also have a Slack community. So you will meet with the other people who are in the membership already. You'll be able to set up co working sessions with them. You'll be able to exchange ideas, support each other, share your wins, commiserate on the things that go wrong, and generally feel a little bit less alone than you are right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're interested in that, again, go to myphdlifecoach. com website. You'll be able to click on the membership, find out all about it. I'm really up front with prices. Some people on these things just don't tell you the price until you dig around. I don't want to do that. The membership costs £97 per month if you pay it on a rolling basis. If you can pay up front for six months, then it is £475. That's in pounds. If you're from the US, £97 is about $130, something like that. £475 is about $630, that sort of ballpark. But I want you to think how much support this is. And I want you to think about the difference it could make to how long your PhD takes. It only needs to cut a month or two off the time it takes you to do your PhD for it to start paying for itself already. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sneaky one, too. If you've ever worked with me before, so you did my Be Your Own Best Boss program, or you've paid for one to one coaching in the past, get in contact. I have a sneaky alumni rate for the membership just for you guys. So get in contact if that's of interest to you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there are a ton of ways you can work with me for free, for smaller amounts of money, for bigger amounts of money. The one way you currently, only some of you could work for me with me is on one to one coaching. So at the moment I am not taking any new PhD clients. I have a pretty full set of clients at the moment you. And I'm encouraging all new PhD people who are interested in getting my support to come into the membership. I truly believe it's the best way for you guys to work with me. You will get all the support you need through that membership program. If you're an academic member of staff, get in contact. I do have a short waiting list, but I would hope to have availability for academic staff in kind of late October, something like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm so excited to be starting a new season. I've got so many amazing topics coming up. Thank you for indulging me telling you about all my services for an episode. I truly do it from the point of view, I want you to know that the support you need is out there at whatever level you need it to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am planning and recording a ton of new podcasts for you. We are going to run throughout this academic year. If you've got ideas for topics, if I haven't done them before, if you think there's things I could go into in more detail, let me know. I'm always open to new suggestions, people I should interview, or if you want to come on and be coached yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is amazing to be back. I'm super excited about this year. I hope you are too. I am here for you however you are feeling. Thank you for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 09 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/3-01-how-i-can-help-you-this-year thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-48-why-we-should-ask-if-this-will-make-the-summary <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p>      </div> <div> I get asked to write short biographies quite regularly, just like little blurbs to put on my website, or if I'm doing a workshop for a university, for example, to get distributed to participants. And that means that a academic career of 20 something years gets reduced down to five or six lines. And doing this recently really made me think about what stuff made it to the summary. When I tell the story of my academic career, what things do I actually talk about? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it made me think of all the things that I worried about and that felt super important when I was in the midst of experiencing them that don't even come close to making the summary. And even if I was asked to write an extensive piece, for example, when I did my inaugural lecture, so the lecture I do after I became a full professor here in the UK, there were so many things that didn't make that longer story either. And so today I want us to ask ourselves is this thing that I'm doing, that I'm worrying about ever going to make the summary of my life, of my professional career? And if not, how do I want to handle it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vicki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 48 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. We're thinking about why you should ask yourself if this will make the summary of your life. Now, I mentioned writing lots of bios at the minute, but I'm also trying to organize some of the crap I have in my house. I am somebody who keeps a lot of sentimental bits and pieces. I have boxes and boxes of stuff from my childhood, my teen years, universities, various bits of my career. And they're all in boxes. And at the moment, I don't look at them very often, and most of them would make no sense to anybody except me. And for a long time, it felt really important to keep all of these things and to have that kind of record of my life. As I've got older, one of the things I've realized is that boxes and boxes of junk are not a record of my life. They're the detritus of my life. And some of them are amazing. And much of it doesn't actually provide a record at all, because it's something that I was given by a friend in a particular situation that to anybody else makes no sense whatsoever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At the same time, I've started going through photos and documents and things that I got after I lost my dad a few years ago, and so much of them are unlabeled photos of people. I've got no clue who they are, or if I do, I know their names, but I don't know much about them. And it made me think how much more I would prefer to have less stuff, but that actually told a story and that had some meaning behind it because I understood who they were and what they were like. And so I'm starting to go through some of my sentimental stuff and think about how can I take this huge quantity of stuff and turn it into more of a meaningful story. And again, just like with the bios, that's making me think what would make the summary of my life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now what's this got to do with doing a PhD or being in academia? Well, often we get super stressed about everything we're meant to be doing, whether it's on the teaching side, research side, administration, outreach, etc, etc, etc. We're very convinced that every single thing is very important. We have to do all of them and it's a real problem if we either can't do them all or that we don't do them very well. Yet when we have that perspective of a few years looking back, suddenly these things kind of merge together a bit. Suddenly we don't remember all the different bits that were causing us stress. We don't remember what things on different to do lists even meant. I don't know if you guys keep your planners, I've got quite a lot of mine and I don't remember a lot of it. What I do remember are certain key things and we'll talk about what characterizes them in a minute, and I remember how I felt during those periods of time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Other things that seem really important to people that I coach now are things like how long it takes to do your PhD, how many corrections you get, how long it is between finishing your PhD and getting your first grant, getting your first permanent job. And again, looking at it with a perspective of time, you get to see how none of these things are part of your story in the end. No one writes how long their PhD took or how many corrections they got on their CV. And in fact, my CV has changed hugely over time. I've got copies of my application when I went for senior lecturer, when I went for reader, when I went for full professor. And there were so many things that felt so important that didn't even make it into the next iteration of my CV. Now, were they useful to get me to that next step? Yes, absolutely. But did the things that didn't work matter? in three years, five years, ten years? No, almost always not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do we do with this information? Well, the first thing is it gives us a certain amount of freedom that by putting it in the perspective of a much longer time scale, we can see that some of these things are just not going to matter in a few months time. It takes a little bit of the pressure out of the decisions. One of the things that I find holds my clients back from making decisions the most is the notion that they might pick the wrong thing. They might pick the wrong way to make their argument, or they might choose to go to a conference when they shouldn't, or not go to a conference when they should. And in reality, not many of these decisions actually have a right or wrong answer. Either way, you can generate a story of a wonderful career. And so remembering that, keeping that perspective can sometimes just take a little bit of weight out of some of the decisions that you're making, or take a little seriousness out of how you're interpreting things so that it doesn't feel quite so bad in the moment and so that it's easier for us to actually get on and do the things that we want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you find yourself saying, well actually this, this could be because if I get this grant then that will really send me down this route and that could be a big part of the story of my career. I want you to also ask yourself, is it the only route though? Because we also have to remember that we only ever tell the story of the life we had. It's a little bit like that Sliding Doors movie. I don't know if you've seen it. It's quite old now, where in one version of the narrative, she makes it onto the underground train. And on the other version of the narrative, she doesn't, the door's shut just in front of her and she doesn't make it. And they follow through both versions of her life that she would have had. And we only see the summary of the life that we made. Is the thing you're doing, the thing that feels like actually it could be a really important part of my future, is it the only route to the things that you want? And I would argue almost always not.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It feels as though getting this grant or completing my PhD by this time is the only route to getting where I want to get. But in reality, if that thing doesn't work out, there are other ways, there are other routes that can be taken. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just want to say I am aware I'm speaking from a position of relative privilege. I came through into academia at a time where, while things were competitive, they were nothing like they are now, and I was lucky enough to get into pretty stable employment pretty quickly. And so I haven't had the huge periods of precarious employment that many of you have experienced or will experience. And so there is a certain extent to which this is the tale of a survivor. But even for people who are experiencing precarity, who are feeling like the things they're doing right now really are the difference between staying in academia or not, of your story going in this direction or in that direction that you don't want, even in those situations, putting this huge weight on it, that this is the only route </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> makes it more difficult. Telling yourself repeatedly that this thing is super important, it's the only way, it's the only way to prove yourself, it's the only way to get on. It makes it so much harder to do, even in situations where that might be kind of true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing in any situation is that all the things you're stressing about are definitely not going to make it onto the summary of your career. So maybe you do have one or two things that like, these are the kind of feel like make or break things. Everything else isn't. All the other things that we're telling ourselves we have to do as well are not on that summary. Even just by identifying these are the things that actually have the potential to be in my kind of life summary, my year summary, whatever it is. And these things, eh, probably not. Even that can take a lot of weight out of your to do list and a lot of weight out of the things you're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, the contrast of this and it's going to sound like I'm contradicting myself, but let me explain is that today is also the only day that we ever live in. We might have summaries of our careers, but in terms of the life that we experience and the way we feel, today is the only day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Today is the only day we ever live in and then tomorrow it'll be today and we live in today again. And so what we get to do is we get to also think about if today is the only day I ever experience, how do I balance giving myself the day and the experience that will feel good and feel sustainable, while also serving future me? That sounds complicated. But in reality, there's some quite simple rules of thumb that you can use. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Having a day that feels good and that serves future you normally involves choosing something intentionally that will move you towards your goals, and then engaging in it in a way that feels positive, where you give yourself positive feedback, where you have clear instructions, where you clearly know when you've done enough, and where you leave space to nourish yourself. And if we focus on that, we can create days that feel good, while also working towards a summary of our lives that we actually like.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately to start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what sorts of things do I think you should actually focus on? These things for me, at least, are usually things that are distinctive. I remember much more clearly the things that I did that were different, you know, when I traveled with a bunch of engineering students to China to experience their integration program that they were going on, for example, things like that were that were really distinctive from my every day life is stuff... they don't make it into my professional bio, but they certainly make it into my like personal summary of highlights of my career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What doesn't is where I did the same thing many, many, many times. And sometimes we're encouraged to do that, right. We're encouraged to chug out papers, and to keep, you know, to focus on quantity rather than quality. And I did that in chunks of my career and I couldn't even, if you told me to sit down and write down what papers I wrote in my career, I don't think I could actually generate an accurate list off the top of my head because there's so many of them that kind of blur into one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So choosing things that are distinctive, choosing things that are interesting or meaningful to you so that you love the process of engaging with them. Choosing things that connect you and help you become the person that you want to be and choosing things that move you forward in the goals that you have, rather than the things that feel the easiest or the most required by others, or the sort of smallest things to move along. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I saw a guy on Instagram talk about how he plans to have one adventure every three months, and he plans to have one big focus of the year in terms of something that he's working towards. So that he can remember 2023 was the year when I did X, and he knows that he did four interesting things during that time. And I touch on this in the monthly and quarterly planning stuff that I do in the Be Your Own Best Boss program, for example, so that you get to pick what are your things for that year, what are your things for that quarter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I really like that idea. I like this notion of consciously picking things that will be memorable, that give a focus to your year. And I think we can do that in our academic careers and that will help shape the summaries of our careers in due course.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we're mindful that there are only certain things that we'll remember, we get to pick what those things are and give them our time and attention and love. We get to make other decisions more quickly, in a lighter way, get them done and remember that a lot of what feels important right now will be forgotten in a year or so's time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We focus on creating a day that we want to live, that builds towards a life that we want to have. And I think if we can just try to do that, we're going to be in great shape to having the careers and lives that we want to have. If you're on my email mailing list, let me know what you think of this episode, whether it's made you reflect on anything in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're not, why not? Get on the mailing list. You'll get summaries of all these episodes. You'll get exercises to work on, reminders of other free and paid services that you can get hold of through the PhD Life Coach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also wanted to let you know that I'm going to be taking a few weeks off the podcast. It is now the middle of August, and I'm going to start back up again in early September. The emails will continue, and instead of providing a summary of the new podcasts that are coming out, I'm going to provide a summary of existing episodes that I think it would be useful for people to go back and listen. Either ones you might not have seen the first time around if you hadn't found me by then, or that I think would be useful for people to revisit. So the emails will continue weekly, the podcasts are going to stop for a little summer break and we'll be back in September.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 12 Aug 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-48-why-we-should-ask-if-this-will-make-the-summary thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-47-nine-lessons-the-olympics-taught-me-that-help-in-academia <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p>     <a href="https://youtu.be/gUaLiCWLQYI" target="_blank">  YouTube link here! </a>   </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> It's Sunday lunchtime. This podcast is due out to you tomorrow, but I haven't recorded it yet, because I've spent most of this week watching the Olympics when I wasn't on calls with clients. I'm telling you that partly so that you can see that all of us procrastinate. I sometimes worry that you guys think that I don't, that like, I've got a total handle on all of this. The reason this podcast works and the reason my coaching works is because I am working on this stuff right alongside you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The other reason I'm telling you is because I decided to just embrace it and make this episode about what we can learn for the Olympics that applies to academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vikki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 47 of season two of the PhD Life Coach. And today we are going to be thinking about nine things that you can learn from watching the Olympics that you can apply into academia. Now when I planned this it was eight things, but I've procrastinated so long watching the Olympics that I've come up with more things. One of which is based on the result that I just watched and I'm still fuming. So we will get to that one in a minute. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now many of you know that I'm a sport scientist. Originally I did a sport and exercise sciences degree. I did my PhD in kind of adjacent stuff to that. And it means I've spent my entire academic career surrounded by people that really care about performance sport. Now I don't really, that's hard to explain when I get so excited about the Olympics. I love the Olympics. I get obsessed with the Olympics. I love watching sports that I know very little about and suddenly declaring myself an expert in it. I love the drama. I just love everything about the Olympics. I don't take it that seriously though, and I think that's one of the reasons I love it so much, is that I can get really into all the fun of it and all the excitement, but I'm not that devastated if it doesn't go right. I've heard enough sports scientists over the years talk about, you know, performance increments and how medals are everything and da da da and all that, and I'm like, huh? Yeah, I don't. Get it? That's not how I feel about it, but it is super exciting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I also think that these sorts of performance environments, whether it's high level sport, high level music, high level anything, I think they all have things in common that we can translate between different settings, right? And you guys know, there's been a few episodes over the last couple of years where I've done things I learned playing Stardew Valley and all sorts of random things. If you haven't listened to that one, by the way. It's good. Go back, find it. Even if you don't, play Stardew. I like learning lessons in one environment, applying them for it in another. And the more I was watching the Olympics, the more I was seeing things that I could share with you guys. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So here we go on my nine lessons from the Olympics for academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am going to confess right up front that this first lesson is directly inspired by a <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/redefining-olympic-success-adam-peaty-in-my-heart-ive-already-won" target="_blank"> blog post by Professor Jenn Cumming </a> where she talked about how people can define success differently in the Olympics. Now this was inspired for her by watching Adam Peaty get a silver and have many people describe this in the context of him losing gold, him not achieving his goals. Yet when he was actually interviewed, he was very much focusing on how being at the Olympics was a victory for him, having got back into training for an Olympics, how getting back into that whole lifestyle after the many difficulties that he's had was a win in and of itself. If you want to read the blog in full, I will link to it in the show notes. This was one that was done for the University of Birmingham for their website as part of their Olympics coverage. But I'll also link to the <a href="https://www.sprintproject.org/" target="_blank"> Sprint Project </a> , which Jenn leads on, where they have a whole series of blogs about how sports psychology can be applied to a whole variety of other settings. So do make sure you check that out. And that blog, and watching the Olympics myself, just really got me thinking about how different people define success. Some people talk about silver being the first loser and that I'm only here for gold. Other people are just happy to be there or happy with what they get. But I think it also goes beyond what's good enough in a performance sense. I think there's a whole variety of other ways that you can define success. Success can be defined in the relationships that you make with the people on your team, or even the people you're playing against. Success can be defined in what else you set up in your life. So, I, along with many, many other people, have been following, along with many of you, I'm sure, Ilona Maher, the US Sevens rugby player, who is hilarious and an absolute goddess on Instagram. Cracks me up. If you're not following her, make sure you do. And they got a bronze. They didn't win. But she has absolutely won in many ways in terms of coverage and positive press and inspiring people to get involved in women's rugby, to showing young girls and women that they can be big and strong and powerful and still feminine and fun and exciting and that is a whole other version of success. And I think in academia, we sometimes can get a really narrow view about what success means. Success means publication in certain journals. Success means grant income. It means particular roles. And all of those things do help progression, but there are a variety of different ways that you can define success in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Your success, in fact my success, was much more defined in terms of what the students I've worked with have gone on and done, and the experience I gave them, and the cards that I got thanking me for the support that I gave them during their degrees. That was more important to me, and I think much more influential to the world, than the research that I did, to be honest. Other people will define success in terms of the impact that they have through their research. So not whether it was published in the top journal ever, but whether it got translated into policy or into something tangible that people could see out there in the world. If you can think about how you define success and what's truly meaningful for for you, then you can start to plan and guide yourself towards those versions of success and perhaps even spend less time worrying about what other people's versions of success might look like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second lesson I want to draw from the Olympics is how you deal with setbacks. Setbacks happen all the time in professional sports. Sometimes they happen at a moment where you can do something about it. For example, I saw one of the, I think it was a Norwegian high bar gymnast, partway through his routine, his hand guards snapped and he fell off and he was given the opportunity to go again, and imagine what that's like, you're falling off, you've crashed to the floor, it was a pretty heavy fall, and he had that opportunity to get back up, redo that move, and then continue and finish his piece. How he responds to something like that could vary hugely between different people. One place I saw it that was really pronounced was in the BMX freestyle thingy, you know, that's probably not his technical name. I don't know what it's actually called, but you know where they're in like the dish and they've got like the mounds and the slopes up the sides and they're going around on their BMXs like a bunch of teenagers and they like go up and flip and do all sorts of cool stuff? Those ones. I was watching the women in that and they were amazing and they were down to the last couple of people and somebody put quite a good score up and, but the last two to go were expected to do better. And the Chinese woman who came up next was doing some incredible stuff, like way better than the other person who was currently in the lead. And then. She crashed and I'm not quite sure what happened because I don't know anything about BMX, but it was very exciting and she crashed. And as soon as she crashed, she got back up. She picked up her bike knowing that she'd lost the gold medal. There was no way that she was going to be able to get the medal having crashed like that. And she just did a whole load more tricks just to show the world what she could do. And I loved that response to her setback. That her first thought was, I want to show them my tricks anyway. And she just cracked on and did it. In contrast, the next person, when they then also crashed, it was a very crashy final. It was lots of drama. And when they also crashed, they just stopped and thanked the crowd. Now, I'm not going to criticize them for that because who knows? They might be injured. Their bike must've been broken. They might be saving themselves for something else. They might be looking after their own mental health. Who knows why they stopped? So I'm not going to judge, but it was a very different response to the Chinese athlete. And we get to choose how we respond to setbacks. We get to choose what is in our best interest. So one of those athletes chose in that moment that it was in her best interest to carry on and do the tricks and another chose that it wasn't. And they will get to decide whether they made the right decision there in the moment. And sometimes looking after yourself after a setback is absolutely the right decision. When I was watching the BMX racing, which I also know nothing about, but it's very exciting , they were talking about how one of the guys had broken his wrist in a previous competition. And instead of stopping, he'd just got his coach to strap his hand to the handlebar to keep going. Now I am not going to romanticize his commitment to BMX. I think that's bonkers. Ridiculous idea. We all, though, get to decide when do we push through setbacks, when do we give ourselves space to recover and mourn and grieve what we didn't do, look after our health. And what I would encourage you to do is to try and decide how do I want to respond to these things? What is in my best interest right now in the moment? And what is in my best interest in the long term? And surround yourself by people who will support you in that. Because sometimes when a setback happens, the right thing to do is get back up and try again. Immediately just get on it because it's not a big deal and you can keep going and other times the right way to respond to a setback is to take some time to rest and recover. And sometimes we need someone else to tell us that. Sometimes we think our only option is to push through. Our only option is to strap our hand to the BMX handle and keep going. I think that person should have had a coach saying, stop, just stop now. You don't have to do this. Okay? Surround yourself by people who will push you when it's in your best interest to be pushed and who will stop you when it's better for you to rest and recover and recuperate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My third lesson really connects to that and it relates to the GOAT herself, Simone Biles, who I'm a tiny bit in love with. She's amazing and if you're not familiar with gymnastics, in the Tokyo Olympics, she got the twisties partway through one of her routines. And what that means is she lost track of where she was in the air. And as you can imagine, if you're doing these big twisting somersaults, that's terrifying. If you're suddenly three meters in the air and you don't know which way is up and down. And she took time out and she was very open about the fact that she needed to take time out for her mental health and to figure out what was happening with this balance issue that she had developed. And I just think it's a really important lesson that that must have been an incredibly hard thing to do. To take that time out, to step away and risk... She didn't know whether she could come back. She didn't know how long she would be away for, but she knew that was in her best interest. And having taken that time out, not only has she now come back and done amazingly well, she's come back and is helping to change the nature of the sport. Those of you who, probably not many people who have watched gymnastics for as long as I have, but the change in how the gymnasts relate to each other within teams and between teams, since I started watching in the 80s to now, has been just astonishing. They used to compete with injuries, they wouldn't speak to each other in rotations, they certainly wouldn't console each other, and yet we see the Canadian gymnast compete consoling a French gymnast who wasn't going to make it through to the team final. All of this stuff. And I do think that partly the high profile kindness that Simone Biles showed to herself has allowed other people to show kindness to themselves. And when you show kindness to yourself, you can show it to other people as well. So the third lesson is that taking time out, doing the right thing for yourself, not only can help your own performance in the future, but more importantly, it can change the climate around you. It can show other people that it's okay to do those things too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fourth lesson is that success and failure can be a really tiny distance apart. I was watching the rowing and within 24 hours, Team GB had won some races by like two tenths of a second, and had lost other races by two tenths of a second. And it just struck me how much when we lose by two tenths of a second, we focus on, oh my god, God, I was so close. It's not fair. It was awful. Not saying those athletes did. I think they responded super professionally, but inside our heads, the tendency is to be like, Oh , if only I just did it. Whereas when we win by that distance, it's like, Oh my God, I'm Olympic champion. That's amazing. And I think my lesson here is that in academia, there's often small margins in things too. You know, when you're scored really high on a grant and then you don't get it because a few other people just got scored a tiny bit higher, but your grant was essentially amazing, it's really hard to swallow, but when we can remember those small margins go both ways and that we can't take it too seriously either way. That when we win by a small margin. Lucky us. Happy days. It doesn't mean that we're unstoppable. It doesn't mean that we're some academic legend. It's like, you know what? Good. I did a good job. Happy days. Let's go. And when we miss by a small target, almost all of that is still true. I did a good job. I wrote a good article. I wrote a good grant. Not my day today. When we recognize that it's small margins in both directions, I think it can be a little easier just to keep some perspective on what it actually means. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fifth one, and this is the one I added, this is the one I'm fuming about right now. This is, this wasn't going to be here, but I just watched the GB men. GB lost. We managed to draw with India who had had, they're great players. Don't get me wrong, amazing team, but they'd had a man sent off. They'd had a man sinbinned. So we're two men up at this point. And somehow we still don't manage to score before the final whistle, which meant we had to go to the penalty shootout thing. And you don't want to be in a penalty shootout against India. Cause their stick work's amazing. And their goalkeeper is an absolute beast. He's awesome. So good. And we lost. And it was rubbish. And the first thing that I got was a phone call from my stepdad going, what was that? "They need to learn to play the team they're playing." And I just thought that was such an interesting comment that you may need to learn to play the team I'm playing. What sometimes happens with team sports is that they plan in advance all their plays, their strategies, how it's going to work. And they don't have either the autonomy or the confidence or the skill, decision making skill, to change that strategy when they need to. And we see this a lot. My stepdad was ranting away, this is what happens in football, this is what happened with rugby. Now whether you agree with that or not, I think it really brings some interesting parallels in academia as well. Sometimes we get very caught up in this is how this project's going to be or this is how my academic year is going to go. And when things start to be not figuring out the way we thought they were going to, an opportunity to do something else comes up, or perhaps you have ethical issues or access issues that mean that a project's not going the way you thought it would, suddenly you have to make decisions about whether you're going to pivot, whether you're going to change your approach or not. And the more we can be mindful of those decisions, more we can be aware when the playing field has changed, when the team we're playing, in inverted commas, has changed, the more we can then decide whether we should still be sticking to plan A or whether we should be pivoting to something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My sixth lesson. Is that you should always run your own race. I coach a lot of PhD students, and one of the things I really see is they're very mindful of where their cohort are at. That they're the last in their cohort to submit, or whatever it is. And I think it's super important to remember that we all run our own races in academia, they're different courses, they're different lengths sometimes. But where this came out in the Olympics was watching the men's triathlon and the British guy who everybody had really high hopes for was in second place behind the New Zealander and the French guy, I think it was in third, was rapidly gaining on him. And the commentators were starting to get proper stressed that he was going to get caught by the French guy and was going to lose his bronze medal. And those of you who watched it live will remember the shots of the TV were rubbish. And so all of a sudden they cut back to him and he was like catching up with the New Zealand guy. The French guy was nowhere to be seen. And he was catching up with the guy in the lead and then went past him. And the New Zealand guy had nothing left, and he went on to win the gold medal. And it just really shocks me, my husband and I were discussing it afterwards, that knowing how much you have left, and deciding when you're gonna like kick it up and run faster, is hugely skillful. Whatever stage of academia you're in, you are in your own race. You get to decide when is a time where you push forward and try and go faster. When is a time where you bide your time, you know, get your breath back, ready for the next push. You have your own race. You get to make your own strategic choices at all the different places, and you get to see where it takes you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that leads me on to the seventh, which is one of the things that I have enjoyed watching at these Olympics, more than at any other Olympics, I think, is the extent to which people are celebrating each other's successes. We saw at the end of that triathlon, the New Zealander who had just been beaten into second place . The first thing he did was came up, sat next to the British athlete, put his arm around him and congratulated him. We've seen the cheers and celebrations on all of the gymnasts faces when they've seen their competitors successfully land amazing moves. When you can celebrate the achievements of the people around you, even if it's people who are in direct competition to each other, it creates an environment that's so much more fun to work in, so much more fun to try and succeed in, and so much easier to fall short in, if you know that the people around you will support you when you feel short, and that you will be super proud of them when they do well, it's just a nicer place to be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My eighth lesson has been inspired by pretty much everyone, but I'm going to attribute it to Max Whitlock. Max Whitlock is the British gymnast who came back for his third Olympic Games. He'd had two gold medals previously. He wanted to defend his gold medal on the pommel horse. And he came fourth. But when they asked him how he felt about not defending his gold, he was obviously really disappointed, but he said Yes, I was working towards a gold medal. That was my goal, but the point wasn't the gold medal. The point was the journey it takes to get to where I have the opportunity to compete for the gold medal. And it reminded me a lot of something that Brooke Castillo, who runs the Life Coach School, where I trained as a life coach, once said in a podcast, which I just thought was amazing, which is that the goal isn't getting there. The goal is being here creating it. And when I think of everybody who's gone to the Olympics, whether they've come last, or got injured, or been disqualified, or whether they've gone on and won their Olympic gold, the real win here is who they have had to become in order to be there. What skills and determination and emotional regulation they have had to develop in order to do all the training it takes to get there, to be at the Olympics, to take part. With any goal, if it's only a successful goal, if you get the thing at the end, you're setting yourself up for massive potential failures. Whereas if you can say, this goal, and the fact I want this goal, is what is going to motivate me to become a person who could win that. To become somebody who does the work needed to win that, then regardless of whether it comes off at the end, regardless of those marginal gaps that I talked about that determine whether you get first or third or fourth, regardless of that, you have still become a person that can be there competing. You've still become a person who had the potential to win a medal. And this is so true in academia too. If you are only going to be happy when you get to your PhD or when you get to your grant, you get your professorship or whatever it is, we spend many years in misery. And you don't know whether you're going to achieve those things or not, especially the stuff that's competitive, like getting jobs. You don't know, but if we can revel in the process, revel in the person that we're becoming, then you can win every time, because regardless of whether you achieve the goal or not, the bit that's in your control, the becoming that person, is happening every day.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My ninth and final lesson is different. I didn't learn it by watching the Olympics. I learned it about myself, which has enabled me to watch this Olympics. And that is, you have to know yourself. So I was doing my quarterly planning. So those of you who listen regularly know that I have a monthly planning system, a quarterly planning system. I teach it within my membership. I was planning my quarter at the beginning of July. So I do quarters in the calendar year. So it's July, August, September. And I knew that the Olympics fell right in the middle of that. And I know that I'm obsessed with the Olympics. In the past, what I've done is I've told myself I should be working, that I can't just take time off to watch the Olympics, I should be working, and then I've not really ended up doing either very well. I've ended up trying to get important work done with the Olympics on, feeling guilty about the fact I'm watching Olympics, occasionally missing Olympics, but usually missing work, not gonna lie. So when I was doing my quarterly planning, I was like, you know what? I have to plan for the version of me that I know will show up. And if you haven't listened to last week's podcast, where Dr. Alison Miller talks about that in more detail, please make sure you do. But I knew that during July and August, I was going to show up as somebody who's highly distracted by the Olympics. And so I planned for that. I've had my meetings, I've had my coaching calls and all that stuff, I've had my membership sessions, but other than that, my only goals have been little adminy things, sorting out stuff that takes a bit of time but that, crucially I can do in front of the Olympics. So I have worked probably a bit shorter hours than I normally would have done, and I don't feel guilty about that, and I've entirely planned for it, and I've got done things that I could do at the same time as watching the Olympics. So I planned for how I knew I would show up and that means instead of feeling bad that I was wasting my time watching the Olympics, I know this was literally the plan. You literally planned to be able to watch this stuff, get these little bitty jobs done and once the Olympics are done, we crack on with content creation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you're planning, know yourself, if you hate getting up first thing in the morning and you're slow until nine, why do you keep telling yourself you should start work at seven? Pointless. Pointless, because all you do is start every day feeling like a failure. Find a balance where you plan for the version of you that's most likely to show up and make that the best version of you. I'm having a really good week because I planned realistically instead of with a kind of hypothetical never actually going to exist focused Vikki who doesn't really watch the Olympics until the evening. Plan compassionately. Plan specifically for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope you all found that useful. After the Olympics is over, I am going to dive straight into content creation because I am turning all of my workshops that I currently offer live for universities, and I still will be, so tell your universities if you want them, I'm turning all of them into little self paced courses that you guys will be able to purchase off the shelf if your universities don't pay for the workshops themselves. So do keep a little eye out for that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So soon as that closing ceremony is done, my excuses for not getting on with my writing are over. I'm going to be recording, I'm going to be writing, and there is going to be a ton of stuff for you in September. I'm really, really looking forward to doing it. If you are listening and you're not on my mailing list, make sure that you sign up so that you get told about all of those things when they become available. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you think your university should have one of my workshops, this is a really good time to let them know. They're starting to plan the years. I'm already booked into several universities. I'm booked in to go and do like keynotes, induction events, and things like that. If you want me for any of those things, give me a shout. My September and October are filling up. So let me know as soon as you can. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are watching the Olympics as well, enjoy. We have so much exciting stuff still to come. I'm looking forward to the canoe cross, whatever that involves. I've been loving the mixed relay. I'd love to know what you guys think about that. Send me what you're looking forward to in the Olympics so I can make sure that I watch that stuff too. I hope you found today useful. Thank you for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 05 Aug 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-47-nine-lessons-the-olympics-taught-me-that-help-in-academia thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-46-how-to-work-with-the-version-of-you-that-shows-up-with-special-guest-dr-alison-miller <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>     </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  Sometimes we have the best intentions for the work we're going to do, but we wake up just not feeling it. We're tired, we lack focus, we don't think we're in the right frame of mind to work. Sometimes we beat ourselves up and force ourselves to sit down and work and other times we just give up entirely. In today's episode, Dr Alison Miller, of The Academic Writers' Space, tells us why she believes we should learn to work with the version of us that shows up. She takes us through some simple exercises that we can use to first understand and then potentially modify the way we're feeling so we can achieve our goals while honouring ourselves.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> **** </span> </div> <div> <span> Alison Miller, PhD is a dissertation coach and academic productivity expert. She is the founder of The Dissertation Coach, a coaching and consulting company that has helped over 14,000 graduate students earn their degrees, She is also the founder of The Academic Writers' Space (TAWS), a virtual coworking community designed for academic writers who want to work effectively and sustainably. Alison recently transitioned to running TAWS full-time. She is dedicated to the success and well-being of graduate students and academic writers everywhere.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Learn more about Alison and the coworking community she founded at: <a href="https://www.theacademicwritersspace.com/"> https://www.theacademicwritersspace.com/ </a> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Find her on social media at: <a href="https://flow.page/taws"> https://flow.page/taws </a> </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> **** </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> [00:00:00] Vikki: Today is another one of those episodes where I have a special guest with me, and I am super excited to introduce Alison Miller, who has been working in this space of supporting PhD students for a really long time, has a huge amount of experience, and I am so excited to have her here today. We had a catch up before this a couple of weeks ago to talk about the possibility of doing it, and we ended up chattering on for Far longer than I think either of us intended. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:00:30] Vikki: And so I am really looking forward to this episode today. So hi, Alison. Thank you for coming in.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:00:36] Alison: Hello. Oh, Vikki. I'm really glad to be here. I was telling Vikki that. We both independently have come to very similar conclusions about how to support doctoral students. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:00:49] Vikki: We have, yes, so much to talk about. And today we are going to be thinking about how to work with the version of us that actually turns up. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vikki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let's go.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:01:27] Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 43 of Season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. So, Alison, why don't you tell people a little bit about what you do and how you support PhD students before we get started. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:01:41] Alison: So glad to be here. 24 years ago, Within a few months of actually finishing my PhD, I started offering coaching services to graduate students. And at the time, there wasn't an expression that I knew of called a dissertation coach. This is in 2000. And, in 2001, I met somebody named Sally Jensen, who was probably the first dissertation coach, like official one on the planet. And she and I independently had a similar idea, which is, A lot of doctoral students don't finish, have very painful journeys, takes way longer than they wanted to, and are honestly under mentored and under supported. And I knew that there was a way because when I got my PhD, I got my PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I was just a crazy procrastinator. As soon as I got to grad school, I was completely overwhelmed with I am not smart enough to be here. I felt like I kind of tricked my way into the program, even though obviously I didn't, and it didn't matter how successful I was. I really thought it was like I was going to be found out. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:02:59] Alison: And what I believed was that I wasn't smart enough, but I was articulate. So I could trick people into thinking I was intelligent. And it really felt like the giant smoke and mirrors act. The whole time I was there, even though I did actually do research that mattered to me and I had a very supportive advisor. So I had some really good things in place. I, by the time I was almost done with my master's thesis, I was so sick of myself and my procrastination and my TV watching and snacking and avoiding and trying to perfect 2 sentences and spending 3 hours doing that, that I thought there has to be another way and I, some kind of out of just like sheer pain, I started working in a more structured way and all the obvious things of like break things down, have a plan. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:03:53] Alison: But what was really fueling it was the insight that I had one day in a particular day where I caught myself in the midst of going to get a snack and watch TV of not remembering how I got up from the desk and how did I end up in the hallway? And every time something got hard, I would think and feel ways that didn't feel good to feel and they weren't unpleasant thoughts to think and I would move away from those thoughts and feelings and sensations in my body instead of recognizing that what's happening was something is hard right now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:04:25] Alison: It's supposed to be hard. I'm doing something I've never done before. Can I stay here? Can I stay with this? And that kind of broke open a whole approach to coaching graduate students. So in May of 2000, I took my very first dissertation coaching client and opened a business, the dissertation coach, the coaching consulting company that I ran for nearly 24 years. And I actually sold the business to a remarkable human named Jessica Parker. And then this is the, the best thing that happened to me in that whole journey is I When the pandemic started, the dissertation coach was almost 20 years old. We had clients all over the world. And I felt like as a business owner, I had a responsibility to respond thoughtfully and compassionately to this experience our clients were having all over the world. And some of our clients were living in places where the lockdowns were very severe. And graduate school is isolating enough, but add a pandemic on that. I was really genuinely worried about people's mental health. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:05:33] Alison: We, our company were worried about what was going to happen with mentorship and we felt like we needed to do something. So we started offering 5 free coworking sessions over zoom every week. And we put out a plan to do it for 3 weeks, not realizing how long the pandemic would be. And I was pleasantly surprised by how many people attended the sessions that we did. And how quickly they started to ask for more and. In the beginning, I mean, I really hadn't, I just was like, Hey, let's get together and co work. And we had this idea. We're going to chat for 10 minutes, set goals, go off and work for 45 minutes. Then we'll check in for 10 minutes in the middle, see what's working, what's not working, kind of reset, recalibrate ourselves for round two, go off and work for 45 minutes and then do a 10 minute kind of like check in how to go. What did you learn? What would you do differently next time? And that is actually a structure that we still use. And what ended up coming out of that was a new business that I now run called The Academic Writer's Space, which is acronym is T A W S. So, it's much easier to say TAWS than The Academic Writer's Space and so we opened up a co working community where now we offer over 100 live facilitated sessions a month, and they're facilitated by highly experienced dissertation coaches, and I happen to know a lot of them because I ran the dissertation coach for 24 years. So we've created a community of academic writers around the world, where we come together to learn how to work in a way that actually works. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:07:16] Alison: And how do we work in a way that we can reliably, reasonably, reliably progress our work, get things done. You know, that we all, academics, we all love to cross stuff off the to do list. Yeah. And we're getting work done in a way that is truly humane and sustainable, that it is honoring of the human who is doing the work. So I would describe TAWS as a place where we are learning a self honoring path of productivity, real productivity, real results and well being while you're doing it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:08:00] Vikki: I love that so much. And hearing, hearing your story, I obviously knew how you built this business and things, but the fact that you took yourself from being somebody who was procrastinating and feeling like an imposter and things, and you realize so much of this mindset stuff for yourself. I'm just, I'm just blown away by that. I did not. I muddled through on sheer enthusiasm for a really long time. And it was only when I started to get coaching and things myself that I realized some of the things that you realized. So I know people will be reassured to hear that you struggled with all this stuff too, but I'm just super impressed that you as a graduate student figured out what you needed to do to change things. I think that's amazing.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:08:52] Alison: Well, I was in a clinical psychology program, right? I was in psych program and I started doing personal growth work, development work while I was doing my master's thesis. And I don't know that I consciously made this decision. I knew that what was going on with me today to day wasn't working and was going to be a problem for me in my life if I didn't do something about it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:09:17] Vikki: I think it's amazing. So, what we're really going to focus on today is thinking about this notion of working with the version of you that shows up. So tell me a bit more about what you mean by that and why that's so important. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:09:31] Alison: Well, there's always a version of us who shows up to work. And the version of us who shows up to work is usually different than we imagined when we made a work plan for the day, for example, and the most important thing that I think anyone can do to help themselves work in a way that works that's effective and sustainable. The foundational practice of that, because working in a way that works is actually a practice. It's not something that we attain and we don't have to work on anymore. We're just, we're always working on it. And the core practice of working in a way that works and everything that we work on in our co working community, the foundation of all of it is being able to observe the version of you who is present. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:10:26] Alison: And it's a particular kind of observation, and this is actually necessary. It's a kinder observation. It's as if you're observing the version of you through like your own heart of, "Hey, Hey, Hey, and let's see, how are you doing right now?" So I've got, I woke up with so much anxiety this morning. My chest feels tight. Oh, my stomach doesn't feel right. I just really don't feel like working right now. That's what's going on with me. See, if that's the version of you who is present. And you don't tune in and recognize that that is who is here, it's going to be really hard to do what you said you were going to do or move in and write, edit, crunch numbers, whatever you're doing. And there's the version of us who is present right now. I might be engaged, ready to go. Great. Let's get in there and work. I might be feeling kind of irritable and annoyed. I might be feeling really pressured. Like I got to make up for lost time. Okay. It's really important that I recognize that the state that I'm presently in cognitively, emotionally, physiologically, the state of my nervous system has a huge impact on now what happens when I aim to take action. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:11:50] Alison: The version of us who shows up may not be as compatible with working effectively and doing the work that you planned as is ideal. So, once we've observed the version of us, who is present and it takes a lot of practice to be able to do that to remember to do it first of all, that's why we're always reminding people of that in our community and to be able to do that with kind eyes. A kind heart, right? Let me look and see. Hey. Who's here and you can hear my tone right now. You see, hi.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:12:28] Vikki: Yeah.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:12:30] Alison: I'm softening and slowing down, stepping out of the intensity and the pressure and the rushing and the multitasking and doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, and stopping the action. So it's like if we had a snow globe and I shook it, we're putting the snow globe on a shelf and letting the snow settle, okay. It's kind of like dropping into the space. If you've ever been somewhere after a snow, and it's incredibly quiet. That's the direction we're pointing ourselves in and you're not going to necessarily feel that- it's, it's uncomfortable to observe the version of you who is present, so this is a practice that takes time and everyone, I invite everyone to go at their own pace. Because it does involve feeling. In order for me to observe the version of me who is here, ultimately, I'm going to have to feel what feels hard to feel, but it is the way, you know, uh, it's a key way anyway.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:13:28] Alison: So there's a version of you who's here right now. And then there's the work. Well, the second movement after observing yourself with through like a kind lens is to observe, is the version of me who's here right now and the work I'm aiming to do, are those two things compatible? This is a game changing practice for people, is to pay attention to compatibility. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:13:53] Alison: And just to give a parallel for people to understand. In the relational world, let's say, Vikki, you and I meet up for lunch, and I'm really stressed out about something that happened, and I'm constantly checking my phone. And I'm just really not present what's happening is something happened to me that now I showed up to lunch with you and I'm actually not in a state that's compatible with relating well to you. We have a relationship with our work, and sometimes the here's the reality. We just plain aren't compatible with what we said we were going to do. Okay. You know what, I'm going to work on my references because I'm compatible with that. And I'm going to see if working on my references can help warm me up and get me to a state where I'm now compatible with that that ugly drafting that I need to do . And by the way, it's not a binary. It's not. I'm not compatible. I am compatible. It's a continuum. You might be less than ideally compatible, but you could probably get yourself there or you're like, wow, I am, I'm just not compatible and I don't see anything I can do to get compatible enough to do that. If that's the case, then change the task or take a nap, cry, eat, drink a glass of water, Go outside. And then on the other side, and this is where, where I believe there's enormous opportunity, no matter how stuck, how much you're struggling. And by the way, if you're the listener, who's thinking about quitting, I want you to know what I'm talking about right now can get you there. This is how you get to the finish line because let's, this happened to me in December. I fell ice skating, I injured my left arm and my right knee. I didn't need medical care, but I was bruised up, but I still wanted to work out. Well, you know what this body wasn't compatible with the workout I wanted to do. So what did I do? I worked out by modifying. We are maybe only a few modifications away from increasing our compatibility with what we said we were going to do or with our plan to being able to actually take action. So, a modification could look like. You know what? I'm going to take a few deep breaths and just stretch a little bit and remember that I have a body. Okay. That feels a little bit better. Okay. Let me look and see. Am I compatible enough yet? Nope. Still not compatible enough. Okay. You know what? I'm going to write down what my mind is telling me right now so I can see what's going on, the beliefs that are active and see if there's something there that's holding me back. Oh, wow. I'm the, you're not smart enough conversation or why is this taking you so long? Boy is present. Okay. What's another way I could see it. Okay. That's a modification. Um, paying attention to biological needs. Sometimes the lack of the real issue in the lack of compatibility is you're exhausted. You're dehydrated. You're hungry. You need to pee. I mean, we will sit at the computer and not let ourselves pee. You can't pee till you write three more paragraphs, right? Maybe you need to cry. Like there's something biological. You need to scream. You need to stretch. You need a hug. There's something that you need that's like more of a primal need, but we're ignoring. Modifications could come in the form of co regulation. You call someone, you get on a zoom call. That's what we do in our community. We are co regulating. We are borrowing each other's nervous systems. So, there's endless lists of ways that we could modify, but when we notice that there is insufficient compatibility to be able to move into the work, reasonable effectiveness, we want to look and see what are the modifications that we can make internally and externally that can help us move back into the work. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:17:43] Alison: And let me just speak one last thing here about external modifications. When I'm not compatible with working, one of the reasons I'm often not compatible is because I have 75 tabs open. I don't have clarity on what I'm actually doing. There isn't a written plan. I don't know where the documents are that I need to do the work. I'm going into a meeting without an agenda. I haven't actually done the kind of environmental alignment work. What I mean by that is, getting the physical and digital world set up in a way where it's much easier for you to move in and do that thing. You separate finding and organizing things to be worked on from the doing of the work. By the way, finding things and organizing things to do the work is the work. It's part of the work. And then there's the actual execution that comes in. So it's kind of like you're being a executive assistant for the future CEO who's going to come in to do the work. And that's a really important modification that everyone can do that's easy to overlook.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:18:46] Vikki: This is such a good example. If people are watching on YouTube, they will see me smirking. And the reason I'm smirking is because about two episodes ago, I did an episode called how to be your own best personal assistant where we're talking about exactly the thing. So it's just another example of you and I coming at this from completely different places and realizing some of the same things as each other. But what I wanted to ask was, I love this idea of modifications, because what I see with my clients a lot, and with myself, to be honest, is that sometimes you sit down to do some work. You're not feeling it. And the easiest thing to do is either to like force yourself in some way to do it anyway or more often to then almost be like, Oh, well, I'm not in it. I might as well go and having this quite sort of binary thing of either I force myself or I indulge myself. So how do you support clients to kind of stay there and take that moment to think specifically, why am I not in this? Because I think often we don't figure that out. We're just like, I'm, I don't feel like it today without really thinking about why that is. And then to actually try these modifications. How do you help them to stay in that uncomfortable space of, figuring this stuff out. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:20:19] Alison: This is tough to do by yourself. It's not that I don't think it can be. If I were someone out there that wanted to do this myself, you have to make it your number one priority in your life to soothe, calm, regulate your nervous system. Ground connect inward. And the good news is there's untold numbers of things for free on YouTube and Spotify and I think everyone can find their own pathway. If I could save you the, who knows how many thousands of hours and and dollars I spent on something I could have done at the very beginning, which was to be absolutely dedicated to paying attention to how you are and seeing if you can improve your well, being even just a little bit. You can get a little bit more peaceful, a little bit calmer, a little bit clearer, a little bit more confident, a little bit more engaged, just 1 percent more. You have to have a dedication to doing something reliably that moves you in that direction. And in the beginning, you have to do it, even though it's not working. It takes time for our system, especially in academic environments that are often unhealthy, downright toxic, abusive scary. I mean, I don't I don't think I'm overstating it. Academic environments can be really, really, really challenging and so we don't realize how fearful we are, how dysregulated we are, how overwhelmed we are, how pressured we are. How we're moving at a pace that is totally incompatible with working effectively. So there has to, it's like a devotion to self. I'm going to pay attention to how I am doing. Inside, I'm going to pay attention to the internal atmosphere, the weather. And you might maybe just having reminders for a while. So, the interesting thing that we've observed in the academic writer space is that these things that I'm talking about today are all practices and they are perishable. They don't work. If you don't do them, there's no forever strategy that we can figure out that, like, here's the thing. If you this is the thing, if you do this you're going to figure it out and you're not going to have to work on this anymore. We've come to the conclusion in our community that the forever practice is observing the version of you who is present. You don't like do that a thousand times and now you don't need to do it anymore. It's like the daily hygiene, it's basic emotional wellbeing hygiene, you know, and we all need to be housekeepers, , you know, of our own experience. Like, this is your house, this is your home. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:23:19] Alison: We have to decide that I want to have a quality of life. Recently someone in our community said, my most important goal is to learn how to do this work in a way where I feel good. And I don't think we talk about that nearly enough in academia. We think it's like, I've got to survive it and get through it. And then we're in this constant illusion. Like after I get my master's degree, after I get my PhD, after I get a job, after I get tenure, and then we can spend decades of our lives not enjoying it. It's really helpful to have a community of people around you who are also practicing observing the version of them who is present because what you find out is that what you experience privately in side is a shared experience and it isn't anything to be ashamed of. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:24:12] Alison: It's what naturally arises in it. If we don't show up to attend to the frightened, overwhelmed, irritated, angry, upset, dysregulated versions of ourselves, then our work can never get the upgraded version of us that it wants.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:24:33] Vikki: Yeah, no, for sure. And it's something I see a lot with. So I do group coaching rather than coworking, as you know. And so people are then seeing what each other are saying within those contexts. And it's all this shared experience of that often we are showing up with very similar worries and very similar concerns and is really empowering to see and what I see with. My clients is they reach a stage where they can kind of understand why some of the habitual thoughts they tell themselves are not necessarily helping them. Then they have compassion for where they came from and things like that. But then they enter this space where they're frustrated because they know that these thoughts that I'm not good enough or whatever aren't helping and they can see exactly why and they cognitively know that they also believe these other things that they can do hard things and whatever and they get really frustrated with the fact that it's not a sort of immediate fix. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:25:35] Vikki: And so I think it's really interesting that whether we're in the kind of co working space or in the coaching space, there's this same thing of accepting that this is work we have to keep doing and that we have to, you know, we're constantly going to be thinking about whether it's how our bodies are feeling or what thoughts are running through our heads. We're going to have to sort of look after that in a loving and nurturing way.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:02] Alison: Yes.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:03] Vikki: For the whole time we're trying to do anything.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:06] Alison: Yes. We all have probably countless patterns, autopilot patterns, and then we start to form kind of beliefs and we just, we have, like, for example, a lot of graduate students that I have met are expert catastrophizers. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:29] Vikki: Yep.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:31] Alison: In our community, we call it doom casting.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:35] Vikki: Yeah, it's a thing.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:26:37] Alison: It's a thing, right? We have patterns and they're very, very fast moving. It's like, if you got on a computer and you clicked on a program and it just opened immediately, all of our reactivity is quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Okay. What starts to happen when you're in a coaching group or coaching relationship, our coworking community. We start to wake up in our pattern. And we realize, wow. When I believe these things, these are really not helpful to me. This is really good news. Now it's easy to get frustrated in this stage of growth because you're awake in a pattern and you can see the pattern is unhelpful, but you actually are still in the pattern. I think people should be encouraged when they get that frustration because it's a sign that you're getting done with being stuck in that pattern.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:27:27] Alison: You know, we have, we often have to be awake. I mean, I have patterns that, it's been such a long wake up. And even in the time that I've been woken up, it's taken a long time to start to feel free from those patterns, but I know that it's worth it to work on it all the time. And the more that you actually do intentionally work on it and you practice new ways of engaging with your work, including paying attention to compatibility, you start to start to have some freedom. It's like a snake shedding its skin. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:28:01] Alison: I'll give you an example. In TAWS, we use technology Zoom and sometimes there are things that will go wrong technologically. And when we first launched the business and we had some technology problems, I just was like, , it was like a tiger was attacking me. My whole nervous system like, Oh my gosh, and people are thinking, and I'm rushing and I'm trying to fix it. And I'm just in this crazy energy, which is completely incompatible with facilitating TAS. And so for a while, I would start to just narrate what was happening, even though I felt powerless to change it. But somehow narrating. Okay. Wow. Heart is racing. You want to move really fast. You're feeling a sense of urgency. You're starting to catastrophize and make up stories about people are not going to want to be members because you weren't there in the first 3 minutes. And it's just an internal hurricane of stuff. And I, so I started to be able to go, okay, oh, and so then you think that, and then you feel this way, and then you feel this way, and now you have all this arousal you feel like really pressured. And I'm just sort of narrating what I'm experiencing to myself. And I noticed over time that I started to better be able to intervene and have another voice that came in that said. It's okay. It's okay. This is a business that relies on technology and technology is not 100 percent perfect. And I think that our members know that I'm dedicated to this company and dedicated to them, and I'm going to figure it out. And so I started talking to myself and now, when problems happen, I have this instinct to go, let me slow down with this. So that I can respond wisely because when I'm reacting quickly, I am disconnected from my wisdom.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:29:44] Vikki: I think that notion that at first, you're only going to see these things almost afterwards. Oh, I got really worked up then, didn't I? That didn't help at all. Okay. And noticing, practicing, doing that compassionately. And then slowly as time goes on, you can notice it a little earlier and still compassionately. Yes. And eventually you get to notice it at a time when you're like, Okay, I'm noticing this at a time I can do something about it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:30:14] Vikki: That's where I love your analogy with housekeeping right because I think the same deal there. You know, we've all had times where the house has got into a bit of a state because we haven't done anything for a while and it's really easy to then put it off right because your eyes mess everything's a mess I'm such an untidy person, but actually if we can just be like, Okay. Yeah, things have got a bit messy over there. I'll put those away. It's not a big deal. Just tidy that up. And then we sort of, we fix it quicker and I feel like we can do that with our own self-regulation sometimes. That we kind of notice that we've got ourselves worked up or we've got ourselves a bit dejected or whatever, and if we can notice it that little bit quicker and support ourselves in it and move ourselves back, then the kind of adjustments become less dramatic, right? You get to moderate through in a little bit more of a, an even keel rather than these big kind of emotional responses.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:31:13] Alison: Yes. I want to add something because what you're saying is making me realize something really important,. Everyone listening to this. If you're in a pocket of time where it's feeling too painful or too hard to work on things internally, work on things externally. Make work plans, and then actually take time to find the exact documents. Paper or electronic, passwords to websites, you might need things you want to print out and put in a folder and you're going to edit them. Make the environment, you know, what, get 1 of those, like, eyeglass cleaners and clean off your computer screen, especially of a touch screen, clean up those fingerprints. If you clean up the fingerprints once a day. Clean off your glasses. Do things that make the environment more aligned with you coming in to execute because I think what happens is that external environment cleanup and organization will have a cognitive impact. And there'll be a by product that you're going to be a somewhat better observer of what's going on and you're going to feel that feeling of like, that's better, it's cleaner, that's more organized. I know where things are. I have what I need. Okay. Now I'm a little upgraded. It's easier for me to pay attention to okay. What have I been thinking that's getting in the way? Is there something else I can think? Before you sit down to work, choose what technology materials are going to come with you on the ride also, you know. Another thing that is can really help everyone's mental health and I know you already know this and everyone's going to resist doing it. But take actual breaks where you are physically separated from your phone. Go for a walk without a phone if it's safe for you. Go out to dinner with someone who has a phone, but you don't. If you feel like you need someone there to have a phone. But like, I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. My parents just went to a restaurant and left the number for the sitter. I mean, you know, we have to remember that for a very, very short part of humanity, we've had this thing of being accessible all the time. It's not healthy for us. It's not helping us. Another thing you can do to to get your, not restructure, but get your brain working better, get your system more online is to go analog for a while. If you're someone that does all of your writing by typing on a computer, who does everything in the digital world, see what it's like to print a draft and edit on paper. Take a yellow pad of paper to a coffee shop and write freely from your mind. It's not a waste of time. In digital form, we have the backspace. We're constantly editing our work instead of just writing it out and expressing it and going with the flow of the current form it's in knowing you're going to revise it later. So going analog is another thing we can do when we feel like we can't work internally.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:34:24] Vikki: I love that. I remember we had a PhD student once who he'd been working really hard on a paper and we'd gone through so many revisions, but it just didn't quite flow and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Trying to give him feedback as to why the paragraphs didn't flow, why it wasn't making a good argument. I was really struggling. And what we decided in the end, I printed it out, we chopped the paragraphs out. So each paragraph was on a separate piece of paper. We went to a meeting room and we literally moved around the paragraphs and we're like, well, that one and that one basically say the same thing, so let's put those together. And it was so clarifying. And I think, yeah, getting away and actually being able to physically manipulate things, just can give you a completely different perspective and it was just a much less frustrating way of working, right? So we're standing around a table moving bits of paper with scissors and sellotape rather than cutting and pasting and trying to scroll up and down and work out what we're even doing. So yeah, I'm a massive fan of that.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:35:30] Vikki: The other thing that struck me as you were talking, it was interesting that you went on to talk about disconnecting from the digital stuff was when you were talking about tidying up and things like that. One of the things that I know I'm not necessarily good at at the moment, but it works better when I am, is doing that stuff while not listening to other things. So often my tendency will be, I need to tidy up a bit, so I'll pop a podcast on. And I know this is a great irony that we're a podcast, we're hoping people are listening, but actually to be able to not have anything in your ears while you tidy your desk, wipe your screen, sort your notes out, so that your brain's mulling over what you're doing next, how you're feeling, and you're not deafening it with my voice or anybody else's on podcasts while you're doing it, I think is really useful too. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:36:27] Alison: I agree and I put on a lot of music that's instrumental that's designed to soothe and calm a human being. I do a lot of things to signal to my system that I can stay back down here in my body and I get pulled out of it all the time. But the more devoted I become to practicing going back inside, the more honestly decisive and clear and capable I feel and it's taken me a really long time. I hope it won't for your listeners. To be devoted to things like separating myself from technology, you know, actually resting for real. And I know it's really hard to prioritize the rest and recovery and rejuvenation that people need. You'll actually be more effective at working though if you do prioritize it truly. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:37:30] Vikki: So my final question, because this is something that comes up a lot with my clients is people who worry that if they start being more introspective and aware of their emotions, they'll almost become too compassionate and become this kind of self care, self soothing, can't possibly get myself to do anything situation where it'll just be too much. How do you respond to those people? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:37:58] Alison: Well, I don't know if everyone who's experiencing that has some version of this belief. And in my experience, it's often active in people's systems, which is that I need to be hard, mean, tough, intense with myself. If I'm going to get anything done, because that is how I motivate myself. And the reason so many of us have internalized this belief is because we were raised in environments where adults, parents, caregivers, teachers, coaches </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:38:36] Alison: paired criticism and motivation. In your room! Why can't you get it together? You know, your brother doesn't struggle like this, you know? So we came to associate motivation and criticism. We internalize that voice of the way that you get yourself into action is to be mean. And so as long as that belief is active and it can continue to be, because it doesn't feel safe to let go of that.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:39:10] Alison: I don't know if everyone knows what A B testing is. It's like, you know, a company will test an ad two different ways and compare the results. You know, there's all kinds of A B testing. I think it's worth doing AB testing when it comes to self compassion. . If you're willing to kindly observe the version of you who is present, see who's here, see who you're dealing with, and have compassion for the version of you who's here, and then move into the work or do your typical beat yourself up, be mean and be unkind and move into the work and just see the difference for yourself. See what happens because the reason it's so vital to be compassionate towards yourself... Compassion isn't about like, Oh yeah, I'm just. It's okay. You don't feel like working. So let's just hang out in bed all day. That's not at all what we're talking about. Compassion can be fierce. Compassion is like about caring for people. And you know, we need, we actually need a lot more fierce compassion on our earth. If you ask me, that's coming in and is like, this is not working. This is not how we treat each other as human beings. This is broken. This needs to be dismantled. Humanity needs to think in a whole new way about how we're going to live. . In some ways we need to do that for ourselves. You know, we're saying the version of me who's present is who's here. And that's who's here. If I'm going to allow it to be so, welcome it in kind of compassionate arms and I'm allowed to be as I am? Oh, I'm just really in a bad mood. And I'm really pissed about what my advisor wrote. And feeling super activated. Of course, it makes sense that you don't feel like working. See now, do you see what just happened there is now, a little door is present. And the door is to my wisdom. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:40:57] Alison: Okay, well, how would someone who was feeling really activated and upset and angry and annoyed or whatever the thing is, what could be done for that person to help them be more compatible with working? It's a lie that our mind tells us the way to motivate yourself, the way to activate yourself and get you to engage effectively is to be mean, because if that worked. Vikki, you and I would have had to find a completely different line of work. It takes time and practice and honestly, again being able to be around other people that are learning to be kind inside. Because I do believe in a, in a really positive way, it is contagious.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:41:43] Alison: I think that an important thing that happens in connection in the relational world between us, there's a particular kind of transmission that happens that isn't actually verbal. I'll give you an example right now of like, Hi, how are you? You see how different that is. That's taken me a long time to know how to do that inside myself, but that being able to do that opens up whole new worlds of possibility for me of how I can navigate through life. So there's a transmission that happens in community that happens relationally where, when you witness and you, you can feel it. And the interesting thing is people will be able even to feel it over the recording because I know when I hear people do it over a recording, I realize it's not so much the words that they're saying. It's the, this is going to sound super new age, but it's the energy they were in at the time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:42:49] Alison: The words will be spoken, you can feel. This person is speaking from inside themselves. That transmission invites people to, I know this sounds really weird, but this is what I'm witnessing happening in TAWS. It's really just co regulation, right? It's being able to borrow other people's nervous systems. And when you can feel that someone can go somewhere inside themselves, it's an invitation for you to follow. Passion expressed in community is deeply healing for people. So I would encourage your listeners to look around in their program. Who's living in their heart? Connect with those people, deliberately connect with your own hearts, and you're going to be able to solve so many of the intellectual and academic methodological, theoretical, all that stuff that you're conceptual stuff that you can't figure out right now. If you're more compassionate, you're going to figure it out faster, I believe, okay. And you're also going to open up a door to your wisdom where you're going to think, huh, what if I tried it this way? You try it. It works or it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter. Go back to your wisdom and you'll start to discover for yourself that you already have a roadmap inside of you. Everyone listening to this podcast, fully installed, you have a roadmap that will help you get to the finish line. Part of that roadmap, by the way, involves conversations and help and support from other people. But you already have a lot of intuition, instincts and gut feelings, ideas about how you could engage with your work in a way that would work better for you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:44:24] Alison: But when we're being mean to ourselves and beating ourselves up and, and we're dysregulated and we're really stressed and we're really pressured, the door to that wisdom is locked and it's almost as if it's painted over and you don't know it's there. So self compassion and the prioritization of your well being, which those are obviously interrelated when those things get really prioritized, it is incredible to see the shift that I see in people where it's almost like a different person because the bedrock of their day to day life is. Being kind to what they find. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:45:07] Vikki: I love it. If people want to hear more, and I'm sure they will, tell everyone where they can find you and where they can find The Academic Writers' Space.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:45:18] Alison: You can go to the academic writers space dot com. There's 2 S's in their writers space. If you want to explore this a little bit further, then I would say, go on the website and sign up for a free week. What that means is you're going to get 7 days of membership for free. There's 25 coworking sessions in a week. You'll just change your time to your time zone, and you'll be able to see the schedule in your time zone. You do not put down a credit card or anything like that. And then there's different forms of membership. If you're interested in participating in the community, it's like a gym membership where you're basically paying to come to as many co working sessions as you want, if you buy like a full access membership and there's also starter memberships. And there's a video library for people. So people just have a way to feel supported. But fundamentally what I think TAWS is, it's a place to practice working in a way that works over time and reaching your goals. Every almost every week, there's someone defending a few times a month. Someone's defending your dissertation and we were there with them when it didn't look good. And one last thing I just want to say to everybody, I've walked the path as a dissertation coach. And now, as a facilitator with thousands of graduate students. I've seen so many people come back after being kicked out of their programs, taking leaves, being interrupted, having all kinds of challenges and difficulties, unsupportive advisors, medical challenges. You name it who have made it to the finish line. So, like, even if right now, you're having kind of a dark moment about your dissertation. It absolutely can get better and you have a lot of power inside of you just by observing the version of you who is present and working with that, working with your compatibility to climb out of wherever you are, and back to the sunlight and back towards the finish line.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> [00:47:23] Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. I know this is only going to be the beginning of all our conversations. We've got so many more things that I'm sure we'll talk about in future episodes and things like that, but thank you for coming on today. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 29 Jul 2024 14:14:56 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-46-how-to-work-with-the-version-of-you-that-shows-up-with-special-guest-dr-alison-miller thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-45-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-intentional-and-resourceful <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>     </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  You ever feel like you get to the end of the week and you have no idea what you did, you've been busy but you definitely didn't do the things that you wanted to get done and the week just seems to have got away from you, then you are in exactly the right place. This is part three of my little mini series about how to be your own best boss and today we are going to be thinking about how to be more intentional and more resourceful. As usual, if you haven't listened to the preceding bits of this series, not a problem at all, they're not in any particular order. But once you've listened to this one, if you find it useful, you might want to go back and check those out. One was looking at how we can be more compassionate and curious, and another was how we can be more encouraging and accepting. And there are going to be two more episodes after this, so make sure you're subscribed and you don't miss either of those. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vicki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let's go. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 45 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach, and we are back to thinking about how we can be our own best boss. A lot of this work came out of the program that I just finished running about how to be your own best boss, where I had a bunch of PhD students with me for three months working on building all of these qualities, thinking about how they organize their time, their tasks, and importantly, how they speak to themselves throughout it. If you think that sounds good, It is going to be available as a self paced course for all of you guys to buy. You can either buy it individually or you can buy it as part of my membership program. It's not quite ready yet, but make sure that you are on my email list so that you will be the first to hear when it is ready to get. But in the meantime, I'm going to give you the 10 different qualities, we're doing two today, that I think you should nurture in order to be an effective boss to yourself.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So the first one we're going to think about today is being intentional. So what do we mean by intentional? I think when you're being an intentional boss, you are really choosing what you focus on, on purpose and for reasons that you like. So often we just end up doing whichever tasks kind of shout loudest at us, the ones that are due now, or the ones that somebody else is waiting for, or the ones that we can see in front of our face, like tidying up the house or whatever. When we're intentional, we spend a little bit more time thinking about exactly what are the most important things for us to do. What are the ones that make us feel good? What are the ones that move our goals forward? And then consciously try and redirect our efforts back to those goals.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, I say redirect on purpose because sometimes people think when they're being intentional, they're being focused, that they will never lose focus. And that's simply not true. Of course, we will end up acting unintentionally. We will do things that weren't what we intended to do. It's not a problem. We're human beings. It happens. But when we're aiming to be intentional, what happens is when we notice we've got distracted, when we notice we're behaving less intentionally. We can just gently nudge ourselves back. And if you want to hear more about that, I did an episode a few weeks ago called what to do <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/what-to-do-when-you-get-distracted" target="_blank"> when you get distracted </a> . Check that one out because I talk about it in a little bit more detail here.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When we're thinking about being intentional, we're thinking about how we can choose our behaviors, our thoughts and feelings from a kind of more pre planned place. Now, there's always a caveat around this, as there usually is for the things that I present, and that is that people think if I'm going to be super intentional, that means that everything has to be focused on work, that there's no space for spontaneity and fun and relaxation and all of these things. And I want to reassure you that is just not true. You can apply intentionality to every area of your life. So we're not just going to try and be intentional when we're working so that we spend time on the things that are really important to us. We can also be intentional in our spare time instead of just drinking a cup of coffee at your desk, we can take your cup of coffee outside and sit in the sunshine and have a moment of fresh air and calm and relaxation in our day, if that's what you enjoy doing. We can intentionally choose to spend time with people that we love and that make us feel better rather than just hanging out with whoever's at work, we can intentionally choose what hobbies we plan so that they are things that actually bring us joy rather than things that we feel that we should do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Intentionality enables us to choose the best version of our life and curate it in the best way. into something we want. And in fact, there's gonna be quite a few other episode recommendations in this. If you lose track of them, don't worry, I'll link them in the show notes. You can always find that on my website, phdlifecoach. com. Um, we have a whole episode with a great coach called Jamie Pei, called <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/25-how-to-curate-your-phd-life-with-jamie-pei" target="_blank"> How to Curate Your PhD Life </a> . So she talks a little bit about this there as well.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Being intentional in your work also means really thinking about why you're doing it and what you want to achieve from it. Some of you will be doing a PhD because that qualification enables you to go on and do some other job. Some of you will be doing it because you were offered the chance and it seemed as good a thing as any. Some of you will be doing it because you're specifically passionate about that subject, or because you want to develop specific skills to go on and work in a particular industry. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When we know those goals, we can then be intentional about designing our experience. We can be intentional about choosing which studies we're going to focus on, which methods we're going to use, what approaches we're going to take, so that we do develop the skills that we want to develop, so that we do address the problems that we want to address. When we're unintentional in our research, we sometimes just end up doing kind of whatever some study our supervisor suggests.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> In these sessions where I'm thinking about how to be a better boss to yourself, what we've usually done is taken the self coaching model and looked at all the components of it. If you're not sure what I mean by the self coaching model, I'll kind of explain it as we go through, but there is a whole episode on <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-6-how-to-coach-yourself-and-why-you-should" target="_blank"> why you should self coach and how to do it </a> . So make sure you check that one out. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Self coaching models made up of circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. And so the sorts of circumstances in which I think it's useful to be really intentional is basically all the time. When you're choosing what to do, when you're planning your tasks, when you're planning your time, when you find yourself with time you didn't expect to have, things like that, when asking for feedback, when networking, when completing a task. Basically everything it's useful to be intentional.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And the sorts of thoughts that you might want to have when you're being intentional are things like, I can do the thing I intend to do even when I'm tired or even when I don't want to, I chose this so it's the right thing to do, I'm doing this for a reason, I'm so glad I chose this, those sorts of things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now I want you to notice that I'm not at the moment talking about how to choose what those areas of focus are. And we're going to cover that in a future episode where I'm going to think about why it's important to be strategic as a boss. Really here, when we're intentional, it's about acting on and intentionally designing our lives so that we achieve those goals so that we move towards the things that we want to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We'll think about how we pick those in a future episode, but here it's really about recognizing, I chose this, therefore I'm doing it. There's a reason I've chosen this. And when you think those sorts of thoughts, the sorts of feelings you're likely to get are things like calm, purposeful, focused, and in control. And even in your personal life, if you're intentionally planning relaxation or intentionally planning play, for example, then you should have a similar sort of thing, but you're feeling relaxed and calm, knowing that the time you're spending doing this was chosen intentionally. It's not lazy time, it's not wasted time, it was chosen intentionally. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And when you're feeling these sorts of feelings, calm, purposeful, focused, and in control, you're much more likely to just take the actions you'd planned. There's not any specific actions here that you should be taking. You're just much more likely to do the things that are in your best interest, that you've chosen in advance. And you're much more likely to take that extra step. So you're much more likely to say, you know what, it would be easy just to sit on the sofa and chill out scrolling on my phone, but actually I'm going to go outside. I'm going to have a drink. I'm going to take myself some fruit and a magazine that I want to read. Does anyone still get magazines? I don't know, maybe I'm in the 90s. Who knows? Take outside a book or something that I actually want to do and turn it into a really nice event. It always reminds me, one of my good friends who now is a superstar professor in Sweden, we lived together as students and she was always incredibly good at being intentional about her space. So whereas I would come home tired and just blob on the sofa and put something rubbish on, she would come home, she'd turn on her fairy lights, she'd make herself a hot drink, she'd get her favorite blanket, she'd sort of cozy up, and she always just, it wasn't a huge amount of effort, but she always just took those little steps just to make it really nice for herself, and she then had a lovely relaxed evening, whereas I often just sat in front of the TV and at the end of the night was like, oh, I've wasted the whole night, I feel rubbish. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  And so just being intentional to make things nice for yourself can just lead to a completely different mindset and a completely different type of activities that you do. And the results you get if you keep doing things that are in your best interest, you keep taking that extra step to do the intentional thing and to really enjoy it, then the result is that you, you can achieve anything you want. If you can be intentional and do the things you plan, you can become the person you want to be doing the things that you want to do. And that's huge. So I want you to have a think, and if you're on my email list, you'll get an email about this that will give you all these prompts and things, but I want you to think about whether you think it's desirable to be an intentional boss. And in what ways are you already doing it? What might get in the way of you doing that? And how could you make that a little bit easier? And these are the questions we're going to ask ourselves after all of these qualities. I'll also link in the transcript. I know all of you don't go and check the transcript, but really the show notes online also have links to all these additional podcasts. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> There's a few other episodes that I think you might find useful if you want to really develop your intentionality. So do make sure you go to the website, phdlifecoach. com, click on the podcast section, you'll find this episode and all the others. There's like 86 now, so make sure you have a good snoop and I'll give you two or three more episodes that will be worth having a listen to if you haven't already. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-27-how-to-plan-when-you-hate-planning-special-coaching-episode"> https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-27-how-to-plan-when-you-hate-planning-special-coaching-episode </a> </span> </div> <div> <span> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-37-why-you-shouldn-t-read-when-you-re-writing"> https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-37-why-you-shouldn-t-read-when-you-re-writing </a> </span> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-42-eight-ways-you-might-be-secretly-procrastinating"> https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-42-eight-ways-you-might-be-secretly-procrastinating </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The next quality we're going to be thinking about today is resourceful, and this I think is one that's always come quite naturally to me, but that really can be developed much further in other people. Now in the dictionary, I looked it up because I was like how am I going to define resourceful? I actually looked up resourceful this time and in the dictionary it's defined as the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. Now I'm actually going to expand that a bit. I don't want to argue with the dictionary but you know, go with it. Um, because I don't think resourceful necessarily has to be particularly quick and I don't think it necessarily has to be particularly clever. I think it just means finding ways to overcome difficulties. And I think in your PhD, there's a bunch of situations in which this is a really useful quality and I think this then goes on throughout academia. So for those of you who are post PhD, long into your academic careers, being resourceful at every stage of your academic career can take you a really long way. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, what sorts of circumstances do I think this is? Well, I think it's times when the people you traditionally work with, whether that's your supervisor, your regular collaborators or whatever, have maybe got less time to give you the support that you'd like. Maybe they don't have the specific expertise. Sometimes we see that collaborative relationships at any stage, whether it's supervisory or just as an academic, you sort of grow apart from each other slightly, one of you develops an interest in something that maybe is getting a little more biochemical than before, or a little more into a different era, or into a different method, or whatever it might be. And suddenly that person can't provide everything you need anymore. Maybe they were your go to, you expected your supervisor to teach you everything you need, but now you're going to use this new statistical technique, or this new qualitative analysis and they don't know how to do it anymore. That's okay, but that's a situation where being resourceful is really useful. It can also be useful when you've got technical problems with your project, whether that's access to things, whether that's ethics problems, whether it's actual, like, machinery breaking down in your laboratory, for example, many of us work in laboratories where perhaps there isn't as much tech support as you would like, and the PhD students and postdocs become responsible for fixing problems, troubleshooting issues in the laboratory. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Maybe you're aware of training needs you have, that there are things that you're good at but things that you're less good at. When we're feeling resourceful we're able to look at those things and see them as a problem to be solved rather than as a kind of inherent flaw that we can't do anything about. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So being resourceful is useful at any time you have any problem that you want to solve and the sorts of thoughts that I want you to nurture as a resourceful boss to yourself are things like There must be a way to figure this out. I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I can work it out. Or someone must know how to do this and I bet they'd be willing to share with me. I bet they'd be willing to help. Or I bet there's a training resource for this somewhere. It's sort of going beyond the problem you have and just assuming and being aware that there's almost certainly people that know how to help with this. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And when we have those sorts of thoughts, we're much more likely to feel optimistic. I want you to compare and contrast. If we're in, "I don't know how to do this and that's a problem" mode, we feel frustrated and shut down and confused and maybe even guilty that we don't know. Yeah. And we know that when we feel those sorts of emotions, we're probably going to end up overworking or procrastinating something that's a kind of frantic action or procrastination. Whereas if we can think thoughts like someone must know how to do this, there must be a resource out there that would help with this, then we start feeling optimistic. We start feeling pragmatic, like looking for solutions and we start feeling calm again. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Calm is a really recurring thought with this When I feel resourceful, I always feel excited to be honest, like, Ooh, yes, I could speak to them and I could speak to them and then we could do this. And it becomes this sort of like, Ooh, I can see how this problem gets fixed kind of vibe. And when we feel optimistic, pragmatic, calm, even excited. The actions we take are we approach people, we ask questions, we look for stuff. We assume there must be a solution to this and we go and find it. And the results we get from those actions are that we solve the problems that we have. And probably even more importantly, often we'll make meaningful connections and learn new stuff. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because in being resourceful, we go and talk to people that we wouldn't otherwise talk to, and we learn how to do things that we wouldn't otherwise learn how to do. I want you to think about what barriers get in the way of you being more resourceful. Sometimes it's about confidence. So one of the things that would really get in the way of being resourceful is if you're telling yourself you should know how to do this. It's really hard to be resourceful and have thoughts like, Oh, there must be people who can help with this. There must be a training resource that would let me solve this, if you're also telling yourself that you should already know. So keep an eye out for thoughts like that because thoughts like that Uh, they might be true. I was going to say they're almost certainly not true. Sometimes, maybe you should know. Maybe you have been shown this stuff before. Maybe you should, in inverted commas, know. But you don't. And so telling yourself that you should know just doesn't help on any level. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. Who knows? But you don't. That's the fact. You don't. So you can either sit around feeling grumpy about the fact you don't know, feeling guilty about the fact you don't know, and stress about all the things that are going to go wrong because you don't know. Or you can put your best resourceful pants on, say, okay, maybe I should know, maybe I shouldn't, I don't. So who does? How can I figure this out?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, one thing I want you to be cautious of with resourceful is that occasionally when people are very resourceful, they can assume that all answers exist outside themselves. So when we are trying to fix a piece of kit, for example, there may well be somebody who knows how to do that. If we are trying to decide what analysis to use, there's almost certainly training programs, books, whatever it is, other people who would be able to give you guidance about the different options and which you might choose. So being resourceful up until a point is really, really useful. Remember though, that resourcefulness  </span> <span> doesn't take away from the need to also make a decision. And I've talked about this in some of my recent episodes where we're talking about contradictory advice and things like that, ultimately, if there's a problem, you need to make a decision about what you're going to do and being resourceful is a great way to get information, to get options, to get suggestions, but then you get to decide which ones you're going to implement and how you're going to implement them. You're going to decide which training is useful, which reading is useful, which people to speak to, or which people's advice to actually take and act on. So when you're sort of trying to channel your best resourceful self, I want you to remember that that's never going to be an alternative to actually having to pick at some point. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Some people think that as long as they keep looking, they will at some point find the perfect thing, the perfect piece of advice, the perfect piece of reading that will tell them exactly what to focus their research on, or exactly what to argue in this particular paper. And you're never going to find that. At some point you've got to decide. The resourcefulness gets you all the information you might need to make that decision. And then you get to make that decision. So there's only two suggestions for you today that you channel your intentionality. You try and be more intentional and you try and be more resourceful as a boss to yourself. Let me know which of those do you feel like you're already doing well? Are these things that you think would be really useful for you to develop more? What gets in the way of that? Get on my email list. Drop me a message and I will try and respond to it in future episodes. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Next week I have a guest episode from an amazing academic coach. I am super excited about it. We've already recorded it. We talked for hours. So my job now is to go and process it and turn it into something that is manageable for you guys. So make sure you tune in next week and listen out for that. I am super excited about it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Make sure you're on the email list. I'm starting to soft launch my individual membership. What I mean by that is I'm not shouting about it publicly. I'm just telling you guys. So if you're on my email list, you will get some information about how to join the individual membership. This is a cheaper way to get coaching than doing one to one and it means you're part of a community of PhD students and early career researchers. It's completely amazing. So make sure you're on my email list to hear more about that. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </span> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 22 Jul 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-45-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-intentional-and-resourceful thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-44-what-to-do-when-you-get-contradictory-advice <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>     </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  One thing that never fails to amaze me in this job is how much I can have the exact same conversation with new PhD students and with senior academics. This became really apparent in the last few weeks, where I had different people tell me about receiving conflicting advice. For some, it was first year PhD students whose supervisors were disagreeing on what the focus of their thesis should be. Others, it was senior academics who were getting contradictory reviews from journal articles and from grant submissions, or even advice about what to do with their careers, what to focus on in order to get promoted. And in all cases, people were asking me, what do I do? If these people say I should do this and those people say I should do that, how do I reconcile that and actually make a decision? It's really hard. What am I meant to do? And so having had some great coaching conversations about these topics, I thought I would bring it all together in a podcast episode for you guys. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vicki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let's go. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 44 of Season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And today we're going to be thinking about how to handle conflicting advice. There's tons of different places that this happens. You might be getting advice about your actual research, like what to do, what archives to use, what data to collect, what methods to use. You might be getting advice about what things to emphasise, about how long something should be, about the style of your writing, whether it's too formal or not formal enough. You might be getting advice about the process, how to organise your time, how much time to spend doing different things, how to build your career, what to put your time into. Which jobs you should apply for when you're ready to get promoted. There's a ton of different decisions that need to be made at every stage of an academic career. And there are always people willing to give you their opinion on it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So what we're going to do today is think about why is it difficult when you get contradictory advice and some questions you can ask yourself to help you figure it out. If you find this episode useful, I am sure you will, I suggest you also go back to season one and listen to episode 23 where I talked about how to make decisions that you love. Whilst it doesn't directly touch on the stuff we're doing today about contradictory advice, it does take you through my favourite framework for making decisions and I think you'll find it really useful. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So why is it difficult when we receive contradictory advice? The reason I think it's difficult is most of us think that when we receive advice, we should be able to act on that advice. That we should be able to sort of directly take, someone says, Oh, you should do this. And we could go, Oh yes, so we should, and then do it. And when you then receive advice from two different people, often who, both whose opinions you value who say to do different things, it's like, well, what am I meant to do if they think I should do this and they think I should do that? It sort of undermines this belief that other people's opinions are somehow right and valid because they can't both be right. if they're saying different things, or should we be able to find a way in which they are both right and come up with some sort of solution that meets them both? And that sort of cognitive dissonance where our belief that other people's opinions should be right, and now they're in contrast to each other, it forces us to realize that that's not the case. That other people's opinions aren't necessarily right any more than our opinions are right, and it can be really uncomfortable to be confronted with that.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It can also lead to a position where we tell ourselves that if they say this and they say that, then I just don't know what to do. And those of you who are regular listeners will have heard me talk before about the paralyzing effect of telling yourself that you don't know, telling yourself that you're not sure what to do and ending the conversation there. Because when we're telling ourselves, we don't know, we then don't figure it out. And there's nothing like contradictory advice to make us feel like we just don't know what to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I think there's also an emotional element to this as well, whereby we often feel somewhat grateful for advice. So, particularly, let's put to one side kind of reviewers of papers and grants, we'll talk about those in a second. But when we're thinking about more general advice, perhaps more interpersonal advice, it's quite common to feel a sense of gratitude and almost obligation. This person cares enough to have given us their opinion, to tell us what they think we should do. And if we do something different, we're in some way disregarding or rejecting their advice. They might be disappointed. They might be cross with us. If we're then proved to be wrong, that we. that maybe the thing we did didn't work out and maybe the thing that they'd suggested would have done, then we might feel regret, we might feel guilt, they might tell us they told us so. There's all these emotions associated with taking advice and then doing something different than what the advice was. And the truth is none of those things are inevitable. The truth is we can think about how we want to respond in the event that we do this and it doesn't work out. But in the absence of that sort of self regulation, it's really not surprising that conflicting advice can feel so challenging to deal with.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, once we understand that, once we understand that it's really not surprising that it feels uncomfortable and we don't have to feel bad about the fact that it feels uncomfortable to receive conflicting advice, then we can start moving into a more curious place of figuring out, what can I do about it? How can I look at this as a problem to be solved, as a decision to be made, accepting that it still feels uncomfortable and that's okay, but that doesn't prevent me from actually making a decision about these things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because once we're in that place, once we see this as like a little brain puzzle to be solved, a decision to be made, then suddenly there's a bunch of questions we can work through, a bunch of kind of criteria to think about that can frame that decision.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The first I want you to think about is, was this solicited or unsolicited advice? So, whenever we submit to a journal, we submit our thesis to our examiners, grants, all these things, we are essentially soliciting advice from the reviewers. We might not like it, we might not want to be getting it, but we are indirectly, at least, soliciting advice from those people. When we submit ethics applications, there's another one where we get conflicting things. I've had clients with all sorts of ethics dramas recently, we are soliciting advice from the ethics board about our research processes. When we specifically ask somebody for advice about our careers, about promotions, job applications, all that stuff, or even our research direction, solicited advice. Great. Even presenting at conferences and seminars and things like that, you are essentially putting yourself in a position where you're soliciting at least questions, if not advice. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Other times, you will get unsolicited advice. It may be from people outside of academia, in your personal life or other connections. It may be from people within academia, but in an environment that you weren't asking for advice. So at networking events, socials, outside of you specifically presenting your research, maybe just in the kind of chatting bits of conferences, you may receive unsolicited advice. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I want you also to remember that even within a solicited environment, there may be some advice that you have asked for and other advice that you haven't asked for. So take the example of doing a presentation, for example. You may have people who give you advice about your methodology, for example. And if you're presenting a study, you're presenting methods, that you use, you are in some way soliciting advice or at least comment on the methods of your study. However, what you may also find that you receive advice on from people in the audience is what you should be researching instead of this. So I've seen many situations have had been on the receiving end of it where some people ask lovely questions, point out things that you perhaps haven't thought of about the specific study you're presenting. And then other people ask you questions like, "Well of course that's not the real issue, the real issue is this." And then go off and talk about something that's completely different than what you presented. Bad conference etiquette, we all know it happens. And in that case, even though you were soliciting advice by presenting, you weren't soliciting advice on your research direction, for example. Or if they start giving you career advice in that context. You didn't solicit that. You were soliciting advice and comment on this specific study, not about the general direction or what you should do next or any of those things. So I would classify that as unsolicited advice as well. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The reason it's really important to distinguish between solicited advice and unsolicited advice is you can have that on a continuum of how much you want to even consider taking it into account. I want you to remember that particularly with unsolicited advice, you can just decide to disregard it. You are under zero obligation to anybody who gives you unsolicited advice to enact their advice in any way. Is it still useful to run through some of the other questions that I'm going to ask you so that you don't miss some useful gems that you hadn't, you know, you weren't necessarily thinking through fully? Yeah, absolutely. Of course, you can run it through a quick sense check to see whether actually, I didn't ask for this advice, but that's actually super wise. Of course you can still do that. But when it's unsolicited advice, we sometimes still feel, well, the person, you know, they've advised this, should I listen? Is that true? Da, da, da, unsolicited advice- you can just be like, Oh, okay. Thanks. I guess. and not take it any further. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We're going to think in a minute about what emotions might make doing that difficult. So if that feels uncomfortable, especially if you're somebody who identifies as being a bit of a people pleaser, if that feels uncomfortable, we will think about ways of managing that uncomfortableness. But I think it's a really important first reminder. If it's unsolicited advice. You can just choose to ignore it. You don't even have to tell them you're ignoring it. You can just say thank you and move on. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, within the realms of solicited advice, I'm not saying that if you solicit it, you have to follow the advice, but I think when we solicit advice, I would suggest that we're kind of signing up to go through a slightly more in detail review process of what they actually say. Obviously, it's still up to you. You can do what you like, but I would advise that if you are soliciting advice from people, you have in mind in advance that you are going to give it due consideration. And what I hope to give you by the end of this episode is a kind of structure that you can use to do that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, knowing that, knowing that if you solicit advice, you are going to take it through a more structured consideration can also help you decide whether to solicit it or not. Often we end up just soliciting advice in a really random way. What do you think I should do? Should I do this? I don't know. And sometimes that can lead to really wonderful insights, right? I'm a big fan of asking big overarching questions of people I don't know very well. You know, what advice would you give to somebody who's my age? What's the greatest lesson you've learned in your life? All that kind of thing. But that's very different from what do you think I should focus on in my research? I would be really targeted as to who you ask that question to, because if you're soliciting it, you should be giving it due consideration. And when we solicit things like that from too many different people, without really thinking about specifically what we're asking and why we're asking that person, we end up with kind of, an excess of information, a whole load of noise that makes it difficult. So be cautious who you solicit information from and be really specific about exactly what advice you are actually looking for </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So when we're then thinking about solicited advice, I want you to ask yourself, why am I even asking for advice in the first place? Because there's a lot of different thoughts and emotions that induce us to ask advice. Sometimes it's because there's specific information that we don't have. So if there's a particular area of academia that we want to get into, for example, and we feel like there'll be specific qualifications or specific experiences, but we're not sure what they are, maybe we're looking for specific mentoring advice as to, okay, you need to make sure you've got this qualification, that recognition, and you've done this sort of experience, for example. Maybe sometimes we're asking advice because we've got a couple of different options that both have benefits and we haven't yet decided which we want to do. Other times we might be asking advice because we think we know what we want to do, but we're a bit scared, we're worried we're going to get it wrong, we're worried that it'll be a stupid decision and people will think we're silly, and we're looking almost for reassurance. Try and get really clear on why you're asking for advice. Because if you are solely looking for reassurance, you might want to ask in a different way. You might want to even ask yourself whether you need to be asking for this advice or not, or whether this is something where actually you need to be able to give yourself that reassurance. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Once you've thought about why you're asking anyone this, I want you to ask yourself, why am I asking this person? Is it because they've got specific experience? Is it because I just really value them as a influential or impressive person in my life? Do I think they're wise and sensible? Am I asking them because they really know me? Remember, that's very different. Somebody who really knows the thing you want to know about might give you advice. But somebody who really knows you may also give different advice. And remember, there's a difference between people that know you now in a professional capacity, versus that know the you that grew up and was a child and all of those things. So, the people that have known you the longest are not necessarily the people that know you now the best. So, why are you asking this particular person? I am not going to ask my family which journal I should submit my article to because they're not in that world. However, when I was considering leaving academia and changing my life entirely to start this business and become a coach, I absolutely talked to my family because they know me as a person and I was interested in their opinion of how I would respond to that kind of change of professional setting and everything. So really think about who you're asking and why you're asking them this particular thing. Finally, if you're in a position to be actually asking advice specifically, so again, this is slightly separate from submitting things, really think through specifically what do you want advice on? Because sometimes people can get really general and if there are constraints around the decision that you're making, it's really important that you make that clear and ask for their opinion within those constraints. So if you're saying within the constraints that I'm definitely doing a qualitative study, which analytical approach do you think I should take? Is a very different question than, how should I design this study? Because if you then ask somebody who's a quantitative scientist, for example, how to run this study, they're going to come up with something that you're not going to want to follow if you want to take a qualitative approach to this particular question. So trying to be as specific as possible about what you're asking can help ensure you get advice that's useful in the first place, even before we're dealing with contradictory advice. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> In the context of submitting things, even then it can be useful to know why you're submitting. Are you submitting because you want to get peer review of this particular article so that you can make this article as strong as possible up to and including the idea that it might get rejected from this journal, you'll enhance it based on those research, those reviewer comments, and submit it somewhere else. Or are you submitting it here because you just want it done and published? Because sometimes that's the case too. And that will affect how we respond to the advice we're given as well. If we're using reviewer advice to improve the paper, that is one thing, if we're using the advice to make it publishable in this particular journal, then that will lead to different decisions. So even in that sort of setting, knowing why you've asked for this advice can really help.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Once we've then got the contradictory advice, I first of all want you to give yourself some space. It is totally normal and totally fine to have an emotional reaction to that. It would be so much easier if they all gave the same advice and you agreed with the advice and you just do that. Happy days. It is perfectly fine to be upset and frustrated and disappointed that the advice is contradictory and that this is going to be a bit more tricky. That's okay. My old supervisor always used to advise. Read your reviewer's comments, walk away for a couple of days, come back, get on. So, don't worry if you're experiencing these sorts of emotions. However, we don't have to act out of them and we don't have to turn them into a massive drama. And we can still use our curious logical approach to think about how we're going to manage it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The first step of that, so when we've actually got contradictory advice, I think, is to really consider the humanity of the people that have given you that advice. What do I mean by consider their humanity? What I mean is that these people have perspectives on the world that will overlap to a greater or lesser extent with yours, but they won't be a perfect match for. They will have their own interests, and, and this one we often forget, especially with more senior people, they are also imperfect. We are all imperfect. We all show up imperfectly, at least some of the time, and we sometimes forget that about the people that are giving us advice. Now, why is all this important? Because sometimes they may be giving advice that is, to them, really true and really important for you to know. But if they have a different perspective that is in contradiction to your beliefs or values or perspectives, then it doesn't have to be advice that you follow. So, to give you an example, I stayed my entire academic career at the University of Birmingham. I went as an undergraduate student, I left as a full professor, and I never worked or studied at another university. Now, many, many, many people told me that that was a terrible decision. They told me that my career would progress much faster if I went and post doc'd overseas, I moved around. I would get promoted more quickly if I was changing institution, all of these things. And they were probably right. Yeah, they probably were. Those things were true. But they were coming at it from a perspective of somebody who wanted to maximize their academic progression and maximize their career development. And if that had been my perspective, then I probably should have gone and done those things.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But it wasn't. I had people I loved in Birmingham, I had my family not too far away, and my life as a whole was more important to me than my career progression. The lucky flip side of that for me was that the other thing that I really valued was autonomy and I had a huge amount of autonomy because of the weird particular setup of my experience at Birmingham, which if you want to hear more about, there is an episode about, can't remember which number, but it's called how I got my PhD in two and a half years and why I don't recommend that you do. I tell you the whole story there. Um, I really valued autonomy and I knew I had it at Birmingham in a way that I don't think I would have done at most places, certainly not in that early stage of my career. And so knowing that I valued my personal life and I valued my autonomy, I decided to stay in Birmingham. Did I doubt myself? Yes, absolutely, because I hadn't done all this work and I was thinking, Oh my God, what if I've made a mistake? What if I should do that? Maybe I should. But I stuck to my guns and I remembered that other people prioritize different things. So remember, people have different perspectives, they have different priorities, that doesn't mean you have to take it into account. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Other people also have conflicts. So one of the things I see happen quite a lot is supervisors advising their students about what they should do in situations where there is a conflict of interest. Now in the nicest people in the world, the best supervisors ever, there's always a bit of a conflict of interests. They want you to succeed, but it's way easier if you succeed in things that they're also trying to succeed in, where your research interests really overlap, where the work you're doing really builds towards their next grant income. But I have clients and experiences with people where the conflict of interest leads to supervisors making suggestions that are not necessarily in the student's best interest. Why don't you just stay on in the lab for a year afterwards and write everything up when that's not necessarily where they want their careers to go and what they want to be focusing on. But it's good for the supervisor to have that kind of cheap experienced hands around to finish stuff off where people have got commercial interests coming out of their academic research. And so they're pushing their students to do the work that helps their commercial interests. For example, there's a lot of places where there might be conflicts of interest. in what people are suggesting. Your family might want you to take a job closer to where they are, rather than further away. That's another conflict of interest. A conflict of interest doesn't have to be nasty. It doesn't have to be someone trying to screw you over. It can simply be that there's a difference between what they want for you, than what you want for you. And remembering that when we're screening advice is really useful. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So I want you to think about their perspective, their conflicts, and I also mentioned their imperfections. And this is where often when we get advice, we think, Oh God, they could have said that nicer. They could have been more clear on that. Oh, that's a bit vague. You know, we get reviewers comments. Everyone has all the jokes about reviewer two being horrible and everything. Remembering people's imperfections is really important. Remember this isn't to justify terrible reviewer behavior, be nice when you do your reviews, but sometimes we do our reviews late at night when we're exhausted because we've realized we've delayed it 10 times and we still haven't done it. Sometimes we are just really frustrated with the paper that we've read, and we're grumpier than we intend to be. And remembering that because the advice was a bit snippy or a bit vague or any of these things, doesn't mean they're horrible or it doesn't have to mean they're horrible and it doesn't mean that you are stupid or unworthy or any of those things. It could just mean that it wasn't a great day for them. We don't know, but I think there's a lot of benefit to just remembering that the story we are putting around that advice may well not be true. That there's a whole bunch of reasons why they responded the way they did, and that we don't necessarily know that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So now what do you do when you've got conflicting advice? We're thinking about the humanity of the people that have given it. We're remembering that they've got a whole bunch of perspectives that might not overlap, lay with us and might not line up. What do we get to do? Well, what we get to do is. We get to decide. And that's one of my favorite phrases. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see I went to a collage workshop like this week, which was lovely. And I decided to put a little motto on it based on things that had been really important in coaching recently. And the one I went for was I get to choose. Because often we think, well if they tell us A and they tell me B, then what do I do? And we try and come up with some version that covers A and B. When in reality, all that has happened is you now have more information. You have information that one person thinks this, and that one person thinks that. And you can add that to the information you already had about your opinions or advice you've had from other people, and you can make a decision from there. It doesn't have to appease both of them. You could decide to go with one or the other. You could decide that you're going to do some third thing that somewhat meets both needs. You could decide you're going to do a version of one person's advice, but you get to choose. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So what you can do is you can kind of triangulate this information together. I'll just say if some people think this and some people think that, what do I want to do with this information? Now remember, a compromise is not the only solution here. Sometimes the fact that two different people get very different perspectives and very different advice on what you should do tells you that actually the problem is a lack of clarity, perhaps, in what you're trying to say. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other reason it's important to triangulate and kind of bring it all together to see what it's telling you as a whole is because often our tendency is to try and please everyone. Our tendency is to try and compromise and come to something that both sides will be happy with. And the problem is then, sometimes we end up with something that is not satisfying to anybody. So think of an analogy of planning a meal, you might have somebody say they want a chicken curry and somebody else say they want roast chicken and you're like, right, I can please everybody here. Let's compromise between those. And we'll do curried roast chicken and roast potatoes. Might be a bit strange. Nobody wants that combination. But if you can look at them both and be like, okay, they want quite different things here, but both of them want chicken. And actually I can take that basic information and come up with something that, you know what I think will work for both. You get to sort of pick out the principles of what they've said and decide can you come up with something that works for both, or do you actually have to pick a team here? Because sometimes in a lot of our work it is better to do one thing well than it is to try and combine everything. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When you think about career planning, this is particularly an issue. We all receive advice about what to do for our careers. You need to focus on your research. I remember that was one of the things that drove me to a teaching focus contract was people saying, Vikki, if you want to get promoted on research, you need to do the bare minimum in all your teaching, bare minimum in all your admin roles really get on with, you know, we want grants, we want papers, you need to really push on that stuff. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And I was like, I don't want to do that. And then other people were saying, what you really want to do is be a really well rounded academic. Make sure you do all this external stuff, do all this, you know, community work, this leadership, all these things. And what I see a lot of academics do, and what I did for a while was try and follow all of the advice. So not picking, not finding a compromise, but instead trying to do all of it. And then we just end up completely overloaded. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If you're an academic, you're in a permanent position where you're thinking about applying for promotion, you're feeling a bit like that at the moment, do give me a shout. I have one or two spots available for my promotions package where I will help you figure out how to streamline what you're doing at the moment and come up with a coherent case for promotion, whether it's a senior lecturer associate prof level, or whether it's a full prof. So whatever level you're looking at, give me a shout if that sounds like you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other thing that example brings up is my final point in this kind of you get to choose section and that is that your response to somebody's advice can be as useful as the advice itself. And it's worth spending a little bit of time just thinking about what is your response and why is that your response. So in that example, I was being advised that I should cut back on all my teaching and leadership and just focus on research so that I could get promoted on the research route. And I realized I didn't like that advice. It was probably correct. I did get promoted on research. So obviously it wasn't completely correct, but it probably would have been a faster way to get promoted on research so they weren't wrong, but I noticed that when they were telling me that I had some real resistance to it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And thankfully it was one of the moments in my career where I was quite reflective and I stopped and thought about it and was like, why am I not going, Oh, brilliant? Because actually a lot of academics, if you say to them, you know, if your people senior to you say, what I want you to do, I want you to do less on your sheets and less on your admin and focus on this, they'd be like, Oh my God, that's the dream. Thank you so much for giving me permission. Amazing. Yes, I'll do that. And I didn't. And I knew it was interesting that I didn't. And that was what made me realize that I didn't really want to be doing my research anymore. So even getting advice that you disagree with can really tell you something about your opinion as well. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So when you're getting conflicting advice, I want you to stop and think, how am I reacting to each of these pieces of advice? If I look at them in turn, and if I look at them as conflicting advice, and why am I feeling that way? Now, be careful about knee jerk reactions to advice as well. I remember another time, and I can't remember whether I've talked about this before or not, I had a lovely colleague who was just hilarious, very opinionated, and he saw a pile of papers on my shelf and told me I should throw them away because I was never going to read them. And I got super defensive. I said, I am. I know they're not central to what I do, but they would be really useful. I'm definitely going to read them. Yeah, I didn't. I think I've told you about it before. About two years later, when I came back from a sabbatical, I just binned the lot of them sheepishly. But at the time I was really pissed off about his advice. I had interpreted it and internalized it as a criticism on my commitment to reading on my discipline, my organization and all of these things when in reality he was just right. And so had I been more reflective in that situation, I might have noticed that actually it was probably a bit of a defensive response to his advice. It was a little bit me taking it personally, meaning something about me, which prevented me from listening to it and going, yeah, probably is good advice. Cause for like two years, I looked at that pile and felt guilty. I'd have been much better off just getting rid of it and accepting earlier that I wasn't going to read it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So when you're getting this sort of conflicting advice, I want you to think of it as extra information to support your decision making. Think about your response to the advice and how it's made you feel and what thoughts you've had about it. What you can glean from that. Think about whether, are there ways you can take glimmers from both of them and create something that works for both? Are you going to pick a side and why, how are you going to justify that? Remember when you justify things, you usually only have to justify it to yourself. If it's a review or a grant agency, you might need to justify it to them, but you can always say. I've done this but not that for these reasons. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The final thing that can hold us back from managing constrictory advice is our beliefs about how people respond if we don't follow their advice perfectly. Because sometimes we worry that we will make people sad or disappointed or frustrated if they've given us advice and we don't follow it. And the first thing to say is, I can't even reassure you that that won't happen. People may well be frustrated or disappointed that you didn't follow their advice. What I would suggest is that that's okay. They've given you advice. And they get to feel whatever they feel if you choose to do something different. When you start to make decisions based on how other people will feel about your decisions, rather than on the basis of what's right for you and your situation, that's when we just get in a pickle. And that's where this conflicting advice feels so challenging because suddenly you're forced that you can't please everyone. Often if somebody gives us advice, even if it doesn't necessarily feel right for us, we follow it because, well, maybe they know, and we put our own needs to one side. But suddenly, if you've got contradictory advice, you can't do that. You do have to pick. And from that perspective, getting contradictory advice is actually really freeing because you physically can't please both of these people. You actually can't follow their advice. And therefore you have to accept that at least one person may choose to be disappointed or frustrated and that that's going to be okay. And what we get to do is we get to look after ourselves through that instead of avoiding it by making decisions that they told us to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So what we get to do is we get to say, right, I get to decide if I'm following that advice or that advice or some combination or some completely other option, I get to pick that based on reasons that I like, based on my needs and what I want. And they get to manage any emotions they have because of that and I get to manage any emotions that I have about the fact that they're disappointed or that they're sad or that they're frustrated. Okay, we don't have to manage those emotions by avoiding them, by doing what we're told, by following the advice. We get to manage those emotions by being kind to ourselves and looking after ourselves and allowing ourselves to experience it, while making a decision that feels the best one that we can make at the time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So that's my advice. That's whatever stage of the academic journey you are at, you will be getting all of this contradictory advice. And the more we can be reflective and intentional and all these words that we keep using in these podcasts about how we think about what they've said, evaluate what they've said and choose mindfully what we're going to take from it, the more we can use advice as something that sort of informs our decision making rather than as a pure map that we must follow because it's been given to us.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I really hope you find that useful. I'd love to hear what you think. Make sure that you are on my newsletter so that you get the emails each week about this. And if you are a PhD student that's interested in longer term support, but you've thought that one to one coaching is a bit too expensive for you, make sure you're on my newsletter because I'm going to be giving more information about my PhD Life Coach membership, which will be a more affordable way for you to get access to online group coaching, all of my self paced materials and a really supportive PhD community. That membership is also open to early career researchers, so if you're a postdoc or at the beginnings of your academic career, it's absolutely for you too. If you have any questions, just drop me an email. Academics who are thinking about starting leadership positions or who are going into promotions applications, applying for fellowships or any of those sorts of things, get in touch. I have one or two slots for one to one clients at the moment, and I would love to work with you. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> <span> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 15 Jul 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-44-what-to-do-when-you-get-contradictory-advice thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-43-what-to-do-when-you-can-t-judge-how-long-things-take-to-do <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>     </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  One of the most common things I hear from clients is that I can't plan my time because I never know how long things take. Things always take me longer than I allowed for and then that just messes up my system and so there's no point planning because I never get it right. Does that feel familiar to you? Is that something you experience? It's really common at every stage of the academic career and so today we're going to be thinking about what you can do if you struggle to judge how long things are going to take. </span> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vicki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 43 of season two of the PhD Life Coach. Today's episode is taken directly from my Be Your Own Best Boss program. This has been a three month group coaching program that I've been running through April, May, and June. On day of recording, we actually finish today, which is super exciting. And I'm going to be turning this program into a self paced course, something that you can take yourself through. There's loads of information, there's loads of tasks and activities, reflective practices that help you to develop what type of boss you want to be and how you can become them. Make sure you're on my email mailing list, and you will be first to know when this is available for you guys to get. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the course, I have a whole section about what to do if you're not implementing your plans. But what I'm doing for today is just selecting out this one little bit to give you a little taste and to give you some really helpful advice about something that's a really common problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the issue is people who think they can't plan their time because they're rubbish at judging how long anything takes. What they're finding is that they plan their time, things take longer than they think, and so they end up having to re jig their entire, like, time plan for the week in order to make more time for the thing they haven't planned enough time for. They often end up bumping other activities later, often those activities are the ones that are really important, or for us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then it all just becomes a bit of a pickle. And I get it, I've had this problem since I was a GCSE student. I remember making all my revision timetables. Be getting a little carried away with color coding them and then realizing that I was already behind on my schedule and I was going to need to make it all again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a really common problem, but I think there are some real strategies and I think there are some real changes of mindset that will help us to approach this so that we can get better at planning our own time and that these misjudgments become less of a problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today I'm going to take you through six things that I think you can do if this is something you struggle with. So the first one is one you're going to have heard a hundred times before, but bear with me. Do not just go, Oh, well, no, there's reasons why this advice hasn't landed before and why it will land this time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So my first piece of guidance is that we have to be realistic about what we plan in. We have to think through all the stages of completing a task in order to plan for it accurately.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know you know this, I know when you plan you think you're being realistic and you've struggled with being more realistic in the past. Why I think I can help you in ways that this advice hasn't helped you before is I'm going to give you two reasons why I think you're being unrealistic at the moment and help you and overcome those. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And by overcoming the kind of things that underpin the challenges, which is what this podcast is all about, the entire podcast, it makes it so much easier for us to follow the advice that others give us. So the first reason I think that we're often unrealistic is because we put too big tasks into a block of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If your instructions to yourself are, work on my introduction, then who knows how long that will take, because it's a very unspecific goal. And even if you get more specific and you say write three paragraphs of our introduction, unless you're really clear what stage that is at, it's hard to know how long that would take. If you said to me, how long does it take to write three paragraphs of an introduction? I'm like, well, it depends. Do you know what's meant to be in them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have you got your notes? Do you have a plan? Do we have a draft and we're just tarting it up a bit? Are we generating it from start? What exactly are you trying to do? So, one way to make it easier to be more realistic is to get really specific about what you're doing in each time block. And this is a fundamental part of time blocking and task management, in fact, that I teach on this Be Your Own Best Boss program. We have to know exactly what we're meant to be doing at the moment. If I said, how long will it take to turn these bullet points into a paragraph, then suddenly it's easier. It's not easy, I'm not gonna go so far as easy, but it's much easier to guess how long it will take.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing that makes it difficult for us to be realistic about how long things take is what that means admitting to ourselves. When I talk to some of my clients in my group coaching program about this, they often said that one of the barriers to giving themselves more time was feeling like they shouldn't need more time. Feeling like other people would have been able to do it in the time that they allocated to it. So in that moment of planning, they weren't willing to be uncomfortable by giving themselves more time than they think it should and so they planned in an unrealistic amount of time, and we're then uncomfortable later. So if you're often unrealistic about how long things take, I want you to think about why. What are the thoughts that you would have if you gave yourself more time? Sometimes it's about what you should be able to do. Other times it's thoughts like, if I don't do it in this amount of time, then I won't be able to finish. And that might feel really true to you. But if you're repeatedly telling yourself, if I don't do it in this amount of time, I won't be able to finish, but then you don't do it in that amount of time and you just readjust, then it's not true that you had to do it in that amount of time, because you didn't and you're still trying to finish. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really think, what are the thoughts that are preventing you from being more realistic? And start to challenge some of those to make it a little bit easier for us to overestimate, to give ourselves more time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is that we need to understand that this is a skill that we're developing. Judging how long something will take, and then taking that long to do it is a skill and an art and it's something that we can't just naturally do. People seem to think that it's something that you can either do or you can't do. And if you can't do it, then, Oh no, I'm never going to be able to plan, but actually it's something we can get slowly better at. But as with anything, if we want to get slowly better at it, we have to practice, and we have to sort of follow how that practice goes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I want you to do, if you're somebody who tells yourself you can't tell how long something takes, I want you to pick a task, I want you to guess how long it will take, I want you to do it, trying your best to prove yourself right, to do it in the amount of time you said you'd do it, then see how long it actually takes and see how close you were. There used to be a race, when I was at University of Birmingham, there used to be a race where everybody had to run, I can't remember whether it was 5 or 10k, and the point wasn't to run it as fast as possible. The point was to run it in the amount of time you had told them that you would do it. Now this was before, like, widespread use of GPS and phones and all that stuff, you weren't allowed watches, you weren't allowed a phone. You had to just race the race and try and get it as close as possible to what you said you were going to do. A really fun concept for a race because it means that the fastest people won't necessarily win. And I want you to do something similar for your planning practice. Guess, have a go, try and prove yourself right, assess which direction you were wrong in, and guess again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, many of us will be inconsistent. Many of us, there will be days where you can get something done in half an hour, and other days where something will take an hour. That's fine. No problem. We get to plan for those things. When we're planning, we get to say, okay, I'm planning to do this on a Friday afternoon. That means I'm probably going to be more tired. I'm probably going to be losing momentum. Let's give myself a little bit more time. Or I'm planning to do this on a Tuesday morning. I'll be in the flow after having worked on Monday. And actually I can plan in a relatively stringent amount of time because I reckon I'll be on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's go. Those of you with menstrual cycles, you can plan around those things. What times of the month you might be better, less good. Those of you with health conditions will know what times of day, what times of week, times of month are more of a struggle for you. You can even plan around weather. Some of us work more slowly when it gets warmer, things like that. Understanding what things affect how long something will take, and taking them into account, and practicing taking them into account, means we can slowly judge, and slowly get better at judging.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The one thing I will tell you with this is estimating badly will always be better than just starting and seeing what happens. Maybe you do get it completely wrong, but when we estimate badly and we notice what we get wrong and we readjust next time, we get better. When we keep just winging it because we think we're not good at it, we never get any better and we never develop this skill. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By the way, this can also be a useful tactic for getting any boring jobs done. I used to procrastinate emptying the dishwasher and things like that, because it's like, oh, I'll do it later. And so I tried to guess how long it would take me, and I was like, 15 minutes. And then I emptied it, and it takes, like, four. And that really helps, because when I'm going, I can't bother to empty the dishwasher. It's like, four minutes! Four minutes. You can do four minutes, Vikki. So even just this guessing, trying and timing, re evaluating can help in all sorts of things, not just your academic life.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing you can do is make sure you're using role based time blocking. So if you haven't listened to this episode, I think it's episode 33. It is this notion that we all have different roles in our jobs and that if we can allocate time blocks to a role rather than to a specific task, it means we don't have to be quite as good at judging things. Now, I would always try to give yourself specific things that you're trying to get done, especially if it's writing or something like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you've just got a bunch of admin tasks and you have no idea how long they'll take, block in an hour's admin work and just smash through them. And this time it's not how long will these take? It's how much can I get done in an hour? Okay, we've allocated to that role. These are the jobs that are associated with that role. How many of them can I get done?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The important thing here is that you've decided what order you're going to do them in. So that as soon as you start, you're like, That one. Boom. Let's go. That one. Boom. Let's go. Okay, and you work through them and you don't have lots of, Oh, I suppose I could do that one or that one. You have a list, start at the top, you keep going, you work until the end of your time block.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So using role based time blocking, especially for those smaller things where trying to make big judgments about how long they'll take is probably more of a waste of time than just getting on with it. Role based time blocking, really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth thing is that sometimes we have to flip this on his head, and instead of saying, I wonder how long this will take, we say, I am giving this task 90 minutes. So we choose. It's not, I'm guessing it might take this long, let's see. It's, we decide, I've got 90 minutes to do this, let's go. It will be as good as I can get it in 90 minutes. If your house was a mess and somebody that cares about that stuff and that you care about was coming to visit, maybe your parents, your friends, whatever, and they're suddenly like, we'll be there in 15 minutes. And you're like, Oh my God, there's crap everywhere. You would get your house as sorted as you can within that 15 minutes. Do you guys do that? I feel like I've done this a lot in my life. I kind of crazy run around to try and make things look more presentable before everybody arrives, at least hoovering dog hair. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you'd asked me how long it would take me to clean up my house, take me a couple of hours or whatever it is. If you tell me I've got 15 minutes, I will get it good enough. I will get it as good as I can in that time. This can be particularly useful for things where you feel you might be prone to wasting some time messing about and making things beautiful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So presentations, for example, you might decide, I'm giving myself 90 minutes to make the slides for this presentation. I know roughly what I'm going to say, I just need to make the slides. 90 minutes. That's what I'm willing to do. Let's go. And at the end of that 90 minutes, that's how good they're going to be. And that's what I'm going to present with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This isn't to stress yourself out. This isn't to like make yourself work frantically fast, but it's to make yourself prioritize. It's to make yourself go, if I've only got 90 minutes, I'm getting the content in first. I'm not spending 20 minutes on Google looking for the most beautiful creative commons free picture to use to illustrate this point. I'm just going to get the content in. If I've got time for pictures, I'll do that at the end. If I've got time for animations, I'll do that later. You get then prioritized so that you get the important stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fifth suggestion here comes to this idea of what do I do if something did take longer than I anticipated? So say you set yourself a two hour writing block. You intended to write three paragraphs and you actually wrote two paragraphs, and you don't wanna get behind on schedule. So you're thinking, oh goodness, I need to find another hour in order to get that final paragraph, that third paragraph that I'd intended to do done. And people often ask me, what do I do in that situation? If I'm not perfect at this and I'm practicing and I'm being compassionate to myself and all of those things, what do I actually do? And my tip here is try not to rearrange today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you'd planned to work from 10 till 12, writing those three paragraphs, it's 12 o'clock and you've written two. I would make sure you congratulate yourself because you've created two paragraphs of work. That's amazing. Happy days. You notice that the third paragraph hasn't been done. I would give myself just a few minutes to write down all the things that need to go in that third paragraph, so the stuff that's top of my head because I've been working on it, the stuff that I would do next if I was carrying on with it now, just to make it really easy for the next time I pick it up, and then I would try to stop on time. If you're suddenly like, oh my god, it's 12 o'clock and I hadn't even noticed, give yourself 5 or 10 minutes just to jot down what you're doing next, and then off you go. End your time block. If you were planning a break, then go have a break. If you were planning to do different work, then go do different work. Try not to rearrange your current day on the hoof. We'll talk about rearranging tomorrow in a second. On today, try not to make changes for today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We then get to be really proud of what we did get done in that session and we get to make a little note to our boss selves that three paragraphs didn't fit into two hours in this particular circumstances and that we need to take that into account next time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we can then do later on in the day in one of our admin blocks or something, we get to look at tomorrow or the day after and figure out where we can find an hour to do that final paragraph. Now, if you are planning a compassionate, realistic diary, then that may be relatively straightforward. If you've planned a realistic amount of time to work on a presentation tomorrow, for example, and you finish with 30 minutes to go, because you were quite realistic, you could go, Oh, I've got 30 minutes. I can chip away a bit more of that paragraph. And smash through that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alternatively, if you find that you are someone who often underestimates how long things take, and even though you're trying to follow my first tip of being more realistic, you still have that hangover, you can plan for that too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You could block into your diary leftovers time. Time to finish jobs that you didn't finish yesterday. So that when you then get to that, You haven't got to rearrange other things. It's time that was specifically allocated to this. And if you get all your jobs done on time because you were nice and realistic, that leftover time could be for fun work or it could be for not working at all. It could be that, you know what, if I have finished everything in the slots that I gave myself, I finish at three o'clock on a Wednesday. Happy days. Let's do it. Your goal, if you do plan in that time, your goal is to not use it. That's the ideal. The ideal is that we try and finish in the slots that we've allocated, and that leftover time becomes joyous time that we can do with whatever we want. So it's there, we can use it if needs be, but we're trying to protect it. Having some idea of what you'd use it for. That's time that I could just chat to my colleagues. That's time I could just sit on campus and have an ice cream and enjoy the sunshine. If you have something that you could sort of be looking forward to it equally incentivizes you even more to try and stick to your time block. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Finally, and this is one that I actually hadn't written into the course when I was drafting it, but it came up when I was coaching some of my membership students this week and it's actually ended up being the most important item on this list. And that is, do not expect your work to fix negative emotions for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the biggest reasons that people give me as to why they can't get a piece of work done in the time that they have available is because they don't think they know enough. They still think it's not good enough. They're not clear. They don't feel ready to send it to their supervisor. They don't feel confident that it will be accepted. They don't feel certain that it's good enough. And so they want to work on it longer in order to feel confident, ready or certain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Your work does not create your emotions. Your thoughts create your emotions. If you are going to work on a piece until you are confident, or until you are ready, then you are inevitably going to take longer over it than you had planned to. Because you're expecting that piece of work to fix your emotions. Instead, what we do is we judge how long should it actually take, do I want to give it? We try our best to do it in that time, and if at the end of that time we still feel uncertain, we still lack confidence, we still feel a bit confused, we manage those emotions ourselves. We still give it to our supervisors, we still submit it to colleagues for comments, for example. And we cope with the fact that we feel a bit uncomfortable because we're not sure whether it's good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also plan time not to carry on working on it, but to check specific things. So instead of saying, I'm going to keep working on it until I feel confident, you can say, I am going to stop working on it after this amount of time, regardless of whether I feel confident or not. But I am also going to come up with a checklist of things that I want to check in another session, which will help me to think the thoughts. "Actually, I've checked all the important things, and I think it's good enough". So instead of just expecting us to continue working until such a time as an emotion just spontaneously arrives that we're ready, or a different emotion arrives, like panic, because we're coming up to a deadline, we get to plan for that and we get to look after ourselves through those thoughts and emotions instead of expecting the work to give it to us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that you found that helpful. Those are the six things I think you can do if you are struggling with judging how long something will take and finding that's messing up your planning. Have I missed any? Is there anything that you think I should have included? Is there anything that you struggle with that I haven't touched on? Please make sure that you're on my email list and then you can message me or you can message me through social media on Twitter or Instagram and let me know where there's anything else that you think I should address in future. I love to have a listener led sessions. We've got an interview coming up with a dissertation coach. She is absolutely amazing. I'm super excited. Make sure you tell your friends about PhD life coach so that they are all subscribed ready for when that comes out. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 08 Jul 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-43-what-to-do-when-you-can-t-judge-how-long-things-take-to-do thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-42-eight-ways-you-might-be-secretly-procrastinating <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>   </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What is your go to procrastination activity? I think my worst one is scrolling social media. It's my kind of default if I get stuck on something, I, there's something I don't want to do or whatever, I end up scrolling social media. Sometimes it can be things like watching TV if I'm particularly stuck in a series. It can sometimes be, now that my husband works from home, going and annoying him instead of doing my work. But today I'm going to argue that those forms of procrastination, whilst unhelpful, at least we know we're procrastinating. If I'm scrolling on social media when I'm meant to be recording a podcast, I know I'm procrastinating. If I'm chattering with my husband when I'm meant to be writing the next stage of my handout, I know I'm procrastinating. If I'm watching all the episodes of Traitors U. S. Season 2, which I did last week, message me if you've been watching. No spoilers, but oh my god. If I'm watching those when I'm meant to be planning next year's membership, also exciting. Then I know I'm procrastinating. Doesn't mean I've fixed it, doesn't mean I can stop it necessarily, but at least I know. And for those of you who know my NICE model of procrastination, the N is for notice. It's notice we procrastinate. If you haven't seen that one, make sure you're on my email mailing list and you can have a whole freebie article thing about it. Today's episode though, we are going to be thinking about eight things. that I believe are often signs of procrastination that we usually don't think of as procrastination and they are the insidious ones. They are the ones that leave us ending a week going, I don't even know what I did this week, but it wasn't the things I intended to do. So, keep listening, make sure you identify which of these eight you're doing and what you can do about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello, and welcome to the PhD life coach. And if you are listening to this live, I am on my holidays. So I am pre recording this one because I didn't procrastinate it. Yay. Go me. I put a time block in for recording podcasts. I planned it, I'm recording it, and I'm very proud of myself. Today we are going to be thinking about eight things that can often be procrastination that you may not think of as procrastination. I'm going to talk about why we need to identify those and what we can do when we notice that we're doing them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I often start with a caveat. Apparently this is a sign of ADHD that you feel the need to like pre explain to people what you're going to say so that you don't offend them. So go with me if this is just me being neurodivergent but I feel the need to say this in advance. All of the things that I'm about to identify are things that can be very, very useful. Some of them are things that are absolutely essential to our academic career. So if you go away from this podcast saying, Vikki says I don't need to read anything. Vikki says I mustn't help other people. You've entirely missed the point!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My point is the activities that I talk about today are things that we often choose to do instead of the other thing that we actually intended to do. None of these things are harmful in their own right. None of these things are things that we must never do. But I want you to notice which of these you do when you're intending to do something else. Because that's the definition of procrastination. Procrastination is doing something other than what we intend, in order to avoid the emotion associated with the thing we intended to do. So, if you had planned to write in a block on Wednesday, and you ended up doing one of these eight things instead, that's procrastination. You are avoiding whatever emotions are associated with this task that you wanted to do, and you're avoiding it by doing other things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now there's two reasons why we want to notice this. The first one is if you don't notice it, you can't do anything about it, and you end up in this confused state where it's like, things always come up, I don't understand, I end up doing other things. I don't know how I'm ever going to get this done. If you don't notice it, you can't fix it. And the second thing, and this one's really cool, is if you notice which of these you usually do, you can start to identify what needs that task is meeting and work out how to meet those needs doing the task you intend to do. Because often when we're procrastinating, not only are we avoiding the negative emotion that we associate with doing the task, we're also looking for something as well. And I talked about this on my recent episode about getting distracted, the kind of push and pull, the push away from the things we intend to do and the pull towards the things we're distracted by. So if we can understand the things that we procrastinate by doing, and we understand what needs they're meeting, we can really start to plan our intentional activities a lot more mindfully, so they meet those needs and we get done the things we want to get done. So as usual, I've noted down eight. I might make up more as we go along. We'll see.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first one is reading. Now I touched on this. I'm not going to talk about this for ages. Cause I just did a whole episode about why you shouldn't read in a writing block. Reading can be procrastination. Obviously reading's important. Don't go and tell your colleagues and supervisors that I told you you don't need to read. But often what I see is the reason for people reading is to feel more certain about their ideas, to feel ready to write. And I want to remind you, your feelings of certainty or your feelings of being ready don't come from reading. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They come from the thoughts that you are having. There is no amount of reading that will prepare you to feel absolutely, completely certain as you do a first draft of something. Reading can be a procrastination from experiencing the emotion of uncertainty, from experiencing the notion of confusion. We keep reading in order to fix the uncertainty, in order to fix the confusion, rather than because we're looking for anything in particular. If you notice that every time you sit down to write, you think, oh, I don't quite know enough about X, and you go off and read, that's procrastination. Now, do you still need to read more things? Yes. Will that work better if you do the reading after you've attempted to write something? Yes, absolutely. And check out that recent episode if you want to hear more about why. Reading more can be an attempt to avoid uncertainty. It can be an attempt to avoid having to make a decision, because when we write, we have to decide what our argument is, okay? Whereas when we're looking at other people's work, we don't have to make any decisions about what we're including or not including. We're just reading all this stuff. Reading can be procrastination. If that is one that you experience, I want you to notice what emotions you're trying to avoid, and I want you to ask yourself, what would it be like to write while feeling uncertain? What would it be like to draft something while not being sure that my argument makes sense. Those are the emotions that we need to learn to tolerate in order to get on with the writing. We don't even have to make them go away. You can think thoughts to try and make yourself feel more purposeful or determined or whatever, but you can also just decide, I'm going to write while feeling uncertain. I'm going to outline this while feeling a bit confused. I don't need to fix that by reading. Then once we've got outlines, we've got drafts, we go and read afterwards. Absolutely that activity comes, but avoid it as a way to make yourself feel better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second one is doing tasks for other people. Often when I speak to people, whether it's PhD students helping out their supervisors, whether it's academics supporting their students and colleagues, often we find we don't have time for writing or the big tasks that we want to get done, because we end up doing bits of things for other people. Someone emails, they need to know where something is, so you let them know. Somebody knocks on your door, asks if they can pick your brain, so you invite them in. All of these things munch away at the time that we've dedicated to do a piece of work. Why do I think this is procrastination? Because helping other people is way easier than doing your difficult tasks. You've got somebody specifically asking for it. It's a very clear question. Seeing answers to other people's problems is way easier than seeing answers to your own problems. You get immediate gratification because you tell yourself you're a good person for doing it and they thank you as well. And it feels kind of urgent and time pressured because somebody's asked for it. Okay, all of those things are really tempting and all of those thoughts will make you feel purposeful and on it and helpful and like a good person and those are all good things. We all want to feel like that and again, we also don't want to be that professor who just locks himself in a room and doesn't help anybody with anything. No one wants to be that person. But that equally doesn't mean you have to be on demand available for absolutely everybody all of the time to the detriment of your own ideas and career and enjoyment. There's a place in between this. If you are someone that finds that you're procrastinating by helping people, the first step is to recognize it as procrastination. Often we tell ourselves, I couldn't get to writing because I had to blah. I had to, I was interrupted, I was asked to. And we hand all our empowerment to somebody else. We hand all our empowerment to people who are asking things of us and almost hold ourselves as this kind of slightly helpless thing that, well, if people ask me, then I have to. It's not true. What's happening is that you had planned to do your task and when that time came, you chose to do something for somebody else instead of this. And where this one is particularly difficult is secretly I think you like that a bit. Secretly I think you like the fact that you're somebody who puts others before yourself. And that's fine, that's okay. That can be a big part of your kind of sense of self, but you also have to then balance it with the you that does want to do this work, with the you that wants to help others by role modeling the fact that you don't have to do everything that everybody else asks. If you're not willing to do this for yourself, do it for the people behind you. Do it for the members of staff or the students who are more junior to you, who see you sacrificing your own career in order to help everybody else. This is procrastination. It's really nice procrastination. It's really well intentioned procrastination. But it is procrastination. You are partly choosing it because you want to be lovely to everybody else, but you are also partly choosing it because it is easier than doing the hard thing. You know you're capable of helping them. You don't know whether you're capable of writing this paper or getting that grant. Now, if you find yourself, if this is you, there's a few things you can do about it. You can schedule time for that. You can schedule it. There's two hours of my day, every single day, where I'm doing work that I'm perfectly happy to be interrupted from. Come by then. You can schedule it in. If you want to be someone that helps people, tell people, after lunch, as long as I'm not in a meeting, interrupt, whatever, contact me, I'll do whatever. But between 9 and 11, I'm not here. I don't exist. There's nothing that can't wait till this afternoon. So you can schedule time for the things you like. You can remind yourself that helping yourself to complete these tasks is helping other people. Your department needs you to publish things. Your department needs you to get grants. Your department needs you to finish your PhD. Getting these big tasks done is also for other people as well as yourself. It's for your participants. It's for the people that care about your research. It's for you. It's for your family. There's other people that care about that one too. They're just a few more steps removed and so we have to more actively remind ourselves of that. The other thing you can do is you can notice the extent to which this procrastination is because the tasks for other people feel achievable and more time constrained and you can then choose to replicate that in your writing practice. Make it much clearer and more specific, exactly what you're meant to be doing today. So there's much easier to go, Oh yeah, get that done. Do, do, do. And you can look at my episode about how to break your work down into chunks to get more tips about how to do that. Lovely to help people. Not as an excuse not to do your own work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Third one, napping. Now, many of you will be a fan of a nap. Many of you will actually feel better after you've had a nap. Many of you will have psychological or physical disabilities that mean that napping is a really important part of your self care. If that's all the case, not procrastination. If you've got a young baby that means you get broken up sleep and you nap in the afternoon in order to catch up your sleep, not procrastination. You are intending to nap. You are napping. That is productive. That nap is a productive nap. Happy days. If you need it, you intentionally planned it in and you're now doing it, it's not procrastination. However, if every time you sit down to start a writing block, you feel the urge to have a nap. I want you to really question, is it a physical need for a nap? Or is it resistance to doing the task that we're about to do? Because our brains are tricky things, okay? There's many times that where you just don't want to do a thing because it feels difficult, it feels confusing, it feels too big, it's overwhelming, you should have done it before, that your brain actually gives you physical sensations of sleepiness. This isn't that you're just going, Oh, I think I'll just lie down. You actually properly feel sleepy. If there's no specific reason you need a nap, you haven't missed sleep, you're not ill, you don't have disabilities that would feel better for naps, I want you to really ask yourself, am I just avoiding doing this thing? And if you are, what can really help is actually, ironically, a little bit of physical stimulation, a little bit of having a jump up and down, a little bit of putting a favourite song on, a little bit of fresh air, just a few minutes of something that's more energising. If you're somebody who regularly actually needs naps, actually needs to fall asleep and actually feels better afterwards, let's just plan for that. Let's put that in your diary. I know for everyone that's not possible if you're working on campus and all of those things, but if that's something you regularly need, let's just intend to do it, put it in a time slot where it will be good, and then do it. And then it's productive, happy days, you're doing what you intended. But watch out for the desire to nap as a form of procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Fourth thing, making things beautiful. This might be your slides. This might be tidying up typos. Oh, I can't move on. If there's typos in the paragraph, I can't possibly move on to the next one. It just really bugs me. Well, you could just choose to not let it bug you. Or you could choose to allow it to bug you and write the next section anyway. You're allowed to be bugged. It's okay. Making things beautiful is often way easier than writing the next bit. And when we tell ourselves these stories that I couldn't possibly move on until it's sorted. I just need to find the right picture for this slide and then I'll move on. Otherwise it's going to bother my head. We end up using up so much time that is meant to be being spent generating new content. Now in my, how to be your own best personal assistant episode, we talked about how you can actually refer that almost to another role. That one version of you is in charge of generating content and your personal assistant version of you is responsible for making things beautiful. That can really help because you'd be like, I am going to make it beautiful. It's just not my job right now. So I want you to notice if this is something that you do. You like everything to be just so, as a way of avoiding the more challenging emotions associated with generating new content. Again, you can start to recognize what needs this is meeting. So often when we make things look nice and tidy or beautiful, we say nice things to ourselves. Oh, look at that. That looks so good. I'm so pleased with that. Yes. Just like that. And we say nice things to ourselves. So you could start doing that when you've just created a scruffy paragraph. Like, oh, look at that. I've got a whole paragraph written. Wicked. It's a bit of a mess, but happy days. I'm so glad it exists. We can give ourselves a sort of praise that at the moment, some of us only reserve for when something looks all nice . . We can also, like with the reading, just get better at tolerating the negative emotions associated with it being scruffy. If it annoys you because the things aren't lined up properly, that's okay. You can be annoyed. We're grown ups. We can cope with being a bit annoyed and still do our work. We can try and reduce the level of annoyance by thinking different thoughts. It doesn't matter. I'll sort it out later. Whatever. But we can also just be annoyed and do it anyway. So with many of these things, it's about learning to tolerate some of the emotions that we're trying to avoid by doing these procrastinatory activities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth one is waiting till you're ready to do something. Often we talk about waiting till I'm in the right state of mind, till the creative juices are flowing, waiting until we're sure that we're ready for promotion, for example. Waiting is often also procrastination. Again, it's avoiding the challenging emotions of feeling unsure about whether you can do something, but trying anyway. Now, with things like promotion or sending stuff to your supervisor, I'm not saying that sometimes you shouldn't wait until it gets to a particular stage before you do that. What I'm suggesting is that instead of passively waiting, you spend time figuring out exactly where it's at and exactly what we're waiting for. What decisions do we need to make? What things are going to happen or what time points, what things do we need to put in motion so that they do happen? So that when the time is right, we are actually ready, rather than waiting until we just spontaneously feel ready, which is usually a long time after, we could have done it sooner. If you're saying, you know, I just don't feel ready yet. I'll do that when I feel ready. Ask yourself much more specifically, what do I need in order to feel ready? What are the specific things I need? And how can I start moving towards those things? So that becoming ready is become some action that you're actually doing in an intentional and guided way, rather than a kind of sensation that you're expecting one day will just kind of pop up and go, okay, we're ready. Because that often doesn't happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The sixth thing is planning and task organization. Now I'm well aware that many of you will have listened to my role based time blocking episode or the various ones about task management, whatever, and started to reorganize some of your systems. So again, reorganizing your systems, finding out things that work for you, isn't always procrastination. It usually is procrastination if you've got a sudden urge to do it right in the middle of being really, really busy with doing other things. So in my what to do when you've got too much to do course that I offer for PhD students and members of staff, we talk about how when you're in the midst of overwhelm, where everything is just feeling too much, that is not the moment to decide you need a new planner, you need a new to do list management system, a new app or whatever else. That's the moment to pick one thing and make some progress on it. We get to recognize that there are points at which more new systems might be useful, might help us keep better track of what we're doing, but in the midst of overwhelm is not one of them. If we try and do it in the midst of overwhelm, it's procrastination because we're avoiding the sensation of overwhelm without actually addressing the things that are overwhelming us. We're avoiding the sensation of overwhelm by making ourselves feel organized because we want to feel organized. And we're doing that by chasing down this elusive perfect system. So planning, useful, finding new systems, useful, but only when we do it, when we intend to do it, rather than as a way of avoiding those feelings of overwhelm and stress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The seventh one, and I'd be interested to hear what you think of this one. So make sure, make sure you're on my email list. You send me your thoughts on this. Seventh one is complaining. I remember as an academic that there were certain people that you knew, if you bumped into them in the corridor, were gonna spend 15 minutes telling you why everything was so terrible. And don't get me wrong, I love being a shoulder to cry on sometimes when somebody is in acute need, or where it's a good friend and you want to be there for them and all of those things. But there's also just other people that you know will just moan to you, and then when you go in your office, they'll moan to somebody else, and then they'll moan to somebody else. And the stories are more dramatic every time, you can almost predict the things that they're going to say. And that is procrastination. Them complaining is procrastination, and you listening to them, or joining in, is also procrastination.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, how do we tell the difference between the sort of complaining that's healthy and the sort of complaining that's procrastination? The first is, if you're complaining and the purpose is to experience the emotions and to vent, it should relieve over time. It should be something that actually, by getting it off your chest, you then feel a bit better about it. You've sort of passed through that initial response. If you find that by complaining about it, what actually happens is it just gets worse and worse and you work yourself up, then often what we're doing is avoiding doing something about those things. We're avoiding making the decision to accept them, we're avoiding making the decision to resist them, and we're avoiding coming up with some sort of compromise system that works. We're just moaning about it. So if you're venting and you feel better immediately afterwards, maybe that's okay. Maybe that doesn't count as procrastination. Maybe that's a necessary experiencing of emotions. If you're complaining in a way that might actually initiate change, also not procrastination. So if you're complaining in a way where you're saying, look, this is happening, this is why it's a problem and these are the things we could do about it, you're effecting change in your environment, or you're trying to at least, that doesn't count as procrastination. When it's procrastination is when we're not making ourselves feel better, we're not changing anything, we're just spending more time moaning about it than actually getting on and doing something. And the doing something could be putting in formal complaints. The doing something could be just getting over the fact that that person is annoying and that's just the way it is and we've got to put up with it and we're just going to let them be. It could be getting on and doing some of the tasks that we're complaining we have too many things to do. There were times when I spent so much time complaining to other people that I had too much to do, that if I'd just done some of the things I would have felt a lot better and I would have had less to do. So we've all been there and it's not to beat up on people that spend time complaining, but I want you to notice when you're using complaining as a procrastination to avoid doing something about the situation. And finally, and this one is the most me one of all of these, and if any of my friends from my old workplace or anything are listening to this, you will know this one is one that I am constantly on. My final form of procrastination is coming up with new ideas. So many of us who have creative brains, many of us with ADHD, with whatever tendencies, we love to come up with new ideas. And the times that new ideas are most tempting is when there is something you need to finish that you've been doing for a long time. That last 10 percent of a project, that cracking on with something that you're not sure why you signed up for, but you really need to just get finished now. When you've got admin jobs that probably need doing, that's the time when it becomes really exciting to design a whole new workshop, to design a whole new research project, to try and set up a new collaboration, whatever it might be. New ideas can be procrastination from focusing in on the things that you've actually chosen to do. Again, I love my ideas, I love the sensations I have when I have ideas, and I love the fact that I'm a creative person and that many of these new ideas I bring into fruition, but I'm getting much better at recognizing when I'm going off into a little rabbit hole of new ideas as a way of avoiding doing something. I'm getting better at recognizing it, going, Oh yeah, you're procrastinating. And I'm getting better at taking the steps I need in order to move on. And what do I mean by that? The first thing is I need somewhere to put the new ideas. So I have places where I can jot down my ideas that are things for the future that are not for now. And I can put them on those lists, knowing that there will be a time when I put that in my diary and intentionally think about that new idea. But that time is not now. So much better at having somewhere to put them. I'm also getting better at recognizing that when I have the new ideas and when I'm getting all excited about them as a form of procrastination, it's usually because I'm feeling in need of some connection, for some enthusiasm and some sort of optimism, because when I've got new ideas, I automatically am like, Oh, we could do this, we could do that and it'd be amazing. And. I'm recognizing that what I really need is those emotions. I don't need the new project. In fact, the last thing I need usually is the new project. It's usually when I'm completely overwhelmed by having too much to do that I come up with these ideas and get excited about them. What I need is the emotion that it's generating and so what I can do instead is take a step back and figure out how can I make myself feel zest, feel enthusiasm, feel excited about the things that I'm actually intending to do and actually need to do rather than experiencing those by coming up with new ideas. I'm recognizing the emotions that I'm avoiding and I'm recognizing the emotions that I'm being drawn to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my eight things. Which ones are your things? And how are they impacting your ability to do the things that actually you want to do? This isn't even about doing the things you have to do or should be doing. These are things that you actually want to do. Those of you doing PhDs do want to finish your thesis. Those of you in academic careers, do want to do the piece of work that enable you to get to the next step or to enjoy what you're doing, or to do the bits that you came here for in the first place. Which of these are most common for you? They might come in waves depending on what you're experiencing. Whichever it is, it's okay. You're completely human. There's nothing wrong with doing any of these things. They don't make you a bad person or a lazy person or a big procrastinator that can't do anything about it. But it's really useful to notice. To know that procrastination isn't just faffing about on the internet or watching TV. It's doing many of these things when we're intending to be doing something else. When we notice, we can take power from that, create the environment we need in order to do the things that we want to do. I really hope that has been useful for you all. I'd love to hear what you think. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 01 Jul 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-42-eight-ways-you-might-be-secretly-procrastinating thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-41-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-encouraging-and-accepting <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>   </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How have you been speaking to yourself so far today? If you've been critical or judgmental, you are in exactly the right place. This is part two of my little mini series on the 10 qualities we need to be better bosses to ourselves. If you haven't listened to the first episode on this, don't worry at all. They don't come in any particular order, but do go back and check it out at some point. In that episode, we thought about why we needed to be more curious and compassionate. Today, we are thinking about being encouraging and accepting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 41 of season two of the PhD Life Coach. The two qualities I'm going to be talking about today sound quite related to each other, encouraging and accepting. They both sound nice, don't they? They both sound like things that we would want from the people around us. Interestingly, though, when I talk to people and I ask them what do they love about their supervisors, who have been the most influential leaders in their lives, who have they most enjoyed working with, encouraging is one that comes up often. People often say they were really encouraging. They made me do more than I ever realized I could. They made me feel like I could get on and actually achieve things. But people rarely mention accepting. They rarely come up with that as a quality that they have found useful in the past, and I think it's because there's a lot of misunderstanding about what we mean by accepting. But I think the two of these go together really well. So we are going to think about how we can nurture our encouraging side, how we speak to ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and how we can nurture this more accepting side as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're going to have the same sort of format as we did in the first episode, where we're going to think about what do we even mean by encouraging and accepting. We're going to think about what circumstances that might be useful to channel, what sorts of thoughts you might have if you're being encouraging and you're being accepting, what emotions you might feel, what actions you might take and what results that you might experience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you're not sure why I'm talking about circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results, do make sure you check out my episode on how to coach yourself as well. This is the basis of the self coaching model, which is the sort of underpinnings of a lot of the work I do. And essentially it suggests that the thoughts we have, the way we speak to ourselves, influences our emotions, which influence our actions, which create our results. And so by thinking about the way we speak to ourselves and the thoughts that we allow to stay in our brain, we can fundamentally change the way we feel, the things we do, and the results that we can generate in our lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  We're going to start with encouraging. Now I chose all these qualities really specifically and when I came to encouraging, I was choosing between encouraging and motivating. People often talk about how someone is motivating or that they want to be more motivated. And I always feel slightly uncomfortable around the word motivated. And I was really trying to figure out why that is. What is it about that version that just feels like it could be a bit off? And I threw my mind back to all my time working in a sports science department, listening to my sports psychology friends talk about their research, I realized it's because motivation isn't purely a good thing, in inverted commas. Motivation is simply being able to influence somebody to behave in a particular way. We motivate ourselves to behave in a particular way. And there's ways of doing that that are really good for our psychology and really good for our sort of sustained goal attainment. And there are others that can be really harmful. And I'm going to do a whole episode about motivation in the future. I'm thinking about what types of motivation we might want to generate and how we would do that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In contrast, when we look at encouraging, I looked it up in the dictionary to try and understand Why it was a much more kind of purer word, a much more wholesome in its entirety word. And the definition was making you feel more confidence or hope. When you're encouraged, you feel confidence and hope. And I thought, you know what, that is the vibe we're going for here. We want ourselves to feel as though we believe in ourselves, like we can be optimistic for our futures, optimistic for our abilities to both achieve the things we want to achieve, but also to look after ourselves in the process. So being an encouraging boss is reminding ourselves that we can do things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often we forget the stuff that we've achieved in the past, or we somehow sort of write that off as easy or a fluke now in retrospect, but now this next thing we can't do. Being encouraging, we remind ourselves how important it is to believe in ourselves, to believe that we can do things. We can experience hard times and be okay. We can do tasks that feel difficult until we overcome them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you've listened to my previous episode, you might think that encouraging sounds a lot like compassion, and it really does. It's a similar sort of vibe. But for me, encouraging is a more energized version. So for me, compassion is kind of, it's okay that you find this hard. Those sorts of sentiments. Okay. It's all right that this is challenging. We can look after ourselves and work our way through it. Encouraging is more like, come on, let's go. You can do this. You've done things like this before. We can do this next bit. Let's get on. So it's a much more kind of upbeat, energized version.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to think about when in your life you've wanted a little bit more encouragement, or when in fact you've received a bit more encouragement from other people, so that you can kind of learn to channel that for yourself. Now the circumstances that I've identified where it could be good to be more encouraging are things like if you've got a difficult task to do. Maybe you've got a deadline that's feeling too close and you really need to kind of smash on and get it. Maybe where you're feeling nervous about a task, you're worried about how it's going to go. Or where you've got a task that's just taking a really long time, and you just have to keep turning up to get it done. Can you think of other situations where it would be useful to be encouraging? Those are ones that I came up with that I think a lot of PhD students and academics at every stage of their career experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what types of thoughts might we have when we're being encouraging to ourselves? Things like, I've done hard things before, or it's going to feel awesome once this is done. I'm going to feel so good to have completed this task. Things like, I reckon I can smash through this task today. So identifying something manageable and encouraging yourself with the belief that you can get through that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also be encouraging more generally about kind of our sense of self. I am someone who gets stuff done. This one was a really funny one for me because I used to believe that I was someone who procrastinated a lot, that I was somebody who got overwhelmed and didn't finish projects. All of those things are true. There are a whole bunch of projects that I've never finished, usually because I start 47 million projects and then wonder why I don't finish them. But that was the story that was uppermost in my mind, that I was someone who didn't finish tasks. And it wasn't until I was really reflecting on my career and all the things that I have done, that I was like, I am absolutely someone who gets stuff done. I got an awful lot of different things done. And anybody listening to this podcast has also got a lot of things done as well. By virtue of where you are, whether you're a first year PhD student or a senior professor, whatever position you're in, you have got a lot of stuff done. How more encouraging would it feel if you focused on telling yourself that you are someone who gets something done rather than spending more time looking at the things that you haven't done or haven't done yet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another encouraging thought we can have is reminding ourselves how far we've come. Often we spend more time looking forwards at the things that we still need to do and haven't yet achieved, rather than looking back at the things that we have done in the past. Encouraging thoughts can be things like, I've come so far with this, let's just do a little bit more. We can do the next step. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now when you think those thoughts, it's going to feel awesome when it's done. I can smash through this today. I'm someone who gets things done. We've come so far. I've done hard things before. What sorts of emotions do you think you would feel? If you can really think those, and believe them, and remember we're only going to choose thoughts that we actually believe, what emotions do you think you'd feel? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I feel things like strong, and ready, and energized, and supported, and appreciated. Things like that. Are there any others that you experience? If you're feeling things like disbelief, what we want to do is go back and re evaluate some of those thoughts. Because none of this is about telling ourselves to believe thoughts that we don't believe. It's to remind ourselves of thoughts that we sometimes don't spend much time thinking, but that we do believe are true. So if your gut is, I feel surprised because that's not the way I feel, you know. Let's go back. Let's reevaluate those thoughts. Come to something that feels encouraging, but also plausible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you're feeling strong and energized and supported and appreciated, what types of actions are you likely to take in these situations? You're probably going to identify quick wins and get on with it. You're probably going to spend time reminding yourself of the things you've done before, reminding yourself of what you've got done already, you're probably going to do something like set a timer and get on with it. You're probably going to procrastinate less and actually start these tasks. And when you've done them, or when you've done a portion of them, you're much more likely to recognize it and praise yourself for having done it. And if you take those actions, you become exactly what you said. You become someone who gets stuff done, and you become somebody who recognizes all the stuff that you've got done. I want you to ponder for yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are there other consequences you think that would come from you being encouraging? Maybe you worry about imposter syndrome. Maybe you worry about whether you deserve to be here. Maybe if you could nurture encouraging thoughts about your right to be here, for example, your right to be in academia, your right to study what you're studying, perhaps you would feel a little bit more like you belong. Maybe you would be able to encourage yourself to believe that you have a place here and that you can contribute to your area of academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the people on my mailing list, you will get some further reflective questions to think about to really ponder how you can nurture this more encouraging approach. If you're not already on my email list, you'll hear about that in a second and how to sign up. If this is something you really struggle with, I also have a bunch more episodes. that you might want to go out and listen to after you finish listening to this one. I've mentioned the last one of this series where we were thinking about curiosity and compassion. You might also want to listen to the amazing one with Professor Jenn Cumming, looking at <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/10-how-to-review-your-year-the-strengths-based-way-with-professor-jenn-cumming" target="_blank"> how to review your year, the strength based way. </a> There's things like <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/13-what-to-do-when-you-know-you-re-behaving-like-a-toddler" target="_blank"> what to do when you know you're behaving like a toddler </a> . Sounds like a funny one, but when we're in that kind of stroppy mood and we just don't want to do anything, there's some really important tips in there about how we can be more encouraging. There's a really pragmatic one about <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/17-why-you-should-never-cross-things-off-your-to-do-list-and-what-you-should-do-instead" target="_blank"> why we shouldn't cross things off our to do list and what we should do instead </a> . So that's really about recognizing all the things that we actually do get done. And there's another episode called <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/36-why-we-should-be-more-proud-of-ourselves-and-how-to-do-it" target="_blank"> why we should be more proud of ourselves and how to do it </a> . So those can really help you hone your encouragement skills. You can find those. If you just scroll through the podcast, wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube, but I will also link them in the show notes. There's always show notes on my website, the phdlifecoach. com slash podcast. And you can find all the links there and the links to the YouTubes and the podcast episodes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.ck.page/c637b96083" target="_blank"> newsletter </a> is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the next quality I want us to think about is being more accepting and this is one where I've really kind of thrown around what word I wanted to use in my very first episode how to be your own best supervisor where I came up with ten of these qualities. I called it let it go because I couldn't think of think quite what a word would be. I wasn't really fully sure. Sounded a little bit Frozen to me and I wasn't really sure that summed up quite what I meant. And then I went to kind of "free thinking", but that wasn't it either because that kind of overlapped a bit with creativity, which we're going to talk about in a future episode, that wasn't quite what we meant to, but I decided that I was going to settle on "accepting" because really what we're thinking about is accepting our faults. Accepting where we are. Accepting our mistakes and embarrassments. Accepting other people. Accepting other people's judgments and other people's ways of doing things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm going to jump in with a bit of a disclaimer before we start. Some people dislike accepting because they think that accepting is the same as, like, settling. It's like just being passive and going, Oh well, if it's like this, it's like this, there's nothing I can do about it. That's not what we mean by accepting. We are going to be a form of accepting that is accepting our own humanity. I talked about this a little bit in the compassion episode where I talked about Kristen Neff's work. It's about accepting our own humanity, our own capacity to make mistakes and still be okay and accepting that other people do things differently. It is not about accepting unacceptable behavior. It is not about just shutting up and putting up. It's about choosing, am I accepting this thing or am I actively resisting this thing? And therefore, how do I want to behave? When we can accept where we are, it's much easier to then make decisions about what do we want to change, either in our actual circumstances or in our own thoughts, feelings and behaviours, in order to help us move forward. When we're more accepting, we spend less time moaning about how terrible things are, and more time either moving on within those constraints if it's something we can't change, or taking the steps to actually address it if it's something that we can change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what sort of circumstances can you think of where it'd be useful to be accepting? I thought of circumstances where other people might judge you, where you do something that might be embarrassing or where you made a mistake, where maybe you don't work the same way as other people. I often have clients who either because they are neurodivergent or because they have dyslexia or other disabilities, or simply because it's just the way they like it, that work in different way to others and often they spend a lot of time beating themselves up about that, that they should be able to work in a more focused way, in a more structured way, in a faster way, in a more considered way, whatever it is, rather than accepting the ways that each of us are different and each of us work in different ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other circumstances are when other people aren't behaving the way we think they should. Now, this isn't where they're behaving in completely inappropriate ways, I don't mean that. But if you think your supervisor should be kinder in their comments, or they should respond more quickly, or they should give you more encouragement. And it's not that they're being mean, it's not that they're being horrible, they're not just not being exactly how you think they should be. Sometimes there's a big argument there for being more accepting that they are how they are and we get to look after ourselves within that context.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another place where it's useful to be accepting is when things are just taking longer than we think they're going to. It can be really easy to allow that to be really frustrating, to allow that to mean something about us and our abilities and all those sorts of things, when in reality, some things just take time, and some things just are difficult, and accepting that can make it a lot easier to keep going with it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, what thoughts might we have if we're being an accepting boss to ourselves? Things like, other people are allowed to have their thoughts. Other people are allowed to do things the way they do things, even if I don't think it's the right way. They're allowed to do things like that. It's okay for me to do things in a way that works for me. That doesn't mean we never learn from other people, that we never look for inspiration from others and try it out to see if it works for us. But it's okay for me to work through something in the way that is working for me. Accepting thoughts can also be things like, everyone makes mistakes. I don't have to be perfect. And those things can really uncover some deep beliefs. I have so many people who believe, I don't know if you can hear. There's a fly in my office while I'm recording this. I've tried to find him. I've stopped talking a number of times. Tried to find him to get him out. Can't see him. Can hear him though. If you can hear him, I'm working on being accepting of the fly. Accepting imperfection. Accepting the fact you might be able to hear a light buzz behind me. I'm hoping my microphone doesn't pick it up. But anyway, I'm channeling some accepting thoughts here too. My thought is this podcast can still be enormously useful for my listeners, even if they can hear a fly in the background. I hope it's not too annoying if you can hear it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So as I was saying, for I was rudely interrupted by the fly. We have a lot of ingrained beliefs that other people don't need to be perfect, other people can make mistakes, but when we do it's somehow terrible. And it's okay if those are the first thoughts that come up. They come from a lot of different places in our background, our cultures, the sort of the histories in our families and all these things. But we get to choose the second thought. We get to choose the one that we stay. And as long as you cognitively believe that I don't need to be perfect because I'm a human being just like other people, then we can remind ourselves of that. We can be compassionate, like in the previous episode, and say it's okay that you sort of deep down believe you should be perfect, but you also know that you don't need to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if we think these thoughts regularly, What sorts of feelings will we experience? I think sometimes the feelings can be things like relieved, especially if you're somebody who is usually super critical and super judgmental of yourself. It can be quite relieving to go, you know what? It's okay. This doesn't have to be perfect. It can be quite calming and help us be like, it's okay. We are where we are. We move on from here. I think it can also help us be pragmatic. I quite like a sort of slightly flippant vibe of, oh well, it's about as good as it's gonna be, so let's go. That kind of accepting, yeah, it'll do, that's fine, happy days. Let's move on. And if we can channel those sorts of feelings, we're much less likely to dwell on past mistakes. We're less likely to sort of ruminate about what other people are thinking. We're more likely to find a compromise that works, right? If we've got things that aren't exactly as we want them to be, our supervisor, our colleagues aren't behaving exactly how we want them to, but it's still within the realms of being okay. Not being like against regulations or anything. Then by accepting that we can then figure out ways to work with them. If we know that our colleagues are always late to our meetings, we can make plans to always have something to read in that time when we're waiting for them to come on, for example. We can plan for it rather than making it a massive drama. If we can be accepting that we sometimes make mistakes, it's much easier to then make up for those mistakes. Often I see clients who feel really shameful or embarrassed about the fact that they've made a mistake or even that they've just not replied to an email and then they don't address it because they're too embarrassed to talk to the other person and in many ways, we end up making it worse because now we've not replied to their email and we've not replied to tell them we've not replied to their email, and it's become this whole thing rather than being able to go, oh yeah, sorry, my bad, I missed that. Da da da. Crack on. Okay, when we can be accepting, we're much more likely to just be like, oh yeah, I made a mistake and this is what I need to do to fix it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're much more likely to move on quickly to what actually needs to happen now. We're more likely to focus on the current moment and enjoy it. If we accept that we're in the midst of a busy teaching period, for example, we might spend less time beating ourselves up about the fact that we're not writing and more time figuring out a short burst where we could write And maybe even enjoying the phase of the year for what it is, enjoying that teaching and that student interaction. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're also much more likely to decide to do things that are a little bit risky. If we know we're very critical of ourselves, we know we're very self judgmental, and we know that we're someone who beats ourselves up if we make mistakes, we're much less likely to want to submit that paper for comment. We're much less likely to put ourselves forward to do a presentation or to get an award or any of these things, because we know that if we're not successful, we're going to be horrible to ourselves, whereas if we know, well, if I'm not successful, then I accept that too and I'll look after myself and we'll move on, then it's so much easier. Yeah, I might make a mistake. Okay, happy days. The reviewer will tell me I've made a mistake and then I'll fix it. Great, we like that. That gives us more information. If we're accepting that sometimes reviewers are not as constructive as we might like them to be, it's a lot easier to then just decide how we want to respond to it, rather than getting really angry about the fact that it shouldn't be like that. If we're accepting that we might do things in different ways to other people, we're much more likely to come up with some novel and interesting ways to do the things that we want to do. We're much more likely to actually get on and do them in the ways that work for us, rather than telling ourselves we should be able to do this task like a, inverted commas, normal person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what results do we get from those actions? Much less wasted emotion. There's nothing wrong with negative emotions. If they are the consequence of thoughts that you're like, you know what? I stand by those. In my current situation, these are entirely appropriate and I think it's okay to feel disappointed or to feel frustrated or whatever. But when we're accepting, we're much less likely to kind of whip up drama and have unnecessary emotions about things that aren't even true or aren't even realistic. We're more likely to come up with quicker solutions. We're more likely to find new approaches. We're more likely to try new things with much less drama. And imagine the outcomes that you would get if you were able to submit to journals without any big drama. Volunteer to do talks, to do something new without all the drama. Because you accept that, yeah, it might go well, it might go badly. That's okay. I'll be fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So again, people on my newsletter, you'll get a series of reflective questions that will help you really think through how you feel about being a more accepting boss to yourself. And that can really help you sort of take stuff you listen to in a podcast from being something you listen to once and go, "Oh, that's interesting" to something that you can really start to embed in your own self talk and behavior. If you found this part of the episode useful, there's a bunch of other episodes that are related to this topic of being more accepting. Things like <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-31-how-to-get-back-to-work-after-a-break" target="_blank"> how to get back to work after a break </a> , <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-28-how-to-stop-comparing-yourself" target="_blank"> how to stop comparing yourself </a> , <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/my-post" target="_blank"> what to do if you already feel behind </a> , <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/32-how-to-seek-the-help-you-need" target="_blank"> how to seek the help you need </a> , <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/28-how-to-learn-from-past-mistakes" target="_blank"> how to stop beating yourself up and learn from past mistakes instead </a> , <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/26-how-to-be-kind-to-yourself" target="_blank"> how to be kind to yourself </a> , and one of my very early episodes, <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/5-how-accepting-where-you-are-is-the-first-step-to-getting-to-where-you-want-to-be" target="_blank"> how accepting where you are is the first step to getting to where you want to be </a> . Make sure you check some of those out, find them in the podcast app or on YouTube, or they're all linked on my website too. I really hope you found today useful. We've now covered four of our 10 qualities. So we've looked at compassion. We've looked at curiosity. Now we've looked at encouraging and accepting. Keep an eye out for a few weeks time when we do the next two, which are resourceful and intentional. Super, super useful qualities that often we don't think too much about. So make sure you don't miss those. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please share it with your friends and colleagues and students. I really want to get this out to as many people as possible.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also have some exciting news about my membership program. So definitely make sure you're on my email list because they are going to be the ones that find out about this opportunity first. Thank you all for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 24 Jun 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-41-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-encouraging-and-accepting thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-40-how-to-use-the-do-know-don-t-know-list <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe>   </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things I hear clients say most often is that they don't know what to do. They either don't know what decision to make in their life, they don't know how to do something, they don't know how to present their argument, how to structure their paper, they don't know which study to do, they don't know, they don't know, they don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It comes up all the time at every level of the academic journey, whether you're a PhD student or a full professor. This idea that we don't know something and that that is a problem can really cause a lot of delays. It's a huge source of procrastination. If you've written something in your kind of task list for the day and you get to it and you're like, yeah, I'm not really sure how to do that, it's really easy to decide, oh, I'll do it later. It's really easy to put off because you're putting off something that's kind of a bit nebulous anyway. This is something I've addressed with some of my one to one clients recently, and lots of them have had success with a really specific tool that I like to call the do know don't know list, which I'm going to share with you today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 40 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And we're going to be thinking about this tool, the Do Know, Don't Know list. But first, let's think, why do we even keep telling ourselves we don't know? Well the first thing is, we're all working in an area where we're right at the edges of human knowledge. And we sometimes forget that, I think. It becomes so normal to be in this kind of higher education environment where everybody's doing research, everybody's experts, so much so that most of us don't feel like we're experts, we forget that actually doing things that we don't know how to do is almost entirely our job description, whether you're PhD students or academics, doing things that people haven't figured out how to do yet is what we do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yet often we allow this to be a reason not to act, not to do something. Now sometimes we tell ourselves that we don't know, when we actually don't know. Where there are bits of information that are missing, bits of training that are missing, that would enable us to actually do the thing. So sometimes we just don't know. Other times, what we really mean by I don't know is I haven't decided yet.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm on a bit of a thing at the moment that most time management problems are decision making problems. And I think this is true a lot in the "I don't know" issues too. Often we're saying things like I don't know how to structure this paper. And one of the things we'll think about is how to actually reframe that as I haven't decided yet how I'm going to structure this paper. Because not knowing, I don't know, implies there is a correct solution out there that if only you knew enough, you would be able to do, when in reality that's usually not true. So sometimes there are things we specifically don't know. Other times we tell ourselves we don't know when we just haven't decided yet, for lots of different reasons. The third reason we sometimes tell ourselves that we don't know is because it's easier to tell ourselves that we don't know than it is to do the hard thing. Often when we pin it down, we do know what we need to do. I felt a little bit like this. I wrote a children's novel that I'm still going through submissions and everything like that for, looking for an agent. And I'd written the whole thing. I was pretty pleased with it. It taken me a really long time. I had this wonderful mentor that I won in a competition and she was giving me advice. And I'd written the whole thing in third person. And I was talking to her about it. I was saying, you know, I'm really happy with it, but I just don't know how to make it a bit more vivid, a bit more engaging and all these things I just don't know. And the more we talked, the more it was like. I do know., I need this book to be written in first person. I need it to be the voice of the main character. And I was telling myself I didn't know what to do because the thought of having to rewrite the whole thing was just enormously overwhelming. Now as it was, once I decided I was doing it, went for it, so much better and going through a new round of submissions now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But sometimes we tell ourselves we don't know when. do, but we don't like the emotions that we think that decision is going to bring up, whether it's going to be something hard, whether it's going to upset people, it's going to disappoint people, whatever it might be. Okay, so there's a bunch of reasons that we tell ourselves that we don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So why is it a problem when we don't know? Well if we're telling ourselves we don't know it's really hard to take action because we don't know what we're doing. We're telling ourselves all the time that we don't know. It's also hard to resolve because when you're saying I just don't know, I just don't know, I just don't know, you're not leaving any space to come up with ideas. We're not energizing that curious part of our brain that we talked about a couple of weeks ago that really help us come up with solutions and decision making and all of this good stuff. We sort of freeze, a bit like a computer that's got too many tabs open.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Another thing is we often make it mean something about us. Not only do we not know, but we should know, and if we were good enough at it, then we would know, and other people seem to know, and suddenly now this means that we're not good enough, we don't belong to be here, that everybody else is better than us, all of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We take the fact that we're telling ourselves we don't know things to mean a whole bunch of other stuff that it simply doesn't mean. And that can be even more paralyzing than that initial thought that we don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing is that it also completely hides all the things we do know. When we're saying, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, we forget to acknowledge the things we do know. And almost everything we know a bit about. It's very rare for us to be embarking on something where we have literally no clue. Maybe you don't know the structure of an upcoming article that you're writing. But you do know, I assume, that you're going to start with an introduction and that you're going to finish with a conclusion. You do know that you have to make an argument through the paper. If you're in the sort of sciences area, you know you've got an intro, method, results, and discussion, or whatever format it is for you. There are things you do know. You probably know roughly how long it needs to be. You probably could figure out pretty easily how long paragraphs might need to be. There's a bunch of things that you do know. But when you're telling yourself that you don't know, we forget all of those. So, my solution. My solution here that some of my clients, my one to one clients have been using recently and have found really useful is the do know, don't know list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I want you to think of something at the moment that you are struggling with. That you're like, I just don't know how to write this. I just don't know which route to take or whatever. And I want you to grab two pieces of paper and I want you to write at the top of one of them, do know, and I want you to write at the top of the other one, don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Start with the things you do know. I want you to write specifically, in as much detail as possible, all the things that you do know about this thing. All the basic premise behind it, all the basic structure that it should have if you're writing something, whatever it might be. If you're going, I don't know what I'm going to do in this presentation. Well, I do know how long I need to talk for. And I do know that I usually use X number of slides per minute or whatever it is. What do you know? I do know who the audience is. I do know why I'm doing it. Be really silly here. Write down the obvious things. I do know I shouldn't swear in my talk. I do know I, whatever it is. Okay? Get all of that stuff down.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And now we turn to the don't know list. And I want you again to be as specific as you can here. Don't write, I don't know what the structure should be. Say, I don't know whether I should write about A before I write about B or write about B before I write about A. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Get as specific as you can about all the things that you don't know. Now, as you're doing this, you might remember other things that you do know. Go back to that note. Write them in the do know list. When you're writing the do know list, you might go, I thought I knew that, but now I'm not sure. Brilliant! Put it on the don't know list. But make it really specific. Force your brain not to just go, Well, I don't know. Ask, What don't I know? Get it as detailed as possible.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now we've got two lists. First thing is we get to look at these lists and we get to go, you know what, I know some stuff. There's stuff I don't know, but I know some stuff. So we sort of reassure ourselves that we know some stuff. And now we get to ask the first question. How far can I get with the bits I do know? And I would really recommend actually starting with that. If you know that you're going to start with an intro and you're going to finish with a conclusion, could you write some of that now? Even if it doesn't say the exact things you know it's got to say, or that you need to figure out, could you draft some of it now? Could you start making the slide, like, putting out the right number of slides, putting a title at the beginning, put a conclusion, you know, I need roughly three that are introductions, say, and roughly two that are conclusion or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How far can you get just from the things you do know? This is really useful to get you moving, especially when you've found it paralyzing to not know what you need to do. Especially when you're feeling like I'm just not making any progress. I'm spinning. How far can you go just from the things that you do know? Once you've made some progress with that, In doing so, you might come up with other things you do know, other things you don't know, by the way. So we keep adding to the lists as we realize things. But once you've made a chunk of progress based on what you do know, we now get to look at your don't know list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we get to ask ourselves, Do I actually not know? Or is one of these options just a bit scary and I'm delaying making it? So if we actually know what we need to do is not do this presentation, then we get to think about, okay, what's stopping me making that decision? Who am I worrying about letting down? What do I think I would make it mean about myself if I didn't do this presentation, what's stopping you taking that decision? If it's that you do know what you need to talk about, but you're delaying doing it because it feels like a lot of work or it feels quite complex, how can you support yourself to be able to do it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So identify the ones where it's like, you know what, this isn't a don't know issue, this is a I'm scared issue or a I'm overwhelmed issue. And then we manage that separately.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now identify things where you don't know, but really it's a decision. And this is anything where it's about what order, what to include, all of these things. There's no right answer. There's no magic thesis in the sky that is exactly what you need to be aiming for, and no one's told you exactly what it looks like, so you've got to figure it out. No, you get to decide.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things I want all of you to think, and this is a word that comes from PhD criteria, but is relevant across your entire academic career. And that is, you do not need to know what is the right answer, because there is no right answer. Academics are good at Lots of things, but arguing and disagreeing with each other is one of them. There's no right answer. What you need to make is a decision that is defensible. So you need to take a position in your paper, whether it's the argument that you're making or whether it's the order that you're telling it, you need to take a position and you need to take a position that is defensible. That means you could explain why you took it and you could stand by it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, with most of these, there's probably three different decisions you could take and all of them would be defensible. Cool, pick one. Pick the one that feels the most defensible. Pick the one that feels fun. Pick the one that feels true to you. Whatever it is. But recognize that an awful lot of these don't knows are, I haven't decided. Pick one that you can defend. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the third type of item that you might have on your don't know list, are things that you actually don't know. I don't know how to import my transcripts into NVivo. I don't know how to code in R for the task I need to do. Whatever it is, pick your discipline, pick your thing. I don't know how to do that. But if we can get really specific about that, then it becomes super easy to say, okay, how do I find out? Because if nothing else, we're researchers. If I don't know what form I need to fill in to reclaim the expenses that I did at conference, whatever, who does? Where can I find that out? Who could I speak to? Where could I look? Who has done this before? Who could teach me? What options have I got? Where could I find out about those options?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We get to put our best research pants on and ask ourselves, Okay, if I don't know How do I learn? How do I figure this out? And then, as you gather the information, this then becomes a decision. This then stops being something where I don't know, I'm missing key facts, and becomes, okay, now I've got a bunch of key facts. Bob says I should do it like this. Belinda says I should do it like that. And then we get to pick. We go back to our decision. We get to pick it's defensible. I like it for this reason, this reason, and this reason, I decided not to do the other one because of this reason and this reason let's go  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this then all relates into decision making and I've done a podcast about decision making before. If you haven't checked that one out, highly recommend you go back and look. It's called how to make decisions. I think I have to make decisions you love, that's what it's called. Go back, find that one, but I'm going to take you through the basics now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's take an example. We're deciding what argument we're going to put forward in our article. So quite a big decision, you'd think. What we get to do is we get to ask ourselves what options are there? What arguments could I plausibly put forward? Because whilst you're saying I don't know what argument I want to make, there's presumably a relatively limited range of arguments that you're likely to make. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what are your options? It's the first step. Second step is you get to ask yourself, why would I do this one? Pick one of those options and ask yourself why would I do this option? Why wouldn't I do this option? So what are the reasons I would, the reasons I wouldn't. Then look at a different option. What are the reasons I would do this one and the reasons I wouldn't? Try not to think of it as pros and cons. Pros and cons is different, slightly. We're thinking about what would be my reasoning. If I was arguing with somebody that this is why I did it, what reasons would I say? Okay, if I was arguing why I didn't do this other thing, what would the reasons be?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you get to do that for each of your options and then what you do is you look at your reasons. You look at the reasons why you would do things and the reasons why you wouldn't do things and you look at all of them and you get to pick which reasons you like best. Maybe you've got an argument. I would, I would make this argument because there's compelling evidence in the data. I would make this argument because, it's also in line with stuff I personally believe. I would make this argument because I think it's a really novel contribution to the literature, and then the reasons for not might be I would not make this argument because it has the potential to be controversial. I would not make this argument because it actually has implications for the second study that I had planned, that maybe I would need to change that now that I've done this one and made this argument.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you get to look at them and say, which reasons do I like better? Do I want to be somebody who makes the compelling argument, who makes the argument that's in line with their beliefs, and who makes an argument that's novel and interesting? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or do I want to be someone who doesn't do those things because they're worried what other people are going to say? They're worried that it's too controversial. Or, there's no right answer here, do I want to be somebody who protects my own psychological safety at absolute maximum and if it's an argument that is going to make other people uncomfortable or I'm not willing to put myself out there and do that, I will find a way of arguing this that is novel and interesting but is less controversial, for example, and you can translate this out into your own disciplines.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to decide for you in this moment when you're making these decisions, which is the better decision for you. Some of it will depend a little bit on what you want now and what you want in the future. If you're someone who just wants your PhD done, you might choose to make an argument that's straightforward, that's easy to argue, where it's incremental change based on other people's work. So it's novel, but it's building on other people's work so that it's probably going to have a straightforward review process into a nice, comfortable journal and happy days, it's a chapter done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're somebody who's really pushing for an ambitious career, where you're hoping to get big grant funding as an early career researcher and all these things, maybe you'll push into the more controversial argument. Maybe you'll do something that really stands out that bit more. For example, so you get to bring in your own beliefs, your own preferences, your own ambitions when you're making these decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this is a bit, usually people stop, they make a decision and then that's the end of their process. There is more to this process because what you now do is you decide this was the best decision you ever made. Because the worst thing about making a decision is if in a week's time or a month's time or a year's time, you beat yourself up about making the wrong decision. So you get to decide, I love this structure because of this, this, and this. I love this argument because of this, this, and this. And when your brain is going, oh, this feels a bit difficult, or I'm a bit worried that they're going to hate me or whatever, you go, yeah, but we decided this. I love this decision. I'm really excited about putting something out there that's going to get people talking. People talking is attention and all attention is good for my work. This will increase my profile, even if some people disagree with me. And you remind yourself of all the reasons you chose this one, because there is nothing that is going to diminish your motivation and diminish your wellbeing more than telling yourself you should have done something different in the past because you didn't. Okay? You didn't. And it's a pointless exercise. We can learn from the past, we can decide to do things differently next time, but we can still decide that it was the best thing ever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Would it have been easier for me and my novel if I'd written it first person in the beginning? Yes. Absolutely. Do I stand by the fact that I decided to write it third person and then that means I had to change it? Yeah, absolutely. Because I think I figured out a lot of stuff writing third person that then made it really easy to write it in first person. I don't think I'd have got there in the same way at least if I'd done the other one first. So I stand by my decision to do it third person first and I absolutely stand by my decision to completely rewrite it afterwards. Was it efficient? No. Was it the right decision for me? Yes, absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing you can do is decide how long you're deciding for. So let's say you're deciding on what your argument of a paper is going to be. You might find that there are times when you want to change your mind about it. Okay. But what you don't want to be doing is changing your mind about it every two minutes. Oh, I could argue it this way, write a little bit. Oh no, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll argue it that way, write a few minutes. And going backwards and forwards. And same with the structure. You know, I've had clients who they write it one way, then they change their mind, they write it a different way. And what it means is it never gets to full draft stage.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, for example, if we're talking about an argument or we're talking about a structure, you could decide, I'm doing it like this, for these reasons, these are the best reasons ever, and I'm deciding this until the first draft exists. This is what I'm doing, and I will do my best to make it work, until a whole first draft exists. After that, I'm up for change. Once I've got a whole thing I can look at, I could, at that stage, decide, you know what, this argument's not working, I'm gonna change this bit, I'm gonna move that bit. This structure's not working, I'm gonna swap these around, whatever it is. But you decide how long you're deciding for. You might decide I'm going to write it like this until somebody else tells me that I shouldn't. So you might decide that you are going to write it in this structure with this argument until you submit it to your supervisor and after that everything's up for grabs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, always remember you shouldn't just be doing what your supervisor tells you, but that can be a time point at which you'll reconsider. That I'll write it like this, I'll see what my supervisor thinks, and then in collaboration with my supervisor I'll make decisions about whether I'm sticking with this decision or whether we're going to modify it. In collaboration, and what that means is you take into account their ideas, you take into account your reflections that you've had since this, you tie that all together, and then you make a decision that you take responsibility for. So we decide, based on the reasons we like best, we decide that we love our decision, and we decide for how long we're sticking with our decision, when are we going to re evaluate? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  This is the same... Some of you might use the do know, don't know list about other decisions. You might use it about what you're gonna do after your PhD, for example. I don't really do career coaching, other people do, but you might be thinking about what do I know about what I want after my career? What don't I know? How can I find that stuff out? And then you can go into the same decision making process. And you can also set time schedules. You can decide, I've decided that for two years after my PhD, I'm gonna attempt to get a permanent academic job. After that, everything's off the table. We'll see what we can do, but for two years, I'm going to do everything I can to make this happen, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The power of the do know, don't know list is that it helps you really elucidate what you know, what you don't know, and importantly, where you go next. If you ever hear yourself saying, I just don't know what to do next. I don't know what the next step is. Then I'm going to tell you right now what your next step is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is what you're going to write on your to do list. If you're saying, I don't know what I do next, what you write on your to do list is decide what I do next. That's your next decision. Okay, and you do it in this process. What are my options? What would be my reasons for doing it? How do I pick one? Pick one. Best ever. Let's go. Okay. You always know what to do next because if nothing else, the next thing you do is make a decision and this do know don't know list will really help you figure out how to take this really stuck feeling of I don't know, and turn it into a bunch of actionable steps so that you can keep moving forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Try it out. Let me know what you think. Some of my clients have used it highly successfully. I'd love to hear how you find it and what types of decisions you use it for. If you're signed up for my newsletter, just reply to the email that you'll get about this podcast anyway, and let me know what you've been using it for and how you found it. If you ever have questions, you can also reply to those emails and ask me the questions and I'll try and clarify them in future sessions. I hope today has been useful. It's been a short, sharp tool, sort of a session. Coming up we've got a couple of guests booked in that I'm really excited about. I will tell you more about them soon. And we've got the next installment of the 10 qualities that I think all best supervisors for ourselves should have. So keep an eye out for those too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Make sure you tell your friends about the podcast if you found it useful. I just found myself recommended on Reddit last night, which is very exciting. I don't know how I found it, but I spotted it and that was really exciting. So if that was you, Thank you. If you've been finding this useful and you haven't told anybody yet, why not? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please let people know. I want to try and help as many PhD students and academics as I can, so help me get the word out there. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 17 Jun 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-40-how-to-use-the-do-know-don-t-know-list thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-39-how-to-be-your-own-best-personal-assistant <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <span>   </span> <iframe> </iframe> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I used to say that if only I had a personal assistant, I would be the most efficient academic in the world. Have you ever watched Suits? I wanted a Donna, the wonderful Donna, Harvey's amazing personal assistant who always had the things he needed right there, who kind of protected him from the worst aspects of himself and made sure that all the things he did worked brilliantly. I needed a Donna. Now, I reached professor in the UK, but I never took on any of the roles where you ended up getting a personal assistant. So like head of department and things like that in the UK, you might get access to a personal assistant. All the leadership roles I did didn't reach that level of support. And so I never really experienced what that would be like. And to be honest, most of you probably don't have access to a personal assistant either, as nice as that would be, but even just recognizing that would be useful can give us some guidance about what we can provide for ourselves. So whenever we're thinking about what we wish we had, we can start thinking about how can we incorporate some of those elements into our lives now. So today we're going to be thinking about how you can be your own best personal assistant.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello, and welcome to episode 39 of season two of the PhD life coach. And we are talking about how to be your own best personal assistant. First of all, we should probably define what we mean by this. And for those of you who listened to the podcast before, separate it from this notion of boss mode and implementer mode that we've talked about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So boss mode is where we're making. strategic decisions. We're sort of separating ourselves from the minutiae of day to day. We're planning what we're doing, we're prioritizing, we're deciding on what our focus is, we're scheduling important work, we're time blocking, we're reminding ourselves why we're doing what we're doing. And hopefully, if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, we're also setting the intentional thoughts that we want to think, as well as the intentional actions that we want to take. Now, if that sounds like something you don't know about yet, that's fine. No worries. There are several episodes where I talk about this stuff and I'll link some of them in the show notes for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For example:  </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/be-your-own-best-supervisor" target="_blank"> How to be your own best supervisor </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-24-how-to-plan-using-boss-mode" target="_blank"> How to use boss mode to plan </a> </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-7-how-to-plan-your-week-with-ex-client-and-phd-student-marie" target="_blank"> How to plan your week </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's also something I teach in my How To Be Your Own Best Boss program, which is running at the moment. We're entering into the last month of the three month program, which has been amazing. I will be running that again in the autumn, so if it feels like all this stuff is something that you would like more support with, make sure you're on my <a href="https://thephdlifecoach.ck.page/c637b96083" target="_blank"> newsletter </a> , so that you're the first to hear when registration for that starts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, so that's boss mode. Then there's implementer mode. That's the version of us that gets on and does stuff. We're the ones that read the articles. We're the ones that write the papers. We're the ones that design and do the teaching. The implementer is the one that actually gets on and does it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how is personal assistant different? Well, personal assistant is all about how do we make it easier for the boss? And for the implementer to do their jobs. How do we make it tidier? More organized? More pleasant? More efficient? Okay, the personal assistant does the kind of operation stuff that makes things run more smoothly. So I mentioned Donna from Suits at the beginning. If you don't know that show, not a problem, I'm sure there are other versions of a kind of supportive assistant that you can think of. When I'm not envisaging Donna looking after me, I often envisage somebody who's maybe a bit older, who's known me since I was really young, who's a little bit firm and maybe a tiny bit stern, but who I know loves me deeply and really understands me and wants the best for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can decide what sort of vibe works best for you, but your role is to make it easier for the other two roles. The other thing that the boss and the personal assistant have in common is that we work with the you that usually shows up for work. So often when we're in boss mode, we plan for a version of us that has to be perfect and has to do exactly what we say and has to turn up perfectly on time and organized and ahead of themselves and all of these things. And to be honest, for most of us, that's not real. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when we're in boss mode, we often talk about how we need to plan and strategize for the implementer that we actually are, the person who usually shows up and the same is true in personal assistant mode. So for example, any personal assistant of mine will need to understand things like I get really distracted by new and exciting ideas and want to run off down those rabbit holes. I'm getting better at not doing that every time. Okay. But that's still a tendency. I have a tendency not to put things away, so they know and work with these types of tendencies, rather than things only working if you turn up as your perfect self. And I'll talk as we go through, as we talk about different tasks that you could ask this personal assistant of yours, i. e. you in personal assistant mode, to do when we think about what those tasks are. I'll give you ideas as we go through how you can make those tailored to the real you and understanding of how you usually show up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But first I want to think about why this is even desirable. So for me, the benefit here is that it makes everything else work better. It means that when I'm in a writing block, I'm ready for that writing block and I've got the things I need. When I'm in operations role, I know what tasks I need to do and I feel like I've got sufficient time to do that. It means I'm working in an environment that's nice to work in and it is as undistracting as I can make it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Why is pretending that you're your own personal assistant different than just doing this stuff as one of your tasks? For me, it's just a different mindset. It's a separate thing to think, how could I make this easier for myself and do those tasks than it is from actually doing the tasks. And in reality, we often get bogged down in doing the tasks. How many of you, and I know I'm guilty of this still, how many of you have got items on your to do list that are things like sort out the files for whatever that just never come to the top of your list because you've got so many other things that feel more important and feel more pressing. Those are the sorts of tasks, as you'll hear in a second, that your personal assistant version of you could do in personal assistant time. And that then brings them to the top of the to do list. So those are some of the benefits that I see. But let's get specific. What tasks are we going to give this personal assistant?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I already had a bunch of ideas about this, but I also did a little bit of research and how I did it was I looked on websites for people who were offering actual personal assistant or virtual assistant roles. So working in a business like mine, at some point I may appoint somebody to help me with all of these things and to do it for me and a really good way to come up with ideas about what we could do for ourselves in personal assistant mate and to look at what they would do for us if we were employing somebody to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I've come up with 10 things that you could do for yourself when you are in personal assistant mode that will make the rest of your academic life feel easier. As usual, you know me, might add things as I go along, might not end up being 10, we'll see, but it started out as 10 anyway. So the first one is, if we spend time at the beginning of the week planning our time in boss mode, which I would really recommend that you do. If you haven't already listened to my how to plan your week session, where I talk to an ex client, Marie, about how she plans her weeks, do go back and check that one out. It will really explain to you how that boss mode start of the week happens. But for now, just imagine you're starting the week in boss mode, making strategic decisions about what things you need to do this week and when you're going to do those major roles. Your personal assistant time might come just after that, where you actually go in and you really specifically check, have I actually left gaps between things. Have we actually left time to eat? Are we finishing at times when we want to, that are kind of in line with the skeleton calendar that we've come up with, i. e. our kind of rough approximation of what we want a week to look like.  <span> Now, if in boss mode, you can be compassionate and think about all these things too, Brilliant. But often we still find that we don't. And so I find it quite useful to switch myself into personal assistant mode and just double check that those things have been done.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where I've got friends who have become heads of department, heads of college, pro vice chancellors, those sorts of people, who do have personal assistants, one of the things that they have found most useful is how much their personal assistant defends their diary. All of us have had these situations, and this is maybe more relevant for the academic listeners rather than for the PhD students, but all of us have had those situations where we're blocked in time for writing or reading or something like that, and then somebody's asked for an appointment and you've kind of gone, oh, I don't have any other slots, but yes, okay, I can meet at this time, and you just kind of wipe out your block. Or you wipe out your lunch, or the break you were going to have, or the walk that you'd scheduled, just because somebody else was having an emergency. And one of the things that I've heard people reflect a lot of times is that personal assistants are really good at saying, no, no, no, you need that block. If there's no time, they'll have to wait till next week, or they'll have to wait, I'll schedule in slot in future, which is for emergency conversations. I'll put that in your diary, but this week it's going to have to wait till next week. We can do that for ourselves. Just double checking that when we're in boss mode, we didn't get overexcited and plan too much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing a personal assistant can do is notice when you've got a writing block coming up. So say you've planned, this comes out on a Monday, maybe you've planned on a Tuesday morning, you're going to do two hours of writing. You can look ahead as personal assistant and say, how can I make this easier for implementer me to do? Examples are things like, can I make sure that there are some really clear instructions as to exactly which bit you're writing? Can I make sure, maybe put a folder on the desktop that's got the three articles that might be useful during this? Now, do go back to my episode from a couple of weeks ago about why you shouldn't read during a writing session. But you might decide that there's one or two bits of notes or one particular article that you want to have just to check quick things. Okay, how can you make sure that those things are there? How can you make sure that you're going to avoid distractions? Do you want to think about changing location, working somewhere away from where you usually work? Is there anybody you need to tell and put on Do Not Disturb so that you don't get interrupted during this time? Could you even go as far as like filling up a water jug? That's something my husband does for me sometimes and I love it. He fills up a water jug so that I've got water on my desk when I'm gonna work. Can you think about things like that? Can you book in a walk in the diary immediately after the block so that once they've got their writing done they can go and have a little walk and decompress? And I'm still talking about they as though it's somebody else But I'm talking about us. I'm talking about the personal assistant, us, thinking about the future us that's going to be doing that writing block, and thinking about how can I make it easier. As you do it, you'll get [00:12:00] better at this as well. Just as if I was going to appoint a personal assistant or a virtual assistant, they would slowly get to know me and what's helpful and what things would really speed me up. As you start doing this, you'll start to notice then, Oh, it would have been really useful if I'd done this before this session started. And so you will get better. And so when you mindfully practice this, you will get better at being your own personal assistant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing is personal assistant might look at what meetings you've got coming up, and they might just double check. Have you actually got the Zoom link for them? Is it in the appointment on your Outlook? If you use a system like that, is the Zoom link right there where you can find it? Are there materials, are there other word files or whatever that should be attached to that document? Are you physically going somewhere? Do you know where that is? How are you doing? Get there where you can park or what public transport to get or what the walking route would be. Do you know what you need to wear if there's any restrictions around that sort of stuff? What can you do to make it so that when you come to that moment, you don't just go, Oh my God, I don't even know where the zoom link is, which is something that has definitely happened to me in the past and I'm sure the same is true for you. How can you make it really easy for them to show up to that meeting prepared with the things that we need?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth thing is about reading sessions. So if you've blocked in some time to read some literature, what could your personal assistant do that would be useful? Things like, could they file away your notes. So they're actually properly labeled and somewhere that you can find them next time. Have you found more PDFs and downloaded them? And they've all got those stupid names that when you download them, just make no sense at all. Could your personal, personal assistant rename them for you in something that actually makes sense and put them somewhere you can find them next time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By the way, this is where I'm going to ask you guys is knowledge. See whether you guys have got more insight than me. If somebody could invent an AI assistant that goes into a folder of PDFs, opens one of them, gets the name of the author, the date, and the title, and then saves the PDF as author, date, title, I would literally give them all my money. I mean, I wouldn't, but somebody, if that does that exist. If you already know that exists, if there's a way I can dump a load of files into an AI thing, tell it what format I want the file names to be, and it does it for me, that would be amazing. If not, computer scientists get onto it. That would be amazing. I hate the stupid titles you get when you download PDFs. But anyway, I digress.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At the moment, that's just a job that as personal assistant, we can do for ourselves. For example, last night I had a big CPD file on various topics because I love to stay up to date on the research side of being an effective researcher, whether that's being an effective supervisor for my supervisor training course that I offer, whether it's the literature behind self regulation, procrastination, I try and stay on top of those sorts of things. I find it fascinating, and I think it's really important that I practice evidence based support as well as you guys. Anyway, so I have these big files. They're all things that I've downloaded loads of. Some of you kindly download them for me because the downside of being a, independent business is that I don't have access to the libraries that you guys do. So my various listeners and clients and things often download things for me. Thank you, my lovelies. And I end up with this huge folder. Anyway, I spent a little bit of time in personal assistant mode. My personal assistant was very relaxed last night because we did it in front some very drivel dating program that I found on TV, bit of junk on the telly, renaming my files. It was fine. I had the telly to watch, not a problem. Wasn't too boring. Was quite easy to go. Got my little boost from feeling like I was organized. And today I feel very looked after because my personal assistant worked hard last night and I now have a beautiful folder of labeled articles where I can actually find the things I want when I'm designing new workshops, which I am at the moment. So that's another sort of thing you can do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth thing that I think personal assistants can do is think proactively about what meetings might be useful. So we've already discussed how if there's a meeting already in your diary, they can help you be ready for it and organized for it. But what about meetings that you haven't yet decided that you need? Taking a moment to actually stop and go, Who would it be useful to catch up with right now? Who haven't I spoken to for a while? Who could I pick their brain? Who could I inform or keep interested in what I'm doing? And how can I get those scheduled in? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Spending just a little bit of time sending out some messages, trying to get those things booked in, can be a really helpful way of organizing things. It's always easier to get meetings in the diary in two or three weeks time than it is urgently now. So a personal assistant who can think slightly ahead and be like, Oh, I haven't seen my second supervisor for a while. I'm not quite sure what I need just yet, but in a couple of weeks, it would be brilliant to have a meeting, tell them what I've been doing, double check. Get that booked in. Use your personal assistant time to get those sorts of things booked. I've started doing it with haircuts. Now, my organized listeners, you are going to laugh at me because this should not be a revelation on any level, but with things like haircuts and dentists and all that kind of repeated stuff, I've had a habit forever that I eventually book it, I go, and then I don't do anything else, I've been, fine. And then, however long later, I'm like, Oh god, I really need to book a hair appointment, and then I don't go round to it, I don't phone them, da da da, and then it just takes longer. I've started at the end of my hair appointment, just booking the next one. And I know you, at least half of you, are rolling your eyes that this is not rocket science. But for me, this is making a big difference. When I turn my diary like, Oh, I've got a haircut book this week. How [00:18:00] organized am I? Brilliant. So, if anyone, you know, do that too. But you can do this with all your academic work as well. What would be useful to have booked in already? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The sixth way they can help is another being proactive task. And here is thinking about what regularly wastes you time. What do you regularly lose? What do you regularly struggle with? What regularly just uses up way more time than it should? So where don't you know your passwords? Where can't you find your files? Where do you find yourself reinventing the wheel? So some examples here are things like I've got much more... I've spent a little bit of time in personal assistant mode, sorting out all the handouts for my different courses. So that my, my notes, the handouts that I give to the people after they've attended, the PowerPoint slides, if I have them for the various workshops that I run, I can now go and be like, Oh, there's my how to make decisions and prioritize course, and I've got all the bits I need right there. Might not feel very revelationary for you, but often I was re downloading those from places and pulling them together, and now they're all just there, which makes implementing this stuff so much easier. What wastes time for you? Where could you make some of these things simpler for yourself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another one that I haven't done too much yet, but I've had colleagues who've done this in the past and found it really useful, is writing auto replies for things that you get often. So if you get regular emails where similar types of things need to be said, can you pre write that text, and then be able to just either cut and paste it in or have it on one of those auto text things that you can do in most email software so that it's ready to go. I remember one of my very organized friends, shout out Professor Jenn Cumming, who's been on the show before, when she stopped being project module supervisor, so she used to oversee our dissertation module years and years ago. Um, she handed on like all the emails you needed for different times of the year when you told the students how this worked and when to hand that in and reminders about this that and the other and finding out when you know starting the marking process and all these things she had like just a bank of emails that she was able to give the next person and the dates that they needed to be sent and it was just like legendary. How could you do those sorts of things to just make some of your routine processes a little bit easier? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the seventh one's going to sound a bit of a strange one. This is sorting your email, processing your email, because I think it's really useful to separate out processing your email from doing the tasks in your emails. So if you're in personal assistant mode, you can go into your emails, you can delete anything that's junk and unsubscribe - apart from from my newsletters don't unsubscribe from those -so you can unsubscribe from anything you don't want anymore, you can file away anything that you want to keep look at later, you can mark as spam anything that's found please don't mark my newsletters as spam they're not you can just unsubscribe if you don't want them anymore um you can, as personal assistant, you can answer quick ones. So it's just, you know, where's the zoom link for this webinar? Oh, I can do that one. Do, do, do, boom, gone. So if they're quick and easy and don't really need the implementer version of you to do them, you can just do them. You can flag ones maybe, that are bigger tasks, but that are time sensitive and others you can take and put on your to do list. Now, whether you then leave it in your inbox or put it somewhere else is up to you and your systems, but really flagging which ones need doing it urgently and turning them into tasks can really help keep you on track. Because one of the things I see, and I fall foul of this as much as anybody, is that we have a to do list, but we also sort of have a to do list in our emails as well, things where people have asked us stuff that we need to do, and often we don't reconcile the two. And if we don't, we end up at the end of the week feeling like we didn't do any of the things on our tasks. It's a task list, but we were definitely busy. So what were we doing? So your, what your personal assistant can do is deal with the easy stuff and then put the more complex stuff, the stuff that takes more than a few minutes to answer actually into your task list so that you can allow for it when you're planning and so that you know when you're going to do it. If you use my role based time blocking system, check out the episode on that if you haven't seen it already. Then when you're taking them from your email, you can allocate them to a role. This is a marketing job, this is an operations job, or whatever it is for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The eighth one is a fun one. And this is your personal assistant can make things beautiful for you. So all of us, whatever level we're at, will sometimes make presentations, for example, whether it's for conferences or teaching, uh, we'll be formatting documents to send to people, all of these things. And it's easy to get bogged down in making them beautiful. What I would really suggest is that you separate out what [00:24:00] are jobs for the implementer you, and what are jobs for personal assistant you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for me, the implementer does content. Your boss decides, aka you when you're in boss mode, decides that you're going to do this presentation and what the point of doing the presentation is, you know, what's the strategic value that you're going to get out of doing it. So the boss decides those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The implementer is the one who has to decide on the content. He has to decide, what am I going to say? When am I going to say it? On what slides? What's the key points here? What's the take home message? All that good stuff. And actually make that stuff exist. That's implementer's job. Implementer's job, by the way, is not to second guess boss. Implementer's job is not saying, maybe we shouldn't do this. I don't think this is a good idea. Implementer's job is to do what the boss has asked them. But, Implementer's job is not finding the perfect picture to illustrate a point you want to make. That's your personal assistant's job. And if you can separate this stuff out, it will stop you disappearing down these rabbit holes of wasting ages making things look fancy during blocks when your intention was to create content. And what you can do, therefore, is you can block time. Okay, I've got three hours this morning to write this presentation. That is not picking color schemes. That is not making designs. That is certainly not finding photos. That is, on this slide, I need to say these things. On this slide, I need to say these things. Here's my data. Here's my conclusions. Whatever. Okay? It's getting that stuff done. You can then block an hour in some period of the day, for me, it's often like late afternoon, but whatever time of day you feel is a sort of low time for you to make it beautiful. And now you've got an hour to make it as beautiful as you can. And at that point, yes, your personal assistant might correct typos and things like that as they go along, but your job's not to second guess the content, your job is just to make it presentable. Now, if we think back to the proactivity, if your personal assistant's got a bit of spare time, they might make a slide deck where it's all, you know, it's got the right colors, it's got the layouts, da da da, that can always be used. So you're not reinventing this every time. In fact, some of your universities will have standard ones, and maybe your personal assistant will find those for you, so you've got them. By separating it out, same as with not reading during a writing session, we're not beautifying our slides during a slide creation session, separating it out makes it way better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The ninth thing and I've left this towards the end because it kind of in the week comes towards the end, personal assistant can reconcile your task lists. And what I mean by reconcile your task list is actually go through your tasks, tick off the things that you have done, add anything that's come up since you last looked at your task list, and just make sure that you know what's going on. I used to get myself really stressed. I'd be like, Oh my God, I need to do this. I've got so many things on my list. Look at all of these. And then I go through it and be like, hang on. I've done that one. I've done that one. I've done that one. And it'd be like, once I crossed off the things that I had done, or even found that I had the same task on my list four times, cause my brain kept reminding me I needed to do it. So I'd add it to my list and then be like, hang on, your list is artificially inflated with repeated tasks here. Maybe that's just me, but spending time actually reckons like moving things you've done onto your done list. And if you don't remember about the done list, there's an episode on that too, uh, moving that onto your done list and then. Knowing exactly where you're at. During that time, you can also check any statistics you want to keep track of. So, I keep track of things like how many people I have on my newsletter, um, income. That's always a nice one. Uh, things like that. You might keep track of how many words you write a week, for example.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In that end of week, when you're reconciling the task list, your personal assistant can also look ahead and go, what have we got coming up next week? Just checking. Now, it's not for you to make decisions. That goes into kind of boss mode, but you then make it easy for you to have some boss mode time. So when you start on a Monday morning, you're like, right, I've got a reconciled task list. I've got a tidy desk. I know what's coming up in my diary. I can make some decisions about what I'm doing when, what I'm going to prioritize, what's going to get delayed. You make it easy. When I was first started doing these sort of Monday morning meetings where I was checking in with myself, I was doing this all at once and I was finding that I was using some of my best time on a Monday morning on really mundane, oh, how many Instagram followers have I got or whatever all that stuff. And so what I'm really trying to do now is separate that out, have my personal assistant Me, on a Friday afternoon, do as much of the kind of mundane checking out of things so that on a Monday morning, I can be in strategic mode and actually get straight to making decisions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing Friday me is trying to do is just tidy up my desk, get rid of my Diet Coke cans, empty the bin, all of those things. If you ever get a real PA, you probably don't expect them to clear up your junk. But when we're our own PA, we can ask them to do those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Finally, you can also make a decision about whether this PA that you're being to yourself only exists in your work life and only does work things. Or, whether they also are part of your personal life as well. I like to think of them as part of my whole life, because I think it's the easiest way to kind of keep on top of things. And so if you're having a sort of a personal assistant, who is also a domestic personal assistant, you can think about things like, okay, I've noticed that I've got a really busy week next week, where I've got lots of coaching, I've got lots of sessions, whatever. I'm going to make sure there's some food in the fridge that's really easy to cook. This is not, by the way, the time to get super overambitious and decide that you're going to do food prep a la Instagram gurus and whatnot, just have stuff that's easy, that's roughly in line with what you want to be eating so that when you are trying to grab something in between sessions, it's vaguely nutritious, vaguely in line with the sorts of things you intend to eat and doesn't take too long. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also think about things like, are the clothes I [00:30:00] need for next week clean? Do I need to book any train tickets? Do I need to fill the car up? Are there any personal appointments, haircuts, dentists, things like that, that I need to book? They can do those things too. So you could even schedule some time on a weekend that you spend in personal assistant mode.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are 10 things that I think you can do when you put yourself in your own personal assistant role that will make the rest of your time so much easier. As I said, it might sound weird because you might just say, these are just tasks, Vikki. These are things that I could just put on my to do list and do, but I would encourage you to block time as personal assistant. Create a role, personal assistant, where your priority is doing these things so they don't get pushed out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also find that by characterizing it as a role, it makes it easier to get on and do. As you all know, I may or may not have ADHD, who knows, maybe this is a neurodiverse thing, maybe my neurotypical audience will think this is strange. Often I find things that work for people who are neurodiverse actually often work for people who are neurotypical too. You just may be less dependent on them. But one of the things I find is when I put myself in personal assistant mode and I think about it like that, I find the tasks easier to do. Those of you who follow me on Twitter, I'm at Dr Vikki Burns, might have seen me post this week that I was looking after my twin nieces this week. I, I go and see them before school 'cause their mom worked early one day and they had been told that they weren't allowed any device time, until they're tidied their bedrooms. And so my job was to help them finish tidying their bedroom before they go ready for school and everything. And I'm not the world's most tidy person. Anyone who's met me, you probably know this. And often I get overwhelmed when I'm tidying up my own thing, unless I really use my own coping strategies. And I found, I mean, I'm in a bedroom. It was a lot better to be fair, but it's still slightly chaotic twin 7 year olds bedroom. And I was going, right, let's just find all the hair things, headbands, hair clips, all that stuff. Let's find all of those, we'll put in this box. Now let's find all the cuddly toys and we can put them on your beds. Okay. And I found it so easy to break it down into specific let's just do this one thing. Okay, we're done. And there was something about the fact that I was doing it for and with them that made it enormously easier than when I do these things for myself. Like I say, might be a neurodiverse thing. But I think the same comes true with personal assistant. When you put yourself in personal assistant mode, it's easier to go, Oh, okay, how can I make this nice? How can I make this good? In a way that we often don't bother to do when we're just in our own task list.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're thinking, this is all very well Vikki, but I don't have time to do the other things, let alone have time to put in my diary that I'm going to tidy up my desk. I would just really encourage you to reflect. I would really encourage you to think, if I just put 30 minutes 15 minutes a day in my diary where I had this vibe where I was thinking, how can I make it easier for myself? What difference would that make to my productivity in the rest of the week? I feel like investing half an hour to make sure that you've got the things you need for your writing session. That your reading session wasn't a waste of time. That you know what's coming up in your diary. That you are organizing the meeting details that you need. I think all of those things will make everything else more effective. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also think, and this is a bonus for you because you guys know that I really emphasize compassion and a kind of building a relationship between you and your future self. I also think this is part of generating a positive relationship with your future self. Often, we blame past us for making bad decisions and not doing the things that we think they should have done and we almost believe that future us is like, Perfect and amazing. And we'll get everything done, which kind of lets present us off the hook. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like, Oh, I'll just do it tomorrow. I'll be able to do it tomorrow. No problems. Where actually, if we can get to a stage where we really practice thinking about what will make things better for future us, then we're so much more likely to do the difficult things now, to do the boring things now, do the non urgent but really helpful things now. So actually, I think not only will you be getting these personal assistant tasks done, you'll be nurturing a relationship between you and your future self that will change how you relate to yourself the rest of the time. And this is where for all that I would love to have a real life personal assistant that I can delegate some things to, I actually think that learning to be my own personal assistant is making me better at being an implementer, it's making me better at being a boss, and it's making it easier to do the things that I'm intending to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm still practicing this. It's a work in progress. It's something that I sometimes spend time doing and sometimes don't, but I noticed that things feel much better when I do. And when I noticed that I haven't been, I try and nudge myself back to it. So have a think about how you can practice this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want some more support, my newsletter is going to have some summaries of what I've said today, and it's going to have some specific journal prompts and actions that you can take to help you really embed this stuff in your life. So make sure that you sign up for that. I'd love to hear what things, have I missed any tasks that your personal assistant version of yourself can do for yourself? Is there anything you've tried and found really useful that I haven't thought of and talked about today? Let me know. Get on my [00:36:00] newsletter list, drop me a message, and who knows, maybe I'll include it in a future podcast. If you've got questions, things you're unclear on, or topics that you think I should cover, make sure you let me know. I can always do future podcasts on your topics and questions. I really hope you found today useful. It's something that's helped me enormously. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 10 Jun 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-39-how-to-be-your-own-best-personal-assistant thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-38-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-compassionate-and-curious <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My very first episode of this podcast, 78 episodes ago, which I'm very proud of, was about how to be your own best supervisor. And since then, that concept has really underpinned everything that I do in my podcast, in my coaching, and now in my group program, How to be your own Best Boss. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  In that first episode, I introduced you to seven qualities that I think help all of us be better bosses to ourselves, if we can just nurture them in ourselves. Since that episode, I've coached hundreds of clients, from new PhD students through to full professors, and all of what I said still stands. But I've also learned more. I've seen more, I've listened more and clients have taught me more about what's helping them and I've seen them develop over time. So I decided it was time for a more detailed look at how to be your own best boss. We're going to have a series of episodes, not every week, but kind of every other, every three weeks, where I'm going to pick a couple of qualities that I think we should be trying to nurture in ourselves when we're being our own best boss and talk about them in a little bit more detail. We're going to think not only about why these qualities will help us, but importantly, how and when we need to nurture them. What sorts of thoughts and feelings do we want to try and generate in order to take these actions that are in align with these great qualities? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Today's episode is the first in that series, and we're going to be thinking about why it's important to be compassionate and why it's important to be curious.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you've ever beaten yourself up about something that you've done wrong, in inverted commas, or where you just got confused and didn't know what to do, and beat yourself up for that instead, then this is the perfect episode for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 38 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. I am currently coming towards the end of the first iteration of my How To Be Your Own Best Boss program, which is a group coaching program for PhD students and postdocs where we really try and develop the qualities we need to be our own best boss. We've thought about how we're currently bossing ourselves and what challenges that can sometimes create. We've thought about how we can be a boss that can plan our time and our tasks in a way that feels fair and achievable and even exciting. Today we have a workshop where we're thinking about what happens when we don't do what we intended to do and we're going to finish up learning about how to plan for our weeks, our months and our quarters in a bit more detail and in a way that is informed by all of the coaching practice. It's been an amazing experience. We're going to be running it again in autumn. So if you missed out this time, don't miss out next time. But that whole experience has really made us all reflect on what qualities we want to have as our own bosses.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And today, as I said, we're going to be thinking about compassion and about curiosity. So let's start with compassion. I often find that people think that compassion is the same thing as indulgence. But if we're compassionate to ourselves, we'll say, Oh, don't worry about that. It's okay. You don't need to work today. We can do it tomorrow. It doesn't matter that you missed the deadline. Not a problem. Let's just have a rest and eat some chocolate and do stuff tomorrow. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When in reality, compassion is being compassionate for our whole selves. It's being compassionate for the parts of us that make mistakes and the parts of us that need some love and care and attention, but it's also being compassionate for the us that wants to achieve our goals. It's not compassionate to our ambitious selves or to our determined selves if we always indulge when we want to rest or get distracted or have treats. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the ways you can distinguish between whether you're being compassionate or whether you're being indulgent is asking yourself, is what I'm proposing doing good only for present me, is it good for present me and future me? So, if I'm really tired, and I'm genuinely very, very tired, I perhaps haven't slept well, maybe I'm not well, maybe I've had a really heavy time of work recently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I'm genuinely really tired, then resting is good for present me, but it's also good for future me, because future me will actually benefit from me having energy and having taken this rest period. So it's good for me, it's good for future me too. Whereas on the days where I kind of feel a bit tired, but there's no particular reason I should be feeling tired, I'm not ill, I haven't missed out on my sleep, and I suspect that that tiredness is maybe at least in part resistance to the task I'm planning to do, i. e. I just don't really want to do it. The napping in that moment is good for present me, it means that I haven't got to do this task that I don't want to do, but it's not good for future me, because future me doesn't actually need that nap, we've judged, and future me needs this task done because otherwise she's going to have to wedge it in somewhere else that she didn't intend to. So by asking yourself, is it just good for present me or is it good for present me and future me, you can kind of distinguish a bit between compassion and indulgence. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I've started reading the work of Kristen Neff, who specializes in the area of self compassion. And I really liked the way that she broke it down. She broke it down into three components of self kindness, rather than self judgment, common humanity, rather than isolation and mindfulness rather than over identification. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think these are really useful to think through in turn. So self kindness, what she really means is being gentle and understanding with ourselves and using, she says the word, soft and supportive tone when we speak to ourselves. I really like that notion of generating a soft and supportive way of speaking to ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we're not telling ourselves that we're rubbish. We're not telling ourselves that we're lazy and we just have to pull ourselves together. We're not indulging ourselves. But we're just using a gentle voice to say, I understand that this is difficult. We are still going to do it. But I understand. How could you generate that sort of a tone when you're speaking to yourself? How different would it be if the voice inside your head came from self kindness rather than self judgement?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By common humanity, what she means is recognising that the things that we beat ourselves up for are universal. Everybody procrastinates to a greater or lesser extent. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody offends somebody sometimes. All of these things that we often take as massive moral failings when we do them are things that every single human being does and does quite regularly. When we can experience that common humanity, that universal experience, suddenly it reminds us that this isn't just about us being rubbish. This is normal. This is what people experience. This is part of that kind of bigger human experience. Now this element is why I love group coaching. If you haven't ever experienced group coaching, do make sure you're signed up for my newsletter and you'll get access to my free online group coaching once a month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the next one is beginning of june. So make sure you are signed up before that to get the invitation. Because in these group coachings, not only can you get one to one coaching yourself, but you get to see other people getting coached. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so often the people who are watching people getting coached say, it was like I was talking, but it was coming out of her mouth. I couldn't believe that he was saying all the things that I've thought. And I had no idea other people felt. So don't get me wrong. I love my one to one coaching and people get a really long way with that sort of intensive one to one support, but there's something very special and something really helps you develop that sense of common humanity in group coaching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the third element that Neff mentions is mindfulness. And this is here really about staying in the present moment, but not in the sense of that kind of traditional mindfulness that's associated with meditation and those sorts of things, but staying with the specific incidents that we're thinking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often when we're not compassionate to ourselves, we take a single mistake now and make it mean a hundred different things. We make it mean things about us as a person, about us in the future, our prospects, whether we're going to finish our PhDs, whether we're ever going to become a professor, whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When with self compassion, if we can stay mindful, what we're doing is we're staying right here in the moment and just dealing with this one thing that isn't going so well, this one thing that is feeling like a struggle. It's avoiding self identification. So a lot of my clients tell me, I'm a perfectionist. I've never been someone who sticks to my plans. And these very, Fixed identities. These, this is just who I am. I am someone who procrastinates. I am someone who's a perfectionist. I am someone who doesn't do what they say make it way harder to change things than if we can stay right here in the moment in a mindful and compassionate way and say, okay, this time I didn't write for my full writing block. But I can do this now, but I can do that differently next time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now for each of these qualities that I'm going to talk about over this series, I want us to also think about that self coaching model. If you don't know what I'm talking about at all, I will take you through it a little bit today, but there's a whole episode on how to coach yourself in the archive. So do make sure you go back and check that out. But the self coaching model has five components. Circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it proposes that our circumstances are broadly neutral. At least they're certainly factual. Our thoughts are the cognitive story we tell about them. Our feelings are the emotions we experience in our body. Our actions are the things that we do, either with our bodies or with our minds, and the results are the consequences of those actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what I want to do is think about what types of circumstances is it useful to be compassionate, what thoughts might you want to think if you're trying to be compassionate to yourself, what feelings those thoughts might generate, and what actions and results you might take and get as a consequence of thinking and feeling those things. And we'll do this for each of the different qualities that we talk about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when should we be compassionate? Now, I think all the time is the answer to that, but some of the really specific times that I want you to think about are when you've experienced setbacks, where there are delays that are outside of your control. Maybe there's things you can't do in the laboratory, or access you can't get to something, or your supervisor's taking more time than you would like them to, to get you feedback, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So any of those sorts of setbacks. When you've made a mistake. of some description, so where there's something gone wrong that maybe is your fault, either knowingly or unknowingly. Maybe when you've said something embarrassing, or maybe when you're unhappy with your progress. I want you to have a think about whether there's other times in your life that it might have been useful to be more self compassionate, but those are the ones that I identified. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then some thoughts that come to me that feel compassionate and kind in this setting are things like everybody makes mistakes. This doesn't mean anything about you as a person or as an academic. This might not have gone well, but I can do the next thing in a way that feels good. Then this final one, and this one sometimes isn't true for my clients, or they don't think it is, but I think it's a useful one to try and nurture. I trust myself to decide whether I actually need a rest or whether I should push on. And if that doesn't feel true to you at the moment, I want you to think about how you can kind of develop that as an ability. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, when you think about those thoughts, what sorts of emotions come up for you? For me, I thought of things like calm, understood, and worthy, cared for even. Those sorts of feelings. What comes up for you? And now for me, when I feel calm, understood, and worthy, the actions I'm likely to take, I'm much more likely to think about the things I've done right as the things I've done wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm much less likely to kind of spiral and catastrophize and make this all into a massive deal. I'm more likely to correct, in inverted commas, my mistakes. So if we're feeling self compassionate and we're telling ourselves, everybody makes mistakes, it's so much easier to go and apologize to somebody or go and make up for something than it is if we're telling ourselves that the fact we've made a mistake makes us a bad person and that we'll never finish what we're trying to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It makes it much easier to take the next step, to get on with the next thing we needed to do, and it makes it much better, and it makes it much easier to take a break that actually helps, to take a break when we need it and that will make us feel rejuvenated rather than as a way of just avoiding our tasks.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And think about those actions. If you took those actions regularly, what would happen? The next step would get done. You'd make a task feel good. You'd right the mistake, or at least you'd avoid making the same mistake again in the future. You'd build trust in yourself. You'd take breaks that you need, and you'd move your project forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think about that model, that all is underpinned by self compassion, and how different it would be than if we did a model that was driven by self judgment. When we have self judgmental thoughts in those exact same circumstances, we usually feel guilt, shame, dread, these sorts of emotions, which we know will probably lead to either procrastination or frantic action. And we know that those results are never good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think this really illustrates why self compassion is so important, both for how we feel and making our experiences more pleasant, but also for our actual achieving goals and getting things done too. I want you to have a ponder. Do you think it's desirable to be self compassionate? Is there anything that worries you about being self compassionate? Let me know. If you're on my newsletter, you can always email me straight back and let me know your different thoughts and feelings and who knows, I may even make you a podcast in the future, answering your questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Also, now that there's a lot of podcast episodes out there, nearly 80 like I said, it can sometimes be hard to navigate yourself around them. So if you're feeling like you really want to develop more self compassion, I'm going to put in the show notes some links to some other episodes that might link well to this notion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So things like <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/22-what-to-do-when-you-re-feeling-a-bit-bleurgh" target="_blank"> what to do when you feel a bit bleurgh </a> , <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/28-how-to-learn-from-past-mistakes" target="_blank"> how to stop beating yourself up and learn from past mistakes </a> , and so on. So the show notes are always on my website, the phdlifecoach. com under podcast. If you go there, you'll find the show notes and I'll put a few links of some suggestions in there for you, if you want to follow this one up further. Others include:  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-28-how-to-stop-comparing-yourself" target="_blank"> How to stop comparing yourself to others </a> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-14-how-to-stop-feeling-guilty-when-you-rest" target="_blank"> How to stop feeling guilty when you rest </a> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/36-why-we-should-be-more-proud-of-ourselves-and-how-to-do-it" target="_blank"> Why you should be more proud of yourself </a> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/11-how-to-rest-over-the-holiday-period" target="_blank"> How to rest over the holiday period </a> (Christmas themed, but always relevant!) </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second quality I want to think about today is curiosity. And I think this is one that I rarely hear people think about. We're often curious about our research, about, you know, our teaching, maybe. But we're rarely curious about the process by which we do things, don't do things, and how we can change them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, curious is very different from judgmental. Same as self compassion is different to judgmental. When we're being judgmental, we really shut down the problem solving part of our brain. We tell ourselves these are fixed things. They're shortcomings. They're not something that we can do anything about. Or if we do do something about them, it's through kind of discipline of forcing ourselves and all this stuff that just doesn't sound fun or interesting at all.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Curiosity is a much more open approach. Rather than saying, Oh, you never do your writing blocks, we've missed another one. You're going to get really behind. We're saying, Oh, it's interesting that whenever we put a writing block in the morning, we really struggle to get going and don't often start until a bit later on. I don't know why that is. What is it that gets in the way? And what this does is it engages that creative problem solving part of our brain. It engages the part of our brain that wants to solve little puzzles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can also be curious about our thoughts and feelings. Sometimes we just get mad about something. You know, we're cross that our supervisor hasn't sent us something. We're cross that our boss has allocated us a new admin role without telling us about it, whatever it is. And we don't really get curious about why it bothers us so much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What is it about the fact your supervisor hasn't sent you feedback that's upsetting you? Because sometimes, it's because deep down we're worried that this is going to hold us up, it's going to mean that we're not going to be able to finish on time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times, it's because we feel like it's a sign that they don't care, they're not interested, we're not a priority. If we can sort of be curious and dig into it a little bit, it's so much easier to fix because I don't know about you, I can't make your supervisor get feedback to you more quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Supervisors who are listening to this, I get it. I was often late with feedback. You guys are so overloaded. I understand. But if we can't change the other person's behaviour, then what we can do is think about how can we protect ourselves from the kind of negative impact. And it's a very different problem if we're worried that the feedback is going to mean that we can't get done on time, versus whether we mean that the lack of feedback means that they're not interested, they don't care, or we're not a priority. We can look after ourselves in very different ways if we understand what the underlying emotions are here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Curiosity for me is lighthearted, it's solution focused, it's creative, and it's open. So not only does it actually helps us to change things. It actually feels really good. It's really nice to be curious. It's why a lot of us have ended up in academia in the first place, because we're really curious about different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can turn that curiosity in on ourselves to think, Ooh, how can I make this easier for me to do? Ooh, I wonder in what ways I could make this more fun to do. I wonder if there's any different ways of writing this that I haven't thought of. Then suddenly we're opening up this really enjoyable part of our lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's apply it into the self coaching model like we did with self compassion and think about what circumstances it would be useful to be curious. The things that came up for me are when you're not sure what's gone wrong, where things just aren't working and you don't know why. When you're struggling with something and you don't know why it feels so difficult. When you're not sticking to things and you don't know why. When you're choosing between different options, so curiosity can be really useful in decision making.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, often, just as an aside, often people don't even register they've got a problem with decision making. So, if any of you are out there thinking, I don't know what the right way to do this is, whether it's writing, whether it's teaching, whether it's your promotion materials. If you're thinking, I don't know the right way, the problem is not that you don't know the right way. The problem is that you're not recognizing this as a decision that you need to make. There is no right way to structure a paper. There is no right way to frame your promotions materials. What there is, though, is a series of decisions that you need to make based on your own best judgment at the moment and be able to justify those decisions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in that situation, curiosity really helps, because suddenly we go from, I don't know how to do this, to, I wonder how I could do this. I wonder what options there are. If I did it like this, what would it be like? If I did it like that, what would it be like? I often think with writing, people would be way better off, when they're saying I don't know how to write it, they'd be way better off just writing it four times, in four different ways and seeing which one they like. And most people would say, well, that doesn't sound very efficient, but I can assure you it takes a lot less time to write something four different ways than it does to sort of battle to get yourself to the desk, procrastinate for weeks on end, tell yourself you're terrible, tell yourself you're useless, and all of these things. Way easier to go, I'm going to spend an hour writing it this way, an hour writing it that way, and see what works out best. So bringing curiosity to decision making can be really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what sorts of thoughts help us to feel curious? Things like, I wonder why it's like this? This is an interesting problem to explore. So reminding ourselves this isn't some massive crisis we've got to fix here, it's just quite an interesting problem. Am I better off writing in the mornings or the afternoon? I wonder. Am I better off talking about this thing first or that? Am I better off focusing this entire paper on this one thing or including all three? I wonder. How interesting to explore it. Thoughts like there could be a different way of doing this. Sometimes when we're feeling stuck it's because we're really fixating on it has to be like this, whereas actually if we can tell ourselves No, could there be a different way of doing this? I think there could be, we often identify more. When we're thinking about how we respond, so you get an email from somebody that's upset you, for example, you're having thoughts that make you upset, think about, I wonder how I could respond to this. What options are there?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other one, and this kind of relates across to self compassion, is, it's okay that you don't know, I can figure this out. So something about curiosity that has a certain optimism, about it that I don't know, but I can figure it out. It reminds me a lot of one of my old coaching clients who used to say, I don't know how to do that, but I'm a researcher, so I will research it. I just thought that was an amazing mindset to have.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now when we're generating curiosity through these sorts of thoughts, what types of feelings do we generate? I identified things like interested, inquisitive, open, hopeful, those sorts of very open and optimistic sort of vibes. I wonder how it feels for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And now I want you to think, if you were feeling hopeful and optimistic and open and creative, what things might you do? Well, you might braindump all the reasons that this might be bothering you at the moment. You might ask different people what approaches they take and think about whether they're relevant for you or not. You could speculate wildly about different approaches without judging them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's an old story, I don't know how much it's based in truth, but there's an old story that post it notes came about because people were talking about qualities of glue, and what things it could be useful for, and what types of qualities they would want it to have, and they were kind of trying to be as open and, optimistic and kind of curious as possible. And one of the things that somebody identified was not very sticky glue. And they said it as a joke, because in most circumstances, it's not very sticky glue would be incredibly unuseful, but from that open curious place, they identified that actually, Post it notes and unsticky glue is incredibly useful and has made them billions of pounds. So the other action we take is that we believe other ways of doing this. We believe that other ways of reacting are possible.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And now when we do those actions, what results do we get? We come up with creative solutions. We get better insights into ourselves. We create links with other people because when we discuss these things with other people, not only are we likely to find solutions that we want to try out, we also get better understanding of them as people. We start to feel a bit more connected to them and we give ourselves a bunch of options. So those are the reasons that I think generating curiosity can be so powerful. And I have to say, I started with these two for a reason. If you're going to pick any two qualities, self compassion and curiosity will take you a really, really long way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love to hear your views on it. Make sure you're on my email list. Jump on, let me know what your thoughts about this. Have a think about what barriers are there to being self compassionate, to being curious. How could you overcome those barriers? How could you make it a little bit easier to be self compassionate and to be curious? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, I'll put some links to some podcasts that if you want to build your curiosity might be really useful for you. So for example, how <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/5-how-accepting-where-you-are-is-the-first-step-to-getting-to-where-you-want-to-be" target="_blank"> accepting where you are is the first step to getting where you want to be </a> . That was one of my very early episodes that kind of relates to this topic. I also have ones about <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/23-how-to-make-decisions-that-you-love" target="_blank"> how to make decisions </a> and I have a great one about <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/25-how-to-curate-your-phd-life-with-jamie-pei" target="_blank"> how to curate your life with Jamie Pei, </a> with one of my guests that came on. So, make sure if you want to see those, either dig through the archive yourself, or I'll put links in the show notes for those too. This is the beginning of our series. There's going to be five episodes like this where I talk about two different qualities. I'll intersperse them with some of my more traditional episodes and some of the guests that I've got lined up for you all and I'd love to know what you think. Can you guess what qualities are coming up? Jump on my social media. Let me know what qualities you think I should talk about. At the moment, I've got 10 identified, but who knows? Maybe you'll come up with some that I haven't thought of. Let me know. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 03 Jun 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-38-why-we-all-need-to-be-more-compassionate-and-curious thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-37-why-you-shouldn-t-read-when-you-re-writing <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So many of my clients this week have been struggling with writing. Now that's not unusual. But what has been unusual is how they've all identified the same issue with writing. They talked about settling down to have a block of writing where they decided what they were going to do. And started writing, and then realized there was a little detail that they couldn't remember, or an argument they wanted to check, or something they just wanted to look up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so they'd get the article, they'd check, and then they'd find themselves in a rabbit hole, disappearing off, looking up new things, finding out the details, and sort of plunging off into that literature. And then, before they knew it, their two hour block had gone, they'd written a hundred words or something, and spent the rest of the time reading. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when I shared with them what I'm going to share with you guys today, the words You've blown my mind have come out more than once this week. It didn't strike me as being that revolutionary, but it seems to have been. This is in one to one coaching. This is in the workshops that I offer. This has come up several times this week. And so I wanted to share it with you. So if you find yourself reading when you're intending to be writing, This episode is for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vicki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 37 of season two of the PhD Life Coach. And normally I stay within the realms of coaching and mindset and helping you figure out what's best for you. Today, I'm getting dictatorial. I'm going to give you some rules, and they are grounded in mindset, but take these as recommendations, as advice grounded in evidence and coaching strategies, see what you think. You can see if it works for you, but I highly recommend you give it a shot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in the interest of going down the whole writing vibe, I am going to structure this like a exam essay. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to say, and I'm going to tell you all the reasons why I think this is completely justified. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, my key point is that when you are writing, when you are in the middle of a block of time that you have allocated to writing, you should not be reading anything. I'm going to add a second one, which is that when you've got an allocated reading block, you absolutely should be writing. So these are the two things that I'm going to try and convince you of in this episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, the writing one first. Why shouldn't you be reading in a writing block? The first reason is we see the problems it causes. Every single one of you will have got partway into writing, decided you don't know quite enough, and gone off into reading and wasted that time. You will all have done that to greater or lesser extents at some point. And that's reason enough to try something different. If you didn't think about it anymore, but you just noticed that when you try and write, you end up reading and you end up derailing your writing attempts, you can try something different without any other logic there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, I'm a coach, and so I'm going to try and explain to you why I think this is so helpful. And, the first thing I wanna share is that it's because your reasons for reading are not helping you. Your reasons are things like, I don't know enough yet. I can't remember the details, and I should be able to. I can't write this as well as other people can, so I need to see how they put it. It's all these thoughts that generate self doubt and confusion that make it hard to write. It's not even the fact that you go off over there reading. It's the thoughts that are making you want to that are the real challenge here. Because actually if you could just quickly look something up, come back to your writing and carry on, this episode's probably not for you. This is for the people who end up buried over there, five papers deep, without realizing what they're doing. This episode's for the people who do it from panic and scarcity and confusion, rather than from a kind of quick, ooh, I'll just check that. Yes, happy days. Okay?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you sometimes end up getting sucked in over there, I recommend you go cold turkey, that you don't check anything at all. Because it's easier, as is often the case in life, it's easier just not to do it, than it is to highly regulate ourselves while we do it. So that's my first reason, is that it's driven by your self doubts, that behaviour is driven by your self doubts, and therefore it's not likely to be a helpful activity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Second reason is that you allocated this as a writing block and part of building this relationship between the us that plans, boss us, and the us that does our work, implementer us, part of building that relationship is doing the thing you plan to do in that slot. And if we regularly, as boss, plan that this is a writing slot and then as implementer decide we know better as the boss, we break down that trust between boss us and implementer us. So writing only in a writing block is important just from the point of view, that it's what you said you'd do. You called it a writing block. We're reinforcing the fact that we do what we said we will do in these slots.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third reason is that if you read in a writing block, you don't know how long it takes you to write something. One of the biggest pushbacks I get against role based time blocking, or any sort of time blocking, is that I don't know how long things will take. And It's no wonder you don't know how long things take if you spend half your session or three quarters of your session doing something other than writing. It's like saying you don't know how long it takes you to run 5k if you keep stopping to chat to your friends on the way and have a little picnic. It's fine, they're lovely things to do, but it means of course you don't know how long it takes you to run 5k because you never run it all the way through without stopping for those things in between. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, if we want to be able to time block, and I highly recommend that you work on this, we need to know how long it takes us to do something when we only do that thing. We need to know how long it takes us to write 200 words when we only write. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Fourth reason. This one feels a bit harsh. But, reading is procrastination a lot of the time. Now, I am not saying, please do not go to your supervisors, or your bosses, and say, I listened to this coach on the internet and she says I don't have to read anything. Not what I'm saying. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it is true that if you are feeling an uncomfortable emotion like confusion, or boredom, or frustration, because you're finding writing difficult or slow or any of these things, it's so much easier to go and look stuff up and read some articles under this story that I don't know enough yet than it is to face front on the frustration and the boredom and the confusion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It becomes something we do to avoid those emotions. We think we're going over there, you know, we've got a really good story as to why it's totally justified I need to look at these things. But it's not really why we're doing it. We're doing it to avoid the uncomfortableness of a blank page or not knowing what we want to say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of this is solved by some really simple strategies. We're not even doing thought work today. All we're doing is putting in place one boundary. One thing that you are saying, this is now true for me, and it will change all of this. Which is, we don't read in writing sessions. Now, this means two things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It means before writing sessions, you need to work out what you're gonna need in order to be able to write. Now, I don't mean you need to have memorized everything. I don't mean that you need to know everything back to front, but you need to have at least some idea of the point you're trying to make and a couple of the reasons why you're making that point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can set this up for ourselves in advance. And I've got an episode coming, which is about how to be your own best personal assistant, which is a kind of further development on the whole boss thing that we've talked about before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But essentially, in this case, in order to be able to write without reading, we need to just make sure that we've got a few notes and a few things set out for ourselves beforehand. That enables us not only to write without reading, it also makes that time so much more effective. How many times have you sat down for a writing session where you started out going, right, uh, where was I up to? What do I need to do today? I'm not entirely, uh, not sure. So many times, I'm sure, it's really, really common that that's how we start writing sessions. And it's no wonder we feel so much sort of lack of motivation to do it, because the first thing we've got to do is actually work out what on earth we're meant to be doing anyway. That's not fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this task you have to take in order to plan for a session where you're only going to be writing actually makes the writing session better. It actually makes it easier to start. It makes it more fun because actually you start it going, okay, I need to write that. Let's go. I can write that because I've got some bits down there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next thing it needs is it needs you in the session, when you're thinking, Oh, I need to look that up, to just write down on another piece of paper what you need to look up and then keep writing. You can type into the chat, blah, blah, blah, brackets, check that the paper actually says this or you can write it on a separate list. Whatever you want to do, but you keep notes as you write. Insert reference here. Clarify this argument later. Work out whether this is actually accurate or not from the article. Look up the figures. Look up the statistic here. Insert number here. Whatever it is, write little notes to yourself, but keep writing. Because in reality, those things can be slotted in later when we are not in the prime real estate of writing time. Checking those things can happen in the evenings when you're tired or in the afternoon in between meetings or whenever you've got time for little bits of faffing around jobs. You can check that stuff then, you can check that stuff in a reading session. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  What we do is we write, we write to the best of our abilities, we make notes where there are things we're not clear on there, and make notes where there are things we want to check, and we keep writing. You will be amazed at how much progress you make, how many words you can chug out, when you don't let the fact that you're not quite sure what you're saying in this bit stop you writing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, you will get a better understanding of what you do know and what you don't know if you just keep writing. Often you'll come out with things you're like, oh, I hadn't even thought of that. That's exciting. Keep that thought. Or, you'll go, I had no idea that I really didn't know this bit at all. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, what it then means is your next reading session is going to be so much more effective. Because when you're in a reading session, you've now got a to do list. Because even a reading session can become procrastination, if it becomes a session where you're just sort of meandering through literature with no particular goal and getting frustrated about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Side note, if you plan a session that is about meandering through literature and that's the purpose of the session, happy days, do it, enjoy. Part of the love of academia is that side of things. But, if that's annoying and you're like, I end up reading but I don't really know where I'm going and I'm all confused and everything, this is a great way to make your reading sessions more effective as well as your writing sessions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have a reading session where you're like, my job is to answer all these questions that writing Vikki came up with. Reading Vikki is now going to check that argument's true. She's going to find the numbers you need for that bit. She's going to find you a reference that backs up that point and check that there isn't anything that massively contradicts it. Let's go, let's find each of those things. You're a researcher. You research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then, after you've had a reading session, maybe you want to put in editing time. And your job then is to read this chunk of text that you created in a writing session, put in the bits you found from your reading sessions, and then actually make it all sound better, you know, check the structure, check the flow, check whether you repeat yourself, all of that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By separating it out, and only doing the things that you're intending to do in that session, you will be inordinately more productive. You will probably have heard the message, don't edit in a writing session, write in one session, edit in a different session. That's quite a common one. I've never heard, and certainly the students that I was speaking to this week, had never heard of not reading in a writing session, but it stands by the same logic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't want to waste time perfecting sentences in a session that's designed to generate text. You don't want to waste time checking details in a time that is specified to generate text. Let's generate text.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love to know. I'm going to go on in a second and tell you about reading sessions because there's a whole other thing there. But, I would love to hear from you guys. What do you think? Have a go at doing this. Even if you think I'm completely weird, have a go at it. Let me know how much writing you get done, how you find it, whether it makes a difference for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second half of this is thinking about reading sessions. Now, you might say, Okay, Vikki, if I don't read in a writing session, then presumably I don't write in a reading session. No, I'm not going to follow my own logic there, and I'm going to say, not only are you allowed to write in your reading sessions, I would massively recommend that you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because again, passively reading can be a form of procrastination. It's a form of just kind of taking stuff in. It takes cognitive effort to understand somebody else's argument, but it's not quite the same cognitive effort as deciding what your argument is. It's deciding what you're going to say and how you're going to argue it. It is easier than that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can also become really untargeted really quickly and not in a let's immerse ourselves in the literature way in a I'm kind of drifting through this without a purpose. kind of a way. And how we get around that is we change the tasks we give ourselves in a reading session. So many of you will put as your task, you'll be doing role based time blocking, you'll give yourself a reading block, you'll come around to that reading block, you'll look at your reading list and you'll go, I need to read the Burns et al paper. And that will be your task. Read Burns et al paper. Except if you don't know why you're reading it and you don't have a plan for what will exist at the end of that session, then you read it and you go, well done, that's interesting. Maybe you make some notes, maybe you highlight some things. I would ban highlighters, I'll tell you about that in a second. Sorry to all of you who love highlighters. Um, and then that's your reading session over. And often we can do that without any real sense of why we did it or where we are now, because we did it, other than being able to tick off our list that we read that paper. What I would encourage you to do instead is to come up with a specific task. Read the Burns et al paper and pull out the take home message. And pull out how she measured stress, for example. Because we're going to be measuring stress, let's figure out her methods and what we like about them. So what I would encourage you to do is before a reading session, decide what is going to exist at the end of that reading session. And it's not just a read paper, it's something that you've written.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things I used to get my undergraduate students to do, which I shared recently with a client and they really liked is answer. Five questions, and I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna add a sixth for you guys. So the five questions I used to get my undergrads to answer is, Why did they do this study? What did they do? What did they find? What does that mean? And what do I still want to know? And that often covers off, like, limitations, future directions, things like that. The one I would add for you guys, because you're PhD students and academics, is, what does this mean for my work? So, as a minimum, if you plan nothing else for a reading session, I want you to write answers to those five questions. When you've read a paper, why did they do it? What did they do? What did they find? What does it mean? What else do I want to know? And what does it mean for my research?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, those of you in the kind of arts and humanities end of things may want to reframe those questions. Those are probably a little bit biased towards a kind of social science, sciences, actual collection of data type thing. You might want, and I'm not an expert in this area, so please adapt them for yourself, but you might want to have questions like, what was their key argument? What evidence did they use to back up this argument? What do I still want to know? Why do we care? And what does this mean for my research? Those sorts of things. Adapt these to your disciplines, but you get my point.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Having some clear questions that you want to find the answers to, that hopefully force you to kind of process in some way, to connect, to pull out key summaries, so that you're sort of cognitively working through their material and not just looking at it in your eyes and hoping it goes in your brain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because this is why I hate highlighters. I like highlighters for like making stuff pretty, but highlighters when used to make notes, you have to go through so little cognitive process to actually do that. You just go, Oh, there's an interesting bit. Highlight, highlight, highlight, highlight. It takes no effort. There's no barrier to highlighting lots of things. It's quite nice highlighting. If anything, it makes you want to highlight more. I used to see my students papers and they'd highlighted like two thirds of the paper. I'm like, okay, what do you remember of the highlighted text and hide their paper? They'd be like nothing. I'm like, so what's point? Achieve nothing. Okay?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, try and have a note taking form where you're A. Structuring yourself as to what you're looking for. You're not just writing down a summary of their paper. And B. Where you have to actually process it through your brain in order to do so. I promise that that will make your reading sessions more effective. It also means, especially if you have these set questions, either my ones or ones that you've adapted for your discipline, this is going to make your writing session easier, too, because you've kind of already broken it down into these things. It's way easier not to need to go back and check stuff if you'd already broken it down into six, seven sentences anyway, so much easier to remember what you want to write about.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my suggestions for you. Never read in a writing session. Instead, make notes of what you need to look up in your next reading session, and just keep writing. And then in your reading session, pick in advance what you're going to write in that session on the basis of what you've read. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. Like I say, my clients have loved this idea this week and have all excitedly gone off to try it out. Those are students who did my How to Write When You're Struggling to Write workshop this week, as well as some of my individual clients as well. If you want to know more about those workshops and stuff, do make sure you check out my website. I've still got some running through till the end of July. They're booked by universities, so speak to your university about getting those booked. Or if you're interested in coaching, do make sure that you're on my newsletter so that you get all the information about my free online group coaching.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope today was useful. The day that this actually comes out is a bank holiday, a national holiday in the uk. So if you're listening to this live, I hope that this is one brief moment of academia in your day, and you are gonna go off and enjoy the holiday. For everybody else. I hope that today is as productive and enjoyable as you want it to be. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-37-why-you-shouldn-t-read-when-you-re-writing thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/what-to-do-when-you-get-distracted <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you have things on your list that you should be doing, but you're not? Are you finding yourself getting distracted by anything and everything? Whether it's distracted by doing other admin y easy tasks, whether it's getting distracted by television or social media, whether it's even getting distracted by cleaning. I'm seeing this all the time with my clients at the moment, and even experiencing it a bit myself, so let's get into it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 36 of season two of the PhD Life Coach, and to date, we are thinking about what to do if you get distracted. It feels like at the moment, there's so many things to get distracted by. Some of them are fun, some of them feel really important, some of them are just distressing and take your mind away from the things that you actually want and should in your mind be doing. Those of us who work from home, we've got things all around us that can distract us. If you work on campus, you have your colleagues, and interruptions, and temptations. We always used to interrupt each other to go for a walk to the shop to get something to eat, or whatever. Wherever you are, it feels like there are distractions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yet at the same time, I hear people all the time being super judgmental of the fact that they get distracted. They think it means that they're lazy. They think it means that they lack self discipline. They think it's something that is going to stop them achieving the things they want to achieve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today, I want to think about why we need to start by accepting that distraction is completely normal and completely human, and then go through some really specific tactics as to how we can address it. First of all, let's get really clear what we mean by distraction. For me, getting distracted is where you're intending to do one thing, and you end up either thinking about or doing something that is not what you intended. Sometimes it can be for a relatively short amount of time, your mind wanders and then you come back to what you were doing. Other times it can be really intrusive and we can end up moving away from and maybe even never coming back to the thing that we intended to do that day. We get utterly sucked in to doing something else.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we think about distraction as either thinking about or doing things other than what we intend in the moment, we can really see how absolutely everybody gets distracted to a greater or lesser extent. There is nothing about getting distracted that means that we can't succeed, that means that we're lacking self discipline, that we're lazy, that we're weak, any of these things that we often make it mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It means that we're human beings and we're human beings that are living in a highly distracting world. And as academics, whether we're PhD students or full professors, we're living in a world where the thing that we intend to do is often quite difficult and requires some cognitive effort and some concentration. So it's not a big surprise that most of us will struggle with distraction at some point in our careers.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For some of you it might feel like a big issue though, and some of you will be listening to this going, yeah but I get distracted all the time, always, no matter what, whatever I'm doing, I get distracted by something else. And it's true. Obviously, there's huge variation in the extent to which people get distracted. If you have things like ADHD, this will make it even more challenging or even more likely to get distracted. But regardless of whether you get distracted a little bit sometimes or a lot often, we still start from accepting that this is a very normal part of the human condition. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that it doesn't have to mean anything about your brain or your future. I am immensely distractible. So much, it's a joke in my family, how distractible I am. Thankfully, my husband's just as bad. I don't know why I say thankfully, maybe that's a bad thing, but it means we have conversations that start out about one thing, pass through about 14 different things and end up on something else entirely. And then we're like, yeah, we still haven't worked out what we're having for dinner though, have we?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I utterly, utterly empathize with the challenges of getting distracted. The reason it's so important to recognize that everybody does this, and it doesn't have to mean anything about you, your abilities, or your future, is because as soon as we make those extrapolations, as soon as we make the fact we're distracted, into a big deal, capital B, capital D. You know, it's a big deal that we get distracted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we start layering in a whole other load of emotions. We start layering in frustration and disappointment and shame and hopelessness, all these different emotions that actually make us much more likely to get more distracted. Because all of a sudden, doing the work we intended is associated with a whole load of really negative emotions, and we're even more in need of going and doing something that feels fun and interesting in the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We often think that if we shame ourselves about doing something, it will make us less likely to do it in the future. And it's not true. It's never true. When we're shamed about doing something, it ironically, and often inevitably, makes us more likely to end up doing it. Because the reason we're getting distracted in the first place is we're associating negative emotions with the thing that we want to be doing, that we're intending to be doing. And when we feel shame, we just layer that all up some more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, first step, you remind yourself, getting distracted is normal. Does that mean we just accept it and don't bother to not get distracted, or to manage our distraction? No, obviously not. And I'm going to give you some really useful strategies that you can use. But, having to use these strategies, completely normal, okay?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to compare it to a tightrope walker. I miss circus. When I was in Birmingham, I used to do lots of different circus things, and I'd see people doing all their different things, including tightrope walking, and I miss it. So I'm going to bring circus analogies in whenever I can. But I want you to imagine somebody who's tightrope walking. Anybody who walks on a tightrope or something like that will wobble a little bit. Yeah, it's a difficult thing to do, especially, you know, you're a bit nervous, your legs are shaking, you know, the wire itself moves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anybody from beginner to expert will wobble a little bit when they're on a tightrope. If we expect that we will only be able to tightrope walk when we don't wobble, then we're never going to be able to tightrope walk. The difference between beginner tightrope walkers and expert tightrope walkers is that when a beginner experiences that wobble, they either don't notice they're wobbling and so they've kind of wobbled a really long way and they fall off, or they notice they've wobbled and they overcorrect the other way and so they fall off the other side. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, they don't notice effectively, and they don't make appropriate corrections when they wobble. An expert tightroper will sense tiny wobbles. They'll notice there's a little bit where their balance is off, and they'll make a tiny movement, to correct for it. They'll nudge themselves back. They don't think while they're up there performing, oh no, I wobbled, I must be a terrible tightrope walker. They think, oh, slightly to the left, let's go slightly to the right, center of gravity over my feet, let's keep going. They learn to notice the wobbles and correct for them subtly, proportionately, and without overthinking it. That's the difference between beginner tightrope walkers and expert tightrope walkers. In time, do they learn to wobble less? Yes, absolutely, but even at their best, they will always be making tiny corrections as they go through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The same is true for distractions. There is nobody in the world who doesn't get distracted. But the people who are less impacted by distractions are the ones that are able to notice more quickly that they've got distracted and to nudge themselves back to what they were going to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those of us that struggle with distraction are the ones that don't notice for ages. We wobble further, we get more distracted and all of a sudden we're out there clearing out the kitchen cupboards or whatever when we're meant to be recording a podcast. Or, when we do get out there, we make it such a big deal that we end up actually making the thing we want to do feel really negative and really awful and we don't want to get back there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, what we are going to think about today is how do we notice more quickly and how do we make small corrections, so that when we do get distracted, it's not as big a deal. We're also going to think about how we can think proactively to make it less likely that we will get distracted. So there's going to be some things you can do there in the moment while you're trying to focus, and there'll be other things that you can plan . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately to start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: In order to understand either of these tactics, though, we need to think about what distraction actually is. And I like to think about the push and the pull of distraction. What I mean by that is the push of distraction is the things associated with the task that you have planned to do that push you away from it. So these might be a lack of clarity of what the task actually is. The task feeling difficult, or you telling yourself that you're not able to do it. The task requiring effort. The task being associated with shame, because maybe you should have done it before in your mind. There's a lot of things that push us away from the task that we're intending to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's then the things that pull us towards the distracting thing. So have a think what distracts you the most. Mine is a kind of constant balance between either social media y stuff or sorting things out in the house. So, I'll either get distracted scrolling Twitter, or I'll decide that now is the exact moment that I definitely need to clean the bathroom even though I haven't done it for three weeks, but now is the moment right when I'm meant to be recording this podcast, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, we have the things that pull us towards things. Now, with some things, it's quite obvious what pulls us towards it. Social media is inherently engaging. It's been specifically designed to attract you in and keep you there. It's interesting, it's short, you don't have to concentrate. So sometimes the pull can be as simple as that, just the pleasure of engaging. Even the devices have been designed so that they're pleasant to hold and pleasant to make that scrolling process.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might wonder though, what's the pull of cleaning? Yet so many of you, cleaning and tidying will be one of your distractions. And the pole there is a sense of something tangible. It's a sense of something that you definitely can do and you know how to do and where you will see an immediate benefit. Cause the thing with cleaning, we grab something to clean with, we clean something, it looks cleaner. We get an immediate like, Oh, that's nicer. Happy days, in a way that often when we're writing or planning a study or doing analysis, we don't immediately get. Not naturally anyway. So there's the push away and the pull towards.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing that you see in the pull towards, the distracting thing, can be things that you will do for other people. And there the pull is somebody seeing how hard you're working, somebody being grateful, somebody thanking you, suddenly you feeling useful because you're doing something that's getting recognized. That can be a pull as well. And I'm going to do an episode in a few weeks about all the different things that are procrastination that we don't often count as being procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we have the push away from the thing that you have planned to do, and the pull towards the thing, the distraction, that's tempting you. And when we can understand that, suddenly we have a whole bunch of strategies that we can take. There in the moment, let's think about that first, there in the moment, you notice that you're getting distracted. And remember, the challenge here is that we have to notice, but minimize the shameful thoughts around it. So we get to go, Oh, look at me, I'm getting distracted. Yeah, that happens. Okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing I find helps with making that real is saying it out loud. It's actually rather than just thinking, Oh, look at me, I got distracted. It's saying, Oh, look at me, I'm distracted. I am choosing to tidy my office instead of editing that newsletter. So we really kind of make it real that we've noticed that we're distracted. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And from there, the skill is we just nudge ourselves back. We don't need a new system. We don't need to investigate what emotions have dragged us off over there. Those of you who are into the self coaching with me, I love that you're thinking about all that stuff, but right there in the moment, we don't need to get into exactly what it is that's putting me off doing my piece of work that I intended to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Exactly, what is it that's attracting me so much about this distraction? It's like, Oh, look tidying again when I'm going to be doing something hard. Let's get back on with this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so I think tightrope walker, a nice Simple, steady correction back to the path that you were intending to be on. There's a tendency to either make it a massive deal, and this is where we over, overcorrect, make it a massive deal and have to uncover why it is that I'm so worried about this piece of work, blah, blah, blah. Or, to allow ourselves to wobble. Oh, I'm distracted now. I'm so useless. I always get distracted. And so now I'm going to watch the rest of the program. Or so now I'm going to scroll for another half an hour. We notice, we correct. And you might find yourself getting distracted every 30 seconds. That's okay. Because as long as we notice and we only spend 10 seconds over there and we come back, then it's fine. We're still staying on track. We're still engaging with the piece of work that we're intending to engage with. So this is what we do there in the moment. We notice, we bring it back. We notice, we bring it back.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in doing so, you remind yourself, this is the piece of work I'm doing. My brain may wander, but I bring it back. Those of you who are into meditation, it's never been something that I've kind of got into. If any of you think I should, maybe message me, let me know. Tell me what practice has worked for you. I know a lot of people say that if you think you aren't good at meditating, you probably really need to meditate. But anyway, those of you who do, It's a very similar process. You know, your mind wanders off from your meditative practice, and you bring it back non judgmentally. We don't have to make a big deal. We don't have to stay over there. We just bring it back kindly and gently. And it's very, very similar with distractions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's the bit there in the moment, how we deal with distractions. However, we also talk a lot about boss mode, putting ourselves in a position where we can actually make it easier for ourselves to engage. So the second part of what I want us to think about today is how can we, as our own best bosses, create an environment in which we are less likely to get distracted so that we have to do that nudging back less often. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we notice ourselves wander off less, we have to nudge ourselves back less often. And that's where we go back to this idea of the push and pull factors, because if you've got things that are pushing you away from the piece of work you intend to do, we can look at that curiously and compassionately and figure out how can we reduce those push factors and how can we increase the pull factors to the thing we want to be doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's have a think. What was pushing you away from it? A lack of clarity was pushing you away from it. Often the thing we should, in inverted commas, be doing is getting on with my writing, or whatever, okay? Really vague, really hard to know exactly what you should be doing, and induces feelings of confusion, overwhelm and so on. So one thing you can do to reduce the push factor is to make it much clearer exactly what it is you're intending to do. What specifically are you writing? What needs to go into it? What's it going to look like? All of those things. So we reduce the confusion, we reduce the lack of clarity that pushes us away, in order to make it more likely that we'll stay. What else pushes you away? Sometimes what pushes you away is the sense of shame that you should have done it before. Well that's something, again, we can clarify that in our own minds. We can tell us that it's perfectly understandable I haven't done this before. I've got a lot on. I'm a busy person. Completely understandable I haven't done this before. I'm a human being who sometimes procrastinates things. That's okay. And we reduce the shame associated with doing the piece of work. If you're pushed away because it's difficult, you get to ask yourself, why is it a problem that it's difficult? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't think any of you got into academia to do easy things. There's a lot about doing difficult things we enjoy. There's a lot of reasons why people do puzzles and stuff for fun. Why is it a problem that you're finding it difficult? And how can you sort of reduce some of the sensations around that that feel so bad? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sometimes those negative sensations come from the fact that we're telling ourselves not that it's difficult, but that it's too difficult, that we're not able to rise to that challenge. So again, you can reduce that push factor by reminding yourself that that's actually not true. that you are able to do the next step, that you've done difficult things in the past. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Every single one of you, I know you have done difficult things in the past. You don't get to be a PhD student or an academic without having done difficult things in the past. So how can you remind yourself of those things to reduce the push away from the piece of work that you're trying to do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also get to increase the pull to that piece of work. Reminding yourself why you wanted to do it. Why is it important? Why would it be so good to get this done now? Why does it fit with your bigger goals? Why is it something that just, once it's off your plate, you don't need to think about anymore, depending on what it is. How can you increase the pull to it? How can you make it feel pleasant while you're doing it, so that it feels like somewhere you want to be?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing we can do to increase the pull to the things that we want to be doing is to make them more like the things that are attracting us. So especially if you're finding yourself getting distracted by things like doing cleaning, doing jobs for other people, sort of small tasks that are easily bitten off that you know you can do and where you get reward afterwards. How can you make the thing you want to do more like that? How can you make it feel more like you can just chip bits off it? How can you make yourself feel like you're more able to do it? How can you make it so that you recognize that you've done it? So we get to steal ideas from the things we're finding distracting and make the things we actually want to do a bit more like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We then also get to think about our typical distractions. We get to think about how can we make them less attractive, so there's less pull towards them and more push away from them. Some people talk about real environmental manipulations like keeping your phone in another room. That increases the push away from that because you've got to actually move and go and get it. One thing I've seen, and I do play with occasionally myself, is you can, on many devices, turn off the colour, which can make it much less attractive to be scrolling Instagram or whatever it might be.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you find yourself getting distracted by other people, we can try and reduce the pull of that. You can ask people between certain hours not to interrupt you. You can turn notifications off. It always amazes me, I always feel like that's really trite advice, turn the notifications off on your emails. And I always feel like it's really obvious advice that you've all been told a thousand times and that you don't really need to hear from me, but many, many, many of you will still have those on. So, instead, what I want you to think about is why. Why do you feel the need to have those on? Why do you feel the need to be able to see it? And often it's something around control. It's something around, if people need me, I have to reply immediately. I like to know what's going on. Sometimes I can just answer things quickly. There's lots of reasons, but when we've identified them as something that pull us towards something that we don't want to be pulled towards, we get to really question all those assumptions, all those reasons why you haven't reduced the pull factor before. Is it really true that you have to be there at all times? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The analogy I often offer for this, is if you were in a meeting with a vice chancellor, would you be checking your emails and answering them there and then? And if you wouldn't, because, no, you would put your full attention into that meeting with the Vice Chancellor, why is it different when your meeting is with your own writing? Because if you could take that hour out and the world will just have to cope without you, why is it different? So you get to think, how can I reduce the pull? How can I make it so that I'm less attracted to do these things, and I spend less time over there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thing you can do, and this is kind of when you're in boss mode and when you're in implementer mode, is know your weak points. Know the things that you specifically get sucked into. So one that I'm still working on, I have to say, this is still a work in progress, but the one I'm still working on is social media before work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know that if I sit down. So I try and get up, go and have my breakfast and things like that. I take my phone back upstairs with me and I'm intending to go in the shower. And I know if I sit down because I'm just going to scroll for a few minutes, that's a pit. I am then stuck. Okay. I struggle. Now I'm getting better at noticing that I've done that and getting myself back out. But the best thing I can do is just decide I don't do that. Okay. Okay, like I say, still a work in progress, but I know my mornings go much better when I accept I just don't do that. If I go back upstairs, I do not sit on my bed, I get straight in the shower and I get on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's because we can coach ourselves out of anything. We can notice we've been distracted and nudge ourselves back, but all of that takes effort. It takes cognitive thought, and sometimes just avoiding that entirely can really help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Know what your thing is. One that I have quite successfully managed is the tidying up thing. So I get quite distracted if my desk's a mess, my study's a mess. That doesn't mean it's not a mess, but I get quite distracted by it. And sometimes I get the, I'll just sort all of this out and then I'll be able to concentrate, except that takes a lot of time. So my strategy there is to, is I just put things in a pile. And you know what? That just stops it being distracting for now. I can tidy it later. That's okay, I'll do that another time when I'm not intending to be getting on with something. But the way I manage my distraction there is because I know myself, I am likely to get distracted by a messy desk. I put it all in a pile. And then, not messy right now, and that is good enough for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What are the things for you? What do you get sucked into? How can you make it easier for yourself to avoid those things catching you? Sometimes this is about environment. Sometimes this is about working somewhere other than in your office. If you find distractions hard to say no to. Or if people don't honour your requests to not interrupt you, for example. How can you physically move yourself somewhere else so that it, you're less likely to experience those distractions? We all have different things. We can notice them without shame and then structure to make it easy for ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing we can do in terms of knowing ourselves is know when we don't get distracted either. When are the times? Think back over the last week, two weeks, month, when you didn't get distracted, where you did sit down and just crack on with the thing you were intending to do. If you can think of an example, try and identify the characteristics. What environment were you in? What were you working on? What was it about that piece of work that pulled you in and didn't push you away? What was it about the environment that kept out some of the distractions that pull you towards them? And most importantly, what were you thinking during that time? Now, be cautious around this one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes the thoughts that we have aren't necessarily adaptive. So some of you will be thinking, well, the last time I just sat down and got on with something, I was thinking, I've left this so late now, I just have to do it. I'm so lazy, but it's the deadline and I absolutely have to. Those aren't thoughts that we want to replicate as a healthy way to move forward to get ourselves to do tasks in a focused way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if those are the sorts of thoughts that have got you to do it in the past, that's fine. We don't have to criticize ourselves for that, but we don't want to replicate those thoughts. If, however, you can think of times when you've focused, where the thoughts you were having were things like, I'm really getting somewhere with this. I'll be so glad when this is done. done. I know exactly what I need to do next, and I'll just do this bit. If those were the thoughts you're having, let's think about how we can replicate those thoughts more often with other tasks that we're not naturally finding so engaging and so focus grabbing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, when you're distracted there in the moment, our job is to notice and to gently nudge ourselves back as quickly as we can. So nice, calm yep, but we're doing this thing. Yes. Oh, I'm on Twitter. Okay. Phone down. Yep. My room is messy, but I can tidy it later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm doing this thing. We nudge ourselves back. When we're in boss mode, we think about how we can increase the pull factors towards the things we want to do. Remind ourselves why we like them, remind ourselves why they're important and why we're capable. We reduce the push factor away from them. So we try and. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We try and stop it being unclear or unwieldy or unmanageable or unpleasant. How can we make them more attractive? And then the distractions, we think about how can we structure our time and our thoughts and our locations so that those distractions distracting. So that those distractions have much less pull towards them, and in fact, push us away. And remember, all of this is underpinned by compassion, that we are human beings who are going to get distracted forevermore, and that's okay. We can get a long way when we just learn to nudge ourselves back to the thing that we intend to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope you find that useful. Make sure you've signed up for my newsletter and let me know if there's other things you get distracted by that I haven't talked about today or other questions or comments that you have. I love to respond to listener suggestions. Thank you all so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> <div>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> . </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 20 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/what-to-do-when-you-get-distracted thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-35-what-to-do-if-you-feel-stuck <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach. And this is the third now in my series of episodes where we actually do a live coaching session here on the show. And so joining me today, I'm super excited to say is Danielle. It's so good to have you here. Let's start, tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: So, I would class myself as a third space professional. I work as an educational developer in a research intensive higher education institution and I am currently in my second year of a PhD around higher education research. It's non traditional in the way it's half of it is modules and the supports to get you up to speed and then the other half is doing the real thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So another one of my part time students that we have so much to learn from, I think, because doing a PhD part time is like the iron man of doing a PhD. So what's feeling challenging at the moment?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: So there's definitely quite a few things that are swirling around in my part time PhD universe. I think probably one of the foundational ones that I would like to unpick personally and I think really challenges quite a lot of us at different points is the whole thing of feeling stuck. And I think feeling stuck and labeling it as such feels slightly less me judging myself than calling it procrastination. But it's trying to make sense of that and where it can be helpful and obviously where it can be challenging and how I can sort of dampen down the challenging bits of, of those tendencies and you know, soar to the great heights.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. We love soaring to great heights. Perfect. That sounds like a great topic, particularly for a one off coaching session like this. We can have something that feels quite tangible where hopefully from this, you can go and do some things differently after we've had this conversation. Hopefully for everybody listening, they'll be able to take something quite tangible from it as well. So let's start, tell me a little bit more about what you mean by stuck.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: I think for me, stuckness is multifaceted. So it's partly around feeling a bit like an imposter. So the department I'm doing the PhD in is, is very much about higher education research, teaching, learning, assessment, et cetera, hence why I'm there and I'm really enjoying it. But it's something I've experienced before is you're feeling like the people that are tutoring you, your academic colleagues are just on such a higher level plane that sometimes it can really mess with your head. It's almost like those beginner feelings of being a first year undergraduate going, what the heck? And almost like that thinking, I want to know there's a right answer or a wrong answer. And intellectually, this is what I talk about and I believe that's obviously not how life works but I think there's, there can be always those points when you're feeling like, I just want to know there's a right way of doing it. And, you know. There's methods and methodologies and ontologies and epistemologies, and there's lots of ologies, and I feel sometimes that I can be like this duck that's in the pond that's just like, my legs can be going like this. And I'm not going anywhere, which is just a weird place to be because, you know, I, I could list off and I exhort all my students, I know what to say, right? But it's how do you make those incremental steps, I guess, to launching, And maybe, I think probably at this point, I've been doing a lot of like, reading, and not, I don't know what's wrong with me, it's just like, not much putting it down, because I know that once you put something down, you've then got something to build on, so it's, it's just, it's a bit weird, I'm in a bit of a weird limbo y state. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. A weird limbo y state. Yes. Cool. So, there's definitely stuff there, as you say, about feeling like there's a right answer and you're not maybe qualified to decide what the right answer is. But let's understand a little bit more of the specifics first. So how does this actually manifest? If I was seeing you work, or I could see inside your head day to day, how does this actually affect you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: So I think one thing would be, I would, and this is the most hilarious, thing to ever confess, so I. really don't like housework. And I have, at moments, gone and purposefully done housework because it meant that I wasn't just almost staring at my screen kind of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: So that, that was just a really interesting observation about my behavior. I thought, Ooh, it's obviously gotten to a point where I really need to physically walk away. There's that whole sort of hamster wheel kind of paddling furiously of trying to find, you know, the right theory or just the right kind of language and, you know, the whole frustration that can come out and it's knowing when to stop going down delicious rabbit holes because it's like fundamentally, I find everything really interesting, probably too interesting. And I think it's trying to work out how I can be more purposeful, um, probably less panicky. Um, and just feel confident to, go on those different steps that lead you to the end product. It's just that thing of feeling like you don't quite belong or you're broken or you're not normal and I think pretty sure that this is all normal and it's not just me being defective or anything like that, but it's, yeah, it's just, how do I get pulled out of that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. And, you know, I can sit here and tell you that I hear this all the time and that this is completely normal and that nothing that you've said in my mind means that you're defective or broken or not normal or any of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But I'm sure lots of people have told you that. Yeah. And, you know, you cognitively know that, but that's not the same thing as kind of consciously believing it inside.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: It's not, no. The knowing and the believing, sometimes they're just, they're wandering off in different directions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why is that a problem? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Because A, I need to progress. So, this is helping me make sense of who I am, where I am in the picture of higher education, what my positionality, what my belonging is, how I can be the best person. I think it also comes back to a student experience. I try and bottle all my student experiences to feed into my own practice and how can I make sense and move on will help me then be a better teacher and facilitator of learning. Um, so I think, I think those, those are some of the many myriads of reasons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One thing I'm seeing here, and tell me whether this feels true to you or not, is there's quite a lot of pressure here that not only do you feel that you don't know some of this stuff and you're not sure whether you're good enough and you're not sure whether you can make the right decisions to progress. And from that layer, there seems to be a layer where you're making that mean something about you. That because I'm not clear on these things, maybe I'm broken, maybe I'm defective. Maybe I'm not good enough. But then it seems like there's almost this other layer of and I need to overcome this because otherwise I won't be able to be a good PhD student, I won't be able to support other students in the future, I won't be a good professional. And that, that feels like a lot of pressure on this learning environment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah, and I think, I know there's a lot of external factors that I'm probably internalizing, not the least, working extensively in a, in a research intensive institution, and being able to be a ninja researcher, in whatever shape or form that is, is highly valued and, and knowing that I, it's just like, I'm not going to be that at the beginning, but it's almost like, what building blocks do I need to actually really believe that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: At what stage in your PhD do you think that should be cemented and clear? That you believe that you can do a PhD that you know how to make your decisions and so on, when should that be cemented. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: It's from an intellectual point of view, I probably know that it's not something potentially that would happen during it, it might, you know, happen once somebody says the magic words, congratulations, you're a doctor or it might not even happen till after, many years after. I'm not expecting to get a whole of anything. I'm actually wanting to build up sort of segments like an orange of confidence, because I know I can have a weird trait as well around assessment. Sometimes I can convince myself totally irrationally that I have failed and I can't read feedback for maybe a week or so after it's been released because I am totally convinced at some point that I am a failure. It's one of those little things that are sitting in the back of my mind. And then, like, I know it's all irrational, but it doesn't stop me sort of going through those motions, and so that's why, like, I'm wanting to sort of develop some sort of techniques to lift myself up to the next rung and banish, not wholly, I'm not expecting to banish some of these things entirely, but actually just making a bit of progression, so. Fingers crossed.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and definitely. So let's, let's get even more specific. What is one piece of work that you are either intending or currently working on at the moment that you feel a bit stuck on?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  So, I've got a module, which is looking at, you're given a smorgasbord, you know, as long as it hits the learning outcomes, you can basically look at anything you, you like, in regards to higher education. And I put together a little framework to support learning design. So, I, I've done a lot of the thinking. But what I hadn't found is a theory, support, and really concretize what I was trying to express, and then, then, then it kicked in of, you know, how can I tell people that, you know, live and breathe this, which is the irrational bit, you know. How do I know what a good thing looks like? And I mean, probably if you look at a transcript of what I'm saying, I, I know a lot of these things are irrational to think and there's lots of journal articles and this, that and the other. There's lots of published things out there that provide that structure and support and ideas of, you know, how you can put stuff together. It's just, I feel, just feel a bit like I'm in quicksand as well. Yeah, it's, it's those tensions and feeling like I've got enough brain space to really pick how things are because, you know, if you've got a very, over full professional life, you've got an over full personal life, you know, things that can't be dropped in either and then that then becomes some things that can be dropped. So, yeah. Yes, it's a, it's a challenge.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And I can see how the PhD work becomes the stuff that gets dropped, right? Cause you've got your job and obviously other people are relying on you, expecting you to do things and stuff. And then you've got your personal life where people are relying on you and where it feels fun and easy and you feel kind of comfortable in it . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And then you've got these. tasks that feel quite tenuous, feel like things that part of you believes you can't do, part of you believes that you should be able to do, and that just feel very unclear as to how to progress them. It's not a surprise that That those are the things that slip. You know, it's got lots of the characteristics of, you know, it's unclear, it, our thoughts about it induce emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Those of you watching YouTube will see that I sort of did a little wonky thing with my eyes there. That's because the, the fact you've got the work doesn't cause emotions, but the thoughts we have about the work can cause emotions, um, and it's tasks that induce emotions we don't like that we end up procrastinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so, all of this is, is really understandable. The bit that I think is really useful to think about, though, is how much extra pressure you're putting on yourself by telling yourself you're being irrational. Because I feel like there's this whole load of self judgment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Oh, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred percent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That this shouldn't be an issue.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: No, I'm, I'm like, I know I'm good at self judgement, I like a hundred percent know that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's something, when people have got really good self awareness and really good reflection skills like you do, we can almost use it as a stick to beat ourselves with. I know I shouldn't be thinking about it like this, but I am. I know cognitively I'm a beginner and that's okay, but I just don't believe it. And. I think the most useful place to start is there. That it's completely normal. Let's be totally compassionate about the fact that it's completely normal to cognitively think one thing and to believe something else, or at least not to be able to act on, at the moment, our cognitive beliefs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And so I would really encourage you to avoid words like irrational, because knowing something and feeling it as true for yourself Are just two completely different things. There's nothing irrational about the fact that that doesn't match up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah, it, it probably comes back to feeling that a lot of words and concepts are very negatively related. And, you know, the internalization of that. Because I've always thought, you know, there's probably very little that somebody in, in power or authority could say about me that I can't say better about myself in a sort of a beating oneself up way. point of view, but that's, I know it's, it's not healthy, but it's, it's feeling, how can you get out of probably that cycle of, of, of thinking? And I know it's not an instant thing either. So.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's definitely not an instant thing, but it starts from recognizing compassionately that it's, this is completely normal. The beating yourself up is completely normal. For all those of you listening who spend too much time beating yourself up, the first thing to do is to stop beating yourself up about beating yourself up because then we're just adding more judgment. Of course you beat yourself up. It's understandable. It's the way society trains us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's the way people with high expectations of themselves sort of learn to treat themselves. It's often how we've got stuff done in the past. Of course you beat yourself up. There's nothing wrong with that. Do we want to do it forever? No. Are we going to make it completely disappear? No, probably not. Can it feel an awful lot easier? Yeah, definitely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But it starts from accepting that this is all completely normal. And I think this will be true, there'll be people who are full time PhD students that have come straight from their masters who will be feeling exactly the same way. But this is particularly true for part time students. I see this time and time again. I have so many part time clients. And you're so used to being a relative expert in your day to day job that it's really dissonant to suddenly get used to and be okay with not knowing in this other place. And especially, it's an issue for mature students who come back to study full time. Definitely. But I find it's even more of an issue for people who have got this weird parallel world where in one world they're, they're senior and knowledgeable and they know what they're doing. And then in this other world, they're relative newbies and they're, they're really unsure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So nothing weird here, nothing broken. The other thing that I think is the error we make when we're thinking about this stuff is thinking that we need to resolve any of this in order to do things. Okay. Okay. So, often, and again, tell me if this feels true for you, often people think that I just need to get a bit more confident and then I'll be able to X. I just need to feel a bit less lost and then I'll be able to Y. Are these things you tell yourself?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: I, yes. I think they definitely come into play.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what I want us to have a ponder on is how can you do your next tasks whilst not feeling any more confident than you do at the moment? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: One of the ways could be just to put some stuff down. You know, it's something I'm happy to tell other people. I need to take my own advice and just put it down because putting something down that's a draft is nothing to be sniffed at. That's a great achievement. And if you don't have a draft, you certainly don't have a final product at any point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What prevents you from doing that at the moment? What, what thoughts, I'm going to say, what thoughts prevent you from doing that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Probably, um, anxiety around structure. Rightness. Um, but I, I do know, you know, I can go, there's plenty of stuff that's been published, you know, if I can find something on a similar theme, that will help me from a structural point of view. Maybe even just, you know, setting myself a task of writing 50 words or 100 words.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But what would you need to think in order to do? So what happens here, and I want you to, you're doing it, and everyone does it, and everyone you've ever spoken to will also do it, is we focus in the actions. What actions do I need to take? I just need to do a draft. I just need to set myself 50 words to do. And these are all true. Yeah, these are definitely the kind of actions you need to be taking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What I want to know is, we know that our actions are driven by our thoughts and our feelings. And at the moment, other people will have said to you, You just need to start. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Just do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But if you're thinking, I need to know what the structure should be, I don't know enough to decide on the structure, then of course you're not going to start. So, what thoughts and feelings might enable you to start a draft without knowing any more than you do at the moment about the structure and the rightness or anything else? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: I </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: think probably space, finding a, finding a space, actually telling myself I can do that, and  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can do what? What are you telling yourself that you can do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: I can do X or Y, whatever needs to start or to continue.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Do you believe that? Do you believe you can do it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Um, I think equally yes and no.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, then let's think of a different thought.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Because I, I think it's one of those things that I've observed about myself. I can also be very influenced by the emotionality of the rest of my life. And it's almost like, how do I get into this bubble? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And this is where we have to be really careful because sometimes we tell ourselves that there are certain preconditions on which we can do this task. I need space. I need a bubble. I need to be in the right mood. I need to be in the right frame of mind. I need to know what the structure is. I need to know that I'm right. And if I don't have those things, can't write it. Yeah. Sorry. And that, you know, all of those things are probably true to some extent. Would this be easier if you were in whatever the right frame of mind is? Yes. If you were on some beautiful retreat in a stately home and wandering the gardens while you think about it and returning to your leather desk overlooking the lake, yes, probably easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Would the same crap go on in your head that what you're saying is not good enough? Yes, probably. So some of these things might help, but we have to be really cautious about telling ourselves that they're prerequisites. Okay. You do not need space. You do not need to know what the right structure is. You don't need to know whether the argument you're making makes sense or not.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yep.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: To write something.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Mm hmm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, thoughts around, I'm gonna muddle this out, I'm gonna see where I'm at.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yep.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And figure it out from there. Or one I love that I use with clients a lot is I can pick. So when we're saying, I don't know what's right. That's true. That's probably true. You probably don't, but is there a specifically right answer? Probably not too. And it becomes this kind of, I'm a beginner. I don't know what's right. I picked that one. Yeah. Who knows? Let's go, kind of vibe. And it sounds a bit flippant and lighthearted, but in some ways I think that can really help. I'm a beginner here. I get to just make it up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: True. And You know, it's almost like being paralyzed because for choice if you're in front of those pick and mix sweets. And you're going, oh, I really like that. It's just like, yeah, it's just, take one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Actually, just pick. So I'm going to get, that is a great analogy. I was at a farmer's market thingy last weekend, and there was a fudge stall, and there were so many different options, and I ended up picking almost one of everything, which meant I, A, ended up with far more fudge than I intended to buy, and B, when I came to eat it, half of it was really disappointing. And what I should have done is gone, I like that flavor and that flavor, and just, And I didn't, I ended up with a mishmash bag, and it was yummy, don't get me wrong. I love all fudge, but I ended up with a mishmash bag of too many things because I refused to make a decision. And I think that is a great analogy to bring into this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And in reality, I don't need to know, you don't need to know, is it the perfect bag of fudge? Who knows? Does it exist? Yes, it does now because I picked it. And allowing yourself to not think not knowing is a problem is super important here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Not giving permission.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Permission? I'm not meant to know. This is meant to be a muddle. I'm meant to be figuring it out. There's not a right answer. And I'm not even meant to know what's the top four. I just get to pick something that I think I can make make sense. and then we see from there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah, that makes total sense.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How could that translate to some of the things that you've got to do at the moment? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: So what I had thought recently was What collectively do I care about enough to look at? In, in greater depth research from a theme point of view and see if I can bunch some themes together. Because it's, it is about, you know, wanting to find out as much about myself as it is about other people, about behaviors, about routes through higher education, teaching, learning. So it's. Yeah, I think going along that road would definitely be a start out of stuckness.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I could pick this. And this feels as good a reason as any. To pick that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yep.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now do be cautious. I'm going to give you one word of warn, warning, warning. That's dramatic. Don't mean warning. One word of like advice or whatever. Anyone who's doing research around stuff that they are deeply personally involved with and mean something about you and all of that as well. Just be really cautious. How often you, um, what's the word? Like, bring that into it, because you can, if you connect something to too many other things, it's like Lego. Have you ever tried to take Lego apart? If you connect it, especially the, the like movementy ones. I can't remember what that's called. They're all attached to so many different things that it's impossible. Sometimes when we have something that feels like it's about us and our development, our career and our sector and our beliefs and everything, it's incredibly hard just to move this one piece of assessment forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I would really encourage you to have that motivation in your broader background, in the back of your mind, but that's the job of your whole PhD. That's not that, every single bit of work you do does not have to, like, reveal something about the sector and your position in it and your humanity that underpins this or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Sometimes it's just a piece of coursework. It's just an essay. Let's just write the thing. So just be careful how many, because sometimes it can feel like that's motivating. Yeah. If I remember why I'm doing it, why this is so important, maybe I'll do it. But other times that's what makes the quicksand because this thing is now too important for you to get wrong and it's too important for you not to develop as a person and become a better thinker and, you know, a more reflective practitioner and blah, blah, blah, blah. It, it, it can just be a piece of work. And that's true all the way up to your thesis.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: True.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It can just be a piece of work that serves this purpose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah. Yeah. And, and sometimes just cutting losses. Because you've had that dialogue at, at, at length with yourself and just going, no, I will do this. It just needs to pass.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And some of that, it's not that that's unimportant, but you discuss, and I can't remember whether we discussed it since we've been recording or, for everyone listening, we have a little chat beforehand, or whether we, you mentioned it,, before that, but, some of this reflection and the kind of recognizing the change in your own abilities and your own beliefs and things like that only happens in retrospect. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So sometimes we are expecting to see our understanding change as we write the thing, we can only write it when we're sure we understand it and stuff. And sometimes, but what we need to recognize is sometimes it's not until. After you've done the thing that you look back and go, Oh my goodness, I know so much more now than I did then. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But you don't need to see it at the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: It's just frustrating.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's so frustrating. Wouldn't it be nice for it to be linear?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: The lightbulb should just be like flickering on and off going, Woohoo!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There's no lightbulb.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Darn it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We just get to look back later and go, Oh, how does that feel when you think about it like that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: It's certainly very helpful and sort of given me a bit of a, like a hook to hang on and just, just do something.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now just implies it's easy. I'm not saying it's easy. But it's okay just to have a go at this. It's okay to try and figure this out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Definitely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What's my best guess? You know, when you hear yourself saying, I just don't know. Okay. You don't know. Cool. What's your best guess? That's all we need. We just need your best guess. It doesn't have to be right, which probably doesn't exist anyway, just need a best guess. I read, I'll try and link to it in the show notes because I'm going to butcher it if I try and remember the exact place I found it, but I read some really interesting research describing the PhD as a liminal space where you're transitioning from being like a taught student through to being an independent researcher. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And the problem with that is that we inherently have to do things in a place where we feel uncertain. We have to do things in a place where it's unclear, because the research is unclear, because that's the problem with being on the cutting edge of research is you're doing things no one's done. So there's no answer here. And us as an individual is in this state of flux and change and we're becoming someone else. But in order to become them, you have to act while we're not them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Uh, the whole fake it till you make it, um.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, but that sound, that, yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: But better phrased.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I will. Well, so I'll, I I'll give a shout out. So, Jamie Pei, who has been a guest on the podcast before, has released a blog on Jo Van Every's. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: blog site. Jamie wrote this post about confidence. And one of the things she talks about in that is that we don't have to aim for, um, kind of a. flashy, sure of ourselves version of confidence and fake it till we make it because we don't have to fake it. We just can be okay with being unsure. So it's not about being a PhD student who doesn't know what you're doing, but pretending you know what you're doing. It's just being a PhD student who knows, okay. I'm not meant to know it all. I'm a PhD student. My job is to do the best I can with the stuff I've got and with the current ability I have. That's my only job. The rest of it comes when we look back and see how much we've developed. So we haven't got to fake anything. We haven't got to pretend that we're comfortable with this. We just need to get used to the fact that it does feel a little bit uncomfortable. Oh. That's not a problem. That's not a sign that something's gone wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's just the space you're in. But then actually, if we don't make that a problem, it feels a lot less uncomfortable. Because instead of being, this is so hard, it shouldn't be hard. I don't know what the right answers are. I should know what the right answers are. We're like, well, I don't know, we'll figure it out. I'm bright. I can do things. I'll choose something and we'll see if they like it. I'll make a good case and let's see what happens.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah. Cause that because maybe some of that whole thinking, um, comes from just feeling like you're enculturated to ignore the emotionality of learning, that any, any learning that's worth is at some point hard and challenging to make, you know, make it stick. And that whole narrative around, you know, perfection. And failure is seen in a, in a really negative light, but actually everybody fails at everything at some point or other. It's, it's really interesting how we can internalize things from society that make absolutely no sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And we can, we can recognize that. We can go, Oh, look at me, believing that and sort of notice it. We don't have to beat ourselves up because as you say, this stuff's pretty deeply ingrained in our society and the institutions that we're in. But just because it's in our heads, we just don't have to take it that seriously sometimes. Be like, oh, look at me trying to be perfect again. That's okay. Not going to be perfect because I'm a beginner. So let's go. What do I need to do? And I think that's something that people underestimate the power of, that just because you're thinking it, you don't have to hate yourself for thinking it, and you don't have to make it go away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can just go, yeah, I do think that, but we're doing this anyway, so might as well crack on. Let's give it a go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yes, I can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, of course you can. My final thing, you said you chose the phrase getting stuck as improvement on procrastination. And I like the logic that you're thinking about how you talk to yourself about this. I'm going to dispute the benefits of calling it stuck though.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Right.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because I think, and you can tell me whether your version of it feels different. To me at least, stuck implies a certain lack of control. That there's things holding you there. I like to frame stuck as I haven't yet made a decision. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because for me that feels less scary. I'm not stuck. Nothing's trapped me here. I haven't, I'm, you know, I'm not some princess in a fairy tale who's got like the ivy come up around my legs and pulling me into the depths. I'm not stuck. I just haven't picked what I'm focusing on yet. And it's not that you haven't found the theory. You haven't chosen it. Because there're theories, this piece of work you've got coming, you can wedge any old theory to fit it if you want to, you just haven't picked yet.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's okay because you've been telling yourself it needs to be perfect and it needs to be the exact right one and da da da. But when it comes down to it, you just haven't picked and you get to pick.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: I get to pick. Maybe that's, maybe that's the title for the episode. I get to pick.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You get to pick. You're not stuck. You get to pick and it's not that big a deal. It feels like it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it shouldn't feel like it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: No, there's lots of feelings.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: That's okay. But we just get to pick and do the next thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Thank you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: How does that feel?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah. Very useful. Very useful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What do you think your kind of main take homes from today would be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: I think about the permission to transition, the permission to choose to do to justify my choice is just as legitimate. I think it's, it's, and it's practicing as well. Just keep on practicing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm practicing making choices.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Practicing constructing an argument.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If it's not the right one this time, and maybe there was something better I could have picked.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, cool. We'll try that next time. We'll try a different one next. I'll use a different process to pick next time, but let's practice with this one and we thought about what would help you, you know, you came up with some great actions like just getting on and doing a draft, doing words or things like that. And we were talking about what thoughts might help. I think I'm practicing could be a great one here. I think sometimes, you know, you think about people who do music and art and things, and those of us who are just on the appreciation end of that, we see the end product, we see them do their orchestral piece, we see their thing hanging in a gallery and we don't see the hundreds of hours that they've practiced. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We don't see the piles and piles of canvases where they've done all their different practices. You know, I, I follow these people on Instagram who do all these beautiful things and you scroll and they're like, they've painted the same thing in slightly different colors, slightly different ways, hundreds and hundreds of times. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I wonder why mine aren't as good as them. Yet somehow as academics, and especially as PhD students, we think we should be able to sit down and write an article and it will look like a published article. And even as an experienced academic, we don't do that. So why beginner academics tell themselves they should be able to do that? It's like, let's just practice writing a paragraph.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just the weirdest thing to be thinking about oneself. And, you know, I think the more we can talk about The messiness of, especially transition, which obviously I'm feeling very transition y at the, at the minute, as you've articulated all of that stuff that goes on that nobody sees, but if you don't do the stuff, then you're never going to have that in baby masterpiece.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Exactly. We have to do our rough sketches, our failed attempts, our practices, our early versions, all of these things, in order to then get to something that is good enough to hang in a gallery and even that, you know, the gallery can be the school hall at the local fete or the gallery can be the national gallery. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's the same in science, right? Your PhD will sit on a shelf in a PhD. Some of it might go into a journal that's pretty good. Some of it might go into journal that's amazing. Who knows? We just, we need it to exist. And we get to practice a bunch on the way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Danielle: Practice, practice, practice, practice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Just going to practice. Amazing. And you talking about the, the sort of being open about the process, I think is so true. And that's why I really appreciate your willingness to be open and to discuss the challenges that you have. I empathize with them so much. I know my clients do. I know the listeners do. So thank you very much for coming on and thank you everyone for listening. And I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> . </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 13 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-35-what-to-do-if-you-feel-stuck thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-34-how-to-manage-your-tasks <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> I've tried a ridiculous number of to do list management systems, everything from bullet journals, online Kanban boards, the getting things done system, the total workday control system, productivity ninja, whiteboards, little different colored cards, like physical cards, notion, to do list, those, all those different apps that you can get, uh, planners, diaries, Literally, I think pretty much anything you can think of, I have tried, and almost every single system has lasted a period of time, that's not necessarily very long. All of them took quite a long time to set up, by the way, just so you know that bit too. Perfect procrastination fodder, because I felt like I was being productive, setting up a new system. Lasted a little while, then stopped. Now, some of this may be my undiagnosed ADHD. But a good portion of this is not understanding the principles of what makes a to do list system work for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today I'm going to share with you the three reasons that I think those different systems didn't work for me previously, and I'm going to share with you the system that currently has been working for me for about two years now so that you can see which bits of it you might like to steal for yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 34 of season two of the PhD life coach. And we are talking to do list systems. Anyone who claims that one particular system will solve your problems- I wouldn't trust them. I am going to share with you a specific version that works for me, but I'm not sharing it because I think you should all use my system. My system has some really specific nuances that make it work really well for me, but that might make you guys think I'm a little bit strange. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's fine, because the ultimate goal we're going for here is a to do list system that works for you and how you work, not just when you're at your best, but also at your more kind of typical normal person level of work and organization. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I said there were three reasons these systems hadn't worked for me in the past. The first is that I had too many things. So I was expecting to find a system that would enable me to fit in all the things I wanted to do when actually all the things I wanted to do was an unrealistic amount of stuff. And so one of the reasons that these systems failed was entirely on me. I wasn't reducing the amount of things that I was trying to fit in, I wasn't making those important decisions and prioritizations before I put them in the system. And then I was somehow blaming the system that it didn't all fit in my life and it didn't all get done. And I blamed myself for not having implemented the system properly. If that sounds familiar to you, don't worry, you're completely normal. Go back and have a look at some of my episodes on things like what to do when you've got too much to do, for example, and how to make decisions and prioritize, because I think those will really help you to narrow down some of the things you're trying to do. There is no system that is going to enable you to do an unrealistic amount of work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The thing I realized is that these systems failed. And for those of you who can't see me cause you're listening on podcasts, not on YouTube, I'm doing little Speechmark thingies failed around that is because I had really unrealistic expectations of what level of adherence I should have to the system. So I would get all set up in a new system, put all my tasks into a new app and bear in mind, I usually had hundreds of tasks. This was always quite a thing. I'd get all set up. I'd use it for a while. I would stop using it perfectly either using it somewhat or stopping using it altogether and then I would declare it a fail. I would immediately say this system doesn't work for me. I need to find a different system and then spend time researching that new system. And the problem is what I was doing then was I was writing it off before I'd even given it a chance. Whenever you use a new to do list system, you need to think about that beginning phase, that first couple of months as being a practice phase. You're trying this out. You are not trying it out to assess whether it works for you or not. You are practicing using it. And if you go about it from the perspective of practicing using it, then when you notice that that you haven't been using it, you nudge yourself back to starting using it again, rather than declaring it just some big fail and looking for a new system. So remember you are practicing, you're figuring out what works for you. You are optimizing it for your own tendencies, your own work style, and your own preferences. And if you can see it more like that, as a work in progress, rather than a kind of yes no test, is this system going to work, then it really changes the way you engage with the new system.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing, is the thing that I'm going to spend the bulk of this episode talking about, which is, I had no system for choosing which approach I was gonna take. I would just see a new way of doing it. I'd see a little YouTube about Notion Worksheets, or my friend would show me her beautiful bullet journals, and that would inspire me to be like her or somebody else would say, I do it like this, and I'd try that out. I had no system for deciding whether it's an appropriate system for me or not. So when we're thinking about something that's tailored for ourselves, it's really useful to figure out what are the principles that will make this a good system for me. Now, what I'm going to do today is talk you through some of the principles that I now look for in a system, and the principles that have led me to the system that I'm using at the moment, and I stand by these principles. I think that a good chunk of these principles will be useful for you as well. You will listen to them and go, Oh yeah, I need a system that does that. Yeah, I need a system that does that. There's other bits that are about my personal preferences that won't make sense for you. So as you're listening, I want you to evaluate each of the principles for yourself, see whether you want to adopt it as a principle that's relevant for you. And if you don't, what would you swap it for? What additional principles would you add to the ones that I use that would enable you to decide that a system could work for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So at the moment, I have eight principles, who knows if we'll make up more as we go along. But the first principle is it needs to be a system that I can implement imperfectly and still return to a state of order. I know I am never ever going to find a system that I stick to absolutely perfectly. I am not that person. You might be. Maybe you are somebody who loves being systematic and methodical and all of those things. And you know that when you've got a system you like, you will stick to it absolutely beautifully. I'm not that person. I get caught up in things, especially when I've got time urgent stuff happening, and I forget to use my systems. Now, I'm working on that myself. I'm working on that through my own coaching and things, but I have to be realistic about who I am, and plan for the real version of me rather than the version of me that I wish I was. And what that means is a key principle for me is that I have to be able to sort of return to it having not used it for a few days and be able to sort of get it sorted out relatively quickly and get back on track. Now I'm getting way better at allowing that gap to be less time. I used to let these things slide for ages and ages and then it would take quite a long time to get back. But I need a system where I can disengage with it for a while and still return to it and sort it out. For a while that led me to things like, non dated planners so that you could miss weeks and not miss pages. That worked quite well for me, but there was other things that that was lacking that I'll talk about in a second. But something that I could use inconsistently was really important. Kind of part of that is having a system for where I capture things that I need to do when I'm not using the system perfectly. So in an ideal world, you would have a single place that you capture your tasks and then you do them from there. That would be dead straightforward. Wouldn't that be lovely? That's not how my life works. I have bits of paper from my mom telling me to book my boiler service. Which I still haven't done yet. So I have those on bits of paper on my desk. I have bits that I've jotted down in my phone. I have emails that I've sent to myself, emails that other people have sent to me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have bits and pieces, you know, and I'm always trying to narrow down the sources of things. I mentioned at the beginning that I read a book called How To Be A Productivity Ninja. I actually really liked that system. Again, I had to modify things for myself. There were bits of it that are overly complex for me, but one of their key principles is being able to collect all the places. They have a cord model, C O R D, and the C is collect. And that's all about knowing where your tasks are coming from. And so I needed a system where the fact that I had tasks in a few different places was not insurmountable and that could be relatively easily reconciled back into my to do list system. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is that I need to be able to throw things over the horizon. Now, this is a phrase that I originally came across with the Total Workday Control system that I was introduced to, like, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, I guess. It's developed by Michael Linenberger. I had a proper old school book on it, which taught you all these little outlook tricks as to how you could manage your task systems. But this principle of throwing tasks over the horizon means capturing tasks that you do need to do, but that you don't need to do now, and having them there in a way that you can't see them until you need to action them. Often we end up with these huge long lists. This is a list of things that are really overwhelming. Whilst I've got a lot better at managing my thoughts, it's not the list that makes me overwhelmed, it's the thoughts I have about it. I also know that it's a lot easier to have those overwhelming thoughts when you've got a huge list in front of you and where half of it you don't even need to do yet, but you've just got to keep track of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so, with throwing things over the horizon, you have a system whereby you will find it when you need to do it, but that you can't see it every day when it's not what you need to be doing. This rules out an enormous number of systems. Most systems aren't set out to cope with that, especially most paper based ones, which I always have a natural affinity with, yet it's incredibly important for me. Again, part of that is that I also need a system that will show me if there's something that I've been kind of kicking down the road every time, where it's never quite come to the top of my to do list. I need a system that kind of flags that to me. So that I can then make a decision, right, we do this thing now so it's gone, or let's just decide we're not doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if we keep pushing it back, we might as well just decide we're not doing it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing is that I need to be able to sort my tasks by role. Now, this is something, if you haven't already listened to my podcast about role based time blocking, go back, listen to that. It's one of my favorites. I refer back to it a lot. And the idea there is that that you plan your week by giving yourself chunks of time to be in different roles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, those are now business related roles. So sometimes I'm in coach mode where I'm working with clients. Sometimes I'm in content creation mode when I'm doing things like this or writing my book or whatever it is. Other times I'm in finance mode, operations mode, CPD mode, for example, all different roles. If you're a PhD student, it might be writer, data analyzer, you know, laboratory demonstrator, whatever it is. If you're an academic, you will know you already have a ton of different roles. You're a PhD supervisor, you're a personal tutor, you're a lecturer, you're a researcher, you're a principal investigator manager person. And because I use that time system, so this morning I'm in content creation role before I switch to my coaching session at 10. And therefore I want to only be able to see my content creation tasks. I don't want to be looking at my to do list when I'm meant to be doing content creation work and going, oh, I do need to send those invoices. Those invoices I want to see when I'm in operations mode later. So I need to be able to sort by the role that that job is kind of part of. Again, this, in theory at least, rules out most paper based systems, although I'm going to tell you my workaround for that in a second. It also rules out quite a lot of other systems that don't have that sort of functionality. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fourth thing, and to be honest, this doesn't rule out any system, but this is about how we use it, is I need every step to be very specific and very actionable. So I need to be able to see exactly what I need to do. So I had on my list, which I'm just pulling up in front of me, I had on my list, write the next section of my book with what I've written and what I've done this morning is turn that into much more actionable steps. Add this section, look up that bit, write that section, much more specific what I need to do step by step. And any system that I use needs to have that ability to have multiple steps. Now what I tend to do, this isn't about the system, this is just the way I use systems, what I tend to do is things that are further away I put in in bigger categories, so write book or whatever, write workshop and then once it gets to the stage where I need to be thinking about it. So I've thrown it over the horizon saying plan workshop for June, then when it comes into my, okay, I actually need to be thinking about this now I'll break it down into much more specific steps as to what I need to do next, because there's nothing like looking at an item on a list and being like, yeah, I don't really know where to start with that and therefore going on to something different. As I say, you can do this with pretty much any task list. It's just that most of us don't. Most of us leave it quite generic to remind ourselves what we should be doing and forget to give ourselves that really specific instruction. The system I use at the moment works really well for that though. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fifth thing, and I talked about this in one of my very early podcasts, is I need to be able to see what I've done as well as what I've got to do. And this is mostly from a motivational perspective. Sometimes it's useful for my kind of audit thing of looking at what I've spent my time doing and all that kind of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Although I don't do time tracking in any systematic way, I love being able to see what I've done. And I talk about that in podcast seven or eight, something like that, about how motivating it can be to focus on what you've done in a day rather than what you haven't. And what that means is anything that involves deleting things or crossing them off doesn't really work for that unless they go somewhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was one of the reasons that a Kanban board was quite tempting for me because then you had things that were to do that you were doing and things that were done, and you kind of moved the ,card into the doing when you were focusing on it, and then you moved it on after that. I found that my systems were too complex for that to work for me, you might be able to get it to work for you. But it did have that thing where you could see the tasks that have gone into done. Many of the apps I tried using, it just deleted it when you'd done it, and that just didn't work for me at all. Remember, all the way through, make sure that you are assessing these principles against what you think. You may well, I really hope that some of them you're like, oh, that's just not important to me, I don't care. Or, god no, that'd be awful, I definitely don't want a system that does that. Or, actually, yeah, that's a good one that I hadn't thought of. I need that in my system. So make sure you're evaluating this for yourself all the way through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Principle six is not a crucial one that, but it's nice. Would rather it was free. I've got lots of things I like to spend my money on, and to do list management isn't really one of them. If I found a perfect system that was absolutely amazing and made my life easier, would I invest in it? Yeah. Absolutely. Have I spent inordinate amounts of money on pretty planners in my time? Yes, yes, I have. Do I want to keep doing that? No, I don't. So for me, being free, easily accessible was really important. It did mean that there were other principles that I would have loved to have in here that I had to let go. So one principle that I have let go, to put it out there for you guys, and you might not be willing to sacrifice this one, is that my system is a computer based system and I can only add tasks to it when I'm in my computer. What that means is if I'm on my phone or I'm somewhere else, then I email myself and then at some point I've got to reconcile it later. That's not ideal. I would love it if there was a way for me to add things directly into my to do list in the exact format that I want them to go in from my phone. There isn't in the way I do it at the moment. And some of these fancy apps will tell you that they do that. For me, there were too many other sacrifices. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So free is a principle that I would have been willing to sacrifice if the other things were better. Accessible from every device was something that I did sacrifice in this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number seven is I need it to not be distracting. So bullet journaling, there were big elements of it that I really liked. Some of the abilities to sort and things like that didn't work for me. But one of the other things was I got way too distracted googling pictures of beautiful bullet journals and buying washi tape and deciding to watercolour a page before I turned it into a spread or whatever it was. And I got too judgy when my bullet journal looked scruffy instead of beautiful. Now again, as usual, I could have managed my mind about that, I could have coached myself on it, but , you know what? There's a billion things for me to coach myself on, and sometimes you've just got to make it easier for yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I wanted a system that would look organized and functional, that I didn't even think about wanting to make pretty, and that would just work with me keeping me as focused on the bits that are actually important as possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the final thing, and this is one of the ones that's definitely probably a bit nuanced for me, but see what you think, is that I love the facility of it being digital. I love the way that that means that you can sort and hide and all those things that you can't really do on paper. But. I also engage with the to do list system if it's on paper, much better. So I decided I needed a system that did both. It means it's probably not the most efficient thing in the world, But it is highly effective. And those of you who listened to Jo Van Every's podcast a couple of weeks ago will have heard her talk about that difference between efficiency and effectiveness. The most important thing is finding something that works for you. Does it mean that I'm there on my printer on a Monday morning? Yes, it does. Does that make me like I'm living in the 90s? I don't care. The 90s were great. It works for me. It's inefficient in places, but it's a lot less inefficient than having a system that doesn't enable me to do the things that I want to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my principles. I wonder what your principles are. Have I missed any that you think are super important that I should be considering? Hopefully none that will make me want to change my system, but do let me know. You guys can always get in contact with me. If you're not already on my newsletter, please, please, please go to my website and sign up. So it's the phdlifecoach. com and you'll see the work with me. Join free online community. You can sign up for my newsletter. You'll get an email every week, which talks about this podcast, gives you some take home messages, gives you some activities and reflective questions and all that sort of stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it makes it much more likely you'll take things that you're hearing in this podcast and actually create actionable change in your life rather than just listening to me and then forgetting. So make sure you sign up for that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let me tell you about my actual system. And the good news is that I turned it into something that you can have too, if you would like. If you sign up to my newsletter, you will get sent a file that will give you my task management system. And that's because my task management system is an Excel file. I know, deeply unsexy. Like I say, we're in the nineties. It's happy days. But it works, it works really well. So the main sheet that I use, imagine just an Excel sheet, the main sheet that I use is called tasks. And this is where everything goes. I have a column that has week commencing. So what week am I going to start doing this thing? I just put the Monday date in. I don't get more specific than that. Then I have a column that is, what is the specific task? I have a category. column. So that's my roles. So what role does it fall under? I have a notes column where I can jot down anything that I need to remember, anything that's important. I also use that if there's a specific day I have to do it. And then I have status, which I was just done or not done. Essentially, you could put something more sophisticated in there, but that's all I do. So that's how it goes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everything I need to do that I'm aware of goes in there. So things that I need to do now, things that I need to go do in the future, everything goes in there. Everything is categorized by my role. I also put personal stuff in here too. Not all the things that I do with my partner, but just like little bits of, you know, book dentist, do guide leader training or whatever it is. Okay. And then what I've done is I've put filters in that top row. So what I can do is I can filter by week commencing, so I can only see the tasks that I need to do this week, and I can then filter by role to see what I need to do in each role. So what my system is, is that as things come up, I put them into that task. Those things might be coming in on my emails, they might just be from my ideas. So I put those in as tasks, and I put in an approximate date that I'm going to do it. If I'm not sure, or if it's a general idea for the future, I just put it in and put the week commencing as future. Okay. And then every now and again, I can filter by future, see all the future things and decide whether any of them are actually coming into, like, play, whether they're actually things I want to implement or not. If not, I can either leave them there, if I might do them at some point, or I delete them at that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I put it on this week, see what comes up. Is that a manageable amount of work when I look at this week? Fiddle with it if not, chuck some stuff to next week, put other stuff in the future if it's things that aren't urgent and that I don't want to do right now. And then what I can do is I can toggle by role. Now, all you normal people who might be able to work from digital systems, you could just use it like that. So that when you Go into operations mode. You just toggle to operations and you start working through those systems. I like paper and I like writing things down and I have a metal ruler, which I'm showing the people on, on YouTube. , I have a metal ruler that I like underlining things with and crossing things off. I don't know why I just like the tactileness of it. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to enable this to happen. So what I do on a Monday morning, I reconcile all of this. I chuck in anything that I haven't thought of. In theory, I do that on a Friday night. I rarely do it on a Friday night. Monday morning, sort it all out, get it down to what tasks I'm doing today. And then I just go through, I go to filter for coach tasks, print it out. Filter for operations tasks, print it out. Filter for program. So I'm running my Be Your Own Best Boss program at the moment for PhD students and postdocs. Filter for program. Print it out. And then I have a clipboard because again, clipboards make me feel really organized. So this is the bit you might not want to copy this part of it. This is me and my own strange brain. Clipboards make me feel organized. So those of you on YouTube can see I have a clipboard with about six or seven bits of paper on it, each of which is a different role and each of which only has three, four items on it, which suddenly makes it feel like, you know what? I can win this. I can do this. So I'm looking at my top sheet here, because it's what I've been working on at the moment is program. And I can see that one, two, three, four, five, six of the things are crossed off. There's two things left. One of which I've broken down into more specific tasks to make them smaller and more cross off able.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If there's things I think of during the week that I need to do, I just jot them in the right category. And then if at the end of the week I've done them, then I add them into my done list, which I'll tell you about in a second. And if I haven't done them, then they go into the to do list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it just means that the bits of stuff that I drop down onto bits of paper actually are vaguely organized. So that whole collect thing is a bit simplified by the fact that I try and add it onto these sheets. I can then see what I've crossed off, see what I haven't. I'm also a humongous fan, I should start having one of those like Amazon affiliate things, shouldn't I, of these tiny, they're tiny little highlighter strips. So for those of you who can't see, they're like post it notes, they're semi translucent, except they're How big's that? Five centimetres long, so probably something like that, and about half a centimetre wide, so they're super tiny, and you can use them to highlight things. So in the morning, I go through and I'll be like, right, I've got an hour for operations this afternoon, which are the one or two operations tasks I want to do, and I can highlight them with my little thingies. And because it's not a real highlighter, I can take it off after I've done it, which is amazing, because obviously, normal highlighters are there. It's highlighted whether you finished it or not. So I combine it up with that. And it works really, really well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then in theory what I do on a Friday, although in reality it's usually on a Monday morning when I'm getting myself together, is that at the end of the week, I go through and just cut out all the rows where it's things that I've done, and I paste them into the Done tab, which is exactly the same format, it's just the things that I've done. Okay, so I get rid of all of those and then I re reconcile ready for the next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that I've started doing is I have a tab called every week and a tab called every month where I have tasks that I want to do regularly. So they're in red and on a Monday I go and grab my every week tasks and pop them in the bottom of the to do list ready for me to deal with them like any other task and in the first week of any month I grab the first, the week of the tasks and put them in. And that just means that they sort of automatically get pasted in at the time that's appropriate to do them. And that's my system. And if you want that Excel file, you can join my newsletter mailing list and we will get it sent to you automatically through that. And you can let me know what you think. Like I say, This system may not work for you, especially the printing out, putting on a clipboard. I think that's a little nuanced for me, but hopefully it's an example of how you can personalize these things, how you can take things about yourself that are already true and are always going to be true and just make them so that you work with them rather than telling yourself you need to be different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What are your little nuances? What would make it a system that works for you? Mine's quite linear. I like jotting. If I'm trying to be creative, I use mind maps and things like that. But when I'm getting things done, I want it to be very linear, very structured. You may not like that. You might want to do a to do list system that's more organic and more kind of branching off in different directions and where you can see the connections between things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I get overwhelmed when I look at things like that because I can see all the connections and I want to do all of it. You might find that inspiring and interesting and engaging in a way that a linear one just doesn't fit your brain. That's fine. But figure out what your principles are and try and adapt a system so that those principles are true for you. And then we stick to it, even when we implement it imperfectly. I don't think I have ever had a week where I have done this system exactly as I intended it all the way through. Never. Literally. I don't think I ever have. But what I do know is that it's quick to get back on track. What I do know is the days where I do it more like I intend, work better. I do know that it plays to the best of me, not to the best of some imaginary person that's perfect. And you know what? It's good enough and it works. And I can't see myself changing it for a really long time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Final point. If you are listening to this on a Monday morning as it comes out, now is not the time to go and find a new system. Do not spend the first three hours on a Monday copying and pasting your tasks into my Excel file. Please. Don't do it. Planning can be procrastination if you do it at times which is not when you intend. I am sure you've got one big task that you've been putting off or that you're not looking forward to doing. Do that task. Do that now. And then think about this task management in an hour where you're a bit frazzled or where you're not going to do something more useful, maybe later on in the day, if that's a less constructive time for you. Please do not make this a reason to procrastinate a task that you have already been avoiding. Go do that first and then, final tip. When you do come to do your to do list, write that thing on it and then cross it off straight away. Because I'm also a big fan of making sure that if you do something that wasn't on your list, write it on your list, cross it off, and then at least it's in your done list as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that was useful for you. I was originally developing this for students on my program, where we're going to do this in loads more detail, figuring out exactly what their principles are and supporting them to both implement and then try out and kind of modify systems for themselves. But I thought that this sort of short overview would be really useful for you guys too. If you're wondering what this program is, it's a three month program called Be Your Own Best Boss. It's running at the moment, so I'm not taking registrations. I've got a wonderful cohort in it at the minute, but I am going to be running it again in September through December. In the program I can just give you a lot more hands on support for how to actually implement these things in your life. So if it's something that you want to make sure that you hear about as soon as it's available, again, make sure you're on my newsletter email list and you'll get all the information. Thank you all so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 06 May 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-34-how-to-manage-your-tasks thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-33-why-we-should-think-about-our-academic-careers-in-phases <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> &lt;iframe src="https://www.buzzsprout.com/1992545/14970257-2-33-why-we-should-think-of-our-careers-in-phases?client_source=small_player&amp;amp;iframe=true&amp;amp;referrer=https://www.buzzsprout.com/1992545/14970257-2-33-why-we-should-think-of-our-careers-in-phases.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-14970257&amp;amp;player=small" loading="lazy" width="100%" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="The PhD Life Coach, 2.33. Why we should think of our careers in phases"&gt; </iframe> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <b> In this episode, I mention a live webinar that I am running with Jo VanEvery on preparing for new academic leadership roles! If you're taking on a new role, like Head of Department, Research Centre Lead, or Director of Studies, and you're feeling a bit apprehensive, then this is the webinar for you! It's on May 16th at 3pm BST - find out more <a href="https://academicwritingstudio.co.uk/start-as-you-mean-to-go-on-webinar-jo-vanevery-vikki-wright/?mc_cid=0b657641a4&amp;mc_eid=UNIQID" target="_blank"> here </a> !  </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> <i> This weekend I've been visiting people that I've been friends with for 15, 20 something, even years. It's been amazing just catching up. Many of you will know I moved away from where I'd been living for a really, really long time to come home to the village that I grew up in. And I really miss these friends. And as we were chattering, as we were talking about health challenges and new babies and becoming a step mom and all this stuff, I realized that these were the same women who I had talked about dating challenges and building my career and all of that good stuff that we go through in our twenties and thirties. </i> <br/> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And it just really struck me how different our lives are now. Our friendship is the same. We don't see each other so much, but our friendship is still there. But the stage of life we're at is so very different. What has any of this got to do with academia? Well, I had already planned to do an episode about phases in academic life, and how recognising the phase that you're in can really help you to prioritise and accept and be intentional. And it just really struck me that often we recognize these phases in our personal lives, but not so much in our professional lives. So today, that is what we're going to think about. We're going to think about what we mean by phases, what decisions we can make once we know what phase we're in, and how it can change the way we think and feel about ourselves and our obligations and choices. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello, and welcome to episode 33 of season two of the PhD life coach. Virtually all my clients, no matter what stage of their academic career they're at, feel like they should be doing more than they are, that there are too many different things. They can't give themselves enough to all of them, and they struggle to prioritize. They have people above them saying, Oh, but you should be writing up, but you should be applying for jobs, but you should be doing outreach, but you should be networking, and then as you progress through academia, you should be developing new modules by now, you should be applying for independent grants by now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By now, you should be doing this. You should be doing your community contribution. You should be showing yourself as a leader, dah, dah, dah, dah. And it can become this enormous pressure that there's no way that all these things fit. And often, certainly I used to tell myself that they should be able to fit. And it was a comment about me and my abilities that meant that they weren't fitting. And that if everyone was telling me, this is what I should be doing, then presumably this is what everyone's doing. And so maybe there's something wrong with me. And as I went through, the more I realized that that's just not true, that there's nothing wrong with me, that's not what I mean. Obviously, there's lots wrong with me, but the fact that I couldn't fit everything in wasn't the things that were wrong. And you might feel like this too, you might feel like if only you were a little bit more organized, if only you could get that time management system running, everything would be fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But in reality, there is too much to do. And if you haven't listened to my episodes about what to do, if there's too much to do, do make sure you go back and check out that one after today's episode because it's a cracker. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The truth is, there's too many things and you can't do them all the time. And what I always get asked is, okay, I, I kind of accept that. I can see your point, you know, it's hard to internalize, but I take your point. But if that's the case, How do I decide? How do I decide what's enough? How do I decide which things to do? And how do I communicate that to other people?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Obviously, with anything, you can take decisions on a case by case basis. You can go, Oh, you know, weigh up the pros and cons of this one. Again, got an episode on how to make decisions. You can listen to that one. Um, and that's where you're doing it sort of one at a time, where you're thinking about the next decision, weighing up why you'd do it, whether you like your reasons, all that good stuff. But it still means you're making loads of decisions, and often, if we're not managing our minds carefully, we could be doubting those decisions, worrying what might have been if we'd chosen something else, if we'd chosen more, if we'd chosen less, if we'd chosen differently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At a wider kind of life level, I also see people on Twitter and my clients and colleagues talking about how they just don't see how it all fits. I don't understand how I'm meant to work and look after my children and exercise and plan healthy meals and look after my parents and see my friends and have a hobby and make a contribution to my community. It just doesn't fit. I don't understand how I'm meant to do all these things. And so even outside of work feeling like so much, we all have then this extra context that's all around it it can make it feel even more like you have a billion different roles and a billion different things to fit into your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so today, this idea of thinking about our lives in phases really helps simplify the process. So what do I mean by a phase? I define a phase as usually around three years in the academic world. So we have a phase where we're doing our undergraduate, maybe yours was four years, depending on what you did, all that stuff. We had a phase, maybe a shorter phase where you were doing a master's if you did one, and then your PhD, depending on where you're doing it in the world, is between three and six years, but if it's a six year one, you probably have a sort of taught component phase and a research component phase. And then as you start heading into academia, if you take on leadership roles, they're often for kind of three to four years, that sort of ballpark. Often you're expected to take the same module for that amount of time. And this isn't a hard and fast rule, you know, if phase feels like two years to you, happy days, we're just not talking about a few weeks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I'm really thinking about here is these sort of mid, mid length of time things. So we're not talking decades, but we're talking something more substantive than an academic year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to take a moment and think about how would you describe the phase of your life that you're in. And we're going to focus mostly on your academic life. But if there's key things that are really impacting you happening in your personal life as well, then do bring that in as well. So for me, I am in probably what I would call the middle of my business building phase. I went full time 18 months ago, having left my academic career at that stage. And things are good. Things are going really, really well, but I'm still in that kind of building phase. I'm also still in my kind of homemaking phase. We moved house at the same time into a new build. You've seen this room change color as the podcast goes on. Uh, the rest of my house is changing color too. And so those are my kind of two big phases at the moment. Before that I had a year of a recovery phase, I think it's fair to say, and three years of being head of education during the pandemic. So overseeing all the masters and undergraduate programs in my school. And that was a phase. My head of education phase was a phase. Okay. Have a think about what phase you're in. If you're a PhD student, you're in your PhD phase. But I want you to think, are you in the early bit? Are you in the mid bit? Are you in the late bit? Because all phases, when we think about them in sort of three years, can be broken up into that sort of early, mid and late. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And some of you will be right slap bang in the middle of a transition. So that year I was talking about recovery, I wasn't physically recovering. It was just an exhausting time being head of education during the pandemic. And then wound down some of my admin responsibilities and I knew I was leaving, so I was starting to ramp up the business stuff as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might be handed in your PhD, applying for jobs, waiting your viva in that kind of a transition. If you're an academic. What phase are you in at the moment? Are you in the sort of pre next promotion phase? Just starting to think about that? In the midst of it? Are you at the point where you're probably going to be applying? Are you about to take on a new big admin role? A leadership role of some sort?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are, by the way, Just to interject, make sure you check out the show notes because me and Jo Van Every, who was on the podcast last week. She's an academic writing coach. She's amazing. If you haven't listened to that yet. Make sure you do. It's a long one and it's really useful. We are doing a webinar 16th of May and it is for anyone who's taking on a new academic leadership role and you're feeling somewhere between excited and a bit scared. Worried about how it's going to affect your life, affect the rest of your work, and worried about how good a job you can do. If that's you, make sure you check out the show notes. I'll include all the details there. Or just contact me on any of my social medias or through my website and I will send you the details. It's £25, it's 90 minutes. Gonna be amazing. Please make sure you are there. Tell all your friends. Anyway, back to the podcast, as they say, um, make sure you've identified what phase of your life you are in at the moment and whether you're kind of early, mid or late in that phase. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What this allows is first of all, for us to recognize the phase we're in as transient. So to be totally honest with you. At the moment, I'm in a phase where I have got a ton of workshops coming up. Some of which I need to finish planning. You know, I know roughly what they need to cover. Have I made the handouts? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No. Are they exactly ready to go? No. Will they be amazing? Of course they will. But I've got a lot of that stuff to do. And sometimes it can just feel a little bit relentless. It was all stuff I chose and I'm super excited about it. And if you want to know more about the workshops, again, check out my website. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> , but it feels like a lot, but something that really helps me is reminding myself that I am in the business building phase. By the end of this academic year, I am going to have a whole program that exists. I'm going to have 12 or 14 different student facing workshops. I've got two different staff facing workshops and it's going to be all built. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And whilst next year will be a lot of recruiting people to come to those, there's going to be a lot less course writing next year. Recognizing it as a transient phase really helps that I know in a predictable amount of time there'll be less of this and more of that. I want you to think in your current phase, what is it entirely appropriate that there's more of? So if you are going into a new leadership role, for example, check out the webinar, if you're going into a new leadership role, Then it might be entirely appropriate that you're in the midst of leadership management stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That there is more meetings, more staff liaison, more of all that admin stuff. And it might feel like writing and research is on a bit more of a back burner. And that might be entirely appropriate for the phase that you're in. Again, we'll talk in the webinar about how you can balance that and make it feel like you're still making progress on the research, if that's what you want to do. PhD students out there, it is a transient phase. I know it feels like a really long time, but there will be a time when your PhD is in the past and you will be onto something different and remembering that can help keep things in proportion.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Recognizing your mini phase, so that like early, mid or late, can also help when we're sort of beating ourselves up a bit as well. So those of you who are PhD students, or if you've just started a leadership role, or you've just started a new academic job, and you know you're in the early bit of that phase, then suddenly we can be like, well, it's completely understandable that I don't know anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm a first year. I'm not meant to know stuff. Figuring out what I don't know and what I need to find out is part of my job. You're not meant to know what forms you fill in for what or where you get your laptop from or what the expectations are because you're in the early stage of a phase. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And whilst it's still disorienting, it's still, you know, it still doesn't necessarily feel great. Knowing that it's completely appropriate is really, really important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can't avoid the topic that there's an awful lot going on in academia at the moment with people under threat of redundancy and job insecurity and all of those things. And in that case, you're in a phase of uncertainty. You're in a phase of transition. And I'm not going to be as trite as to say that remembering it's just a phase makes it less scary, because I can only imagine how unsettling and frustrating and anger inducing many of the positions that you guys are in can be. But knowing that this is a phase, and knowing that therefore your job is to look after yourself through this phase can really, really help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another benefit of thinking in phases is that we can really intentionally decide what fits within this phase. It's really hard to say, I'm going to do less research, or I'm going to spend less time socializing with my friends, or I'm not going to train for that half marathon or whatever your thing is. If we think of that as a almost indefinite decision, then it can be really hard to stomach that because we want to do those things. And especially if you're anything like me, I want to do all the things but when we remember that actually we're in a phase and we're in a phase where we can make decisions based on that phase, then suddenly you're not saying that you're never going to socialize with your friends lots again. You're not saying that you're never going to do lots of research again. You're never going to train for that half marathon. You're saying that's not the phase I'm in right now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've seen people describe it as sort of burners on a cooker, um, where you can turn them up or down. I'm not such a fan of that analogy, because I don't know about you, but I can turn all the burners on my stove up, and it's absolutely fine. I like to think of it as more like little sliders, where if you move one up, another one goes down and so you're sort of balancing them out. You've got a finite amount of slide there, and you balance it between these different areas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm in a phase of my life where I'm spending more time with my family. I'm spending more time doing DIY. I'm spending more time doing course creation and I'm spending more time doing one to one clients than I ever have in my life and that's the phase I'm in. I'm in a phase where I'm doing or trying to do more walking. I'm in a phase where I'm currently not doing the circus that I love. that's something that I want to start building back into this phase, but I'm definitely not. When I was head of education, the one thing that I really stuck to outside of work was that I was training pretty sensibly and pretty regularly for my circus stuff. I used to aerial silks and perform and things. So I can recognize that I'm kind of dialing up the family dial. I'm dialing up the home dial, dialing up some of my business building dials and other things are dialing down. I see less of my friends at the moment than I used to because I'm further away from an awful lot of them. I do less strange events where I disappear off around the country to do adventure races and things like that. I went through a big phase where I was doing that. I do less of those things, but it's okay because I've got stuff at work that's intellectually curious for me and that's a fun challenge. I've got stuff that I'm doing that keeps me healthy, healthy enough. I've got stuff that, you know, keeps me connected to people that are important to me. And those are the things that I need in my life.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I want you to have a think about is what things are you dialing up at the moment? And in doing so, what things does that mean that you are rightfully dialing down? How could acknowledging what phase you're in help you to mindfully turn down some of those things? Now, I do want to refer you back to something that Jo said last week. Jo said that if something is a priority, it is the first thing that goes into your diary, not necessarily the thing that takes up the most time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, If you are dialing something down, it doesn't mean you don't do it. We're not talking about cutting everything out of your life because this is your single minded phase right now. If that works for you, happy days, go for it. But for most of us, we want to think what's a kind of minimum viable threshold. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm never going to dial down exercising to completely zero, because that's just not going to feel good. I'm not going to enjoy it. What that exercise looks like, whether it's mountain biking, whether it's aerial silks, whether it's paddleboarding, whether it's CrossFit, all the different things I've done over my life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What it is varies and how much I'm training and how intense it is varies, but there is a minimum amount that is what kind of keeps me happy and healthy. So with none of these things are we dialing stuff right now. Same with my family. When I was back in Birmingham I saw my family a lot less than I see them now. So family was kind of dialed down and friends was dialed up. Career building in a different way was dialed up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as you better understand what phase of your life you're in, you can decide what the minimum level is for these different sections of your life is. Some of them, you might turn them down to zero. You might say, you know what? I'm just not trying to do that right now. It's just not a thing. Others will be down, dialed at a ticking over kind of stage. Others will be dialed right up as your main focus. And once you've got this idea in your head and you kind of have an idea of what's turned up and what's turned down, it makes it so much easier to decide what you're going to take on in your life. You can decide, actually, that thing sounds amazing and you're right, it's a great opportunity but that's not the phase I'm in right now. Those of you, if you've just secured a big grant, first of all, congratulations, but you might now be, especially if you've only just secured the grant, you might be in like project doing phase. You've got to make the actual project happen. So when you're in the early got a grant stages, your big thing is getting that grant running, getting whatever approvals you need, getting everything up and sorted and starting to happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That might be a time when you turn down applying for more grants, because that's not the phase you're in. You're in the grant implementation phase. Now, if you're in the middle of a grant, and definitely if you're in late phase of a grant implementation phase, you'll certainly be starting to look and dial up the grant application phase so that you've got something to launch into when this one comes to a close. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And that's where knowing your phase, knowing the stage within that phase can help you to prioritize so that you're not having to judge every single individual thing on its absolute merits. You can sort of make rough rules of thumb as to I do say yes to things like this and I don't say yes to things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you also understand these different bits of your life and the purpose that they serve, you can also realize where you've got duplication. You know, maybe you're in a phase where you're just finishing up a grant, or you're coming towards the end of your PhD, and you're really in writing phase, there's lots of writing that needs doing. You might then get the offer of doing more writing. Somehow, senior PhD students often get asked, Oh, do you want to contribute to this as well? Do you want to contribute to that as well? Understanding the phase you're in, and understanding that writing is dialed up, for example, it then also enables you to be like, You know what? Have I got all the writing things I need? I, yeah, I think I do. So even within this phase, writing is dialed up, but it doesn't mean I say yes to everything to do with writing. I can go, you know what, I've got my thesis to write and that will do me. That's all I need right now. Or these two papers, you know, are up and coming. I've got a conference coming. That's sufficient. I don't need to say yes to this other co author opportunity. So understanding these little sliders and how we can move them can help us really make decisions about what to say yes to and what to pass on this time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing I've noticed when I think about my life this way is it enables me to be more grateful for the things that I do less frequently. So, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, I went back to Birmingham to visit a bunch of friends this weekend and I had a gorgeous time. It was so good to see them all catch up with everybody, meet brand new babies, uh, snuggle puppies and all sorts of good stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it would be really easy for me to get really sad about the fact that I can't do that more. And I do feel a bit sad about it because I miss them and I love my friends that live up there and I miss the phase of life we were in when we had all the time in the world for each other, when we were all single and we were each other's social life and that was what we were doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  But, because I recognise the phase of my life that I'm in, I haven't come home feeling sad. I've come home feeling incredibly grateful that I have those people in my life. And incredibly grateful that even in this phase, I can find little bits of time to spend with them. I also find myself much less beating myself up that I don't see them more often. So often when we're in a phase where we're really busy with thing A and thing B, we then notice thing C and beat ourselves up that we're not spending more time on it. So those of you in leadership roles beating yourself up for not doing more writing. People writing up their PhD, beating themselves up for not seeing their family more. Whatever stage it is, there are things that we have dialed down. And when we've dialed them down by accident or by necessity, but not in a kind of positive, intentional way, we often then beat ourselves up for it. And not only does that not feel good, it also means that you often don't enjoy the thing you're doing when you do it, on the odd occasion that you do it. I could have spent all weekend being miserable that I'm not doing that anymore. But I love the phase I'm in and I'm super grateful for the phase I'm in. And I recognize that when I was in that phase, A, I would have given anything to have met my Mr. Right and I, there, I was beating myself up, that I didn't see more of my family. So, when you don't recognize the phases as phases, then it's really easy to get cross about the fact that things aren't different. If you can see that this is the phase I'm in, it means I've got less of that, but I'm going to enjoy and adore every moment of that that I get, then it can make everything so much more pleasurable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that can even be with your work, you know. You can be somebody who is in the midst of a massive management job, but maybe you get one hour a week to do some writing. And instead of it being like, Oh my God, I should do more than this. I should, you know, I can't believe this is all I have time for today. I'm going to enjoy this hour where I just get to think about my academic pursuits. If you find it hard to hold that in your diary, and you find yourself giving out for other meetings and things, Do check out Jo Van Every's academic writing studio. She has a membership program where you can join and they have meeting with your writing where you meet on zoom and kind of commit to doing writing during that slot. So do make sure you check that out. It's really good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've also found that by recognizing the phase you're in, it's easier to be more accepting of the downsides of a phase. Because any phase, no matter how positive, has downsides to it. I spend less time with lots of other people than I used to. And I do miss that. I recently went to a UKCGE conference about doctoral student education. It was amazing. Shout out to anybody I met there. And I loved it. And it really reminded me of all the time where I spent, I had years where I would go to loads of conferences and meet loads of people and have this really big active network. And I loved it. And one of the downsides of my current phase is that I spend much less time doing those things that I really enjoy, but because I recognize it as a phase, it makes me more appreciative of the, the upsides of that phase. So every time I think, Oh, I do really miss swanning around at conferences, talking to people, learning new things, having a good time. I also think, yeah. But because you're in your business building phase and your home building phase, you work all day with a gorgeous Labrador asleep next to you, who you get to snuggle whenever you want. And I reckon, you know, I'm in the midst of Marley phase and that's amazing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So by knowing what phase I'm in, I can kind of accept the downsides because they're kind of allowable downsides that enable the phase to thrive and to exist as a phase. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing with thinking about your career in phases is that it enables you to career plan a bit more too. So if you're finding at the moment, especially if you're in mid to late, sort of, section of your phase, you can start thinking about the next phase. Now, not getting ahead of yourself, not ruining this phase by spending too much time dreaming about the next phase, but, if you're finding that there's particular things that you really miss or that you wish you have more of, you can look ahead to how you can have more of those in the next phase. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I definitely want to make sure that I can create a calendar and a cash flow that means that I can go to conferences like the UKCGE one more often. So that's the UK Council for Graduate Education. I loved meeting all the people that were involved in doctoral student support and learning about the research that was going on. It was brilliant. So I know that at the moment, that's going to be a relatively minimal part of my career, but I hope in a year, 18 months time, when the course preparation stuff settled down, where other things have sort of shifted around a little bit in my business model, that I'll be able to build more of that in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the things I can do is I can reflect, okay, as I move into the next, you know, business growth stage or the business kind of maintenance stage, depending on how things are at, I know I want to make sure I have time for that sort of CPD and that sort of networking. So, we can start thinking, okay, not now, but then. Okay? As you're going through your PhD, you might be right in the midst of a writing phase, and you might be really wishing that you could do more science communication. Well, that's amazing, because that means that you can think about, right, I want to make sure that when I start applying for jobs, I apply for jobs that have that sort of component as a possibility within it, or you might think right at the moment, I'm in the midst of my end of PhD phase or my postdoc phase, lots of writing, lots of data analysis, all that stuff. But actually, I'm really excited about the possibility of developing my teaching in the next phase. And so there you want to make sure that when you're applying for jobs, have you got access to that sort of training? Are they going to give you relief from other responsibilities so that you can do that training? We can use it to start planning what happens  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Finally, and I think this is the biggest thing for me in terms of thinking about my life and phases, is when I think of my life and phases, and I know that some things are dialed up and some things are dialed down, what I can enjoy more than anything is the sense of space that brings. The sense of calm and clarity that comes from not thinking that you're meant to be doing it all. Those of you, I have parents who listen to this, those of you who are in the small people phase of your life. Having just visited people who have very small people in their life. When you've got small people in your life, that's a particular phase. There are some things you are not going to be doing. And that's okay. So, just being able to look at my life and go, You know what? It's, it's got about the right amount of stuff in it. It's hugely freeing because I'm not telling myself I should be able to do all the other things too. I'm not telling myself that I'm in some way flawed because I can't do all of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to imagine what if you could name the phase you're in. Decide whether you're early, mid, late phase of that. Or maybe you're right on that crux of a transition. Decide what you're dialing up. What you're dialing down, decide how to love the things that you're dialing up and the space that you've got to enjoy them, decide that on the odd occasion, you're able to fit in the other things that you really enjoy them instead of beating yourself up for not doing them more, that you've identified kind of minimum levels, things that are just sustainable, how you can then sit back and go, this is about the right amount of stuff. And I know in academia, that can feel like it's never possible. Maybe we'll never sit there and go, this is the right amount of stuff. But maybe we'll sit there and go, okay, this is a lot. But I can just about manage it if I do some of it badly and I do some of it but a bit late, we can muddle through rather than it being insurmountable and never ending.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Being able to see where you're at so that you can give yourself compassion. If you're at the beginning of a phase where you don't know anything and where you can be patient with yourself if in the middle of a phase you're kind of bored of it but you're not ready to move on just yet or when you're at the end of a phase and you're either terrified of it finishing or you can't wait for it to finish, we can be patient with all of those things because we recognize that we're at a particular stage of a particular phase and it's completely normal and it's completely okay to be feeling like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're in the midst of a transition, identifying it as such, I am in a transition, I am in a period of uncertainty right now, and even if it doesn't take away any of the pain and any of the frustration, any of the difficulties you're in, knowing that it's okay that you're finding that hard. It's okay that you're not holding it together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I have clients who are being deeply affected by things that are happening in the world, whether it's within the higher education sector or the kind of political, socio political world more generally. And they're being deeply affected by that. And sometimes the best coaching and the best thing you can hear is that it's okay that you're finding that hard and it's okay that that means that you're not doing everything else perfectly or to the level that you're at. Some of you will be menopausal and you'll be in that phase of trying to be an academic or a PhD student while in the midst of a menopause. Some of you will have experienced bereavements and you'll be in that phase of managing that or you're caring for elderly parents while also trying to apply for promotion. Whatever combo of professional and personal phase that you are in right now, recognizing it as that phase, hopefully can help you to plan, help you to prioritize and figure out how best to look after yourself during this phase. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If there is anything I can do to support with that, please do let me know. You can always send me messages on my various social media or contact me on my email, which is vikki@wemburycoaching. com. You can find it on my website. If you're not already signed up for my newsletter. Please make sure you are. I send out little summaries of the podcast so you can remember stuff. you get activities and reflection questions. You're the first to know about any exciting activities. I'll be sending more information about the webinar for upcoming leaders, so make sure you sign up if you're potentially interested in that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am here to support you, whether you are a first year PhD student entering the beginning of that phase through to people who are experiencing the transition of redundancy or retirement or anything else that is bothering you. Please let me know what you think of this episode. I would love to hear what phase you're in. If there are particular topics that you want me to cover in the future, do let me know. I love to do, listener requested episodes. I hope this has been useful. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 29 Apr 2024 09:49:08 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-33-why-we-should-think-about-our-academic-careers-in-phases thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-32-how-to-plan-your-academic-writing-special-episode-with-guest-jo-vanevery <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Before this episode starts, I want to share some exciting news. Today's episode is with Jo VanEvery, who is an expert in academic writing, and we are going to be talking about some stuff that is relevant to all of you about planning your writing. But we also have an announcement to make, which is that Jo and I are going to be running a workshop in the middle of May, 16th of May, for any academic who is taking on a new leadership role. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> If that's not you, don't worry, keep listening because you might be able to share this with somebody it is relevant for. The workshop is going to focus on getting ready to start any of these major administrative roles. So anybody taking on head of department, head of education, director of a research centre, director of postgraduate studies, whatever it might be. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Anyone who's starting one of those roles, this webinar will help you to get ready, to figure out what your strengths are and how you bring them. That's the part I'm providing. And how and when you want research and writing to fit within this new administrative load that you have. That's the bit that Jo's providing. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> If you think this might be useful for you, make sure you check the show notes, or if you're on my email list, you're going to get this anyway. And you will find out exactly how to sign up. It's a 90 minute webinar, it's 25, it's going to be amazing. Make sure you're there.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> <a href="https://academicwritingstudio.co.uk/start-as-you-mean-to-go-on-webinar-jo-vanevery-vikki-wright/?mc_cid=0b657641a4&amp;mc_eid=UNIQID" target="_blank"> SIGN UP HERE! </a> </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> If you're a PhD student or you're an academic who isn't in that position at the moment, who can you send this to? Who do you know that might find this useful? Is your supervisor taking on a new academic role? Do you have colleagues in this position? Please do share this with them so that we can get this out to as many people as possible. As I say, the episode today is more generally for everybody, all about planning your academic writing, so I hope you will find that useful too.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT GETTING SUPPORT FROM JO, CHECK OUT <a href="https://jovanevery.co.uk/" target="_blank"> WWW.JOVANEVERY.CO.UK </a> . </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 32 of Series 2 of the PhD Life Coach, and we have another guest with us this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am very excited to introduce Jo VanEvery, who is going to be helping us think about how to plan our academic writing. So, hi Jo!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Hello, Vikki. Nice to be here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's fantastic to have you here. So tell everyone a little bit about yourself, and then we will get thinking about all different aspects of planning your academic writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Right. Yeah. So, I do individual coaching, and I also have a group program called the Academic Writing Studio, which started out with me, running some co working sessions for academic writers. Over 10 years ago I started that. Uh, so it's been going for longer than 10 years and it's now become more than that and we'll probably talk about that a little bit as we go along. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Uh, so, I do some group coaching in there. I do some planning classes and I generally help people, find time for their writing and get their writing done. I started that because previously I had been helping Canadian social science and humanities academics with grant applications to the main government funding agency there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I found that especially people from smaller universities with heavier teaching loads were often very frustrated at the fact that your ability to publish from the research you do goes into the kind of adjudication process. And they're like, well, I'm always at a disadvantage because I have this higher teaching load. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just can't publish enough. There's no time for writing. There's no time for writing in term time. So that was kind of how I started a meeting with your writing, which is the coworking session I run. And it kind of just expanded from there. Uh, so I've got over 10 years experience of helping academics basically juggle their writing with other things that they do, so that they can publish and do the things they really want and need to do as academics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I always like to get to know our guests a little bit. So what do you do when you're not helping other people write?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Oh, so, um, I, I am a knitter, and actually that's part of the origin story of having an online business because I, in about 2003, I joined like an email list. For knitters and I met somebody there that got me blogging from about 2005 and so I used to blog about knitting and then through the blogging , I ended up meeting some other people doing online business, people that were involved with WordPress and that kind of thing. And it just gave me this like, Oh, I could do things this way I could write. And so it just, that was sort of part of how I expanded. So I'm a knitter. I quilt. I do, uh, dressmaking, like sewing. I made this, and I sing in a choir.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love it. And I love the crossover there. I think so often people can see their work life and their private life as just completely distinct. And I always love hearing when people have had experiences in their private life that have somehow sort of changed directions for them in their careers and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: That's really neat. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Some of the people I met on that, Nidhi, I mean, they're, I'm still really good friends with them, you know. Uh, 20 years later. And I can see direct links into, you know, what I'm doing now and some of the other choices that we've made. So it's been, it's been good. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So I guess a good place to start, just so that everyone's clear on the sorts of things that we're going to talk about today is what do you mean by planning your academic writing? Because when we've chatted about this before, there's sort of been different elements to that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Right. So for me. There's two main pieces to planning your academic writing, and I see a lot of people talking about wanting to be able to plan their writing project, right? So they're planning a project and they're trying to estimate how long it's going to take. And what the different phases of writing something are so that they can kind of think about like, when am I going to be finished? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right? Or am I going fast enough or slow enough? There's a lot of concerns about speed or efficiency or that kind of thing, but I start from a different place, which is planning your time. And as I said in the introduction, this started because I was working with people who were saying, but I can't write and publish more because I don't have time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My teaching load's too high, or, you know, my workload is too high. And that was, that was 10, 15 years ago. And even, you know, when I was working as an academic and I left academia in 2002, so I was, from 94 to 2002, I was full-time , a sociologist. Uh, and I remember even then, people, you know, that I worked with saying, you know, you couldn't do the job in five days and whatever, and then 20 years since then, it's only gotten worse. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I think it's one thing to say, well, looking at this project in isolation, here's what I would do, and here's how long it would take, and here's when I would finish. And then, but the more important thing is, how much time do you actually have to spend on your writing? And if your writing is important to you, for any reason, it could be personally important to you as, you know, this is part of the reason I wanted to do this kind of work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can also just be, I have to do this, or I'm not going to have this type of work anymore, or some combination of those things. But if it's important to you, then you do have to find a way to protect time to do it. And if you're not protecting time to do it, it doesn't matter how many plans you make about the project, it's not, it's not gonna work. I mean, there are also some issues about how we plan the project, but my focus, you know, for a lot of my work has been on how we find the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And as you know, the listeners to this podcast go all the way from beginning PhD students all the way through to senior professors. So often the reasons they think they haven't got time are different from each other, but I hear the same stories amongst my clients. I hear the same thing about not having time, either that their deadlines are too tight and that even though they're working on this full time, there's no way they can get it done by X with PhD students all the way through to, I can't start writing until the summer because you know, when we're in the academic year, it's there's just too much of it from my sort of faculty and academic clients. So I see, I hear this across the board. So I think this is going to be super useful for lots of people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: And I do as well, like I have people across, I mean, maybe not so much beginning PhD students, but there's definitely PhD students. I have had a couple times master's students usually at the point where they're writing up their master's dissertation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But all the way through to full professors I have someone in my group right now is working on her 7th academic book. So it's like, you know, we've got, we've got people at all levels stages of career. I remember one person who I talked to. The first time she came to my, one of my planning classes, which are about planning your time and your next semester, your next three months afterwards. She said to me, she said, it just, as soon as I heard other people talk about what was going on for them, I just felt relieved that it isn't just me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right. Because I think it's so easy to feel like, oh, I should be able to do this. And to imagine that other people are managing it better and somehow there's something wrong with you personally, and there's not, there's probably not, there's not, there's nothing wrong with you, you're actually trying to do something incredibly difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other part of it is, and this came up in the class I ran last week, is that sometimes, and this can happen, especially when you're early in your career, like a PhD student talking to your supervisor or an early career scholar and thinking, talking to some of your senior colleagues, is that sometimes you get directly told that you have to do things a particular way, right? And that you just need to be working more intensely or like people will just tell you, well, you just can't do that other thing. Or, you know, you just can't write during term time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it sounds like, oh, this person is further advanced than I am and they know what they're doing and they're telling me the way that I have to proceed in order to be successful and I'm struggling to do that. And if you can't do it the way they do it, you're not broken either. It just might be you need another way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, definitely. So let's start then with, I guess, planning at a kind of looking ahead and planning what you might get done this term or this year. What timescale do you recommend people start with and how do they go about it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: So the longer the timescale, the more likely that you're not going to achieve what you set out to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because, you know, just like, with, forecasting the weather, right? The further away it is, the more likely it is to be wrong because we just can't predict everything that's going to happen and we don't have control. So that the first thing I want to say is that the purpose of a plan is to inspire action, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's to help you get started, help you like, be able to take action and do the things you want to do. And, and then the other purpose of a plan is to make sure that the things that are important to you are in that action plan that you're taking action on the important things, and especially when you're juggling what is objectively an unreasonable workload, which the vast majority of academics are currently doing, planning as a practice is a way of saying, if I can't do all of this, I'm going to be very deliberate about which bits I don't do and which bits I do do, right. And that's really frightening and it's what makes it hard, but the purpose of a plan is not to be like, well, I have to do all of this, time is finite, how do I jam all this in here and then the whole thing falls apart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The purpose of a plan is also not to give you some sort of whip to beat yourself with at the end of whatever time period you chose for not achieving what you planned. Um, it's perfectly normal not to be able to predict exactly what you can get done or to have ended up doing other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other stuff comes up. Things will come up that you had not planned for, but you do have to address. And sometimes that's something as simple as, you know, you'll get ill and not be able to work, or, you know, somebody might give you an urgent thing you have to do, and you have to rearrange your plans for that, or, uh, you know, the writing won't go the way you expect it, and it'll just take longer to do this particular portion of the project than you thought, and that's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The point is the plan helps you get started. So in the studio, I do an annual, like, planning your year class to give a big overview of what you'd like to do and what's going on at different points of the year and to really help people kind of look at what their year looks like, because we all have a slightly different 1 and where, you know, what's going to be an issue at different points of the year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's partly about setting big kind of big picture goals, but also just really getting a sense of what really realistically might be possible. And then we plan on a quarterly basis, so every 3 months. We, I usually we start our year on the 1st of July, and there's a couple reasons for that. One is it's actually 6 months exactly later than the normal calendar beginning of the year, but for most people in North America, Europe, you know, it's not, it doesn't make sense to kind of think about a full year starting in January because you're right in the middle of your institutional year, it doesn't really feel like the beginning and I discourage you from starting it when the kind of students come back, because then it's really driven by what other people need you to do. Whereas July, it's kind of the part of the year where you personally have the most control over your time and what you allocate it to and where you have the least number of scheduled things, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can, if you like writing for full days, it's a time of year when you can probably do that. At least some of the time, right? So we start in July and we think, you know, 3 months at a time, but each of those 3 month chunks, we look at things like, where are the transitions, right? At what point in here? Because transitions take energy and extra cognitive capacity just to move from 1 thing to the other.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where are the crunch points? Where are the places in this quarter where it's going to be really hard to juggle all the things because there's just too much happening and it has hard deadlines, right? Where are the places, on the contrary, that could be more spacious? Where you have more possibility instead of thinking, oh, it's crunch, crunch, crunch all the time. Where could I make more space? How would I do that? So we kind of do that. And then with my newsletter, I send out some prompts every month. So that you can review, because like I said, planning is to help you take action and to make sure the important stuff's getting done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so it's perfectly normal to have to revise your plans based on what's actually happening, based on the new information you have all of that kind of thing. So that's kind of where we go. But then it's like, you just need to get through week to week. What am I doing this week? What am I going to do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right. And you get to start fresh. You don't have to roll everything over. Sometimes it's like, okay, I didn't get to that. But now there's some new urgent thing that's come in. So I can't just add this thing I didn't do last weekend. I might have to take a pause on that and bring it back later.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think this is so, so important for people to hear because I have so many clients, and in fact, some of them have been on the podcast in the past. So many clients who avoid planning because they don't trust that they will stick to their plan. And so they see it as a waste of time. They spend their time making this plan, then they don't stick to it. And they quite rapidly decide they haven't stuck to it, whatever that means, and I know I fell foul of this in the past. I'm, I'm getting better now. You know, we decide that it, it hasn't worked and then it solely becomes one more thing we've messed up rather than recognizing that actually that's all part of the process. That realizing that once again, you may be put in a bit too much is fine and we get to readjust and then think about that when we do our next big plan. But this idea that a plan isn't there to be followed perfectly, I just think, frees us up to be a lot more kind of open and willing to try different approaches to planning.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Yeah. So the key thing for me is that your plan is partly about identifying priorities, right? Like what are the important things? If you objectively have too much to do instead of just... like, I like, this is why I like this metaphor of juggling. Um, because, you know, balance we use balance a lot and people talk about work life balance and then they talk about the balance within their work between research and teaching. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And part of the problem is balance gives you this kind of mental image of a seesaw, teeter totter, whatever you call it, where there's like two ends, and you're just trying to balance them. So the first problem with that is you've got more than two things you're trying to juggle, right? The second thing is balance doesn't necessarily mean, like, so many people go from there and that mental image to thinking, Oh, I have to spend as much time on each of these things, or they are all equally important. And they, they might not be. And you, so like, like your academic writing, if you think your academic writing is important, and say you're kind of mid career, you're teaching a couple of classes, you're on a couple of committees, you've got, you know, personal tutees or a couple of PhD students you're supervising, you've got a lot going on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To say that writing is important, you might still be like, well, there's no way that I can give it a lot of time. And so then you can decide either it's not important, or you can be like, well, if I can't give it lots of time, then it just sort of disappears. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so my approach is really to say, well, if it's a priority, and I actually looked this up in the dictionary once. One of the definitions of priority is that you allocate time and resources to it before you allocate time to other things. So even if you don't have a lot of time for writing, one of the principles that we use is, we're going to allocate time to writing first, even if it's only coming to Meeting With Your Writing once a week. And I have definitely members, there's like one member who writing is very important to her, she has said out loud to the group, I wish I could give more time to this than I can, but I work in an institution where I teach four classes each semester. I'm very busy, but I can make time to come to Meeting With Your Writing, which is my virtual co writing group, once a week, and that makes a difference, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the juggling part really as a metaphor is, you know, most jugglers, a lot of times they're juggling three things. Now they've got a whole bag of tricks, right? And they will switch which things they're juggling,. And sometimes they'll be able to do four, and sometimes they won't. And sometimes it's beanbags, and sometimes it's breakables, and sometimes it's flaming torches. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so it kind of is a, it's a much richer metaphor that helps you. And so one of the things I think about planning is that you're kind of deciding. Which things are you juggling and which things are you leaving in the box for later? And if things are going to drop instead of trying to juggle too many things and then have just random balls drop, and roll under the sofa where you forget about them and you don't see them for months, right? That you actually are like, I've got too many things. I need to put one of these down. And then you pick which one, right? That's different than, you know, something is going to drop, but you get to decide.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And that deciding in advance can be uncomfortable. I think it's why we sometimes put off doing that. You know, my planning process back in the day, before I came across all this coaching stuff, my planning process was always, I have too many things, so how can I make a schedule where these things fit? And inevitably that meant starting too early, not having any breaks, kind of, you know, not allocating enough time to anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's why I never then stuck to it. I always used to think I was bad at sticking to plans. Turns out I'm not bad at sticking to plans. Turns out I just spent a lot of years making stupid plans. Because I never wanted to concede the point that I couldn't do them all. And so I sort of made that future Vikki's problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like, okay, this time we will do them all. We will. Of course we never could because it was an unreasonable amount of stuff. And I think one of my most important purposes of planning is confronting that uncomfortableness of accepting which things you're not going to do, which things you're going to do quickly and to a relatively mediocre level just to get them done, and which things you're actually giving time to, in advance, because when we're making that decision on the fly, we almost always pick the things that are easier, the things that are for other people, the things that are imminently urgent. And unless we've got collaborative deadlines, writing rarely comes into one of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Well, exactly. And I think that's one of the things that is particularly tricky because everybody struggles with planning, no matter what kind of job they do or what kind of life they lead. Everybody's trying to juggle a lot of different things. But some of the special things about academia, one is that you do have a lot of autonomy. And that's actually one of the attractions for many people. But the thing about autonomy is on the one hand, you get to choose right. When you're going to write or whatever and what you're going to write. On the other hand, that means nobody tells you right now, and nobody protects that time for you. You kind of have to do it yourself. Um, so that's kind of the downside to the autonomy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing is that the kinds of things you're juggling are different in these really fundamental ways. So it's like if you spend this hour preparing to teach this class in two days or tomorrow or something, and if you don't do that work, you're going to walk into class unprepared and there's going to be an immediate thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas if you decided to spend this hour writing and you don't spend it writing, nobody's even going to notice other than you probably for ages and you get to the point where it just keeps going forward and forward until you get to a point which unfortunately happened to a colleague of mine, 25 years ago, and it was not great, where, you know, she needed to have published a certain amount of things in order for her contract to be made permanent, and she didn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the really terrible part about that is she didn't get any support for that. Basically, she got told by the more senior people, you really need to prioritize this and do this, but nobody ever or like, let us help you do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And like you say, if you don't make a conscious plan to protect time for the longer term but important stuff, then it's the ball that gets dropped and rolls under the sofa. And then you just feel really bad about it, especially if it really is. Important so that idea of priority is about what's important and allocating resources to what's important before you allocate resources to other things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think one of the things about academics is many of them are people who were straight A students. You know, there's a lot of conversation about ungrading and the harm that grading does these days. And a lot of that is quite rightly focused on the harm it does to people who are traditionally excluded from higher education, but I have a very strong view that grading has harmed many of our clients. And many of the listeners, because it has given them this idea that you have to do everything at your best and that getting a B is kind of failing and that kind of thing. And it's, and it's not, right. It's okay to just do them and get them off your plate so that you can put. And, and to decide which things are going to get your a effort.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definite. Empathize with that so hard.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: So part of it is also about thinking about your own capacity and thinking about what's important and what you want to do well, and how much time because your resources aren't just time. It's also cognitive capacity. And that's really important for writing because that's one of the reasons people say, I need these big chunks of time because parts of the writing process do actually require a certain kind of cognitive capacity that is objectively harder to find when you're busy with a lot of other things. The entire writing process doesn't need that, but certain parts of it absolutely do. And so the other thing we talk about when we talk about planning your writing is, what kind of time do I have for writing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What can I protect? How could I protect it? What support do I need to protect it? All of that. But then it's like, okay, what kind of time is that? And what kinds of writing related work can I do in the kind of time I have? And that's the other reason to kind of think about the year starting in the summer when you have a lot of control. And then think about your summer plans, not as I need to finish this article or whatever. But really about like, what's the best way I can use that those longer chunks of time and the ability to have a lot of stuff about my writing continually kind of there in the back of my mind and kind of mulling over like, there's more mulling possibility, you know, because sometimes you're thinking through some really difficult intellectual problems, right? And you, you know, it, you just kind of need them to be sort of in your head while you're doing things. And that's easier in the summer or other big, longer chunks of time. And so the real thing is how do I use that effectively to set myself up for the kind of time I might have later in the year? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so, for example, when we think about, what am I doing during that time? It's like, well, where are you in the process? What kinds of, instead of just like, I need to work on my book. It's like, well, what kind of work does my book really need right now? And some of that might be, I have this really tricky intellectual problem in chapter three, and I don't even really know what the argument is, you're not going to be able to fix that when you're really busy with other things, but that might be true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Really good focus for your summer, right? Like, what do I need to do to figure that out? Like, do I need to do some reading? Do I need to do some analysis of whatever source material I'm using? Do I need to write whatever? But then you might have another one where you've got a draft, where you've done the analysis, where you're really confident about the argument you could make and that you have the evidence to support it and the work that needs to be done next is really to make sure that you've got the right secondary literature in there, you've got the flow you need, you've got whatever. Well, you can make a little bit more detailed list of specific steps you can take. And then that kind of work can probably be done in like hour and a half sessions, which you can find during term time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then there's the kind of stuff that you can probably do... one of my clients at one point she was editing a book, and it was very close to the end. And, you know, so she had everything in but there's all these really fiddly things you have to do at the end before you can submit it to the publisher, and she spent one session just writing this incredibly granular list of all the tiny tasks she needed to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But they were very granular and they were the kinds of things where when she did have 15 minutes. She could look at that list and see something on the list that she could do in the time she had available. Now you don't want to use your big long chunks of summertime to do that necessarily if you don't have a strong deadline, because you can do that when you've got 15 minutes here and there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or if you're doing it in the summer, you don't want to use the best part of your day for that. You want to use the best part of your day for the stuff that really requires heavy intellectual lifting. And then later when you're tired and can't really think anymore about that problem, you can be like, Oh, look here, I have a list of things I don't have to think very hard. Let's see how many I can do in half an hour.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that because One of the things I see is people saying that they have to be in a particular mode in order to write, which as you say, for certain elements of it can be absolutely true, but it can also be a form of procrastination in my view. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, Oh, I'll be in a better state of mind to do this next week, next month, in the summer, that magic summer. And then what happens is we get there and we're more tired than we thought we were going to be. And actually it's been a really long time since we've thought about this project. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we've got a lot of, you know, a lot of pressure on now it's the time for the heavy intellectual stuff. And it can be really easy to then get a bit intimidated. What I love about this notion of like breaking it up so that you think about the different types of work is that I think if you can use the time where you've got less cognitive capacity to do some of the smaller jobs, it does keep it more mulling over in your head for more of the time, so that when you get to a time period where you've got a bit longer, It's easier to jump into it because you can kind of remember the structure of it. You can remember the things you've been working on. Yes. And it's all been sort of percolating a little bit.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: And I like to think of that in terms of like when you're cooking. Um, so I don't know, Not everybody knows how to make risotto, and even those of us that do know how to make it, we often cheat a little bit, but the official way to make risotto is that you have stock, simmering, and you add it very gradually to the rice in the pan, and you stir continuously the whole time, and that's what gives it the sort of texture that you would expect from a really good risotto. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so you've got it sitting there, you brought it to the boil, and then you put it on this really low temperature so that it stays hot. And then when you add the hot broth into your rice, it doesn't cool down and then have to heat up again. It's just it stays at the same temperature. And I like that as a sort of analogy for what you can do with 15 minutes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not necessarily that you are going to accomplish a lot in 15 minutes. It is precisely that it is going to keep the project alive in your head. So that when you have an hour and a half, or when you have a full day, you are not having to bring it to the boil from cold. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are actually starting with warm and making it. And so it just means that you can be more effective and you're less frustrated about it. And I'm not saying don't give writing make writing the big thing for your summer, what I'm normally saying is how do you make that part of a practice that continues through the year and how does doing writing in other kinds of time in the rest of the year, make the summer writing more, dare I say it enjoyable, because that's the other thing we talk a lot about efficiency and effectiveness, but I really like to think about, you know, this is a thing you can enjoy, and and yes, it feels a bit weird. But, the fact is that you wouldn't have done a PhD and become an academic if you didn't find really ricky intellectual problems enjoyable, right? Like that challenge itself is part of what's enjoyable. So it's not fun in the way some other things you do are fun, but it is an enjoyable challenge. But it's not an enjoyable challenge if you feel like you're like under the gun all the time and if you're under pressure. So it's really about relieving enough pressure that you actually feel like you remember why you wanted to do this as for a living in the first place.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And I love, so one of the things as well that I think comes out from having to work out what are manageable chunks to do when you're busy with other things, is it can help us to develop a practice where we break everything into manageable chunks. Because the other thing I see people doing, is giving very large, you know, figure out structure of introduction or something as their to do list item. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's really easy to pass over and be like, Oh, I haven't got brain space to think about that yet. When it's so big and fluffy, for want of a better word, as to exactly what you need to do. I have this theory that even the difficult bits, even the figuring out what the intellectual argument bit is, we need to work out what are the steps I need to go through that give me the best chance of being able to figure this out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: They do. And I think one of the things I often say to people is you don't have to be able to break the whole thing down into those granular tasks, but your to do list always has to have two or three very concrete things that when you look at them, you immediately know what they involve, right? You don't want everything on your to do list to require you to do some kind of thinking before you can even really get started. And sometimes you can do that at the end of a previous session. Like when you finish, just take a moment to just give yourself some clues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can say, uh, like, Oh, okay. I have to stop now cause I have to go do something else. But I was thinking this is what I would do next. And you can just write that. You can just write it right in the bloody document cause you can delete it when you get back there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also be like, Oh, I was thinking about this that I want to go read. And, and instead of trying to keep it in your head, write it down. So that is one thing, but also sometimes it's useful to know that sitting there and using your writing time to plan your writing project is something that will advance your project, right, deciding what would be the next thing to do, or what would be the most effective or what kinds of writing does this need.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, who's an editor. And she said she thinks one of the real issues is that a lot of us, we don't really know much about what we mean by revision. And I think a lot of academics are actually trying to avoid revision. We're sort of like, Oh, we should be good enough to be able to write the whole thing and only need to do a little bit of copy editing before we submit it. And that's not true. That's not even a reasonable goal because you are always setting yourself new challenges. You're always learning new things. And also because it's too big, even an article is too big to hold everything in your head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so one of the things that I talk about is how the first draft or you can call it a zero draft if you like at this point, but when you start writing, you are writing for yourself. Don't start by thinking about what you need to communicate to other people. Think about like that first draft is really about becoming confident in the argument, like figuring out the argument you can make. Figuring out the argument you want to make, making sure those things fit, like what evidence do I have can I say the thing I really want to say do I need to write, but really focused on the research you've done and the thing you can say, and not worrying so much about what other people will think about it when they read it. You're writing initially for that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then revision is where you turn that into something that is communicating your argument to someone else. And revision might involve several passes, right? Like, it might actually make sense, not to just say, I need to revise chapter one, you might say, okay, I'm here. The next most important thing that needs to happen is I need to make sure that the structure and the flow of the argument, the evidence is right. And then you might be like, okay, once I've done that, I'm going to go through and think about what secondary literature do I need to discuss in this with my data? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like, not the introduction part, but the while I'm talking about this, where do I need to like, really say, talk about the theoretical framework or whatever, and put that through, right? And then you might be like, okay, I now know who the reader is. The introduction is really about how do I situate what I'm saying in the set of debates they're already familiar with? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Which of those debates do I need to talk about? How much do I need to say? Whatever. Trying to do all three of those things at once just means you're switching tasks all the time, right? Because you're like, I only want to go through it one more time. No, allow yourself to go through it six, eight, 10 times. But with a very specific focus each time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think what you'll find is that it is more effective. And absolutely don't start with the pretty words, right? Don't worry about the transition sentences. Make notes, right? Need a transition here or, you know, I'm not sure this is the right word, but you don't want to make them pretty because sometimes what you're going to find is there's whole paragraphs there you don't need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you've already spent a lot of time making them beautiful, it's going to be so much harder to get rid of them. So keep them ugly. And then once you're really clear that, oh, I've got all the content, then you can be like, okay, let's go through really carefully and think about the language. Think about the sentence length and think about, you know, all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And once I've done that, I'm going to go through and I'm going to copy edit and make sure I spelt everything correctly and all that kind of stuff. But I think that is really like thinking about the process and where you are in it can be really helpful for deciding what needs to be on your list, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like you can't structure a chapter until you really know what the argument is and what evidence you're using to make it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What do you think gets in the way of people doing what you just said? Because I think most people know in theory that a first draft should be rough, that it didn't be perfect, and da da da. But People still battle with this. So why can't they just go, Oh yes, I'll do what Jo said.,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: There's a couple of things. One is when you feel like you don't have a lot of time, you feel like that in an ideal world, that would be the best way to do it, but I don't have time for that. I need to do it more quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would like to ban the word efficiency from our discussions of writing because I think trying to be efficient is the fastest route to writer's block that is there. Because you end up, if you want to do it the most efficient way, what you end up doing is spending a lot of your time and cognitive resources trying to work out the best thing to do rather than actually doing things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the easiest way to stop doing that is if you catch yourself trying to be efficient, just switch from efficient to effective, right? So I think that's one thing, right? I think the other thing is that we, you know, because we teach these methods to our students and we get frustrated when our students don't do them right in terms of like writing drafts and revising them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think, you know, we know that they're good things, but I think we also feel like as you get better at writing, somehow the need for revision would be less. The other thing I've seen is that because you're constantly leveling up the challenge in what you're writing, You have more optimism about how easy it's going to be because you just did this other thing and it felt really easy and now this one's hard and you feel like, but I thought I was good at this. But what's happened is you have sneakily up up the challenge level as well. Like, you are often doing more challenging things. And, and that's normal. But it does mean that having a process where you allow yourself with the thing to be challenging. So, it's a bit like, um, music practice, right? You know, nobody really enjoys playing scales when they sit down to practice piano, the reason they want to practice piano, even people that are very good, like my kid or my father in law, right? They're very good pianists and they can play some really challenging music, but it does help to warm up by playing scales, right? It loosens up your fingers and your muscles. It reminds you, even just playing the scales of the key that your piece is in. You know, means that you just kind of reactivate some sort of muscle memory about playing in B flat major or whatever the heck you're doing. Right.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, you know, both of those people will tell you that they don't always do that and they don't because it's not fun like playing the actual music is the fun part. Um, but also when you're learning, I mean when, when, when my kid was younger and learning, they would sometimes get really frustrated and want to stop practicing all together and this is the other thing that comes into actually using the time you set aside for writing is sometimes when you sit down to write and it doesn't What you have to do is hard, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You really are resistant and you start feeling like you can't do it and you end up not doing anything because you just feel like this is too hard. I can't do it. Right. One of the things that I suggested to them when they were younger was I, I reminded them that the pieces they could play that felt easy now were once as hard as the thing they're trying to learn, right? And that this new thing is a challenge. But they overcame challenges before and they will again, and it's difficult. So that's one thing to remind yourself. But the other thing I suggested to her was to alternate between, you know, when you get really frustrated, instead of quitting, go and remind yourself how much you love it, like do a part of the process that's easier. Do something right that's still writing that's still right, but that gives you that feeling that you really are capable and can do this. So you don't always have to do the hardest thing. If some days you're feeling really down on yourself and like you can't, then the thing you should pick for your writing time is the thing that feels easiest the thing that will make you feel competent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I think the other thing that stops people from doing that is that what that process of a draft and revision might look like is very different for different people, right? So for some people, I'm, I'm a free write first drafter. I need to just kind of blurt it out and then I can figure out. And so if you, if that's the easiest way for you to get the ideas out of your head and onto paper, then you need a process where you allow yourself to do that and to go around in circles and be repetitive and do whatever you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you need a process to actually look at your free write possibly use reverse outlining to like find a structure, put things new, whatever, right? There are other people who absolutely do not write like that, and you don't have to write like that. And one of the things, actually, those of us that like to blurt it out might have found that in school we might have been taught, no, no, no, don't do that, you need to outline. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's also this thing about how you've been taught is the right order to do things in. For some of us, free writing to start is absolutely the right thing. For other people, writing an outline is a good thing. For other people, writing some sort of basic outline helps them get started and then they free and they go back and forth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For some people, if you find that when you look at a set of sentences you've written, you cannot see how you could write them any other way, then you don't want things in sentences until a fairly late revision draft. Like your first draft might not look like, like a draft at all. It might look like this super detailed outline. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have one client who drafted her entire book, multiple chapters in bullet points. She then did revision still in bullet points around structure around what needs to be here what doesn't all the rest of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then she had to go through really systematically and be like okay I'm giving each chapter a month and I'm turning it from bullet points into sentences right. And that's kind of how that worked for them. And if that's your process, and it works for you, then that's your process. And the difficulty is that you sometimes need to kind of experiment with things and that's where it's like, well, I have so little time to write and I've got so much pressure. I don't have time to experiment. But then what happens is you end up in this vicious circle where you're not writing anything. So sometimes you just have to take a risk.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. I definitely recognize the, I don't have time to do this badly thing amongst my clients a lot. And sometimes getting them to reflect on how much time they're using worrying about and feeling bad about the fact they're not writing. It's usually far in excess of the amount of time it would take to actually have a go at it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm a big fan of, you know, people have this notion of, you know, what, I don't know what the right structure is or the right argument. I do it both ways. Write it that way. Write it the other way. See which one you like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> No, I haven't got time for that. It's like, Oh, you've got time to spend three weeks stressing about which one's the right option. Or we could spend two hours having to go at one of each.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: Absolutely. Like, and that's where the efficiency, right? It's like, that's inefficient. I don't, I don't have time to do that. And that's where it's like, but is what you're doing effective? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And if what you're doing looks inefficient, but is effective and you're getting things finished. then you can keep doing it and stop spending a lot of time looking for the perfect method that would be better for you and just really lean into what already works for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if what you're doing is not effective, then try something, even though you don't know whether that's going to be effective either, but the thing you're doing is not effective. So, you know, there's at least a 50, 50 chance that the thing you try is going to be more effective than what you're doing now, which is nothing. So, right. And, and, and I think it's not just, you know, and it's partly you want it to be effective. And I think we really are bad at understanding how much energy cognitive and emotional labor take, right? We think we have easy jobs, because we're not digging ditches. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But actually, the cognitive labor takes. energy and if you've ever done a really big house move, which many academics have done because of the nature of the labor market, you will know, when you move house, uh, you end up being really, really tired. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reason you're tired is that although all of the decisions you have to make feel small and, and trivial, and certainly nothing like the kind of work that you do intellectually, that there are just so many of them that you actually get a thing called decision fatigue, and you can't write like your cognitive capacity, you like, run it all up. All of that thinking and decision making and one of the things about making a plan is that you make all the decisions at once and then you're kind of working your plan and all you need to do is decide about the stuff that came up and the changes. Whereas if you're kind of working on the fly all the time you're just using a lot of cognitive energy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Weighing up options multiple times a day, right? And the transitions between things, that all takes a lot of cognitive energy because you can't have anything going on in your, like, the nice thing about routines is that things are subconscious and then they take less energy, right? But then the emotional energy, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like emotional work is real work and emotional work is about you managing your own emotions, feeling bad about how you're feeling, you know worrying like what people are going to think about you, all of that stuff Also takes real energy, the kind of energy we measure in calories and all of that kind of thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so just the fact that you're not out digging dishes doesn't mean you're not working hard. And part of the thing about planning is reducing the amount of energy you're spending on stuff that you don't need to be doing. It isn't even making you feel good, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that you have more energy for this stuff that you need and want to do. And for the stuff that makes you feel good, right? Plus leaves you time to be able to actually recharge properly, like sleep well, right? Because how many people are then have all of this spinning in their head and they go to bed and they can't get to sleep because of all the hamsters in their head. And so the people that I'm most angry with are the people that tell some of my, you know, more junior clients, like the PhD students and the junior people, that it's unreasonable for them to expect to sleep well and it's just like, You know, like what the job you just think the job is terrible and it's supposed to be terrible. And I don't know. I just don't believe that. I think you should be able to enjoy it. And you should be able to like, achieve things that you want to achieve. And no, you don't have control over all of that. And the conditions in which you're doing it are deteriorating daily. But pick the stuff that makes it meaningful because otherwise you could have gone to that career fair with all the other really smart final year undergraduates and got a job at a bank or a consulting firm or something and been paid loads more than you're earning now and there was a reason you didn't do that. And you need to remember that reason and you need to be like, this is why I'm still doing this job. And if the, if the big thing that is why you wanted to do this job and is still doing the job is not in your plan, then. I don't know. What's it worth to you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely, definitely. And I think these sorts of tips that you've given today, this advice you've given today, hopefully can help people see how they can take that element that they love and that they do want to be doing and put it in first. I love this notion that a priority doesn't have to be the only thing you're doing, but it's the thing that you put in first when you're structuring your time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: It doesn't also have to be the thing you spend the most time on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. Right? But you put it in first and guard it the most fiercely. I love that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: And one of the things, so one of the things we do, so yeah, so the planning in the academic writing studio, we plan the year starting in June, or in July, so the planning class will actually be on the 31st of May this year, to think about the year, and then on the 14th of June we'll have one to think about the first quarter, July, August, and September, and get into a bit more detail about, okay, what's possible, what are you going to do, And, by doing that, you can put writing first in your year. You can start your year with writing instead of feeling like you're catching up by the time you get to the summer, right? And just Just that sense of is this the first thing I do like it's a circle right it comes around every year it could be either it is a thing we make up in our heads, but it makes a difference. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing we do is most of the sessions of meeting with your writing, I mean when I started there was only one a week, but we've really built on that are on Monday. Right. And the idea is that if you can manage to, to give a couple of hours to writing on Monday, even if that's the only writing time, it shifts how you feel about the whole week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, so many people are like, Oh, Friday, right, I'll be able to write on Friday and then they get to Friday and one, all the things that came up in the week are now leaking into Friday and. feeling like they're more important than doing the writing. Uh, two, you're probably tired, right? And so it's harder. But also you're going through the week kind of thinking, I hope I get to write on Friday, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've planned, I hope I get to preserve that. Because if you write on Monday, even if it's for an hour, an hour and a half, right? On Monday, you are going through the week having already written, right? Even if that's all the writing you do in the week, you did some, you have already done it. You don't have to go through the week feeling like you're going to fail in your goal to write every week, right? Because you've already done it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing is a lot of my clients over, I'm telling you more than 10 years have told me that. Having written on Monday, they often find that they can write again later in the week. So instead of it being this thing about how much time can I preserve at the end of the week after I've never done everything else, you do it first and then you realize, oh, I could fit it in here as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you actually do more than you planned, but you can't judge yourself based on how much you can't set a goal of how much can I do. You just need to be really realistic. Of like, how do I protect some time for this activity and how do I make it feel like this important activity is still part of my work, even if I have this really heavy teaching load and even if I'm still kind of worried, I might not meet these weird standards somebody else has set for finishing, publishing, whatever.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So, if people want to know more about Studio and all the support mechanisms that you've mentioned, I know there are books as well, where do they find out more? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: So you can find out about me at joevannevery. co. uk and my last name is spelled just like those two everyday words, so it's van like a truck, every like every day. joevannevery. co. uk And that's where I have a, there's a blog on that, which we just call the library. Cause it's, there's over 500 posts in there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's some spotlights that pull them together on themes. The current one is about confidence. And, it has links to the books and other things. if you want to join the academic writing studio and come along to the planning classes, we have several membership tiers now. So if you just want planning classes, you can just buy a package of planning classes and you get the annual and each of the 4 quarters and we remind you and you come along and make some plans. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We now have a mid tier. Where you can get that plus all the group coaching we do so, there's sort of general office hours, where you can just get help with whatever you're struggling with, you know, whatever there's some that are specifically writing clinics for or journal article writers or for book writers, there are some PhD clinics and the structure of those is basically we kind of whoever turns up we're responsive. We're like, what are you working on? What's going well? How can we help you? That's basically the structure there. So you can have the planning plus all of that, right. Just for extra support when your plans are falling apart, right? Like if you're feeling like, Oh, but my plans are going to fall apart. It's great. Come to that, come to office hours. We'll help unfold them apart. And then there's the sort of really top membership, which is, which also includes all of that. Plus. A meeting with your writing and we have four sessions every week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's two weeks over the Christmas break that we do not run them, but the rest of the year, even on bank holidays, four sessions a week, three of them are on Monday. One is on Thursday. There may not be four that are a sensible time in your time zone, but it's to mean that we can have people in different time zones, people with different teaching loads. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you like that kind of coworking support, and it is coworking, um, Right. Silent. You get some prompts to start, whatever. So all of that you get at the academic writing studio. co. uk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, um, that's basically it. However, if you only want to spend like a small amount, I've also got these short guides. So these two are really about the things we talked about today. Finding time for your scholarly writing talks about the different kinds of time and what you can do in different kinds of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The scholarly writing process talks about that process going from, I'm figuring out what I want to say towards, I'm communicating it to somebody else. And in each of the little stages, there's questions and prompts to help you think about what has got me stuck and how, what could I do to get myself unstuck. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's a very kind of coachy kind of book and there is in the ebook version, there is a kind of combined thing that has both of those together. Um, so you can just search on Amazon, wherever you buy books. The paperbacks, you'll have to order, and Amazon might tell you that they're out of stock, but you can still order them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They'll just take a little longer to come in, but you can also order them from your local bookshop and all of that. There's a page on my jovenevry. co. uk website that has all those details. Um, so,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and you have a free newsletter  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jo: because I have a free newsletter. So jovenevry. co. uk slash newsletter. So yeah, whatever level of, you know, kind of encouragement and support you want. That's, you know,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: you're there. That's perfect. Thank you so much. So much food for thought for everyone. Um, and hopefully lots of inspiration. I loved your point that you made before that planning is a way to inspire action. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think that today's podcast will have really inspired action in a lot of people. So Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 22 Apr 2024 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-32-how-to-plan-your-academic-writing-special-episode-with-guest-jo-vanevery thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-31-how-to-get-back-to-work-after-a-break <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> I want you to think about your to do list right now. Have you got items on there that have been hanging around for ages? Have you got items on there where it's write introduction or read more and things like that? If so, don't worry, completely human, completely normal. But I bet those are the ones that you aren't ticking off. So many of my clients give themselves really vague instructions about what they need to do and what has to happen next, and then wonder why they're finding it hard to get on with things. And we're all given that advice, you need to break it down into manageable chunks. But no one really tells us how to do that. What is a manageable chunk anyway? How big should it be? What should that look like? What type of chunk will make it easier for us to get started? If any of this is resonating, and I'm pretty confident whether you're a PhD student or an academic, it will be, then you need today's episode because I'm going to help you figure out how to break down your work into easy, manageable chunks so that you can get on, get them ticked off, and enjoy your work again.They say in podcasting talk about what you know. Today, when I'm recording this, it is the 14th of April. I have just had the last week mostly off work, apart from a few group sessions. Um, my stepdaughters were here over the Easter break, which was wonderful and I start back at work properly again tomorrow, the day this podcast is due out. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And I've just realized I hadn't recorded a podcast or posted it ready to go out. And so here I am, on a Sunday afternoon, recording you a podcast.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And so I thought, what better to talk about than how to get back to work after a break, because I've got to do it right now. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 31 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. I don't know about you, but I find the time after a break a really strange time. Because part of me has all these great ideas about how I'm going to be, you know, more organized and things I'm going to do and how, you know, new start, fresh beginnings, all that stuff. And part of me is a bit like, Oh, I really enjoyed not having quite as much work to do over the holidays. </span> <br/> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now I don't have it quite as much now running my own business, but certainly in academia, when I had time off, that feeling that everything had been piling up while I was away and that I was now having to get back and face it and maybe do some of those things that I had put off till after the holidays, was often quite a big sort of, I won't go quite as far as dread for some of you it might feel like dread, but certainly feeling a bit ominous and a bit anticipating the struggles. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So in this session, I really want to think about what makes coming back after a break feel more difficult and how we can navigate it with a little more ease and a little more fun. One of the biggest issues that I see in myself and in the clients that I worked with and a lot of the academics and PhD students I've spent time with over the years is all the stories we tell ourselves as we start coming back after a break. I am going to guess, whether you're coming back after a break now or whether you just had the Easter weekend or whatever it was, I'm gonna guess that you have a bunch of thoughts about you in the break itself. Maybe you're thinking that you hadn't intended to work and you ended up doing some work and you kind of feel like you wasted the break now. Maybe you had intended to do some work and you ended up doing more or less than you intended and you're frustrated you didn't stick to your plans. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Maybe you'd set yourself a goal to get something really big done over the holidays and ended up not doing it and now you're annoyed that you are, in inverted commas, behind. What's true for you? Which of those do you recognize the most? I've experienced pretty much all of them at different times over the holidays, but one of the problems when we look back over things we've done with regret is it can be a really wasted emotion. There's nothing we can do about how we spent the holiday. Sure, we can spend some time reflecting and think about how we would want to learn from this experience in the future, and I will talk about that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But we can't change the amount of work that we did over the holidays. We can't change how much rest we had over the holidays, and the problem when we spend lots of time regretting it and beating ourselves up for the fact that we should have done it differently, we're now making the current time period difficult as well. So we've wasted time. if that's how we're going to conceptualize it during the holidays, either by working or by not working or whatever you think constitutes a waste of time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And now we're wasting time worrying about the things we should have done then, at a point where we can't do anything about it. By worrying about time wasted then, we end up wasting time now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And so I'd really encourage you to either get to positive. about your holidays, or at least to neutral. So whatever you did, I want you to find things you're grateful for. I'm really glad that I spent time doing X. I'm really glad that I kept Y ticking over. I'm really glad that I put Z down and didn't work on it, even though I had intended to. Actually, I think that was the right thing for me. I think that was what I needed. Being able to see and have gratitude for the things you did do puts you in a much better frame of mind to do the things you intend now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It also reinforces to ourselves that we know ourselves and that we're able to act from our best intentions. And again, that can really help when we're thinking about what we want to be doing in this first week, this first two weeks back at work. Now you might be struggling. You might be thinking, yeah, there's nothing I'm grateful that I did because I've now got this massive pile of marking, or I've now got a chapter due to my supervisor and I haven't done any of it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> First, I'd encourage you to really look for the things that you're grateful for. There's usually small things, at least, that you're able to find in there. But if you're really struggling with feeling positive about your holiday, I'd like to encourage you to at least aim for neutral. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> A neutral thought might sound something like, Well, I did what I did, and we're where we are now. Okay? So it's not spending lots of time on regret. It's not faking a positive attitude about it, if you're really struggling to see anything positive in it at all. But it is accepting that it's in the past, and there's nothing we can do about it now. Well, I did what I did. That's it. I did what I did and now we move on. What do we do now? So really aim for at least neutral, if not positive. And you will find that from there, it's enormously easier to figure out what you want to do next.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The same is true when we look back at the past us. The one that was before the holidays, the one that had all these good intentions and expectations for what we were going to do over the holiday and where we'd be at when we get back. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It's probably also the past version of you that has put a bunch of stuff on your to do list now. Do you do that? I used to do that a lot and I still do to some extent. That idea that, oh yeah, I'll get to that after the holidays. When I've had a good break, I'll be much more on it. I'll be ready for it by then. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I'll get to that after the holidays. And then you get to after the holidays and you're like, yeah, cheers to that. Thanks. Now I've actually got to do it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I want you to look back on that version of you with some compassion and understanding as well. Anyone working in academia at the end of the spring term is likely to be feeling completely exhausted, largely overwhelmed, mostly unappreciated, and desperately in need of some sort of break. Even if you're looking back and going, Oh my goodness, I should have done this earlier. I want you to have compassion for that version of you that didn't do it. They didn't not do it because they're lazy layabouts. They didn't do it because they were knackered and because they were doing 14 other things. And because maybe those times when they were lazing around wasting time, they were actually just emotionally and cognitively drained. It's okay. There were reasons you didn't do it before. Let's have some compassion for that version of ourselves, and focus instead on making it as easy as possible for this version, for present us, to do the things we need to do next. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, if there are specific things that you've learned, either from looking back at the things that the past you from the end of term put off, or specific things you learned about how you managed your holidays, then you can spend a little bit of time jotting them down so that when we get to summer, so that when we get to Christmas, you can really take those things into account when you're planning what you want to do next holiday, i. e. things where we can actually change it, where we can learn from this experience and be different in the future, jot those things down. But mostly we want to just focus on how we can make it as easy as possible for the us that now needs to start work and get back into what we're doing, </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> the next thing I want us to do is be really compassionate to the us that's coming back to work as well. So often we think we need to get back on track. We need to get back into it. And this really quite sort of. time urgent, dramatic sense that everything's chaos, we're really behind, and we need to get back on it again. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I want you to really manage your expectations in this period. It's not easy to go from a time where things were more flexible, where you were maybe doing bits of work, but where you didn't have the fun full on sort of university experience and back into that more intense experience. And if we can manage our expectations about exactly how much we're going to get done and exactly how on top of things we're going to get in the time available, then we can actually end the day feeling pleased with what we've done rather than frustrated that we didn't do more. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Your first day back, you are not going to be functioning completely at your peak. Your first day back, you probably are going to spend loads of time clearing emails, remembering where you were, organizing yourself again, and all that stuff counts as work. And that is okay. We don't have to expect ourselves to do everything in this first week.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And to be honest, when we do expect ourselves to do everything in the first week back, it's often when we do less than if we'd had lower expectations of ourselves. Because when we put ourselves under pressure and we tell ourselves that nothing we do is good enough, that's when we end up procrastinating and that's when we end up sort of just doing faffy jobs rather than things that actually need doing. So I want you to really carefully manage your expectations, whether you started back last week or whether this is your first week back now, so that you can identify key priorities, work on those while breaking yourself gently back into the routine of working. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I'm going to give you three tips about ways to do that. The first is to make sure that you're breaking any of your jobs down into really achievable chunks. So do not make Clear Inbox a to do list, especially if you're an academic. So PhD students, it might not be quite so crazy out there for you. Academics, do not make Clear Inbox a single item on your to do list. Because it's way more than just one job. You are likely to have hundreds of emails. Some leftover from the end of term, some that have come in during this holiday period, and that is a big lot of jobs. Break these things down into smaller chunks. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I used to make myself like a little flow chart of, I'd write down how many emails I had at the moment. So it's like 542 emails. And then I'd make a little flow chart where it's like, I got down to 500. I got down to 470. I got down to 460 and then I'd tick them off as I went past them. So I could kind of keep track of where I was up to, and how I was clearing them. Another way to do it, especially if you use Outlook or something like that, you can cluster them by like last week or more than two weeks old or whatever. Be like, right, I'm going to clear the more than two weeks old emails. I'm going to clear the, this week emails. By the way, always clear the, this week emails first. Ones that are late, already late. There's only so much you can do about that. If you can get on top of the most recent ones, that'll get you back on track much more quickly. So, make sure you break your work down into chunks. And if you're never sure how to do that, particularly with some of the bigger tasks, like reading and writing, make sure you listen to last week's episode, because I talked about that in quite some detail last week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The second thing I want you to do is make sure you're looking at your diary now for the next couple of weeks. Often we get caught up in what's absolutely urgent this week, clearing our inboxes and things that have to be done. This week, have a look ahead at least two weeks. Because what we don't want is to get to Sunday next week, and realize that there are things that have crept up on you for the Monday afterwards. So have a look ahead couple of weeks and see what are the things that are absolutely crucial that have to be done this week and plot time into your diaries now to do those. So have that sneaky peek look ahead.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The third tip is that now is not the time for detailed planning. Often people come back after the holidays, and I'm fighting this urge myself, to think ahead for the new academic year and what I want to be doing differently in my business and things like that. And there can be this real sort of urge, especially with spring coming here in the Northern Hemisphere and sort of really this sense of renewal, the evenings are getting lighter, it can really drive this sense that we want to plan ahead and get everything organised and stuff. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now that is really important work and it's work that we should be doing, but I would really encourage you not to try and do that work in your first week back. Partly, it's cognitively taxing work. It's stuff that really takes a lot of time and thought. And often we're not in that state of mind when we're coming back after a break, whether you've been working in your break or having a break break. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  planning can lead to procrastination and overwhelm. So sometimes we can spend so much time planning but what we're actually doing is putting off getting on with the things that we know we need to do. And once we've then got the plan, it can be really overwhelming, this idea of starting it. So a little bit like I talked about in one of my episodes about what to do when you have too much to do, is if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're coming back after a break and feeling like there's a thousand things to do, instead of planning everything, just pick one thing that definitely needs doing and get that thing done and organized. Pick one item from your to do list where there's a clear tangible output that does need doing in the short term and get that done before you start planning when you're going to do everything else. That way, you've almost taken like a big bite out of your to do list already. You've already gone right, and I've got that done. Boom. Let's go. And it generates that sense of you being someone who gets things done. You being competent, autonomous. You're choosing, you're cracking on and getting things done. And that can really help with motivation. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> During all of this, I want you to be thinking about what I sometimes refer to as B plus work. The thing with academics, whether you're a PhD student or a full professor, is that we have been rewarded over the years for doing things really, really well. We like to go for the gold stars. We like everything shiny. We like to get complimented. You know, often people have perfectionist tendencies. I've had clients say, you know, Oh, I'll either do it properly or I'll not do it at all. Especially in this period where we are sort of trying to get back on top of the things we're doing, I want you to think where B plus work is good enough, where just getting it done, not even B plus, where passing is sufficient, where you just need to get things out to your system, where you just need to give quick feedback to somebody, where you just need to fill in a quick form, where there are things where you can just crack them out, get them off your desk. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Is it the best, most insightful thing you've ever done? No. Is it gone and out of the way so somebody else can work on it? Yes, yes it is. Let's do that. So really question these, Oh, I don't have time to do that well. Oh, I need to do that perfectly. And see whether there's ways that you can do B plus work just to get things moving this week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When you're thinking about what to do, I also want you to be planning for your current energy levels. Now, the reality is that if we're coming back after a period away from work, we often don't have quite the same stamina for working all day that we normally do. And we have two ways that we can deal with that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Either, we can ignore it, pretend it's not true, and then have days where we get really frustrated about the fact that we haven't worked a full day the way we normally would be able to, or that we're more tired than usual in the afternoon and then beat ourselves up about it and be cross that we didn't get more done, or we can accept that we're probably not going to be on totally top form the first day we get back and maybe just lower our expectations slightly so that if you get four hours work done on your first day back - happy days!. Let's be grateful. Let's be proud of ourselves that we completed those four hours rather than beating ourselves up that we didn't do eight. So when you're looking ahead and planning, to the extent you have control, I accept sometimes if we're straight back into teaching or we're straight back into research commitments or whatever it is, then it might be different. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But to the extent you have control, plan for the energy levels that you are likely to have getting back into work so that we set ourselves more achievable tasks, set ourselves a day that actually feels like a nice day back, a nice way to get back into the swing of things rather than setting ourselves up to fail right from the beginning. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Another element that often gets overlooked at this point is communication. Now, what I mean here by communication is telling people if there's stuff you haven't done that you thought you were going to have done by now, telling people when they might expect it, asking people for things you need in order to get on with your next bit of work, following up stuff that you thought people would have given you, maybe comments on documents and things like that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So that communication piece that we all need at whatever stage of our academic career is going to be really important this week. And one of the reasons that this gets neglected is because often when we're telling ourselves that we should have done things before, or we should be further ahead by now, we start feeling emotions like shame and guilt. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We start feeling bad about the fact that we are where we are, that we haven't made the progress that we've done. And one of the things that happens when you're feeling either shame or guilt is that you avoid other people because you don't want to tell them that you haven't done the thing. And you don't want them to think badly of you and all these stories we tell ourselves. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And the problem is what that then leads to is a situation where they don't know what's going on. And they don't know when to expect the piece of work. And all those worries we were having that those people might have opinions about us, they probably still will have opinions about us, just about the fact that we haven't told them what's going on, rather than about the fact that we haven't done the piece of work. And so when that's another reason why these thoughts that create shame and guilt can really hold us back. What I want you to think instead is either I can still communicate whilst I'm feeling embarrassed about the fact I haven't done this, or to focus on thoughts that make you feel less embarrassed. It's understandable that I haven't done this yet. There was a lot on, those sorts of things. And use those thoughts and feelings to drive you to actually be in communication with people. Tell your supervisor where you're at with the pieces of work that you had intended to do over Easter. Tell your module teams where you're at with planning for the summer. Ask your supervisors for feedback. Tell your students you haven't gone through their manuscripts yet. Whatever it is. Ask for that marking extension. If you are three days out from the marking deadline and you haven't done it yet, ask for that extension. Ask for relief from something else so that you have time to do it. I know it's not always possible, but the worst thing you can do is to ask for these things after the deadline. I used to be a head of education, so I used to oversee all of this stuff. And members of staff would come to me sometimes a few days before the marking deadline and be like, I am not going to be able to make this deadline. And then I would be able to have a conversation with them about, do I need you to mark it quicker? You know, it's first year work, not too much feedback, just crack on. We just need to get it done. Or can I give you a bit of extension because actually the exam boards aren't for a while or whatever it is. We can actually have a conversation about how to prioritize, whether I can bring in more people to help you. The most frustrating were the ones that waited either until the day of the deadline or after the deadline to tell me they hadn't done it because by then there wasn't a lot I could do. There weren't many ways that I could help. There certainly weren't as many options. Options as had they discussed it with me sooner. So whatever it is that you feel you should have done by now and you're worried to tell somebody, try and have those conversations. Think about what thoughts would you need to have in order to have those conversations. For me, thoughts, like, it's understandable that I didn't get this done. It doesn't mean anything about me as an academic, that I haven't done this. The more neutral kind of, I mean, it's not ideal that I haven't done this, but in a year, no, one's going to remember things like that. So rather than these stories that we can whip up, that everyone's going to hate us, everyone's going to think we're useless, et cetera, et cetera, communicate where you're at now so that people know where they're at. They know when they're likely to get things and are able to kind of plan their work around you.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> There's nothing worse. I remember when I used to moderate scripts and the first marker would be late getting them to me. And I'd be like, I've, I've blocked time out of my diary to moderate these. And now you're telling me I'm not going to have them, but you didn't tell me in enough time for me to use that for something else. And you certainly didn't tell me in enough time for me to block other time out of my diary to do the moderation. Whereas if you tell people earlier, they can shift their plans to be like, Oh, okay. So I'm not going to be doing that this week. I can do something else. And I need to look ahead to next week and plan that in instead. Try. To communicate, even if it feels really uncomfortable. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The final element I wanted to talk about today is the thoughts that you're having about this upcoming term. One way you can figure out what thoughts you're having is by doing a thought download. Just grab a piece of paper and a pen right at the top of it, when I think about this term, I am thinking, Dot, dot, dot. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And then just finish those sentences. Write for five or ten minutes. Try and force yourself to keep going, even when you think you've run out of things to say because can never quite tell what will come out when you keep writing. And really notice the thoughts you're having about this upcoming term. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because when we're having thoughts that lead to feelings of dread or overwhelm or any of these sorts of negative emotions, again, it's really easy to then start procrastinating, to start avoiding work, taking on other things that feel more interesting than the boring things that you've got to do. And one of the best ways to work with that is to just know that those thoughts are there. So what are you thinking about this upcoming term? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When you're looking at the thoughts you're having, I also want you to try and avoid bringing too much drama into the conversation. So sometimes we're thinking things like, I just wish I didn't have to go back. I never actually want to do this. What am I doing with my life? What on earth has happened? We bring all this kind of superlative drama into it that can sometimes just make us feel like there's a massive, massive problem here. And sometimes there can be. Sometimes we're genuinely doing a job or a PhD that we don't want to be doing anymore and that's something that we can look at in due course. But often, this stuff is pretty normal. If you've had some time away doing something different, even if that time was just time to focus on the work things that you wanted to focus on rather than actual holiday time, but either way, it's really understandable that that transition back into summer term feels hard and that you're having thoughts that stimulate feelings of dread or overwhelm or any of those other negative emotions. This doesn't necessarily mean anything about you or your job or having to change anything. Sometimes that can just be part of a transition from a holiday period back into a work period. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And that's not to say that we want to be feeling dread every single time we come back after holidays for the rest of our career. I'm not saying that for a second. But sometimes when we get that in a fleeting way, we can turn it into a massive deal that it doesn't have to be. It's completely normal to have a fleeting sense of not wanting to go back to your job. A temporary sense that you want to run away and start a bookshop or whatever it is. That's okay. There's nothing wrong here. Does this mean that you should actually leave academia or leave your PhD, go and do something different? Maybe, perhaps some people, I mean, I did, you know, I had many of these fleeting moments until they became less fleeting and then decided that what it was that I wanted to do differently. So yeah, for some of you, it might mean something about your futures and the decisions that you need to make. But you don't need to make those decisions right now. Those are not decisions to make when you're in the midst of a transition from holiday back into term time.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> These are decisions to make when you're more back into the swing of things, when you can put aside time to think about it properly. It's something that I help individual clients with to help figure out what their academic story is, what their academic journey is and where they want it to go next, and I'd really encourage you to say to yourself, yeah, I will think about that stuff, but not right now. Let's get back into the swing and we'll think about it from there. Because often that's just what it is. It's that moment of resistance before we get back into the swing of things.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I also want you to think about who you can seek support from this term. We're starting a new phase of the academic year, and often there are new challenges associated with that. Maybe it's things that you've been struggling with for the last term, maybe it's new things that are coming up now that you're not sure how to do. Whatever stage of your academic career you're at, there are people that can support you with those different challenges. And I want you to spend a little bit of time thinking about who those might be. If there are particular things that you're worried about, have a think about who could support you. It could be peers, it could be other people within your department, wider around the university, whether it's at the graduate school or whoever provides your staff development, for example. It could be outside of the department, it could be people you find on social media or through other academic networks that you have. There are always people that can support you. Obviously, if you're interested in coaching, hit me up. Beyond that, without spending any money, there are always people that can help you navigate some of these more challenging elements of academia.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If you feel like you shouldn't need to, to ask for help, I want you to really sort of explore those thoughts and explore whether they're true and explore whether they're supporting you at the moment. I would argue that everyone who has ever succeeded in academia has received support, mentorship, patronage, however you want to describe it, and reaching out to others to help you with things that you're finding more challenging or to connect you to places that can make it all feel a little bit easier is a key part of building your own academic community and getting the support that you need to succeed. So please do put aside a little bit of time. to just ponder on what support you need this term and who might be able to provide that for you.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> While we're exploring our thoughts, the other thing I want you to think about is what thoughts will generate the emotions that you want to be feeling and that will enable you to take the actions that you want to take. Because often when I dig into it with my clients, there is a bunch of stuff that you love about your PhD. There is a bunch of stuff that you love about your academic work, your student work, your life at university. And I want you to take a minute to remind yourself of some of those things. Remind yourself what you're looking forward to doing, what you are excited about, because we don't always have to make all the negatives go away. There's a lot about academia to be frustrated and pressured about right now. But sometimes when we can spend a little bit more time remembering the reasons we're doing it, and remembering the things that we love about it, it's easier to get on with the things that we actually want to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And once we start getting on with the things that we want to do, we can get that sense of momentum, that sense of competence that can really help us to enjoy this transition and enjoy getting back into the swing of work.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So for me, what does that look like? Well, this week I have a couple of different supervisor trainings. I offer training sessions to universities for PhD supervisors. I've got a couple of those coming up this week. I am still running my, how to be your own best boss program, which is going really well. I have some sessions with that, I have sessions with my membership at Birmingham and I actually have a bunch of new individual clients as well. So it's a busy week in terms of sessions, which I'm excited about, slightly overwhelmed, but excited, looking forward to it. And I'm reminding myself how much I enjoy being in those, those live sessions.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I have a whole bunch of admin tasks and I'm going to chip away at those in order of urgency. And I'm going to try and put some time in my diary for the week after next to really dig into some of those, rather than get all caught up on those this week and then feel bad that I'm not on top of everything. If they've waited this long, they can wait a while longer is my little mantra on those.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And I'm really excited about the idea of starting to plan for academic year 24 25, but again, that is something that I've sort of mindfully decided to put back a couple of weeks, let myself get back into term, let's get this supervisor training done, let's get a little further along with my group program, and then the real planning for next year starts. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I have some exciting things coming. You guys will be the first to hear about them as always. And I know me, I know that I get excited about the planning more than I do about the kind of administrative implementation of some things. And so I am quite mindfully telling my brain, yeah, jot down ideas, but we're going to think about this properly in a couple of weeks. Let's get on top of the things we're doing now.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So if you are someone who's going to be in one of my sessions this week, I'm super excited to see you. If you're not, why not? I have a special offer on my PhD student workshops that I have running between the now, between now and the middle of June. So if you are somebody who works at university, or if you can tell your supervisors about this stuff, I have a special deal where you can get access to all my remaining workshops for a much reduced rate, do make sure that you get in contact if that might be of interest to you.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I really hope today's podcast has been useful for you, whether you're making the transition last week and are still feeling a bit overwhelmed or whether you are not quite going back just yet, I hope that the transition can be as smooth as possible and that you can look after yourself during it so that we can all ease ourselves into this upcoming term, and all the exciting challenges that it will bring. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </span> <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 15 Apr 2024 07:52:50 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-31-how-to-get-back-to-work-after-a-break thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-30-how-to-break-your-work-down-into-chunks <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> I want you to think about your to do list right now. Have you got items on there that have been hanging around for ages? Have you got items on there where it's write introduction or read more and things like that? If so, don't worry, completely human, completely normal. But I bet those are the ones that you aren't ticking off. So many of my clients give themselves really vague instructions about what they need to do and what has to happen next, and then wonder why they're finding it hard to get on with things. And we're all given that advice, you need to break it down into manageable chunks. But no one really tells us how to do that. What is a manageable chunk anyway? How big should it be? What should that look like? What type of chunk will make it easier for us to get started? If any of this is resonating, and I'm pretty confident whether you're a PhD student or an academic, it will be, then you need today's episode because I'm going to help you figure out how to break down your work into easy, manageable chunks so that you can get on, get them ticked off, and enjoy your work again. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 30 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach and we are going to be thinking about breaking your work down into easy, manageable chunks. This has come up with a few of my clients recently, both my one to ones and people in my university membership program, this idea that they give themselves really general instructions and when somebody says, break it down into manageable chunks, they don't even really know how to do that. And that's particularly true with some of the more complex and cognitive tasks that we as academics do. Things like reading, writing. We need to think about how we can actually turn those things into very actionable tasks so they can get on with them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  In today's episode, I'm gonna talk about why we find it difficult to break things down into chunks, where that comes from, and then give you, as usual, some really specific tips about how you can break down your work more easily to make it all feel a lot more achievable.  <span> So why do we find it difficult? One of the reasons is that we often don't think we even have time to break it down. I've heard so many people say they don't have time to plan. They just need to get on with things or that when they spend time planning, they end up getting overwhelmed and it doesn't help anyway. So there's definitely something around not trusting ourselves to do this breaking down process effectively and not believing that it will make things easier. Hopefully the tools I give you today will help you to see how to do it in a way that avoids that sense of overwhelm, to do it in a way that really doesn't take that long and in a way that you can really clearly see why it's going to be easier to do it this way.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The second thing is often we think that these tasks can't be chunked down. So often when we're doing something like review the literature or write your discussion or whatever it is, we think that these sorts of very highbrow intellectual academic tasks couldn't possibly be broken down into something systematic. </span> <span>  And I think that belief really holds us back because ultimately, they are broken down into smaller tasks when you do them. You are chunking your tasks, eventually, you're just chunking them the moment you do it, rather than chunking them in advance.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> This is something that really helped me with food planning. I think I might have mentioned before. I was obsessed with the idea that I didn't plan my meals and then one day I realized I do plan my meals. I just often plan them immediately before I eat them. And so somehow it was a lot easier to think, Oh, I just need to plan them a little earlier, rather than think, I don't plan them currently and I need to start, because that kind of big jump feels much more intimidating.  <span> And it's the same with breaking down your tasks. You do already break down your tasks. And how do I know that? Because you don't do it all at once. None of you have written an introduction by simultaneously writing all the words. That's not how it works. It's just at the moment you decide as you go, I'll do this chunk, now I'll do that chunk, then I'll do this bit. You just decide it on the fly. All we're going to do is make those decisions that you're already making a little bit further in advance, so that it makes it easier for you to get started. Even complex intellectual tasks are completed in a series of steps.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Now, I accept that sometimes we may not be able to plan out all of them at once. And that's one of the things I'm going to talk about in the tips. We may not be able to say, here are all 40 chunks that it's going to take to write this discussion section. I accept sometimes you read things and that changes what happens next, that changes what you need to read next, it's an iterative process. Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we can't chunk the first few bits. And then when we get to the next bit, chunk the next few bits. So I will talk about how we chunk even complex tasks in a second. <span>  Often I hear clients saying yeah but I don't know what the chunks should be. It's that magic 'should' word again. If you guys are watching me on YouTube you'll see me doing the little annoying finger, inverted commas thingies. Should.  </span> <span>  Because there is no should here. There is no specific way that you should chunk this down. Different people will do it in different ways. There are some tips, again, I'm going to give you to be more effective, but the belief that there's a right way can really hold you back, as usual, from doing it anyway. So let's try and put that to one side. Maybe you believe that there's a right way to break down your work into small sections. But if that belief isn't serving you, it isn't enabling you to do it because you feel like you don't know that mystery, then let's just put that to one side and think maybe there's a bunch of ways. Maybe I could try it this way. And if we can believe that we don't have to find the right way, we can just find a way, then suddenly it gets a lot easier to get into it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> We also somehow manage to convince ourselves that we need to know all the chunks. If we're going to break this down, we need to know all of them. And as I've already touched on, with complex tasks, we almost certainly don't know all the chunks and what order they need to be done in. But even in a relatively simple task, sometimes breaking down all the chunks can be really overwhelming. And that's going to be particularly the case if you are neurodivergent, you have ADHD, anything like that. But for all of us trying to figure out every single step can be super overwhelming and can become a barrier to actually chunking things down anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I started reorganizing the garage with my husband at the weekend and if we had written down every single step we needed to go through in order to get to a finished garage, then I'm not sure we would have ever started. But we did figure out the first few steps and we did those. Which does, on reflection, mean that my garage is currently absolute chaos with stuff everywhere but, I know what the next steps are too. We just haven't done them yet. So, think about this belief. If you believe you need to know all of the chunks before you even start, then, perhaps again, we could put that to one side and think. I can just break down the next bit, and then when I get to the next step, I'll break down what comes after that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the final barrier that I see is people on some level not believing that small steps add up to a big task. So, we know that we're going to write our papers one word at a time. But somehow when we break things down into small tasks, it can feel like we're not doing enough. If I'm only doing this small task, then I'm not kind of making fast enough progress or big enough progress. I'm not taking big steps. And again, it's a belief that makes it really hard to start.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we're waiting for the day when we can do the whole massive amount, really immerse ourselves in everything, then hey, those days don't come very often, especially if you're an academic further through your career and you're balancing admin and teaching and leadership and all this stuff. But even as a PhD student, that pressure of, okay, today's the day I've got to do loads, is just really unhelpful. So again, if we can work on believing that one step at a time is the way that we get anything done, one chunk at a time is how we get our work completed, then it's much easier to believe that it's worth spending a little bit of time figuring this out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, have a think about which of those beliefs you have that might be making it more difficult for you to break down your work at the moment, and just borrow my belief for the rest of this episode that breaking things down will make it an awful lot easier for you. Just borrow that belief, go with me, and then see whether the specific tips feel like something that you could try.  <span> What are my tips? First one is going back to this notion of separating out boss you from implementer you. The version of you that decides what needs to be done, strategizes, plans, prioritizes, and the version of you that does the stuff. Now you guys will have heard, especially my regulars or people who are on my email mailing list, will have heard me talking about the new program that has actually just started called Be Your Own Best Boss. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> It's for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers thinking about how to be a more effective boss for themselves. If you're listening to this in real time, when it comes out, it's started last week. My group are amazing. I am so excited. We had our first workshop last week. It went really, really well. I am taking late comers, maybe if any of you are interested and you get to me quickly, cause we don't want to get too far through the program but there is still a chance to jump in. If that sounds amazing for you, just get in contact, let me know, and we'll see what we can do. Depends on when you listen to this as to whether that's possible or not, but always reach out, there's always opportunities. And one of the things we're doing in that is really figuring out how we can be the sort of boss to ourselves that we need to get ourselves through whatever stage of academia we're in, in a way that's productive and enjoyable and fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And some of that is about how we talk to ourselves, but a big chunk of it is also about how we manage our tasks and how we manage the time and energy we have to do those tasks. I did an episode a few weeks back about how to plan using boss mode. And I really recommend after this episode, you go back and listen to that one if you haven't already because boss mode is this notion that we put ourselves into like planning oversight mode for a while and make the decisions and then implementer goes away and does it. And breaking down tasks is one of the things that bosses do for the people they work for. Anyway, why am I going into this in so much detail now is because when we're thinking about ourselves as two separate people, the person who plans it and the person who does it, it can change the way we give instructions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead of writing down tasks as though you're going to do them -you know, a couple of words on a to do list- I want you to consider breaking down your tasks as though you were giving them to somebody else. As though the --implementer isn't you, they're a really able research assistant who just doesn't know how to do the things you're doing. So they're very bright, very capable, very able to follow instructions but they don't know how to do the thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can't write, write introduction because they don't know what to do. So what's the next steps that you want them to take over the next day or two that start moving them towards writing the introduction?  <span> When you start separating it out like that, and you review your to do list, you're suddenly like 'Do reading'. Okay, that's not helpful. 'Tidy office' could be helpful, depending on whether it's clear where things go or not. You know, all the things we have to do, actually, are usually written in a way that assumes we know what we're on about. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sometimes that's true, and sometimes when we come to look at it, we're like, I don't even know how to do that. And then we skip over it. So if you write instructions as though it's for somebody else, it forces you to think through what the steps are.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another way of thinking about that is thinking, what instructions would I give AI if I wanted them to do this for me? Now, I have very mixed views about AI, whether it's a good thing, whether it's a bad thing, whether we're inevitably stuck with it or how it's going to go. I have a lot of views, might do a podcast about it at some point, but the one thing that I think is going to be really, really useful is actually learning how to do good prompts for AI. Because as with anything, AI is only going to be as good as its prompts. And if any of you have ever played around with it and written, 'Write an essay about stress management', or whatever, you'll see the absolute drivel that it comes out with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you write, write an essay about stress management. It needs to have five sections. The sections need to cover blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It needs to use up to date literature. Please only use real and existing articles. Apparently that's something you can write. Who knew? Um, and you give it much more detailed explanation than it does a much, much better job. Same as if you give much more detailed explanations and instructions to a real person as well.  <span> And I actually think there's an enormous skill in that. And that's where, and I don't want to go off into a big AI tangent, but that's where I believe that people who don't really understand their subjects are never going to be able to write a good essay or write a good piece of work with AI because they won't be able to give them the specific and helpful instructions that it needs in order to function effectively. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you're writing your own to do list, imagine you are your AI, or you are your personal assistant, and write that level of specific instructions. So if your task, your overall task is write introduction, for example, what are the next few chunks for that? Is it Select six keywords that will form the basis of my searching, enter those certain keywords into X database and Y database in whatever combinations and find 10 articles that, use this particular methodology in that population or whatever. Okay?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get right down to that specifically what do I mean. In reading, rather than writing, read the Burns article, you write, read x article with the intention of finding x, y, z. Or, read the Burns article with the intention of writing two paragraphs of summary of what they did and found. Or read the Burns article and compare it to the Wright article, in terms of their methodology and find five points in which they differ in their approach, for example. Okay, and it can sound really pedantic but suddenly it becomes much more doable. Rather than just read we know exactly what we're doing. It also forces you to think about why am I doing this thing? If I've got read X on my list. Why am I reading it? By giving yourself specific instructions, not only are you more likely to get on with it, you're actually more likely to do it in a way that's going to be useful for you as well, because you will have pre thought about what you actually need to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My second tip is all kind of mixed up with that, which is making it really tangible. So anything on your to do list that's about understand, figure out, decide, clear up, whatever, those sorts of fuzzy words. I want you to get really specific and tangible about what that means. I'm going to do this for myself. Cause I have a habit in my time blocking role. Task management systems of putting things like read X article in my CPD section. And that's great, but it never ever comes to the top of my to do list. So one of the things that I need to do to make that more tangible is read X paper and turn into podcast, read X paper and write blog for whoever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I need to make those into things where there's an actual outcome so that it's much more likely to then get put onto my, I'm going to do this this week. And that's something that you can do. Make it really specific and really tangible so that it's clear and easy to start and so that you're more likely to prioritize it because you can see why you are doing it. <span>  The other way to sort of really make it clearer and really embrace this notion of giving instructions to somebody else and making it more specific is to write in paragraphs rather than a list. So instead of just having bullets, boom, boom, boom, boom, these are the things I'm doing, actually write a note to yourself. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hi Vicki, today we're going to be working on the introduction. What that specifically means is I want you to identify the the paragraph headings for the first page or so of the introduction. I want you to decide what order they could be in as a first draft and then start chucking bullet points into each of those paragraphs to see what they need to cover. We'll review the order tomorrow. For example, and when you actually write it out like that, it's a lot easier to test whether you are being specific and tangible. It's also a really good opportunity to practice your self talk, because it means you can practice writing it in a way that feels enthusiastic, that feels motivating, that feels open, nonjudgmental, compassionate, whatever sort of voice you need to hear at the moment, you can use in those instructions. So rather than just seeing write intro on your task list, you're actually getting a nice little motivational message from your boss, i. e. yourself, telling you exactly and specifically what you need next. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if all of this feels a little bit overwhelming, like I'm going to take more time writing instructions than I am doing it, A, not a bad thing. I want you to think about all the DIY projects that you've done. If you do that sort of thing and think about that notion of, you know, measure twice, cut once and all of that. I really believe with a lot of our work, we should plan twice, do once, which will make it a lot more effective and a lot more enjoyable. But also, I want you to just double check that you're not asking yourself to plan too much. So when we're talking about chunking stuff down and really giving ourselves specific instructions, that's not for everything. That only needs to be for the next thing we're doing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we only need to really chunk down the bit that we're planning to do today and tomorrow, not every step of the entire thing. So when you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, you can just say, I'm just going to break down the next bit. And then I'm going to get going. <span>  That really manages any ideas that this is going to take too long, any notions that this is getting overwhelming. We just break down the specific steps of the very next bit and then we get going. Those of you who love my podcast and do all the activities and read my newsletters and come to my workshops and all of those things, I'm specifically talking to you here because some of you can get caught up in planning as fake action that actually making nice to do lists and doing my role based time planning and doing my self coaching and doing my this that and the other and suddenly you've used four hours doing that instead of doing your work. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're somebody who's at the opposite end of this, that you spend too much time because it feels all tidy and productive and kind of gets you going, I want you to really listen to this bit, that you can just plan the very next bit and get started. Set yourself the challenge that you're going to plan for five or ten minutes for the next task, and then we're getting started. Okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now some of you will be saying, I don't know what the next steps are. And if that's true, I get it. We've all been there. Don't worry. But that's also why you're not doing that task. That's also why it's sat on your to do list for as long as it has. And the fact is, you ain't gonna figure out how to do it unless we turn that bit into a task as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's going to wallow on your to do list until either you sheepishly delete it and accept you're not going to do it, or until a deadline hits enough that you panic and figure it out. So, really easy solution here. If you're not clear what the next steps are, your next task is not write the introduction. Your next task is figure out what next steps are or make decision about X. Because if the problem is you don't know what keywords you're going to search on, or the problem is you don't know which section you need to write, or the problem is you don't know what the argument you want to make is, then your next task is to decide.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so then what you do is you go through the same process, but this time you're not trying to break down how to do the thing, you're trying to break down the steps to deciding. So if you haven't decided what the central argument of the paper you're writing is, and trust me, this happens massively at every stage of a research project, I coach so many people on this, if you're not clear what your key argument is, what steps do you need to go through in order to decide? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I want you to notice me using the word decide. I'm using that very specifically. Often people use quite passive language like uncover or find or these sorts of things where it's kind of as though it's out there in the world waiting for you just to figure it out and find it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reality is, you just get to decide. You get to decide what argument you're making. You get to decide what your central thesis is. You've got this option, this option, this option. Which one do you think feels the most justifiable, the most defensible, the most interesting, the most unique? Cool. Let's do that one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I want you to do is break down the process of going from, I'm confused, I don't know what my argument is, to, okay, we'll go with that argument. What steps do you need to go through? Let's write really specific instructions for that. Maybe it's identify what the different options are. Maybe it's spend an hour on each of those options, writing out what the justification of it will be, and then compare the strengths of those justifications. Maybe it's do that and then talk to your supervisor, your collaborator, about it. I don't know. You, you figure that out in your different disciplines. It's going to be very, very different. But writing down what are the steps I need to take in order to decide can keep you moving on that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also always need to be aware of our thoughts and feelings when we are doing any actions because they're going to be driving what we do. I want you to notice any items on your to do list that make you feel confused, that make you feel overwhelmed, that make you feel guilty, that make you feel stressed.  <span> And I want you to remember, it's not those items that are that are causing those feelings. It's the thoughts you have about those items, but that also, we probably therefore need to address the thoughts we have about those items in order to turn them into something more useful. You're not going to want to do tasks that you're currently feeling guilty, stressed, unclear, about. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you notice, don't judge yourself, that's okay, it's like, okay, that item's really stressing me out. Or, I've been avoiding that item because I should have done it before. And then we get to say, okay, we can work on our thoughts. Check out my self coaching episode if you want to do that. But we can also just turn it into something that we don't feel like that about.  <span> We can turn it into a much smaller task. So it's like, actually, I don't feel guilty about this anymore. I can just do that thing. Okay, so really pay attention to those ones and make sure that you give yourself some very specific instructions on those. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All the way through this, remember, none of this has to be perfect. There's no right way to chunk these things down. I can hear, I don't think you'll be able to, but I can hear my dog snoring in the background as I record this. And it made me think about him when I'm making sandwiches in the mornings. <span>  Um, he always wants to have some of the cheese that I use in the sandwiches. We call it the cheese tax. I'm sure some of you with dogs also pay the cheese tax. Marley doesn't care how I chunk it. I give it to him a little bit at a time, so he has to do tricks and earn it a little bit. He doesn't care what the chunks are. He just wants to get that cheese down his face. And the same is true with you guys. You just want to get this task down your face. Doesn't matter what the chunks are. But let's just break it into chunks, whatever sort of chunks and get them done. Okay. Let's eat our tasks the same way that my Labrador eats cheese. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final tip. And again, a lot of this comes out of the advice that's online for people with neurodivergence, um, who find some of this stuff particularly challenging, but I think it's really useful for everybody because some of this stuff is not intuitive, even if you are neurotypical. So my final thing that I love about breaking down tasks is once you've broken it down to the ones you're doing today, hide the rest of it. Okay. There's nothing more soul destroying than a huge list of tasks. And you're like, I'm doing this one little thing, but look at all of that. Oh my goodness. It's soul destroying. We don't want to do that. That's, you know, why would we just keep chipping away at something that feels completely insurmountable and like we're never going to get through it? Whereas if you can break your tasks down as we've discussed into some really clear instructions, then you can put the rest of the list away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can shut that program, put your notebook away, wherever you keep your list, make it go away. And you just have you and that thing. Now, one way that I manage that is having somewhere. This is mine, um, where I can write down, things that pop into my head when I'm doing this one thing. So at the moment for this couple of hours, my one thing was plan and record this podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I thought of a few things that I needed to do for the students that have enrolled in my program. And so I scribbled them down over here and it's like, no, I don't need to go and do those now because my chunk down task is plan and record this podcast. But I didn't want to lose track of those and my brain keeps reminding me if it thinks I'm going to lose track. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I just scribble it down over there and then focus on the thing that I'm doing. So put away the big list. Have a place where you can jot down things that pop into your head. We can put them in the big list later. And then we focus on The one specific chunk of stuff that we've given ourselves for this chunk of time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I mentioned AI before and I'm not a massive fan. I don't really use it in my everyday workflow, but in researching this episode, I did come across something that frankly was a little bit genius. There's a website called goblin. tools and you can type in any task. Add it to the list and then you click the little magic wand that's there and it breaks it down into tasks. And as with all AI things, it's not perfect, but it was pretty amazing. And it gives you like breaks them down into like six or seven different tasks and then those all have a magic wand too. And you can click on those and it breaks it down even further. Cause if you are still like, Oh, that still feels quite big. Break it down further, still feels quite big, break it down further. And the thing I love about it is it gives you a starting point. So if breaking things down into tasks feels really overwhelming for you, you could try experimenting with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then if some of them you're like, Oh no, I don't need to do that one. Or actually that one's not clear. That one's repetitive. You're at least in a starting point that you can kind of edit from there. So check it out, have a little play. Let me know what you think. And let me know if there's other tools that have you found useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I thought it was particularly good for some of our more mundane tasks. So if you put like clean bathroom in it, it was actually really good. All the different steps that you can go through. So check that out for different parts of your life. This isn't sponsored or anything like that. It was just something that I found on the internet that I thought you guys might like too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I really hope that you found today useful thinking about why it's important for us to break tasks down into chunks, why it's okay that we find that difficult, that a lot of the things we tell ourselves make it harder for us to get on and actually even try to break it down. And hopefully I've given you some really actionable steps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I want you to do after this episode is just pick one thing that feels like a bigger task, that has been on your task list for a while and experiment with breaking it down into a couple of the tasks that you need to start with. Write them as paragraphs, make them specific, tangible, and encouraging, and then block in some time in your diary to have a go at doing those tasks. See how you get on. Let me know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I always love to hear from people. If you ever have questions, just contact me through any of my social media channels, or make sure you're on my email list. In my email list, I always give my readers a summary of the podcast. They get some extra reflective questions that they can work on. They get specific actions to do, and they get to hear about all the products that I sell and the free community coaching that all of you have access to. So if you're not on that, make sure you get yourself to my website, get yourself signed up so that you don't miss out on any of that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also then always reply to those emails. So if you're on my mailing list, you can reply direct into me. You can tell me what you thought of the podcast. You can ask for extra stuff. So if there are things that you particularly want podcasts on, let me know. I mean, I've got a billion ideas, always, but I love getting ideas from you guys. And I have several times in the past made episodes based on listeners suggestions, so get in contact.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let me know how all this lands with you, what difference it makes and what you'd like to hear me talk about in the future. And remember, if you liked the sound of that program, if you get to me quickly, I might be able to sneak you in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Check out the details on my website and I hope to hear from lots of you soon. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 08 Apr 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-30-how-to-break-your-work-down-into-chunks thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-29-seven-mistakes-academics-make-and-how-to-avoid-them <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Everyone makes mistakes. It's inevitable that we're going to make mistakes. But one of the most important things is to be able to recognize what mistakes we're making, figure out why we're making them, and if appropriate, move away from that pattern of mistake. So in today's episode, I'm going to be telling you seven mistakes that I see lots of PhD students and academics making that I want you to check that you're not making too. Some of them are relevant to everybody. Some of them are a little more focused on people who are balancing teaching and research and all of those things as well. They are all things I want you to check that you're not doing. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 29 of series 2 of the PhD Life Coach and we are going to be thinking about what mistakes you might be making. Now this isn't to pick you apart, this isn't to tell you you're doing all these things wrong. Things are hard in academia at the moment. It is a difficult environment and the last thing you need is someone like me telling you that you're also making a load of mistakes. I promise that is not my vibe here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not telling you you're making mistakes in order to make you feel bad. I'm trying to help you see some of the things that you might be doing and what you could do instead so that it all feels a bit easier. They're all things that I've done. They're all things I saw my colleagues doing as I came through my academic career, at every level, pretty much. And they are certainly things that I see my clients experiencing now. So, I've got seven, unless I make up more as I go along, which, you know, sometimes happens if you're a regular listener. So, let's get started. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first mistake is one that I made for most of my career, which is trying to impress by doing it all. So sometimes we're so eager to demonstrate that we're good enough, so eager to demonstrate that we were a good appointment to our PhD or to our lectureship or whatever it is you're in at the moment, that we feel the need to do all the things, all the time, just to justify our existence. And sometimes we're justifying our existence to other people. Sometimes, actually, we're mostly justifying our existence to ourselves.  </div> <div> If I do all the things, I will believe that I'm a good enough academic. I will believe that I'm a good enough PhD student. And the problem is, and like I say, it took me a really long time to accept this myself, when we try to do all the things, we end up not doing any of them enormously well and putting ourselves under much more pressure than we ever actually need to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because the truth is, we don't need to do all the things all the time. Certainly not all the things all the time to the best of our ability. Now, those of you who are in academic jobs may feel like actually you are expected to do all the things all the time. That that is the impression that our institutions give us, you know. In the same newsletter or email or whatever you get around, they tell you about REF, they tell you about TEF. They tell you about the NSS. They tell you about all these things. If you're not in the UK, I'm aware that didn't make any sense For international listeners, uh, the REF and the TEF are ways that our research and our teaching are evaluated, respectively. NSS is our National Student Survey, which has given a lot of attention. You are told that you should be able to do all the things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just not true. And there's two ways you know it's not true. The first way is you look around at your colleagues. No one is doing all the things. Everyone is either struggling and exhausted and trying to do all the things, but barely coping, or they're just deciding there's some things they just don't put much effort into. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We all know the people who've got huge grants, huge publication records, who don't worry about their student feedback and just crack on with their teaching roughly. We all know the people who never hand in their forms on time and all that kind of stuff. You know, there's lots of different ways that we're all letting different bits of it slide. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, first reason, we know you can't do it all because no one actually is doing it all. The second way we know you don't have to do it all, is because people get jobs and get promoted all the time who don't do it all. There's no clearer message from universities than when they promote somebody who's got great grant income or got great publications, but don't do any of the other things that you don't have to do it all perfectly, that is the strongest message that I can give. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, they taught the talk, you have to do everything, but actually when it comes down to promotions and things like that, they don't usually actually walk that walk. They still promote people who only do some of the things. Now you might be sitting here thinking, well, yeah, but I like all the things. And that's how I've spent my career. I wanted to be what I called a balanced academic. I wanted to do all the things. But what we have to then accept is if we're going for that, and I think there's a lot of merit to that, we can't be as good as others as the solely research orientated professor, and as good as the National Teaching Fellow winning teacher, and as good as the incredible pastoral care, looks after all the student, knows everybody's name, person, and as good as the person that does outreach, and as good as the person that does all the admin and leadership and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If our choice is to be someone who does all the things, we just get to accept that we're not competing with the specialists. We're competing by being balanced and finding that version that makes us a really valuable academic by doing all of the things good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way we can manage it is if you want to be someone who does all the things is you can do all the things, just not all the time. So I think I've mentioned on the podcast before, one of the best bits of advice I ever heard was you can do all the things, just not in the same year. So you can decide this year is the one where I really double down on getting a grant. This year is the one where I really dig into getting my teaching sorted, because I've gone into new modules and I need to get that sorted, and that needs to be the priority. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it doesn't mean everything else just stops, but it means that we have focused on one thing of the things as our main focus for that phase. And there'll be other stages of our career where the other things can come in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're telling yourself you have to do all the things and you have to do all the things perfectly, you're creating a recipe for overwhelm, probably procrastination, possibly burnout, and just not really enjoying this career that we've created for ourselves. It's not true and you don't have to do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second mistake that I see people making is believing that they're the only person that can do something right. And I always find this a really funny one because a lot of my clients tell me that they lack confidence. They tell me they're really unsure of themselves. They tell me that other people seem to be better at things than them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But at the same time, when it comes to getting things done, often we think we're the only one we can rely on. My stepdaughter's currently just started university and she's having the joy of group work. I'm sure all of those of you who've been involved in supervising group work before will know the challenges that she is experiencing at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And often we think that we're the only one that will get the stuff done, we're the only one that will do it well enough, we're the only one that can fix that bit of kit, or the only one that will bother to do this. And again, that keeps us stuck in roles and tasks that aren't necessarily serving us anymore. Because what it means if we tell ourselves that we're the only one that can do this, or we're the only one that bothers to do it properly, then partly we build a sense of kind of resentment in ourselves that we're stuck doing this thing. And partly it makes it really hard to move on to other things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember experiencing this quite early in my academic career. I was wellbeing tutor, and this was way before universities had the kind of the big wellbeing services that most universities have now. And it really was something that was dealt with by the academics. And I was a very diligent wellbeing tutor and I looked after my students really well. And I'm sure I helped a lot of people. But when it came time for me to take on a different role, I was really reluctant to let it go. I probably stayed in it two years longer than I should have done because I didn't believe that other people would do it to the level that I did it. And when I finally did move on to a new role, other people didn't do it the same way I did it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Did they do it as well as me? Really depends on your definition of well. Because actually, whilst I was super helpful, I think I was also probably there too much for the students. I think I enabled some of their helplessness and I think I created a sort of impression of availability that probably wasn't exactly what they needed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And then regardless almost of whether they did it as well as me, has this department gone on and thrived? Yeah, absolutely. Has there been a whole series of well being officers now? Yeah, absolutely. And is it all fine? Yeah. And if I had allowed myself to believe that either other people would do it, if not as well as me, then good enough, then I could have moved on to other things much more readily and with less regret than I did at the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to really ask yourself, are there things you're doing because you think no one else will do them as well as you and really question whether that's true or not, or whether it's time to move on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third one, and I see this at every stage of the academic career, from newbie PhD students to senior professors, is prioritizing tasks for other people. And again, this makes you sound like a really nice person, doesn't it? You know, everyone loves the person that puts other people's needs before them and is always there to help if you need them and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These things can make you sound like you're a really nice person. What I want to offer though, is that there's a bunch of people that need you to succeed in the things you're doing for yourself. Because when you're doing tasks for other people, you're not writing that big, exciting research grant that the world needs you to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you're not designing that new, amazing module that your students don't even know they want to do yet, but they're going to love. You're not doing the things that get you the recognition, but that also move forward your discipline and your research and your scholarliness in meaningful ways. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I think it's partly this notion that putting other people first makes you a really nice person that holds us in this mistake as well. Because I'm not saying be selfish, but what I'm saying is when we believe that in order to be a nice person, we have to put other people before ourselves, there's a lot of downsides.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't get to achieve the things that we want to achieve. We set up an environment in which in order to be considered nice, you have to do all the things, which I don't think is a helpful environment. You might be willing, on the surface, at least, to do all the things for other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But do you really want to tell the people that are five years behind you that this is what they need to do in order to succeed and in order to be liked? Probably not. It's probably not the sort of role model that you want to set. There were times towards the later part of my career where I started saying no to things, just to demonstrate to people more junior than me that you can say no and that that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I started leaving at a sensible time to demonstrate to people that you can and should leave at a sensible time as a senior academic because otherwise we inadvertently tell people that this is what you have to do to be considered nice and to be considered a good academic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason I think it's a mistake to always put other people's tasks before yours is I don't think it is just about being nice. And this is gonna sound harsh. I am now calling out all you people pleasers out there. It's not just about being nice. This is partly that you've been taught, you've been brought up that this is how you get people to like you and value you. But it's also because doing things for other people is way easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't want to be harsh, but it's true. And it might not always feel like that, but when you do something for other people, they usually give you pretty clear instructions. There's usually a firm timeline on it, and there's usually a good chunk of praise and thanks at the end of it. And whether that praise and thanks comes from them, which it often will, or comes from yourself because you tell yourself you're a good person for having done this for them. Sometimes we're doing these things for other people because it's easier, because it's clearer, because it's time pressured, and because we'll get gratitude at the end of it. Not because we're just nice.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These things are avoidance. Doing tasks for other people is a form of procrastination, if we're not doing it intentionally. Now, hear me, please, hear me when I say, I am not saying you shouldn't do things for other people. I want you to be amazing mentors. I want you to support your peers. I want you to be the ones that are collegiate and out there taking one for the team. A hundred percent, but not at your own expense. And not in some sort of misguided attempt to make people like you, and certainly not in some misguided attempt to avoid doing work that feels more difficult, less clear, or where there's less sort of certain gratitude at the end of it. Sometimes we need to put our things first in order to demonstrate that we can, and in order to stop avoiding the things that feel hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  The fourth mistake I see people making, and again, I made this a lot, is not believing yourself when you say you have too much to do. Now I have a whole workshop on this, but when we tell ourselves we have too much to do, that isn't inherently a problem. Having too much to do is not a problem. Having too much to do is only a problem when we also tell ourselves that we have to do it and that we can't possibly do it. It's that cognitive dissonance where we hold two different thoughts that are contradictory but we believe them both. There is too much. We have to do it. Those two things cannot be true.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  If you haven't listened to my episode, I have a whole episode on what to do when you've got too much to do. But here the mistake is not believing yourself that you do have too much to do. Sometimes we tell ourselves there's too much, but actually if we stop pressuring ourselves, we stopped like being a wuss about it, we can actually just get on and get it done and it's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Most of the time, for most of you, particularly anyone listening who's in sort of mid to senior academic positions, or junior academics, you all have too much to do. It's just the world we live in. You have too much to do. Don't mess up by not believing that you have too much to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because once we believe there's too much to do, we can start making decisions about which things we're not going to do. Or make decisions about which things we're going to do quickly and roughly and it's good enough. And which things we're going to give people warning that we're not going to do them till next year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have a bunch of papers that I never wrote up. Collected the data in various different formats and I've never written them up as academic papers and I won't now. I am considering writing some of them up as more like little blog post type situations, so who knows, they may see the light of day, but I accepted there was too much to do. There was too much data, there was too many options, and I couldn't do them all. And I tell you what, it felt enormously better to just decide I wasn't going to, than it was to keep telling myself that there was too much but that I had to do it all, and then inevitably not doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because there's no way to do it all if there genuinely is too much. So listen to yourself. Believe there's too much. Believe non judgmentally. Believe non dramatically. And just ask yourself, Okay, if there's too much, then what am I going to do? Because you're clever people. And we can come up with a plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Mistake five really relates to that one. And that is believing that things have a fixed level of quality and a fixed scope. So one of the problems with telling ourselves that we have too much to do is that we think our only two options is do the thing or don't do the thing. Those are not our options. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are so many things we can do to a standard that is good enough, but not as good as our best, in order to have it done, but to have time to do the other things that matter too. Examples, beautiful PowerPoint slides. We can do just as good a presentation with very basic PowerPoint slides as we can with beautiful PowerPoint slides. We can fill in a module review form carefully, thoughtfully, and in lots of detail, or we can bung in some comments and it's good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can send a first draft for our collaborators to look at that is beautiful and nuanced and sophisticatedly written and impressively referenced and all of these things. Or we can send them some notes in an outline to check that we're on the right page.  <span> There is a whole variety of scope and there is a whole variety of quality that we can perform all of these tasks to. One of the most common things that PhD students experience is the fact that their thesis never quite ends up being what they thought it was going to be at the beginning because at the beginning their scope was far too broad.,, They had far too high expectations of how much they were going to get done. And one of the things that that PhD students need to do is to sort of align their scope, quality, and time to do it, in order to enable themselves to fulfill the requirements of a thesis. When we tell ourselves that there is a fixed quality, that it is either acceptable or it is not, and there is a fixed scope that is decided and therefore set in stone, then the only thing that we have any control over is time, so the only things we can do is work more hours or allow it to carry on longer.  </span> <span> Those things are not true. You can change the scope. You can change the quality. You can decide which things deserve the best of you and which things just need to be done.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The sixth mistake that I see people making is making time for the wrong sort of work chatter. So we all want a vibrant academic community. We want somewhere where we feel excited to go to work and share the things we're doing. We have people that we can bounce ideas around with, where we can share our successes and lament our failures and get stuck into whatever disciplinary challenge it is that you're trying to answer at the moment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> We all want that community. Most of us also tell ourselves that it doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist the way it used to, and that we don't have time for it anyway. The problem is that academic communities only exist if we participate in them. And if we tell ourselves they don't exist, then we won't participate in them and they won't exist. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> During the pandemic, I did not make enough time for that sort of bridge building, collaborative, positive discssions. And I thought that that was the right thing because I thought that I needed to focus on all the things I needed to sort out to keep our programs running during that difficult time. In reality, and I think I've mentioned this on past podcasts, in reality, what I did was make it very difficult to implement change because I didn't sort of have my finger on the pulse as to what was happening and what people were thinking. And I wasn't getting for myself that like nice sense of being part of a community that actually makes it easier to get work done. It was not true that I didn't have time to have those conversations. I just believed it was true. And so I didn't make them, when in reality I think they would have helped a lot if I had made time for them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> On the flip side, what I do see people making time for is moaning about how terrible things are. You know, we don't, we say we haven't got time to have a conversation with somebody about our new research findings and what they might mean, but we do have time to spend 20 minutes in the corridor talking about how useless the latest university announcement is, why it shouldn't be like this, why we've got too much to do, why it's all crap, and why higher education is falling apart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And don't get me wrong, we all need to vent sometimes, I get it, but I want you to notice what this does to your emotions. Listening to all of this, participating in this sometimes, I want you to notice what it does to your emotions. Because there is a very big difference between venting in a way that helps you feel better once you've done it, and venting in a way that just feeds the beast, where the more you moan, the more you listen to everybody else moan, the worse it feels. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is not to say that there isn't a lot to moan about. I get it. I'm not sad that I'm no longer working in academia. There's a whole bunch of challenges that you guys are still managing. I get it. Just have a ponder on what types of talking about it make you feel better, make you feel like it was cathartic and got it out of your system, and which make you feel like the will to live is crawling out the door. Because you don't have to be involved in those conversations. Sometimes we feel like we do. You can just remove yourself. You can just say, oh well, I need to get on now. I do that now. If I found myself being like, oh, everything's rubbish, I just remove myself. And you don't have to tell people why, you can just remove yourself. Now, in time, as we learn to regulate our own emotions more, we may be able to listen to other people expressing their dissatisfaction with things without that having to impact our mood. But that does take a bit of emotional regulation skills. It takes some effort and energy and if you haven't got that right now, that's okay. You can remove yourself from the conversations.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But remember, swap it for something else. Swap it for a different conversation. Swap it for a conversation where you tell somebody that you want to hear about what they're writing about now. Swap it for a conversation where you talk about something that you value that they did or ask their advice on something so that you can have a proper conversation.  <span> This isn't about entirely withdrawing, this is not making the mistake of allowing your only interactions being people being very negative about the current situation. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then finally, the biggest mistake I see people make, and I help academics with this, particularly academics, in some of my one to one coaching, is not having a narrative of their own against which to prioritize. Now what do I mean by that? If you are clear on who you are, who you want to be in your working life, and where you want to get to, so this doesn't have to be some grand ambitious plan, but just what type of academic you want to be and what's important to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have a really clear narrative of that, it's enormously easier to choose what to prioritize. It's much easier to decide, I'm going to say yes to this but no to that. I've got enough of these things, so I'm going to do some of those things instead. It becomes a lot easier because you've got something to sense check it against. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's the same as, you know, I've never been somebody who's particularly into like fashion and style and things like that. And so I often found it hard to decide what clothes to buy because I didn't have a clear sense of like what my style is. I've worked on it. I've tried, but other people have a very clear sense of what their style is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So they'll be like, no, I don't go in that shop, that shop. I go in this shop and this shop. I wear these sorts of things and those sorts of things. And boom, it's easy, much easier. I did the same thing with my garden is I chose what colour flowers I wanted to have. And I just don't buy plants that aren't those colors because otherwise it was just massively overwhelming to choose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And It's the same here. If you have a clear narrative for your career, you can then make so much easier decisions about which things to care most about, which things to put most time into, which things to postpone and which things just to not do. If you have no idea what your narrative is at the moment, and particularly if you are in an academic job at the moment, so not PhD students, but people who are actually working in universities at the moment, then keep an eye out for my one to one coaching.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm usually on a wait list at the moment, but you can let me know what your situation is and where you're at and I can let you know how long it would be until I'm likely to have a space available.  <span> Because this is one of my favorite things to do. Help academics to figure out what their story is and how they can then use that to make decisions. If you're not ready to commit to coaching at the moment, but you think you'd like some more support on this, I do have three episodes of the podcast where I talk about how to figure out what your story is, why that's so important and how you can use it to move forward. So do make sure you check those out.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> So those are my seven mistakes. How many do you think you're making? I've definitely made all of them through my career. So trying to impress people by doing it all. Believing that you're the only one that can do certain things right, and so getting stuck doing those things. Prioritizing tasks for other people instead of prioritizing things that will help you move meaningful things forward. Not believing yourself when you think and know you have too much to do, and so trying to do it rather than actually accepting it and coming up with a plan. Believing that things have a fixed quality and a fixed scope, so that all you can do is put more time in or take longer over it. Only making time for chatter that brings you down rather than consciously putting in time for chatter that goes back to the things that you really love about academia and that you find nourishing and fulfilling. And finally, not having a narrative to check your prioritization against.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are making any of those mistakes, and many of you will be making all of them, don't worry. It's okay. The vast majority of academics are making almost all of these. But I want you to pick one. I want you to pick one to have a little ponder on and to think, what would I need to believe in order to change the extent to which I'm making this mistake. So we're not going to stop entirely, but what would you need to believe in order to do something a little bit different? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As usual, I will be sending some more details in my newsletter about these podcasts, so do make sure that you are signed up for that. Every week you get a little summary, you get some reflective questions and an activity to try. So if you're not on that, make sure you get to my website, the phdlifecoach.  <span> com and you can sign up for the newsletter there.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div>  If you're listening to this in real time on Easter Monday, and you're a PhD student or postdoc, you still have like 48 hours to get on my be your own best boss program. So check it out on my website. You will learn how to have positive self talk, how to organize yourself and plan your time, prioritize in ways that feel good and make you the boss that you need in your life. It's going to be amazing. At time of recording, I've got 10 people signed up already. I'm super excited. I would love a few more.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let me know if you want to hear more about it. If now is not the right time, make sure you're on the newsletter and you'll be the first to hear about. opportunities in the future too. The other thing that I wanted to do a shout out about is I do workshops for universities, and I'm doing a special end of year, like special discount bonus thing. Now it might not feel like the end of year at the end of March, but we've got one term left. I do these workshops April through July. And so I'm offering a really discounted rate for access to all of them. So there are 11 workshops left, if you're listening to this in real time, and I'm offering that package for 1, 500. This is incredibly cheaper than it is buying them one at a time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are an academic, please speak to your universities. There's usually a budget somewhere sitting around that needs to be spent before the end of the financial year. So I am here to help you with that. If you're a student, please send information on to your graduate schools requesting this stuff. You can find information about it on my website and on Twitter. So fish those out, send them to university, and hopefully you can get access to these workshops too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is a whole variety of topics, how to write when you're struggling to write, how to overcome imposter syndrome, what to do when you have too much to do, what to do if you're feeling behind, how to make decisions and prioritize. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then in time, how to get ready for the summer. It's an amazing series of workshops. Make sure you're in. Let me know if you need more information. And I hope to see you all at those soon. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-29-seven-mistakes-academics-make-and-how-to-avoid-them thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-28-how-to-stop-comparing-yourself <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> One of the things that always amazes me is the similarities between the challenges that PhD students have and the challenges that people at every stage of academia, all the way up to a full professor, have. And never is that more true than in the challenge of comparing yourself to others. From all of my one to one coaching and group memberships, it's so apparent that at every stage of the academic tree, people are comparing themselves to those around them and doing it in ways that just doesn't help and where they end up feeling guilty, feeling frustrated, feeling hopeless. And it's just so sad that whether you're a first year PhD student looking at the rest of your cohort wondering if you're doing enough or whether you're some kick ass senior professor who's smashing their career, we're still looking across to other labs going, Oh, well, they, you know, they have still got more grant income than me. They still got more publications than me. It's so sad. And it doesn't have to be like that. So today we're going to be thinking about how to stop comparing yourself to others and what to do instead. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello, and welcome to episode 28 of the PhD Life Coach. Do you find yourself comparing yourself to others, and somehow always coming up short? Always feeling like we're chasing down the next person who's doing the thing that we need to be doing, putting ourselves under pressure because of these comparisons. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This originally came up because the PhD students in my membership program were experiencing this a lot. They were comparing themselves to their cohort. Some of them were writing up and feeling like the rest of their cohort had already left and making that mean something about them and their abilities. Others were closer to the beginning of their program and just feeling like other people were in the swing of it much more quickly than they were. And then I see later on when people are seeing how fast people get promoted or when they get their first big grant or when they start winning awards from their learned societies or whatever it is. </div> <div> At every stage we're sort of watching across to see what other people are doing and then using that comparison to mean something about us. And we dug into it in one of our coaching sessions. So we have these online group coaching sessions where we have discussions in the Zoom chat, first of all, and then we do coaching in front of each other. So people get to see each other being coached. And we realized that when I asked people what they compared, they also compared themselves on a bunch of different things. It wasn't just on the sort of usual academic metrics of publications and progress through your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But they were also comparing themselves in terms of how much work other people did and how much energy other people put in. And the thing that was really cute, bless them, and I've seen this at every level, is that we compare ourselves in both ways. We worry if people are putting in more effort than us and we worry that they're working harder than us, but we also worry that there are people that never seem to work as hard as us but are still doing okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So either way round, whether we work more or less hard, we can make it a problem. They also compared themselves in terms of how much experience they had, before and outside of their PhD. And in both directions too because I had PhD students who'd come straight in from their masters who felt that they were much less experienced than other people in their cohort and then I had people who were part time PhD students who had senior careers in other things who felt that yeah they had that experience but that wasn't the same as having recent academic experience and that actually these people that came straight from their masters were much more prepared for their PhDs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again I see this with Full Academics as well. I see people who have come straight through, stayed in academia their whole lives, feel like they don't have the external experience that other people have, and then the people that do have external experience feeling like a bit of a fraud within academia because they feel their actual academic credentials aren't up to it. Either way round, somehow we still come out on the bottom every time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then when you chuck in, all the quantitative things that we can measure in academia, whether that's grant income, or number of publications, or impact factor, or citation numbers, or awards from learned societies, or fellowships, or whatever it is, once we chuck in all that stuff. There's so many things that we can compare ourselves on, and none of it really helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even people that think that they really aspire to having a good work life balance can compare themselves to people who they think have a better work life balance than we do. So even when we're trying to actively not engage in some of this kind of one upmanship, we can sometimes feel that actually other people are better at the work life balance than us. Oh, so and so never works weekends, and I always have to catch up a bit on a Sunday night, even though I don't want to. And we start comparing ourselves on how well we're doing work life balance as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in today's episode we're going to think about why it's such a problem to compare yourself to others, and importantly, as usual, what you can do instead. <span> Now, some of you might be thinking, I don't actually see this as a problem. By comparing myself to others, I give myself something to strive for. And, you know, many of my achievements have been attempting to beat my brother, or to beat my best friend, or whatever it might be. We hear sports people talking all the time about how their bitter rivalries drove them to better performances. So why is it even a problem? Well, I would argue that there's a bunch of reasons why it's a problem. Now, for most people, these sorts of rivalries only drive you to your best if you maintain a mindset where it is achievable to be as good as or better than these other people. So where you believe that they're really good, but you have capacity, i. e. it's a challenge rather than a threat, you have the resources to potentially be able to meet or exceed them then maybe you perceive it as a fun rivalry, maybe you perceive it as something that will drive you to achieve more. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Unfortunately what happens for a lot of people is it doesn't feel achievable, they compare themselves to others in a way that either doesn't feel realistic or is not realistic for reasons we'll discuss in a minute and what happens then is usually something around guilt or frustration or even despair and despondency. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We essentially give up or really struggle to keep going because when we look and compare ourselves to these other people and come up short, it doesn't feel plausible to meet them. And when something feels too difficult, it's really hard to then put in the hours and the effort to try and achieve the goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those of you who have listened to my previous podcast about procrastination will know that if we keep thinking thoughts that make us feel guilty or frustrated or despondent, we're likely to end up procrastinating or overworking one way or another, because we try and avoid these negative sensations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can also be a poor motivational strategy because when we start doing things just in order to be better than somebody else, it shifts us away from a more intrinsic motivation where we're doing something because we enjoy it, because we value it, or because it's part of who we are. And more into a more extrinsic form of motivation where we're doing it in order to beat somebody else. i.e. Get some sort of external benefit that is separate from the benefit of the thing itself. Now I'm going to do an episode in the future, where we look at these different types of motivation and why it can be really important to understand them when we're thinking about motivating ourselves, but suffice to say here, when we're more intrinsically motivated, we're doing it because we value the thing itself, and because we enjoy it, and it's part of who we are. We're much more likely to be able to put in sustained effort, and to have good psychological health during that, than if we're doing something in order to beat somebody else, to get that reward of winning, or to avoid the punishment of losing, in inverted commas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So even if you feel like the rivalries are actually driving you to better performance, we need to look really carefully about whether that's actually helpful in the long run, or whether that is going to lead to situations where you lose your intrinsic motivation and have poorer psychological health because of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that I think is different between rivalries that drive us on versus comparisons that hold us back is the extent to which they make us believe something about ourselves. What I see often in academia is people who find that the comparisons they're making just reinforce the stories that they tell about themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you believe that you're somebody who doesn't work enough, you will probably compare yourself to people who work more than you and end up sort of reinforcing that belief. If you believe you don't write quickly enough, you compare yourself to people who write quickly and publish a lot and make that mean something about your academic life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're doing this, don't worry. This is totally normal to do this. Our brains like to be right. And so if we're constantly telling ourselves that we're not good enough at something, we will look around us for evidence that that's true. And one place you can get evidence that that's true is by looking at people who are different to you and comparing yourself unfavorably to them. When we have brains that want to be right, unhelpful comparisons is one of the things that they will do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it is also super problematic because if we reinforce the fact that we're not good enough at what we're doing or we reinforce the fact that we're not fast enough or that other people are doing better than us and we find evidence for those things being true, it's much harder for us to generate the sorts of emotions that are going to enable us to get on and do our work. </div> <div> We're going to find ourselves stuck much more in in that kind of hopeless, I can't quite get on with this, I'm overwhelmed mode rather than in the, okay, let's go. This is exciting. I'm capable of this, let's get this done, kind of mode that we know helps us achieve our goals and feels so much nicer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other downside that my clients identified is that it can really waste energy. We put a lot of cognitive space in comparing ourselves to others, deciding whether it's true or not, what that means, spinning stories about how they're going to go much further than us or how it's not fair and they've had more advantages. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can use up a lot of cognitive space doing this. And as I talked about last week in my episode about how to manage your energy, cognitive energy is a really important resource for academics. It's something that we really need in order to be able to do the hard work. And if we find ourselves using up that cognitive space on spinning stories about why we're not good enough and why other people are doing better than us, it doesn't leave as much cognitive space for the other things that we need to do. </div> <div> Comparing ourselves to others also skews our decision making because if we're constantly telling ourselves that we should have more publications like she has and we should have more grants like she has and we should have a better work life balance like he does, then we start making decisions based on trying to be more like them, trying to achieve the things that they're achieving. </div> <div> Now that doesn't necessarily sound like a bad thing unless we're doing it from a frantic place and often we're doing it from a frantic place. So we take on that committee role because we should have more extracurricular activities and we volunteer to organize that conference because we should have more leadership things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we then agree to do that extra publication because we need to have a longer publication list. And all of a sudden now we're over committed and overwhelmed and now instead of beating ourselves up, that we're not as good as other people, we're beating ourselves up because we can't stay on top of things the way everybody else does. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And in reality, when we made those decisions, we were probably comparing ourselves to a bunch of different people. We were comparing ourselves to the one who's got lots of publications and the one who does lots of leadership and the one who does lots of other things. And somehow thinking that we should be better at all things than all of them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And making decisions. from that place is never going to go well. If we choose to do things simply to keep up with or beat other people, we don't then end up planning our lives around our values and our priorities and designing a life. that we actually like.  </div> <div> So what can we do instead? Well, I'm going to argue that we can compare ourselves to people. I think in many cases, it can be really useful to compare ourselves to people. And at the end of this podcast, I'm going to tell you exactly how I want you to do that. But first I want to tell you why I think we're doing it badly at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What is wrong with the way we're currently comparing ourselves to others and why it leads to all these problems. And then I will share with you what we should do instead.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first reason is we do it inaccurately. We compare ourselves to what we know of other people. So we compare ourselves in terms of our grant income without knowing what support they've had in order to generate that grant income. We compare ourselves in terms of how many hours they're in the office or in the laboratory without knowing whether they're actually productive during that time, whether they work when they're at home. Or what it is, you know, sometimes you're like, Oh my God, they're always at work, but actually they're faffing about on Twitter or, you know, Oh my God, they get so much done and they're only in the office six hours a day, but actually they're working all weekend. We don't know the truth. Yet often we compare ourselves to these fictionalized versions of other people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the tips I often give clients is that you have to remember that you're comparing your insides with their outsides. You don't get to see the messy bits. You don't get to see the mistakes they've made, unless they're really public. You don't get to see all the things that they worry about, or the projects they didn't finish. You just get to see the announcement that so and so has got another grant and make it mean that you're not good enough. So we compare ourselves really inaccurately based on incomplete information. That's the first way that we get this wrong.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> The second way is that we compare ourselves selectively. We compare ourselves to one bit of that person. I wish I was as far through my data collection as that person without looking to see whether the other elements of their life, of their academic progress are actually something that we're jealous of at all. So I used to run the third year project module in my school. And one of the things that I always used to see was I had some students coming towards me going, Oh my God, my friends, they finished their data collection, and I haven't even started yet. And, and, you know, it's a nightmare. I don't know what to do. And then I would have the other students come to me saying, oh my God, my housemates finished their literature review already, and I haven't done any writing at all, because all I've been doing is data collecting, and I'm going to be so behind when it comes to the writing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> And they were looking at each other. They were looking at each other selectively, and comparing themselves to the one bit that those other people were doing better than them at, and not looking at any of the other bits. Not looking at the ways that actually you're about the same as each other, or the ways that actually I'm a bit further ahead on this stuff than you are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way that we compare ourselves selectively is we don't take into account their whole situation. So often we compare ourselves to the grant income of one particular person, but that person is working in a highly fundable field, has a lot of senior mentorship, doesn't have a family, works really long hours, doesn't have other hobbies outside of work, all these other things. We don't take those into account because we're only comparing ourselves to their grant income. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We compare ourselves selectively to the bits that we can see and the bits that reinforce our narratives about ourselves. So we compare ourselves. This person does that faster than me. This person does that better than me. Very rarely do we go actually, yeah, they do, but I don't like the rest of their life, or I don't like the rest of their choices, or actually this other part of academia I'm actually better at than them, I'm further along than them. We rarely do that bit, we just selectively compare ourselves to the bits that reinforce the negative sense that we have of ourselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing, we compare ourselves unproductively. And what I mean by unproductively is we compare ourselves about things that we can't change. So I see a lot, for example, people who have small children comparing themselves to people who don't and thinking how different things would be if they didn't have small children. That's what I would call an unproductive comparison, because it's not one that you can change your circumstance. You're comparing yourself to somebody who's in a fundamentally different position to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I see it a lot with part time students comparing themselves to the progress made by full time students. It's not productive because unless you're going to change to being a full time student, it's not a fair comparison, and not one that you can actually learn from in any meaningful way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, it's a similar situation for people who have disabilities, who have physical or mental health problems. Comparing yourself to people who don't have the same challenges as you, it's a really unfair comparison and it's unproductive because you can't just decide, oh okay I won't have this anymore then. It's not how it works. Comparison is only productive if it leads to something that's useful and comparing yourself on something you can't change is never going to be useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth reason that we do comparisons in an unhelpful way is when we do it repeatedly without action. So we constantly feel like we're not as good as that other person, but we don't do anything about it. We constantly compare ourselves to somebody else who's, you know, just a bit further along than you, even though you started at the same time, whether that's your PhD or getting your senior lectureship or whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  If we repeatedly compare ourselves to the same person without actually doing anything, again, we just reinforce our negative beliefs. We generate negative emotions and make it way harder to take the next steps.  </div> <div> So what do we do instead? I promised I would give you an alternative here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we do instead is that when we choose to compare ourselves, we compare ourselves compassionately and with intention. Now I have talked in the past about boss mode and student mode. And those of you who are signing up for my be your own best boss program will learn so much more about this. I'm super excited. Starts at the beginning of April. I've had my first few people register and it's going to be amazing. You will have heard me talk about being a boss to yourself where you're actually planning and being strategic and then being your student or worker self where you actually carry out those tasks and actually implement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My big rule for comparing yourself to others is you're only allowed to compare yourself to others when you're in boss mode, when you are thinking strategically, when you are thinking from a place of what do I actually want to do differently, or don't I?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you're in boss mode, you can look at other people. Sometimes it is useful to compare your work patterns to others, to just reevaluate whether you're doing it the way you want to be doing it. You can compare your current publication record or current grant income record to other people, because that can be really useful information. But when we are being our best boss to ourselves, we do that compassionately. We don't do it to reinforce our negative beliefs of ourselves. We do it in a curious way. We do it in a way that goes, I wonder. We do it in a thorough way. So we don't only compare ourselves to the people that are doing. than us. We compare ourselves to a wide range of people so that we can really sort of muddle out where we sit in this pecking order. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are we about where we want to be? Are there ways that we could improve? We get to think about it intentionally. So we think, okay, they've got more publications than me. Why is that? Are they doing something that I'm not doing that I could and would like to choose to do? And if so, how can I figure that out and how can I start doing it? When we're in boss mode and particularly when we're in the kind of compassionate and curious boss mode that I'm going to be helping people generate in my new program, then we can really strategize based on some sensible and logical comparisons. What we don't want to be doing when we're in student mode, when we're in worker mode, where our job is to get on and implement the plan, we don't want our brain spinning with, I'm not good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She's better than me. He's got more than me. I'll never be able to, because it makes it enormously harder to get the work done, which is what we need to do in order to achieve our goals. And nothing intentional comes from spinning when you're in worker mode. When you've got things that you're meant to be doing and you're not doing them, if you're spending that time comparing yourself to it, it doesn't help you get the stuff done, and it doesn't help you make intentional change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, next time you hear yourself comparing yourself to somebody, you don't have to tell yourself to shut up. You don't have to tell yourself that you're not allowed to do that anymore. Because there's a bit of your brain that's doing that just because it worries about you and it wants you to do as well as you can do within the situation that you're in. Okay, so we don't have to shut up that bit of brain. But we can say to that bit of brain, this isn't for now. Next time we're in boss mode, we can think about this properly. We can compare our publication record properly, decide exactly where we're at. Are there things we want to change? Are there things we love about where we are with our publication record? Are there people we are doing better at? Are there reasons we are where we are? And is there anything sensible and achievable that we can take from these comparisons? And we do that in boss mode. </div> <div> We then set those intentions and student mode or worker mode gets on and does those implementations.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can compare yourself to other people, but let's do it in a way that is fair to you and in a way that enables you to use that information to get better at what you're doing and achieve your goals rather than in a way that just gives yourself another stick to beat yourself with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope you found that useful. If you're listening to this in real time and you're a PhD student or a postdoc who wants to hear more about my Be Your Own Best Boss program, just find me on social media. I'm the PhD life coach and Dr Vikki Wright. You'll find me everywhere or get yourself on my mailing list. So go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com website, sign up for the email list. Contact me through that. Find out more details. I would love to have you in the program. It's three months. We've got workshops. We've got group coaching. There's an ebook. There's access to other workshops. All sorts of stuff. It's going to be a wonderful community. We're going to learn so much from each other, so do check that out. If you're a member of academic staff, remember I do one to one coaching, or tell your students about my program. I would love to support them too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you all so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 25 Mar 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-28-how-to-stop-comparing-yourself thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-27-how-to-plan-when-you-hate-planning-special-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> In this episode, you get to hear a live coaching session with Laura! Laura is a part time PhD student who has tried every planning and task management tool possible! She shares that she finds it stressful to even think about planning and is worried about how to manage the last couple of years of her research. I coach her as I would in a private coaching session and we reach some great insights about how Laura is already planning way more than she gives herself credit for and how she can keep developing her skills. Perfect for anyone who has ever been self critical, worried about planning or fed up of never finding the perfect system!  </i> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 27 of the PhD Life Coach. And this is going to be another of my special episodes where I have somebody on to be coached. So today I have Laura with me who has volunteered to be coached around a challenge that she's experiencing at the moment. So hi, Laura, how are you doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Hi, yeah, no, I'm really good. It's really exciting, uh, to be doing this today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's amazing to have you here. So tell everyone a little bit about who you are, where you're at in your PhD journey.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: So yeah, so I'm a part time PhD student, so I'm in my fourth year. So that's like year two in equivalent full time years. <span>  I am in information studies. So, researching kind of how people use and experience information and I'm looking at it in the context of running as a sport and in my day job, I work part time as a librarian at a university.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So good. I have a lot of part time students that listen to the podcast and who are part of my membership program and do one on one coaching with me. <span>  And often they feel like they're experiencing very different challenges. And one of the things that I think is so useful is regardless of whether when people listening, whether you're part time or full time, I think the things that part time students learn how to do are obviously useful for other part time students, but can be really useful for full time students as well, because you've almost got a more extreme version of this really long, drawn out project, which feels like that as full time, so even more so as part time.  </span> <span> So, tell me a little bit about what is feeling challenging at the moment.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: I think it's very much, you know, four years of doing it, and for me, that feeling very much kind of like we've kind of crossing over that halfway point now, and yeah, you know, maybe a little bit of pressure around how much there's going to be left to do, but it is also very much that maintaining that momentum and that energy, you know. I've been doing this since 2020, we're now 2024 and that seems to be kind of rapidly moving on, but I feel like I've still got a really long way left to go.  <span> Um, and how do I, how do I keep myself, I mean, I love my research. I love my topic and you know, sometimes I can't imagine not having this in my life, but at the same time, it's like gotta keep, gotta keep going. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So tell me more about how you're experiencing the momentum at the moment. Is that, does it ebb and flow? Is it always low and you're having to kick yourself into it? Does it come in spurts? How do you experience it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: I think, I, I mean, so I had a really difficult year last year. I broke my ankle partway through the year, which, as someone who's researching running, was, you know, an even more incredibly difficult setback.  <span> And I got COVID, I just felt like it was like a real struggle of a year to keep going. So I do kind of feel like I'm coming into this, this second half of this new academic year with a bit more of like a renewed, like, finding my energy again but it's very much trying to get into that rhythm of, you know, balancing going to work, doing the PhD, how everything kind of slots together.  </span> <span> And I think that can be, that can be really difficult. And if, you know, I've come home after a, a really long week at work and it's like right time to sit down and try and get myself back into this headspace of doing my research. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: So I think one of the things that's really interesting when we're thinking about Finding things sort of difficult, looking kind of over a long period of time, sort of, oh, I need to keep momentum going.  <span> We could either focus on how you can look at that sort of timescale, the kind of now till the end of your PhD timescale, and think about that in a slightly different way than you are at the moment. Because I think sometimes when we tell ourselves, Oh my God, I've got to keep momentum for all this time.  </span> <span> That can be an exhausting thought in itself. So we could think about that side of things. Alternatively, what can be useful is to actually draw the focus a bit closer to where we are and sort of almost train, train ourselves the right word, not sure, but to kind of encourage ourselves to think about how we can maintain momentum over a week or a month as our key focus with the belief that as long as we keep doing that, the rest will come together. So which feels like it might be more useful avenue for you to explore, do you think?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Hmm, yeah, because I, yeah, because I tend to, I say if I was to really reflect on my working kind of habits, I'm much a get a burst of like, so I'm so hyper focused on this and it's all I can think about it's all I'm going to do. And then I kind of feel a bit burnt out and I can't, I'm like, I'm going to have to like, lie down for a week and I've drained myself of all my energy. So I'd say I don't, in the short kind of term, I don't work in a very sustainable way. But thinking about the big goals to me is quite often quite overwhelming and stressful, so I do, I'm, I, I'm good at thinking, okay, what am I going to do this week?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: But I don't necessarily, you know, I'm not always very good at thinking, or what, what, what might I be working on in six months time. And how do I get to that point? If, does that make sense?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, I think it leaves us in a  <span> place where there's a couple of different things that we could think about. We could think about how you could look after yourself to work in a bit more of a sustainable way day to day, which might then help you feel like it's going to be easier to keep that going in the long term, or we could address the bit that feels a bit overwhelming and actually dive into how could you spend a small amount of time thinking about that longer term picture in a way that doesn't feel stressful and overwhelming or at least where we can handle and regulate that stress and overwhelm. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah. And that kind of, I suppose that kind of feels like a good thing to do because sometimes I wonder if the reason why I get into these, like, okay, right, all, all I'm going to do every night this week until like 11 o'clock at night is... all the words are going to pour out of me and I'm going to be so in the zone. <span>  And sometimes I think that comes from a place of, of panic. Like, oh, don't feel like I've made much progress for a while and now I'm going to go into like super, super panic writing mode and churn out a load of stuff.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: But if you're not quite sure what direction you're going in and where you want to be at certain times, then that can be challenging, right? <span>  Because you're putting in all this effort, but you don't know whether it's going in the right direction at the pace you want it to be.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Possibly, yes. But yeah, if, if someone said to me, right, sit down and, plan out what you want to be working on and when for the rest of 2024, I would probably like freeze up and go, Oh no, no, no, no, no. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Well that sounds, if you're willing, then that sounds, and I don't think we do a full year. If a full year feels like it would be a freeze, then one thing that can be really useful to do with that, and we'll think a bit more about why you feel like this, but one thing that can be really useful is to find a period of time that is beyond what you feel comfortable planning for easily, regularly, but is not as far as like completely panic inducing. <span>  And I think this is really useful for people because I think people often struggle to have these broader, perspectives. And often I find it's because people think that they need to know more detail than they actually do and so we avoid thinking about it at all. And so I think if we can go through some of that, then I think that will be really useful for people listening who are trying to do these sorts of longer term planning as well.  </span> <span> So tell me what is it about planning ahead that feels stressful for looking further ahead than that?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: I think it's that indecisiveness and how do I, how do I know what I'm supposed to be doing in the future? Because I do, I even, you know, I just feel like sometimes I feel like I just about know what I'm doing now. So it is that, you know, the committing to the abstractness of and the potential. I don't. Yeah. It's I know some people seem to find it almost quite comforting to have things planned out, but I do not. And I think it probably must really frustrate my supervisors as well actually. And it's like, you know, what's Thinking about the bigger picture, um, and me being like, Oh, I'm, I'm not a planner. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, one thing I will reassure you and everybody with, and I do workshops on this is we are never responsible for other people's thoughts and feelings. So you show up how you want to show up and how you are with your supervisors. And then your supervisors are grownups who are allowed to have whatever thoughts and feelings they have. <span>  And everybody, in my experience, everybody stops acting quite so weird if we just accept that people will think and feel what they think and feel, and it's not our responsibility to micromanage it. Um, so, we'll leave your supervisor's frustrations over there. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, who knows. Your responsibility is for you to think about how you want to show up, okay?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Exactly, exactly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, a question. Is it the idea of making a longer term plan? So that period of time where you're actually thinking about it and planning it that feels difficult, or is it the notion of having a longer term plan? <span>  So if your fairy godmother could come down and just say, here's your plan for the next six months. It's all stuff you really like and want to do. I'm magic. So I've taken into account absolutely everything you want, but it's realistic as well. Um, do you like the idea of having it or is there a challenge with that as well? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Oh, what a, what a question. I think part of me does like the idea of, you know, the magic plan just appears for you. I think part of me would then be kind of like, but what if, what if it doesn't go to plan? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What would you like about it? So it's okay if you're having different sides of the coin, how you're feeling about it, and we'll explore both. But let's start with what would feel good about having a three month plan or a six month plan?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: The security of, like, here's a mapped out kind of direction that we can, we can kind of follow to help us feel less chaotic all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why do you think it would reduce the chaotic feeling?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Because a lot less energy would like, and like mental energy would constantly be used. . Trying to work out, okay, where are we again? What are we doing right now? What, what should I be doing today? What's my priority today? I think I, I, you know, when you, especially when you're part time and you know, you've got one day a week that is your, your day to sit down. <span>  And, you know, you're not working, that's your PhD day and then you find yourself thinking, okay, well, what, what should I be doing today? You know, if I could be like, okay, it's, this is, this is the plan says we're doing this today. Let's just try and do this.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: And how do you think that would affect your productivity and how you feel about your work? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Again, it's, I suppose it's sometimes, you know, is there an element of needing that yeah that mental flexibility to be able to be like, sometimes I'm a bit like, well, what do I feel able to be doing right now? It's almost like needing like a little menu of these are the things that need to be done. Which one do I have the right brain space for right now? Cause of course you don't always, you know, you might be like, okay, I need to I should be writing, like, this findings chapter but actually, you know, there's stuff going on that means I, I don't feel I can get into it right now. It's, yeah, it's really, it's the, particularly kind of being in a, a bit of a writing. stage right now, although the way my, the way we've kind of structured my PhD is that I've done some data collection over the last year, I've spent the last few months doing analysis and writing it all up. And now I need to start moving back into another phase of data collection, which I think is not always how lots of not, not, it's not kind of the typical way you see PhD kind of timelines.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you're sort of switching between some different things at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah, which was a deliberate strategy that we thought about that would be useful to help me with this issue of you know, the, I like novelty, I like to have fun new things to be thinking about. So that was a, a good strategy that me and my supervisors talked about. And I was like, actually, I think doing it like this would be much better for how my brain works than spending two years gathering a load of data and then having to sit down And all I've got left to do is write about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's something that's going to be different between different individuals, right? Because I coach people where their dream is just to have one thing that they can just immerse themselves in and do that. And the task switching between things, they find really difficult. Whereas other people, I'm a bit more like you, other people like to have a few different things. <span> Um, what I want to notice though, is that you have said that you don't like and find it very difficult to plan for the future. But this bit of what project sits where and therefore what activities you're going, that sounds like you've been planning for the future.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: It's like, yeah, I've been planning for the future, but I've not been committed. Yeah, it's, I've not been, I suppose it's all. Yeah, it's. It's funny that isn't it actually, but yeah, the idea that do actually have actually been doing the planning. I just don't recognize it as planning, because it's maybe it's not what what I think other people think planning looks like. It's not in a Gantt chart. It's not in a big thing on the wall. It's not in like a anything it's just all in my head. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And this is so interesting. I want all of you listening to think about this in your own lives is often we have these pictures of ourselves, right? As to what person we are and what we do and what we don't do. You know, for a long time, I had a belief that I was someone who over committed and then didn't finish things.  <span> And that used to really hold me back because I really, really believed this and it almost made it true because when I believed I was somebody who overcommitted and then didn't finish things, I had, I, there was no real incentive to not overcommit because it's, oh, that's what I do. And it took quite a bit of coaching for me to be like, Yeah, I overcommit, and there's some things I don't finish, but there's a lot of things I've finished.  </span> <span> There's a lot of things I have done successfully. And so this image of myself as being someone who didn't finish things was not only not helpful, it just wasn't true. And so I think recognizing that in some ways you are someone who plans for the future and who plans for the future with their own preferences in mind.  </span> <span> So it's not that you've planned out a way of doing studies that's just the most efficient or whatever. You've planned out a broad structure, even if it's not written down in a Gantt chart or anything, but you've planned out a broad structure that takes into account what needs to be done and what might work for you. How does it help to think that you are already doing this a bit?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: It, it, that's such, yeah, to have that kind of reflected back to me as yeah, the, the idea that. You know, I'm not just aimlessly wandering through a PhD. I have really thought about, you know, made those decisions around when to do particular things, and where we are going to go with it next. I think part of my, part of my big like kind of block on this is often to do with the fact that I'm the type of person who will be like, Oh, a shiny new, like productivity tool. Oh, a new notebook, a new diary. I'm going to use this diary. This is going to be the system for me now. And I find it really hard to pick a system and stick to it because I kind of forget to use it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: And so I've done all the different, you know, the, the websites with all the little to do doing done boards on the calendars, the spreadsheets, the bullet journals, I have literally tried every single system out there and I'll get all like super excited about it for like a week and I'll put all the stuff in it and I'll set it all up. And then I'll just completely forget to look at it. So I  <span> find planning stressful because I find it hard to. follow through with whatever, you know, with that system for planning things out.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: If anyone's watching this on YouTube, so if you're on podcasts, just so you know, I post all of these on YouTube as well. Um, it's exactly the same. It's not like fancy YouTube videos, but if you prefer that format, you can just do it. Anybody watching on YouTube will see that I was grinning all the way through Laura's saying that then. And that was not because I was laughing at you, Laura. That was because I was empathizing with you so hard. <span>  In fact, I think my fourth ever podcast episode. It was called Why You Don't Need Another Planner. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, I would highly recommend you go back to that. Uh, exactly the same. And so many people experience this and we can think about why that really isn't a problem and it isn't, but we can also think about why we choose to do it. And we're going to go that way first. So why do you want to find the system that works? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Because, well, so yeah, like, if, it's like, you know, I, you know, you can't, can't hold everything in your head when it comes to all the things that need to be done and when they need to be done by. I mean, I can try and hold them all in my head and, you know, you get told, don't you, like planning, having, you know, all the tasks mapped out and the deadlines and when you're going to do them by and keeping track of it all.  <span> But, you know, you get told that's a really important part of project management skills. And part of me still, um, maybe, yeah, that idea that surely there's gotta be, like, the perfect solution out there, I just haven't found it yet. Um, I know, I do know that that is probably  </span> <span> not actually true.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Possibly not. How would you feel if you had the perfect system? What things would you say to yourself, and what emotions would you experience? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: You know, I just, I don't, I don't actually know the answer to that question. Like, because part of me does recognise that I don't, there isn't a perfect system out there for me, so I do find it quite hard to imagine.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But what thought and feeling are you chasing? Because when we're looking for a new solution for something, we're essentially chasing a thought and feeling combination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Reassurance that I'm doing it right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: If you had the perfect system, you'd tell yourself you're doing it right, and you'd feel reassured.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah, I'd be like, I feel so secure that, I'm, I'm doing everything I should be doing right now at the right time. That kind of relief that you're not going to drop any of all the things you're juggling.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm not going to drop any balls. And this is really interesting and it might sound to listeners like we've slightly gone off on a tangent away from planning. <span>  But one of the things that I've found with myself and with clients is that is that one of the biggest barriers to planning can be this belief that we won't follow through on our plan anyway and therefore it's a waste of time and it's a bit of a painful waste of time because we're going to beat ourselves up for not following through on our plan as well. </span> <span>  So understanding this stuff is a really important step to feeling willing and able to plan so that that doesn't feel quite such a threatening thing to do. So I want you to notice that what you really want isn't the perfect notion template that's going to automate all your everything's or the perfect </span> <span>  the perfect daily planner that's got gold edges. This is back from the days when I fell for all this stuff. I still do to some extent. You know, whether it's old school, whether it's the perfect technical solution, it's not the solution that we're looking for. It's that we want to feel secure and we want us to feel reassured and we want to believe that we're on top of things and we're doing the right things. </span> <span>  But anyone who's familiar with the self coaching model that I teach knows that the system we're using is just a circumstance. Yeah, it's just a fact. I have a Notion template. I have an Excel file. I have a diary system. I have a bullet journal, whatever it is. And the rest of it comes from our thoughts. </span> <span>  And so we don't actually need a new system in order to feel more reassured and more secure. We just need to change the things that we're saying to ourselves all the time. Because it's when we're telling ourselves, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't even, you know, I never plan ahead. I just wing it and work hard and burn out and all of these things. </span> <span>  When we tell ourselves all of this stuff, that's what makes us feel insecure. That's what makes us feel like we're not in control of this last period of our PhD, is all these things we tell ourselves. Okay.  </span> <span> So before we get into the practicalities of actually how we can plan, tell me things that you already believe about yourself that make you feel reassured or secure. </span> <span>  So we're not going to, I'm the most organized person in the world, because that's, that's not helpful. Things you already believe that make you feel secure? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Like, you know, I know that I'm good at getting things done when they need to get done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. I'm good at getting things done when they need to get done. Perfect. What else?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: I think I actually quite, I enjoy the, the, the sense of achievement of finishing off a piece of work that, you know, has been hanging over me. And then, you know, all of, and you think, you think you're never going to get it done. But I really, you know, I, I enjoy that sense of like achievement and those little moments of, and I'm good at recording those little moments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Amazing. Because lots of people aren't. So that's a real strength.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: I don't have to do lists, but I am good at two. I am good at things. I've done lists. I love that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: In fact, I have a whole episode about done lists as well. So if anybody's interested in that, it's called why you shouldn't have a to do list. Um, so yes, that can be enormously important because so many people rush from what I need to do next, but as soon as it's done, it's forgotten and they're on to the next thing. So that's a huge strength. So you're someone who gets stuff done and you're somebody who gives themselves credit and sort of recognizes those achievements of getting stuff done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah, I like little milestones and I do, I, you know, I think I am good at recognizing the, you know, the fact that PhD, it's not all about the end result. It's about everything you do along the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you're someone who has milestones? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Yes, I suppose I am. I suppose I am.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You're starting to sound a lot like somebody who plans a little bit more than they give themselves credit for. Because you can't achieve a milestone if you haven't got a milestone.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: That's very true, isn't it? I'm a I'm a, I'm a planner that can't recognize the fact that they plan ahead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Who at the moment doesn't believe that or doesn't spend time thinking those thoughts? It's not that you can't. At the moment, you don't spend time thinking about the times that you have planned.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Um, and don't, I think, yeah, well, you know, those, if you, you know, to ask me What are you very good at believing about yourself that is a very negative, self limiting belief? <span>  It probably would be , you know, I'm terrible at planning. I'm disorganized, I'm chaotic. I, you know, and I probably do limit myself with, with that a lot 'cause I can't stick to a system.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, I don't think the problem here is the, you can't stick to a system. I think the problem here is that you're telling yourself you should be able to stick to a system perfectly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah. And I think. That, someone, I had that given to me as a piece of advice once from someone else, um, who was trying to give me some support with getting, you know, getting, getting into good like habits in the PhD, and their advice was, Just pick a system and stick to it, and all will be well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, that's not what, that's not exactly what I'm saying. I, I sort of agree with that. Yeah. Rather than the kind of pursuit of the perfect system. I don't think there's actually anything wrong with switching systems. I mean, switching systems every couple of weeks and spending lots of time researching the perfect system and watching YouTube videos about how to do the perfect system and spending lots of money on planners you never use, yeah, that's probably not ideal. But switching up how you do it every now and again, not a problem, not a big deal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Or if you're like, if your system just kind of fizzles out, or morphs into something different, then maybe that's okay? Like, yeah, I think maybe I, you know, given myself a lot of, a lot of, of pressure to be like, be like the perfect, like, super organized <span>  phD student, because you kind of need to be super organized when you're working in such limited blocks of time. And yeah, that probably is a bit of a barrier to how I think about what planning is and whether I'm good at it and things like that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Cause I think one of the biggest issues for want of a better word is the belief that if the planning system fizzles out, to use your phrase there, that the A, that that's a big problem and B, that that means you need a different system. I have stuck to, and I'm going to tell you in a minute what my definition of stuck to is, because it is definitely not the same as what most people's is at the moment. <span>  I have stuck to the same planning system now for probably 18 months, something like that, which for me is revolutionary. This is, you know, my previous best was about two weeks, genuinely two, three weeks. And the reason I've stuck to it this time, it's because I have completely changed my definition of what sticking to it means, okay? And when it fizzles out, I don't take that as a sign that this is the wrong system. I just notice that it's fizzled out and start doing it again. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yes, rather than thinking, oh, it fizzled out, therefore it can't have been working. Yes. I need to invent a whole brand new process for doing it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because when it fizzles out, the habit can be to make that mean something about the tool that you're using, i. e. that it's the wrong system, you haven't come up with the right way of doing it, or that it says something about you. <span>  That you can never stick to a system and that you are somehow flawed. Often, we make it mean both, which makes it a whole heap of fun. We have both the wrong system and the wrong brain and we're screwed and we'll never succeed.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah, that sounds so familiar. Like, it's me. I, um, I am not good enough to, you know, To do this planning, why, why am I not good enough to be a planner? <span>  And I think maybe one of the, I suppose one of the big fears might be that, you know, I'll get towards the real end of the PhD and find myself in a place where I'm thinking, Oh, if only you'd stuck to, if only you'd put more effort into following that Gantt chart, we might not be in a in a, in a mess right now. </span> <span>  And of course, I don't know I'm going to be in a mess in like a year or so's time, but I have that fear that I might be, and it could be my fault for not planning well enough.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Do you know the best thing about that fear though? That fear is a fear of a thought that you might have in the future. You can decide that you're just not going to think that thought, or you're just not going to believe and give it lots of airtime. <span>  You can decide that no matter what happens between now and then, you're not going to spend lots of time telling yourself you should have done it differently, and you're going to choose instead to focus on things that are also true. That you've made progress that you've got through, you've got stuff done, et cetera, et cetera, you know, you've already said you're good at recognizing the things you've achieved. </span> <span>  You can decide I'm just not going to, if my big fear is that I'm going to tell myself I should have sorted this out earlier, I could just not do that. And of course it will still come up. I'm not saying we can't just, that we can just delete these thoughts from our heads, but we can decide. One of the phrases I really like, that I use with myself a lot is the, We don't speak about ourselves like that. </span> <span>  And I have to remind myself of that. I'm going to do a podcast episode. In fact, by the time this one comes out, it will have already come out. So check it out, guys. It's great. I haven't recorded it yet, but I'm sure it will be. About the things that I'm still doing wrong in inverted commas and how I've learned to be okay with it. </span> <span>  And so I do still have these beating up thoughts that come up in my head. You should have done this. You should be further along. You should be more on top of this, dah, dah, dah. But I'm also increasingly better at reminding myself we don't, we don't talk to ourselves like that. We don't have to think those thoughts and if we can build that into a planning system where it doesn't matter if we stick to this plan perfectly or not. The point is that we make a plan from good intentions. We attempt to stick to the plan for good intentions. And when we notice it's not quite what we thought it was going to be, or we're not quite doing the things we thought we can be. We can either realign or compassionately nudge ourselves back, but that none of these things mean it was a big mistake or a waste of time or a huge failure. It just means we need to realign ourselves back to what we were talking about and what we were doing and that that's okay, because that readjustment is part of the planning process. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah. And kind of, you know, when you asked What are you good at? And again, I do think I am actually very good at responding to, to those difficult moments. Probably partly thanks to my kind of professional background and the amount of kind of reflective practice we do in teaching and in librarianship and things like that. <span>  I do feel I've got this really good skill of being a very reflective and reflexive practitioner, which I think of as a strength in other respects with the PhD, but perhaps I've never really thought about how it can be a strength when it comes to, when plans don't go to plan.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: So tell me just briefly what you mean by reflective in this context. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Um, so it's like, taking those moments to think, okay, what, what's been going on, what's happened, how did that make me feel, what could I do differently. So when we're teaching in my job, you know, if we've done a teaching session, it might not be a formal thing of, you know, sitting down and writing about it, but generally always taking those, you know, those moments to think, how did that go? What didn't work? What am I going to do differently next year when I teach this particular workshop or this particular class? </div> <div>   </div> <div> Vikki: It's almost like you're planning.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: It's almost like you're planning, isn't it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I'm terrible at planning. I'm really good at reflective practice. I think about what I've been doing and I work out what I need to do next. But yeah, terrible at planning. Awful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Awful at planning, good at, good at thinking back on how things have gone.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thinking about how it's gone and deciding what you're going to do differently next time is literally planning. So you are telling me at the moment that you have an overarching structure for your PhD where you know roughly when you'll be data collecting and what bits you'll be writing up during that and things. <span>  And you have well developed skills at being able to think about how things are going and decide how to do them differently next time.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah, yeah. I'm guessing my, uh, my actual problem is just, not, um, not being able to recognize a lot of this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It's what happens is people think that someone who is good at planning makes a plan, does the plan, And then makes another plan. And that it's this very linear, I decide it all in advance, I just implement it exactly how I intended, and then I do it again. <span>  And people have this perspective, but that is not how planning goes for anybody. There are people who are much more highly structured. I get that. It used to, I was head of education in my old role, and so I'd oversee all the modules in my school. And it would baffle me sometimes where people were like, but I'm teaching this in six months, Vikki. I needed to know this two months ago, cause it's all planned out. I'm like, how is it all planned out eight months before you start? I don't understand. So some people are much more highly structured in how far ahead they do these things and stuff. But no one just plans it out, does it exactly as they say, and then goes on to the next one.  </span> <span>  It's an unrealistic level of perfection that we're asking of ourselves. When we can see that the process of planning helps us to make some decisions now rather than later. And then we get to kind of work through the plan and some bits of it we will do and other bits that we don't do, and then we can readjust. </span> <span>  And if we see that readjustment as an intrinsic part of the planning process, then suddenly we haven't failed at our plan. We're just assessing where we are, we're retweaking and going again. And that doesn't mean, you know, I was the queen of remaking my revision timetables because I'd color coded them and then I hadn't stuck to it or whatever. </span> <span>  It doesn't mean just cramming, cram more in. It, readjusting can be going. Oh, I'm planning too much, aren't I? I'm not actually putting a realistic amount of stuff in here. Um, I need to get rid of some of this or I need to postpone some of this or whatever it can be that. It can be noticing You know, you are constantly telling yourself. You need to start work at 7 30 a. m You never do so How about we just tell ourselves we're gonna start working at 8 and then we are sticking to what we wanted to do Let's not give ourselves sticks that we just never ever stick to So that readjustment is part of the planning process, whether that's a sort of three, six month planning process, or whether it's a what we do this week process, readjusting is part of it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah, it really is, isn't it? That kind of, and yeah, I would say, you know, I'm, probably a good strength of mine, that reflection and on the flip side, not be afraid to deviate from what I thought I should be doing, because something is telling me that that's not the right thing to be doing right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You get to be reflective then and think about, do I like this thing that's telling me to deviate? Because sometimes our brains tell us to deviate because it feels hard, or, you know, we can't be bothered at the moment, or it sounds boring, or we don't think we're good enough, or those things. So sometimes we hear those gut feelings and we can listen and go, You know, I don't like those reasons for deviating from the plan. We need to just stick to the plan.  <span> Or we listen to them and go, they're actually telling us, you know what, you put too much in this section of time. Or, you know what, I'm not actually interested in that study we designed. I don't know how we ended up over there, but it's not what I want to be doing and so we readjust. </span> <span>  And so, When we can take some of the emotion away where we're not telling ourselves that readjusting means that we're big failures and our plan was a failure and we're rubbish and our system's wrong. We just tell ourselves that, okay, that's interesting. I'm deviating from this a bit. I wonder why that is. </span> <span>  Is this actually the wrong route? Have I set it up in a way that doesn't work for me? Or do I actually need to develop my, my sort of skills in doing the thing I intended to do a little bit more? And we can have a mixture of those things, yeah? We can, we can have a mixture of It's partly sometimes I just fap about on my phone when I should be starting work, and I just need to get on with it. But other times, if it's something that I'm constantly setting myself up for fail because I never do it, well, let's just I obviously don't want to right now, so let's just not plan it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: You know, it's so interesting to hear somebody talk about Like planning as something that has that ongoing kind of reflection and questioning. What's going on here is, you know, rather than what you often hear when you go on course, you know, you get sent on all the courses, you know, project management courses and time management courses and it's all, you know, it is all very structured and if you do this, this, this and this, you'll get to the end. And I don't think, I, now when I think about it, I don't think I've heard as much kind of emphasis on That, you know, that importance of like reflection and thinking almost, you know, you know, on a regular basis, what's going on here? Does this, is this working? Do I need to change something? And I quite like thinking about planning from that perspective now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Why does that feel better? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Cause it, it kind of makes me think I can be in control of everything in a way that feels very comfortable and like natural to how I go, how my brain works and how I, how I approach things rather than planning being something that It's like something I've got to learn, like this brand new skill that I don't already have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. I want to take you back. You said that if you had the right system, you would think, I'm doing it right. I'm doing what I should be doing. And I think what you just described, It's essentially you telling yourself that. that actually if I see planning more as a reflective process, more as something where I am going to wander off, but then I'll nudge myself back, or I'll choose a different way, or whatever it is, then I can be telling myself, I'm doing this right because I'm adjusting my plan.  <span> I'm sticking to the bits that I really want to and the bits that are really important. And I'm recognizing that some weeks are going to be different to others and some days are going to be different to others. But on the whole I'm, I'm doing this and, and that's so powerful because then if you want to be feeling secure and reassured, you can make yourself feel secure and reassured by knowing that you've got this iterative, messy sometimes, but ultimately kind of well intentioned system, where we, we figure it out.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: Yes. Yes. That's like, I do actually, just from having this, this conversation, I'm like, yeah, actually, like, maybe I do have a lot more control of this big unwieldy PhD thing than perhaps I give myself credit for sometimes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You've done four years. You've done four years alongside another job and got yourself here as somebody who believed, you know, through all of that, believing that you couldn't do planning. But somehow getting here, so you were doing planning and you did all these things. And I just want you to think how much easier the rest of this could feel if you know that it's not reliant on you finding the perfect system and beating yourself into doing it perfectly. <span>  So I had a meeting yesterday with some people who were interested in doing my group program, which is called being your own best boss and we're going to cover loads of this stuff. And I was talking then about my experience with role based time blocking, which is one of the tools that I recommend. And I was explaining to them, you know, I stick to role based time blocking probably between 50 and 70 percent of what I intend each week, something like that. Um, you know, in better, in inverted commas, weeks, maybe a bit more than that, but there's always bits I shift and not for good reasons. There's always bits I shift because I've been procrastinating or bits because I'm tireder than I thought I would be, and I'm not managing it or whatever. </span> <span>  But I've got enormously better at not beating myself up about that. And that makes it so much easier to then just tweak stuff. To then just go, Oh, look, today's felt a bit rubbish. And when I look at it, I didn't stick to any of the things that I put in it. Okay, well, what can I do in this next hour that'll make me feel like I've finished intentionally? </span> <span>  And let's just have a look at tomorrow and see, am I being realistic or not? Because what I used to do, right, was just shove more in. It's like, well, I've been rubbish today, so tomorrow I need to do all of today's and all of tomorrow's, so let's just wedge it all in. Whereas now I'm so much better at being like, you know what, that's okay, you know, today went great. Things feel better when I do the things I intend, so let's just try that tomorrow. Let's see what barriers we can overcome. Do that tomorrow.  </span> <span> And the response from the people in the group was like, Oh my God, you only stick to it 60 percent or whatever. I was like, yeah, but you teach this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, we know. And I teach it from that place of not doing it perfectly. And they were like, I think I could do this. I'm like, yeah, you definitely could. I think it makes so much difference to know that just because you're not doing it perfectly doesn't mean that it's not a good system. It's not that it's not a system you can make work and you're not someone who can keep this all on track. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yeah. And that's a really, really helpful, a really helpful reminder. Like, like you said. Before it's, you know, it's not necessarily the system doesn't work and you don't need to just completely get rid of that system just because you haven't been following it as you planned it out or as, as you said you were going to do, but kind of acknowledging that, you know, life gets in the way, you're not always going to remember or, you know, whatever happens. <span>  But the system can still be a useful system to come back to. So I think there's actually a system that I was kind of using and I haven't, I haven't opened the notebook for like a week, but I can kind of recognize that it does actually really work for me when I, when I need it to.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. I want to pick up one thing you said. You said when life gets in the way and things, one thing that's really important with this is we're, we're super compassionate to the fact that things aren't going to go perfectly, but we also take responsibility for them. So life doesn't happen to you. You make decisions. Okay. So things happen and then you make the decision that I'm going to deal with that instead of the thing I intended. <span>  Okay? And that's not to, like, blame or anything like that, but the more we can recognize that even interruptions are decisions we make, because we decide whether we're going to engage with them or not. Even emergencies are, you know, there are people who would hear that a family member are in hospital and would continue working because that's the decision they make. Other people would go immediately, no questions asked.  </span> <span> It's all just decisions we make. And so what we can then do is decide which of the decisions that we stand by, which of the decisions, actually, that was an interruption that was absolutely appropriate for me to drop what was on my plan and go do it. </span> <span>  Actually, that was an interruption that just felt a lot easier to deal with than the thing I intended to do. So, yeah, next time I might need to think about that differently. So we just take that little bit of control, um, of it.  </span> <span>  The other thing I'd say, or two things, so one is I tend to have the same core system for deciding what I'm doing each quarter, what I'm doing each month, each week, and the same core system for how I manage what tasks I have, but I tweak Exactly how I'm doing it that week. </span> <span>  And what I found enormously useful about that is I'm not reinventing. I'm not wasting time learning a whole brand new system. I'm not sort of having to move across all the tasks that I put in a Kanban board last week, but now we're going to be in an Excel file or whatever, um, but I do give myself little, Oh, Is it useful for me to put it on little post it notes? </span> </div> <div> So I just have the one thing I'm doing now. This is what I'm experimenting with at the moment. Or would it be useful to take things that were in my electronic diary and put them into my bullet journal instead? Oh, do you know what I mean? These things. So I have these kinds of, I have cores and then I twiddle around the edges and that really helps because I'm not reinventing, I'm just slightly going, okay, would this help? I think this might help. This might make it feel easier.  <span>  And that, that can be a really sort of positive thing, because I'm not wasting loads of time, but I am constantly just trying to iterate a little bit to make it feel nicer and easier to, to stick with.  </span> <span> The final thing, as your like, reflective homework, is you've mentioned a couple of things where you have strengths in other areas of your life that you haven't really thought about. So the reflective practice is one example that you haven't really thought about applying to planning. I'd really encourage you to spend a little bit of time thinking about some of those other strengths. And this is true for all PhD students, but particularly for part time PhD students who've got this whole other bit of their life where often, you know, they're quite experienced, they're quite senior, and all of those things.  </span> <span> Have a think about whether there's anything you do in your library life, in your teaching life, that you can take and apply over here. So have a ponder about what other skills you have in your librarian world that actually could be deployed over here really effectively.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Laura: Yes, I like that. I like the sound of that. Some reflective, reflective homework. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. So what do you think you'll take from this session?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Laura: I think the thing that's really kind of like light bulb moment almost is that idea of kind of planning is not necessarily like you say that fixed, like here's my plan and I'm going to do my very best to stick to it. And obviously, you know, whereas planning can be more of a, an iterative ongoing, like, you know, if you're always sitting down and thinking right, what do I want to achieve in this little block of time, that's still, that's still doing. <span> Having the intention of planning something. I think if you use the word, kind of, the intention of it, I think that's something that's really important to actually recognise. You know, not just drifting through a PhD and just seeing what happens. There is a lot of intention there with what I want to achieve. </span> <span>  I just haven't thought about it as, well actually this does make you somebody that is doing planning work and actually potentially being quite good at it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. What a lovely thing to take. One thing I always encourage people after coaching sessions like this is definitely spend some time writing down some of the thoughts you've had during the session. <span>  Obviously you're going to get this recording of it too, so you'll be able to go back and listen to yourself anyway, but also have a think about what's one thing you could do today. that helps sort of move you forward from where you're at. Okay. So thinking of a sort of something that you can immediately act on, um, can be really useful too. </span> <span> I'm sure for lots of people listening, this will have been super useful. So thank you so much for coming on and being open and honest and willing to share all of these things. People really benefit from hearing other people getting coached. Everybody watching or listening, I want you to have a think, what are you going to take away from this? </span> <span>  What are you going to do differently because of the stuff that we've talked about today? And if you're interested in being coached in the future on the podcast, do just drop me a message and let me know. I'm going to make this an ongoing series. So thank you everybody for listening and I will see you next week. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 18 Mar 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-27-how-to-plan-when-you-hate-planning-special-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-26-how-to-manage-your-energy <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> <span> <span> How many times have you seen or been on a time management course? How many books and podcasts and blogs and social media posts have you seen about time management?  </span> </span> <span>  I want you to compare that to how many times you've seen courses and support for energy management. So much less. It's so rare to see people discussing energy management compared to how often we see people talking about time management, and it just doesn't make sense because time passes. We can organize our tasks within time, but we can never manage time itself. It's the one commodity we have very little control over.  </span> <span> But that's okay. Because actually time management is rarely the issue. Our issues are usually around energy management and focus management, yet there's much less support out there for this. So that's why I'm recording this podcast. </span> </i> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 26 of season two of the PhD life coach. And today we are talking energy management. Now this is, it's another personal one for me, really. So I, as most of you know, have some sort of, I don't know what, but undiagnosed ADHD type tendencies. I don't struggle too much with energy. I do struggle with being able to direct my energy towards the things that I intend to do. So my amount of energy, I would say, is somewhere between normal and higher than normal. But my, uh, my ability to direct it into the, um, things that I've sort of intended to do, that I've planned to do, I find quite challenging. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I also have a sister that I love very dearly who has had chronic fatigue for 30 years ish, give or take, and it fundamentally affects every aspect of her life. For her, it's much more about the amount of energy she has. Between the two of us, we have learned an awful lot about how to manage your energy. Now you may have other reasons why energy management is so important to you. If you are a parent with young children or you are menopausal, or you are a part-time PhD student who's doing a PhD in your evenings and weekends, or you are an incredibly busy academic with 4,000 things going on and you don't feel like you've got the energy to do any of them, whatever the reason. Maybe you're older, maybe you have other health conditions, maybe you have other disabilities that I haven't mentioned. There's lots of reasons that energy management is important to all of us. And even if you're somebody who considers yourself pretty healthy, able bodied, no particular reason why you might be struggling with your energy, you may still not be able to kind of, control your energy, use it as you want to, direct it in the areas that you want to spend it. And that is what today's session is all about. Thinking about what do we mean by energy, how can we manage our energy, and what things do we have to be careful of in the process. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now one of the things my sister and I talk about a lot is there's different types of energy, and these aren't like distinctly defined in the scientific literature or whatever, but there's the physical energy that it takes to do physical tasks. There's emotional energy. You know what it's like when you've just got home from a day at work where everybody's been annoying and you haven't been able to say anything about it and you've had to kind of regulate your emotions and not get frustrated with them and deal with this and you come home and you're just exhausted and you haven't got any left so your partner says one thing to you and you just snap at them. We know what it's like. That's emotional energy.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> There's cognitive energy. The energy it needs to sit down and read that article or write that report But where our brains are really thinking lots about something that's difficult, and we're having to stay focused and put our attention on it. That's cognitive energy. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> There's also social energy. We vary quite a bit in our introversion, extroversion, and whether we get energy or lose energy from being with other people. But our social energy is another area for us just to be aware of when we're planning all of these things. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> A big type of energy that I've noticed is kind of creative energy as well. Sometimes we've got the energy to do clearly defined tasks, but we haven't got the energy to come up with ideas and be sort of generative in that sense. I'd love to know, you can let me know on social media or via my website, if you can think of other types of energy that I haven't covered today. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So why is it useful to understand the different types of energy? Well, for me it's because when we say we're tired, that can mean a whole variety of different things. That can be a deficit in all of these forms of energy where we're just knackered, or it could mean we're low in any one or more of these forms of energy.  </span> </span> <span> But if we know what type of tired we are, it can help us to plan much more effectively what we actually need to do now. So as an example, often after a day at work, I feel cognitively tired. I sometimes feel socially tired. Whilst I'm a pretty extroverted person and I do get energy from having all of my coaching sessions and training sessions that I run, at the end of the day, when I've had lots of sessions in a day, I can just be very tired, socially speaking, but I'm not physically tired. And sometimes I can be sat on the sofa being like, I'm so tired. And then my husband suggests we go for a walk and I'm like, I can't, I'm too tired. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And then it's like, no, this makes you feel better. And actually when I get out and walk, I'm not physically tired at all. And the walk becomes rejuvenating for me because I wasn't short of physical energy. I had plenty of physical energy. I was just short on cognitive energy and social energy. So a nice quiet walk where I'm just chatting to my husband or if you're really low on social battery, perhaps where you're not chatting at all, can be exactly what you need. So by understanding these different forms of energy, it can really help us to make decisions.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If we understand these different types of energy, what we also need to understand is which tasks use the different energies. So, the example I just gave you there was pretty obvious. Walking takes physical energy. And if you go with somebody else, it maybe uses a little bit of social energy too. But other things, it's not quite so straightforward, depending on how you find that task, it may take more or less of different types of energy. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So as an example, writing, once I get going on writing, I don't find writing particularly cognitively challenging. And so I can usually write even when I'm feeling relatively cognitively tired. Reading, much less so, unless it's just reading for fun, but reading of academic articles and things where I'm really having to kind of dissect what they mean, I need more cognitive energy to be able to stay focused and to direct my focus onto that reading process. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We get to divide the different tasks we have in our lives into different forms of energy. These ones take physical energy. These ones take emotional energy. These ones take cognitive, social, creative. And we can then use this more nuanced understanding to plan in advance. So when we put ourselves in boss mode, if you don't know what I mean by moss mode, make sure you check out my podcast from two weeks ago, where I talk about boss mode, how we can use our kind of higher brain to plan and strategize and make decisions so that then student us, worker us, can just implement on that.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We can use this knowledge when we're planning to make sure that we plan a nice mixture of different types of tasks, that we're not expecting our brains to do lots and lots and lots of different cognitive things in a row, for example. But we can also use it when we're making more spontaneous decisions. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> When we're thinking, I'm too tired to do this, we think, am I too tired to do anything? Or am I too tired to do this specific thing? Is there something different that actually I would feel better if I did as well? So we can kind of use it either in the planning process or in that more spontaneous process. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I use this information to design my day. So I know that tasks that I might struggle to focus on where I need high levels of cognitive energy, I need to do earlier on in the day. I know that I can always plot more social things into the afternoon when I'm typically tired because I have a pretty big social battery and generally get more energy. I'm like a little dynamo. I get more energy from interacting with others. And so for me, I would always try to put coaching, put workshops, put individual meetings into the afternoon because I very rarely run out of social battery in the afternoons.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I then also know- and this can be a strength and a weakness. So keep an eye out for this one in yourself. I also know that my creative energy is often replenished kind of early evening. Early evening when I'm just wrapping up the day, I've been doing lots of things is often when I get a new and exciting idea and get a kind of another burst of energy. Now, if I can direct that appropriately, then that can be amazing because sometimes I can just get a big chunk of something that's creative and important and valuable done in that last hour where actually I haven't got the brain space to do anything that's more organized, for example. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Where I have to be careful, and this is probably the ADHD stuff coming out, is that because I know my creative energy is often boosted at that time of day, I also have to make sure that I don't get caught up in deciding that I definitely have to finish this thing today and therefore end up doing far too much going on into the evening and turning it into some massive project. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So I use my knowledge of the different types of energy that different tasks take and my kind of baseline levels of those different sorts of energy to choose what tasks I do at different times a day. Doesn't always work. As I discussed in last week's podcast, I'm not perfect in any of this, but these are the things that I try to potter through. These are the things that I try to be mindful of when I'm doing my role based time blocking and deciding which chunks of tasks I do at which times of day. I want you to think about how that works for you. What times of day are best for you to be doing your cognitive tasks? What times of day do you need to get physical activity done? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If I've been sitting all day, then I still have physical energy left in the evenings. Other people, regardless of what you've been doing during the day, struggle to summon up physical energy in the evenings and so if you want to get exercise done, you want to have it earlier on in the day. So knowing your own baselines, knowing the types of tasks you need to do and what type of energies you need can really help you plan this stuff out.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, as with everything, We're never going to be perfect, and this can be an iterative process. You, if this is the first time you've thought about this like this, just try and watch it over this week. Don't change anything at the moment, but just watch what type of energy different tasks seem to need from you. Watch when you have more energy, when you don't get more energy and kind of just get to know it. Maybe make some notes of the different times of day, the different types of tasks and how you're feeling and just sort of use it as an opportunity to get to know yourself. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Often when we learn something new like this, we start thinking, oh, that's another complication that I don't have time to think about, but actually, we can just do it really gently and really gradually.  </span> </span> <span> For people listening, especially if you are an academic or a PhD student who has another job, you might be thinking, well, I don't get to control my energy. I don't get to control what tasks I do at which times of day. I have meetings at all times of day and that's not ideal for me, but it is what I'm given. I have certain hours that I have to work. I have to teach whenever they tell me to teach. I have no control over this. That's fine too, but it's still useful to know because you then get to decide what you put in amongst those things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So if you know that your schedule, which let's say you don't have control over, has scheduled cognitive tasks in a time where you know that that's not going to be your strength. You can think with what do I need to do with the rest of the day so that I'm as ready and prepared as I could be for that.  </span> </span> <span> What do I need to plan in after that? So for example, if you know that you find teaching cognitively and socially tiring, then, what are we going to put in the slot immediately after teaching so that you can replenish as best as possible? We don't have to tell ourselves, I need to be different because this is the timetable they gave me and I've just got to suck it up. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We get to think within the context of the immovable circumstances that I do have, how do I want to manage the rest of my tasks? How do I want to manage how I look after myself? How do I want to manage what I say to myself during all this time? Because even if you can't control it, even if you're like, yeah, but Vik, I'm straight out of my teaching into a quality assurance meeting and there's nothing I can do about it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Okay. We can at least decide that we're not going to sit in the quality assurance meeting going, I can't believe I can't concentrate. Everybody else can concentrate. I'm so stupid. I can't even do this. We're not going to beat ourselves up about it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Okay. Yeah. This is probably going to be a bit of a struggle because I'm pretty tired from teaching and I'm tired in the same sort of way that this takes, but I'm going to have a glass of water. I'm going to take my time. I'm going to be kind to myself. I'm going to contribute where I can. And I'm going to accept that this isn't my peak hours to be doing this but I can get it done. Okay.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So regardless, if you have control over it, you can use this information to shape your time. And if you don't, you can use this information to shape how you treat yourself within that predetermined structure. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> One theory that I want all of you to be aware of, some of you will be already I know, is called spoon theory. Now this was designed by and for the disabled community and it refers to the notion that energy can be represented by spoons and that we are given a certain number of spoons per day and that number of spoons varies enormously between people and I would argue between different types of energy. How many spoons you have for the different types of energy. And the idea is by conceptualizing it like that, we can make decisions about how we prioritize how we use those spoons.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, if you are somebody who has a severely limited number of spoons, then you're a real Olympian in this process. You know exactly how many spoons you have, how many spoons, even minor tasks, like having a shower or getting dressed or those sorts of things, how many spoons they take. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And you are really the masters. I see it with my sister. You are the masters of knowing, if I do this, then I can't do that. If I do that, then I'll need to do this. And really being very sophisticated with your spoon management. It's like, I truly believe if you want to learn to budget, you need to speak to people who don't have much money because people without much money are absolutely skilled as anything at working out exactly what's going where, exactly what sacrifices they need to make on this in order to make that happen and so on. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Don't budget from a rich person. It's easy to budget when you're rich. And similarly, learning to budget energy from people with limited energy can be a really useful tool. So however many spoons you think you have, we can conceptualize it like this and use it to make more intentional decisions about how we spend those spoons.  </span> </span> <span> So what can we learn from spoon theory?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Firstly is accepting that everybody has limits on their numbers of spoons. Now, for some of you that will be absolutely obvious based on your health status, your age, all the things I discussed earlier. You might be really, really aware of your limitations. For others, you may never have thought about it like that.  </span> </span> <span>  If you're generally healthy, got a decent amount of energy, you may never have thought about it like that. And you may still be stuck in the trap that I used to be stuck in of, I should be able to do everything. I did not accept that I had a limited number of spoons. I thought that I should be able to have an active social life and lots of hobbies and lots of family time and lots of work in lots of different directions and do all the extracurricular things I thought I should be able to do at all. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span>  And because I had probably more energy than most people, I didn't like to accept that there was any limit on that. And it was only actually when I accepted that even though my limit is pretty big compared to lots of people, there is a limit. And therefore, even though I've got quite a lot to go around, I still need to decide how I'm going to use it and how I'm going to spend it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another lesson from spoon theory is don't judge yourself by your best days. So, sometimes, regardless of your health status, we have a good day, where we get loads more done than we normally do, within whatever context that means for you. And it can be really easy to judge every other day against that standard. That if I could get that much done in that day, imagine what I could do if I did that every day. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And then when we have a normal day where we get a normal amount of stuff done, where we use a normal amount of spoons, it feels somehow inadequate compared to that perfect day, that one day where it all worked.  </span> </span> <span> In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask clients who say that they don't feel like they've done enough is what would constitute enough? What is enough hours done in a day? What is enough tasks done in a day? How much work do you have to do to declare it enough? And in most cases, they have never thought about it. They've never considered what would be enough. It's just a vague sense that they would know when it was enough. And the problem is, when we've only got a vague sense of what's enough, we spend most of our time thinking that it wasn't enough. </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So remember, best days are exceptions. They are not days against which to judge ourselves. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another lesson is that you can borrow spoons from the future, but only if you pay them back quickly. So what I mean by that is you can use more spoons in a day than you strictly speaking have. You know, we've all done it where we stay up late finishing something off or going out and having a good time, whatever it is. And then the next day we have to rest much more than we did in order to repay those spoons. And every now and again, for most of us, we can do that. We have to balance up the consequences of doing that. How big a deal is it to have to rest the next day? How easily replenished are your spoons? For some of you, particularly if you have ongoing health issues, we'll find that it's not easy to replenish your spoons. And so borrowing from the future leads to the next day not being worth what you gained by borrowing it, i. e. the amount of rest needed to replenish the spoon, the amount of pain you experienced, whatever it may be, makes it not worth it. But even if you're healthy and you're borrowing from the future, you're overusing your energy, be really mindful of when you are repaying this. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because sometimes, especially healthy people who don't have issues with their energy levels generally, think they can continue to borrow from the future indefinitely. They can keep pushing themselves. They can keep using more spoons than they actually got, and it will be okay. I'll muddle through. I'm always all right, really. And that's the path to burning out. That's the path to overwork and then actually having physical difficulties that will make it much harder for you to replenish those spoons in the long run. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So, think about the consequences for you as an individual in your particular circumstances from borrowing for the future. And if you think it's worth it, make sure that you are also strategizing as to when and how you're going to be replenishing those spoons before the debt gets too big. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I also want you to remember that even when we do a task, we can choose how many spoons we're giving to it, and which spoons we're giving to it. So, I've talked before about the joy of doing some tasks badly, just because they're not that important. Filling in a form? Don't mess about with the fonts. Just get it filled in. Don't tidy anything up. Right, good enough, happy days, off it goes. You can choose how many spoons you spend on something.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another example of that, outside of the kind of mindless tasks that don't feel important, is how many spoons you are going to give to the emotional side of it. So sometimes when we're at work whether you're a PhD student or an academic, we can get really caught up in all the stories, right? There's so many stories about, oh, it's not fair because this is happening, and it's not fair because that's happening, and they should be doing this, and they're not doing that. And all of those thoughts take emotional energy. They take from that store of spoons that we have to give things that we care about. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And it's not easy to detach yourself from that because we usually care about the things around us and we care about justice, whether that's on a tiny, small, local level of our department or more widely than that, but you get to choose how many spoons you spend thinking and talking to yourself about this stuff. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It is perfectly acceptable to sit in a committee meeting and go, you know what? I don't have enough emotional spoons for this argument. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut and not get involved. You can do that. You can decide that this argument just is not worth the emotional spoons. You can decide that this decision is not worth the amount of cognitive spoons you're giving it. Sometimes we get really caught up on, you know, should the title of my article be this or this? I don't know. How many cognitive spoons are you willing to give it? Not many. It doesn't matter. Just pick one. It's all good. Okay. So if you're finding there are things that are particularly draining any one type of your energy, ask yourself, Not how many spoons does it take? Ask yourself, how many spoons am I willing to give this thing? Because you have more control over that than it might feel sometimes. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another lesson we can learn is around what we do when we're low on spoons. And I'm going to talk in a second about replenishing spoons because that's super important and I don't want anyone to think that any of this is about sort of driving through and doing more than you're capable of because it's really not. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But when we've got a small number of spoons left, we often think what we need to do is small tasks. And then we end up doing the things that are often much less important. Just clearing these emails here and there, filing that, tidying this up. You know, the busy work that always feels achievable, often doing things for other people, because that feels achievable and it feels important because they're going to thank us for it, and so we think not many spoons left. I'll do the easy things. And that's fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But if you find yourself doing that habitually, and you're always or regularly a bit short of spoons, the problem is that you will never feel you've got enough spoons for the big tasks. Often, especially during term time, when, you know, academics, you're teaching and got student responsibilities as well as all your research work and so on, we feel like we haven't got any spoons at all that we can give to the big tasks, because we need lots of spoons for them. And so we give little bits of spoons to all of the small things. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But what I want to encourage you to think about instead, is if you haven't got many spoons left, how can you take small chunks out of the big tasks, instead of filling yourself up with the small tasks? What do I mean by that? So often our big tasks are writing, designing a presentation, planning our thesis, those sorts of things, you know, big important things that actually our progression of our PhDs dependent on, our getting a secure jobs dependent on, going for promotions dependent on, all these big things that actually really need to happen for our careers and for our contribution to the world are often the ones we don't feel we have enough spoons for. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If we can really break those down into much more manageable chunks than we usually do, then suddenly we're in a position where actually with our few spoons we've got left, we could choose to just chip a little bit away from that paper, instead of using those last spoons to fill in some bit of crappy paper at the universities told you to do.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But this only works if we know what those chunks are, because we know when we're low on spoons, when we're low on energy, the thought of looking at a big task and going, oh, how can I break off a little bit of this that I can do while I'm struggling, It's not going to happen, is it? We're going to struggle with that. It's not going to be good. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span>   </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So one of the things you can do when you're in boss mode is figure out how to turn the big job that you want to do this week or this month into very tiny things so that it's always clear what the next step is, and you don't have to work out all the tiny things. You just have to work out the next two or three tiny things that need doing. Because then if you have only got a few spoons left, Let's eat something important. Let's eat something that we actually care about. Because it's amazing how, if you chip away at something, how fast progress you can really make. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The final thing is, I want you to think about what replenishes your spoons. And I want you to think about this from two perspectives. One is the, what replenishes your spoons that will feel good and that we therefore want to do more. So for me, walks always replenish my spoons, uh, showers always replenish my spoons, playing with a dog, all those things. I've talked about that in a past episode, before, so figure out for you, what tasks replenish your spoons. They make you feel better and able to do the things that you want to do.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I want you also though, to be careful of false replenishment. So, this may be mainly for the ADHD people out there, but I think some of the rest of you might struggle with it too. I get false replenishment from taking on new tasks. Because I'm a creative person, and I'm somebody who's very enthusiastic, and I have lots of ideas, and there's lots of things that I think should happen in the world, I get a lot of energy from discussing new ideas and agreeing to do new things and starting new stuff. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I get very excited. And that's brilliant. It's good to know. But I have also learned over the last few years to be cautious of trying to get my energy from there, because that's the route to overcommitment. That's the route to overwhelm and that's the route to never feeling like I'm on top of anything at all. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because if every time I'm low on spoons, I make myself feel better by taking on more things, that's no not astainable strategy. And it's taken me 20 odd years to realize that, but we got there. So, you know, happy days. You can learn it now. Um, But think for you, what are activities that you think replenish you, but that don't? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another one for me is social media. When I've got no spoons to do anything useful, I'm I often go on social media and feel like I feel, I never feel better for going on social media. I like social media, it has its place, I still want it in my life, but too much time on social media feels like it's replenishing me, feels like it's a break, but actually I end up more drained than I started with. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So think for you, what false replenishments do you have? For some people it's alcohol, for some people it's eating. So think about what things do you tell yourself replenish you but don't actually in reality replenish you and be really cautious of those things.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So I want you to spend some time picking things, picking just one or two activities that do genuinely replenish you. You enjoy them while you're doing them. And you feel rejuvenated after you do them. Be really mindful of what those are and consider even planning them into your day in advance of everything else. One of the principles of role based time blocking is to put your replenishment activities in first. So we don't put meetings in first. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We don't put tasks in first. We put the things that are needed to maintain your spoons, to maintain your energy, to maintain your quality of life frankly. We put those in first. So identify what they are. Make sure you're planning them first.  </span> </span> <span> I really hope this has been useful for you. I am very aware that I am using a theory that has been designed by and for people in the disabled community. Often what is designed by those who are most in need can also be used in a kind of universal design way for everybody else. There's an awful lot we can learn from and with people who are struggling with this the most.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> With that in mind, just as a little side note at the end. Be really mindful of the spoon levels of the people around you, and the fact that they might have different absolute numbers of spoons, and might be distributed differently amongst the different types of energy.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So one thing my sister and I always have to deal with is that I get more energy from interacting and she uses up energy from interacting. And so we have to balance that between us. Cause I offer is like, Oh, if you need to get that done, we could do it together. It would help. And so she's like, no, that doesn't help. That makes it harder, that uses more energy than if I did it on my own. Whereas for me, the self regulation required to do something on my own is enormously higher than if I was doing it with somebody else. You know, I'm the kid that my mum used to get my friend around to sit on my bed while I tidied my bedroom because then I'd actually do it. Because I have so much less resistance to doing it when somebody else was in the room.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So be mindful of your own spoons. how many you have, what type, and how you spend them, and where you can get more of them, and be mindful of the spoons of the people around you, and how they may well be different to yours. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And with a little bit of consideration to ourselves, and to those that surround us, we can make much more intentional decisions about how we use our energy so that we can live the lives that we want to live. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 11 Mar 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-26-how-to-manage-your-energy thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-25-five-things-i-struggle-with-that-might-surprise-and-reassure-you <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i>  Do you ever listen to my podcasts and go, well, that sounds all very nice and I'm sure it works for you, but I don't think I could do that. I don't think that's possible for me. Have you tried every organization system out there and always fall off the wagon after a couple of weeks, tell yourself that this is the time it's going to be better and then it's not, and then beat yourself up for it? </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> If that's you, this is going to be the perfect episode. I'm going to tell you about all the things that I still struggle with, even though I teach them to other people and how I got to be pretty much okay with that.  </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 25 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach and this is going to be a bit of a personal one. I have been talking with clients recently who've been sharing how they can sometimes feel really almost hopeless about the prospect of improving the things that they currently find difficult, so people who plan or struggle to stick to their plans and they're kind of burnt out of looking for new systems. They feel like they've tried every single option out there and they never stick to it. And they're beginning to believe that maybe there's someone who just can't do this.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> In fact, you're going to hear from one of these clients in a couple of weeks time, because I've got another coaching session coming up where I'm coaching her on the podcast so you can hear our whole session. So keep an eye out for that one in a couple of weeks. But she's not the only person. Other clients have also said that sometimes they get put off learning new systems because they just don't believe that it's going to work. They believe that it works for other people. They believe it could be useful. But they've tried so many things and failed so many times, they almost can't get their hopes up about it. And they almost don't want to put themselves through it because when it doesn't work out, when it just becomes another planner that sits on the shelf or another IT system that you're not using anymore, it just becomes another stick to beat ourselves with.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And a lot of the clients that work with me regularly, really like hearing about the things that I've found difficult because they see me as somebody who, A, I'm a coach. I do all this stuff. I have all these ideas. I have all these techniques that people can use. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But also I was a highly successful academic, you know, I won awards, I made full professor, I've got, I don't even know, 60 plus publications, you know, I did all of those things. And when I tell them the things that I find difficult and they're the same things that they find difficult, then it kind of just gives them a little reassurance that, oh, I don't need to be perfect. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> In fact, I had a hilarious conversation in one of my membership coaching. So as many of you will know, I have a membership program at the university of Birmingham where students have annual access to ongoing coaching. And one of the students said, you have to be organized to be a lecturer. It's just like. Mate, have you looked at your department? No offense, and I don't actually know specific people in her department, but any academics listening, you'll know what I'm talking about.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Seriously, there is no way in this world that you have to be organized to be an academic, because if that's true, there's a whole bunch of academics that we could all list that really don't fall into that category. I was like Has your supervisor ever forgotten to give you feedback? Has your supervisor ever, like, failed to turn up for something? You're like, yeah. That's them not coping with their workload. That's them not being able to organize things.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now I'm not criticizing the supervisors. We all know that the vast majority of this comes from overwork and overwhelm and the unrealistic expectations that this sector has of us. But this notion that you have to be this perfect example of organized, absolutely on top of everything bliss in order to be successful in  </span> </span> <span> academia, it's just not true. There's so many examples of people that are a hot mess but doing okay anyway. Now, that's not necessarily how we want to live, and it's not necessarily fun to feel like a hot mess, and we certainly don't want to feel like we're constantly overwhelmed and burned out, but the solution to that is not having to be a perfect organized person.  </span> <span> The solution to that is learning to be a pretty good version of yourself and okay with the things that you find difficult.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The first thing that I struggle with is getting started. In the mornings, I consider myself a morning person. I'm pretty chatty. I'm pretty awake. My worst nightmare is to go and stay with friends and them not get out of bed and me be kind of like, come on, what are we doing? What's happening? I hate it, But getting up and actually starting doing the thing I'm intending to do, I find it really hard. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I get super sucked into catching up with a TV show on my phone, or scrolling through social media, or any of these sorts of things. I Get caught up in something that feels easier than the next thing I'm doing and then all of a sudden it's an hour later than I said I was going to start and I haven't started yet. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I used to make this a massive problem. There were many days, tell me if you've experienced this before, there were many days where if I hadn't started work at the time I intended to and therefore I'd thrown my schedule off, I would essentially give up on the day, not in the sense that I would just do no work whatsoever, but I would be in my mind,  </span> </span> <span> well, today's rubbish, today's a write off, I haven't even stuck to it now.  </span> <span> You know, if I haven't even stuck to the beginning part, there's no way I can do the rest of it. And so, you know, it's all rubbish, isn't it? And then I'd go through the day in that kind of mood, like defeated, like, and I'd do the bare minimum, I'd go to the meetings I was meant to go to, but I'd waste time in between. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And what I realized with coaching was that the problem wasn't so much the getting started in the morning, the problem was how I was then spending the rest of the day. So I still struggle to get up in the morning. And I say struggle, struggle implies that I'm trying really hard. Part of what frustrates me is in that moment, I'm not struggling at all. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I'm just watching my phone and having a cup of tea and thinking, Oh, I'll start later. And that does still frustrate me and I'm still trying out tactics to make it a little bit easier to move myself on. But what has made it enormously easier is that I'm much better now, but when I do get going Of going, right, what are we doing? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Picking the thing, going, or following my plan, if I've made one, we'll talk about that in a second. But, not beating myself up about the fact that I didn't start when I intended to, but focusing much more on what I can do now. That's the bit that's improved. I'm now much better at getting going on the thing that I said I'd do now.  </span> </span> <span> And making sure that that bit happens. And making sure that I squeeze bits in as I go through. And telling myself I can implement the rest of my plan. And then if I do that, it will be a pretty good day and it really can often be a really good day. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> One slightly weird technique that I can't remember whether I've ever shared on the podcast before, so bear with me if I'm repeating myself. I used to be part of a coaching program called Focused with Kristen Carder. If you have ADHD, I highly recommend it. It's really good. And we have body doubles where we would dial into zoom calls and just tell each other what we're working on. And then kind of not monitor, but like, just feel like you were there with someone while you were working. It was a really good way to get things done. And these people were all over the world, right? Some of them, and a lot of them were in the US. And what that meant was that if I was logging on at like half nine, ten o'clock, beating myself up about the fact that it wasn't 8am when I expected or intended to get working, there would be people there who'd be up super early working at like 7am, 6am their time. So I went through this phase of just adopting their time zone. I'd be like, I'm in New York, it's 6am, I'm super organized, and I'd just do that. And there was something about it that just changed the vibes for me. So if you struggle to get going in the morning, first step is to make sure you're not allowing that to poison the rest of your day. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We're not gonna ignore it. I know some of you are going, yeah, but I need to start going on time or I'll never get everything done. We're not going to ignore it. We are going to try and tweak it, but we're going to start from removing this kind of knock on impact of that. From there, we can get more experimental.  </span> </span> <span> I'm more kind of trying things out now. I'm not beating myself up. I'm not thinking my day is ruined if I haven't started on time. I'm just Going, Oh, I wonder what happens if I start with writing. I wonder what happens if I start with exercise. I wonder what happens if I start with a dog walk. Whatever it is, I try different approaches. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I'm definitely getting up earlier. Definitely getting up earlier. I'm not, still not getting up exactly when I want to, when I tell myself I should, which is a whole other conversation, but it's better. And you know what? I'm okay with that. Better is good enough at the moment.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So the second thing that I talk a lot about in coaching, in fact, I have a whole episode about is time blocking. I use an approach called role based time blocking, which you can hear, I've got a whole episode about it, but essentially the idea is that you don't have to plan exactly what tasks you're doing in every block, but you plan what hat you have on. So as a PhD student or academic, you might have a teaching hat. You might have a data analysis hat, a report writing hat , you might have a reading hat, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. You get the picture, you get your different roles. As a business owner, I have I have coach, I have course preparation, I have operations like the admin behind the scenes, I have marketing, those sorts of things. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And with role based time blocking, you essentially block in what role you're going to take in each slot. And then from there, work out what tasks you want to do. So in that marketing role couple of hours, you're only going to do marketing tasks. In the operations one, you're going to do these. And it can, it's a simpler way of time blocking than putting specific tasks in. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's really good if you're not very good at judging how long a task will take because as long as you stay in role for that whole block, then you've achieved it as it were. And I find it super useful and I've been using it for maybe three, four years. And when I tell people that, they assume that I mean that I block out my whole week and then I do what's in my blocks and I'm like this perfect embodiment of role based time blocking. I, that, no, that, that is not what I mean by using it. By using it, I mean that most days, or most weeks, I plan most of my role based time blocking things. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I could show you my diary. I could show you some weeks where, you know what? There's whole days that I haven't put anything in. I'm like, I have no idea what I did that day. I do. Cause I have some notes of what I do each day. But in terms of the diary, I haven't put any time blocks in at all. Cause I For whatever reason, decided I'm not to, and didn't do it, so just did some stuff. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Other weeks, you can see every time block in there, and I may be stuck to 60 percent of them. Something like that. But the reason I still use it, and the reason I still consider it a hugely effective system, Is that when I do use it, my week goes better, my day goes better. And when I don't use it, I'm really pretty good at not beating myself up too much about that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And just going, Oh yeah, you didn't do that for the last couple of days, did you? Well, let's do that for the next couple of days. And just sort of start it back up again. And I find that even on the days that I plan it out and then have to move things, it still goes better than if I hadn't planned it out. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because it's easier to know what I should be doing. It's easier to know what tasks got bumped because of the emergency or whatever. So there's much greater awareness. There's much greater intentionality. And so far for me, as a way of organizing my time, it's the least worse option. You know, people talk about democracy as being the least bad system of government. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's a bit like that. You know, I'm not that great at organizing all my time and sticking to the things I intend to do. But this is the system that I stick to the most and where I get the most benefit from, even when it's implemented imperfectly. And it is always implemented imperfectly. I don't think I can think of a week that I have ever done every single block in my, that I intended to do. And I mean, that would be nice, wouldn't it? So it was like computer games. Can I achieve perfection one week? Maybe I set that self as a goal, one week this year, I'm going to have a week where I do my time blocks absolutely perfectly. But if I work better doing it imperfectly than I do, if I don't do it, happy days. I'm okay with that.  </span> </span> <span> So I want you to think about what systems for you, are you able to implement imperfectly that would still make things better than they are at the moment?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another example of that, my third thing I struggle with is task management. And that kind of relates, right? It's my list of things to do. I have a fancy little Excel spreadsheet that I really like this system. So I have columns where it's, when am I intending to do it, as in what week am I intending to do these things? What tasks are there? What role do they fall into? So what type of task are they and are there specific deadlines or whatever associated with it? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I add filters in the top. So one of the things that I'm able to do with it is filter anything that I do need to do, but not this week. So often we get in our heads like, oh, and I've got that conference, and I've got that paper, and then in two months I'm going to be doing this, and da da da, and it can really add to our cognitive load to have all those things in our heads, even though we're not meant to be working on them now, knowing that we are going to have to in the future really can make that feel very overwhelming. And so what I love about my system is that I can filter, on the columns and just have the things I'm intending to do this week. In fact, let me know. So you can either contact me on social media, on all the usual places. I'm at Dr. Vikki Burns on Twitter. I'm the PhD life coach on. Instagram, or you can email me via my website, the phdlifecoach. com. Let me know whether you would like that Excel file as a freebie.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I can share that with you and show you how it works. So I really like the fact that I can filter and be, only show me things I need to do this week, only show me things that are in operations.  </span> </span> <span> I've got my operations time block. I'm going to do those tasks. It works really well. Sometimes, quite often, I end up with bits of paper like this all around as I've thought of something. And what I then do is at some point when I go, Oh my God, my desk's a mess. I start sticking them into there, get rid of the paper, bring myself back to that system. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And. I would usually, in the past, call that a fail. Like right now, I'm looking at my desk, and I've got three post it notes here that I've got things on that I need to do. I've got another bigger post it note over there. And then I know in my notebook there's a bunch of tasks that I haven't put on my sheet.  </span> </span> <span> And normally I would call that a fail. I would decide that that means my system doesn't work. And I would then start looking for a Notion template or a Kanban board or whatever it is that would be the system that works, that I actually stick to. And I don't now. I take that as a sign that I just need to get back to my system. I just need to go, okay, we'll pop those things into the file and then we'll go from there. . Because this system has the features that I need. It has the ability to keep track of what I need to do. It works with role based time blocking and it has the ability to simplify. Cause if I see too many things at once, it's all going to go wrong. And so, from that perspective, this system works really well for me.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> What I still struggle with, what I'm still not very good at, is checking the damn system. Checking the list. So there are days when I'm here and I do two hours work and then I'm like, I haven't even looked at my to do list, I have no idea.  </span> </span> <span> And they were things I needed to do, because they were on post it notes, they were in my inbox, whatever it was. But sometimes I look at my to do list after a few hours and I'm like, Oh my God, there's so many things. And then I look at them, I go, hang on, I've done that one. I've done that one. I've done that one. And I just haven't ticked them off. And again, I used to beat myself up about that. I used to think that I had to be somebody who diligently checked their to do list at the beginning of the day and diligently checked things off as I did them and diligently reconciled it at the end of the day and added things in and wouldn't that be nice? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I am building towards that. I am slowly working at my systems as to how that will work better. And each week or each fortnight I experiment with a different way of helping myself with that. But without reinventing the whole system, without deciding that I need to translate everything into Todoist app or whatever, um, this is the system. This is just the system. And I'm going to keep nudging back to it. And that's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But the more often I think, Oh, I haven't looked at that. Oh, I haven't put these in it. Then the closer it is to up to date anyway. There's very few people. If you're listening to this and you are one of these people, then all credit to you. But there's very few people that manage this stuff absolutely perfectly. And we don't have to. It's okay. We can do it in our own little way. And then get back on track and then do those things, use it exactly as we intend for a while and then not, and then get back on track. And the key, the bit I'm working on with all of this is reducing the amount of time in which I realize that I'm not using my system because back in the day, before I discovered coaching, before I discovered any of this work, I would not notice for ages that I'm not using it. I wouldn't consciously note that I'm not using it. I'd kind of be aware, but I wouldn't stop and think about that. And then I would declare the system rubbish and me rubbish and reinvent. Whereas what I'm really working on now is maybe not taking a week to notice that I haven't checked my to do list recently and haven't updated it and I've been going off a piece of paper instead, but to take three days or to notice today or to notice this morning and that as soon as I notice I'm a little bit not using it to move back into it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's a little bit like, so my stepdaughter is going to be learning to drive soon and her grandparents live on a farm. And so she's been, you know, even though she's not 17 yet she's been able to practice up and down the farm track a bit. And, you know, when you're learning to drive, you can overcorrect.  </span> </span> <span> She's actually pretty good at her steering, but you can often overcorrect a bit or not realize you're drifting. And as you become a better driver, you're much better at just noticing tiny shifts and correcting them. That's what I'm working towards. Just being able to spot a bit quicker that I'm not doing the system as I want to, and nudging myself back to it, but not beating myself up every time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Yeah, we've all been that learner driver where we're like, I can't believe I can't do this. This is so bad. It's like, no, it's okay. Of course you can't do it. We're just going to, as time goes, we're going to get better. That's the sort of vibe that I'm trying to bring to all of this.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The fourth thing I struggle with is decision making. I still have a brain that wants to do everything. I have so many ideas. Honestly, if I could run a company where I'm doing all the things, I have so many ideas for you guys that would help PhD students, that would help postdocs, that would help senior professors, leaders. I want to work with professional services. I want things that you can buy online that are completely self paced. I want high end coaching where it's super bespoke. I just want to do it all. I want to help you guys so much, and I'm so excited. I want to be doing keynotes. I want to be writing books. I want to everything. And so I find it difficult to make decisions because I want to do all of it. And making a decision means telling myself I can't do everything. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I have a whole course on this. You can go back to my podcast about how to make decisions or my podcast about what to do if you have too much to do. If you want to know more about the workshops that I do for universities, then do get in touch. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> There's still some available to book, but for example, I'm running one for Birmingham on Monday. So the day this comes out on how to make decisions and prioritize and I still find this very difficult. The difference now is I understand why I find it difficult. I find it difficult because I'm enthusiastic about all of them. I find it difficult because part of me still believes, to some extent, that I should be able to do it all and that I would be happy if I could do it all.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The difference now, after coaching, is that I know that bit's not true. I know that I shouldn't be able to do it all. I know that it's not realistic on any level to do all the things that I want to be doing right now. And I also know that I wouldn't be happy if I tried. I know that the attempt to do everything and feel happy because you get to do everything culminates in not enjoying doing any of it.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's a bit like trying to eat all of your favourite foods on the same plate. So you might love ice cream, and you might love sausages, and you might love candy floss, and you might love avocado, but if you had them all on a plate Not so hot. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I know that now. So I know that it's uncomfortable to make decisions, and I know why it's uncomfortable for me. And whilst that doesn't make it any easier, and I still avoid it, it means that I do understand better that it helps. And I do understand that what I need to do is pick things to meet my different needs. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So there's about 47 hobbies that I would love to have. More than that. So many more than that. But what I'm working on at this year is sort of picking one for the month, and then embedding new things. So from a physical activity perspective, January was about walking more. And I did, I increased my steps per day by 2, 000 or so extra steps compared to the end of last year. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And that was my big thing. I was trying to do some strength training, but I wasn't putting a big thing on adhering to that. And then I did okay in January. I didn't quite add as much as I wanted, but I did okay. And then in February, it's like, right, let's keep on the walk and keep trying to increase that a bit. But I want to be a little bit more focused on adding the strength training stuff.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And again, It's not been perfect. I've just done my monthly review and it's not been perfect, but it's been a lot better on the strength training and the walking I've maintained is slightly better than January. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And now March coming up, I want to add a racquetball session every week. We played a couple of times in February, but a bit more ad hoc. I want to add that in. And then my idea is to get back to silks in April. And so rather than, as I would have done in the past, going, I'm going to go to silks and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that, and I'm going to finish writing my novel, and I'm going to sew this, and I'm going to paint regularly, and I'm going to do this, da da da. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> My brain still wants that, but I'm getting much better at going, but not all of the time. So I find it hard. I still have to battle my inner instinct. I've still got a brain that is going, you should be painting more. You should be sewing more. You haven't even got your paddleboard out yet. What's happening? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But those things can come later. I'm going to start introducing paddleboarding after silks is embedded, so that I can go out on my paddleboard more. And we'll just see, and if at some point it becomes too much, then I make a decision about which things I swap out. Maybe racquetball is a winter thing and paddleboarding is a summer thing, and we rotate them.  </span> </span> <span> So it's getting easier. It's hard, and I recognize I don't like doing it, but I'm getting better at making it less painful and doing it more often.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And then the fifth thing, and this is the one that's hardest to admit, is the beating myself up. Because, you know, I do coaching from a compassionate point of view, where we're really accepting of ourselves, and where the first thing we need to do is remove or try and reduce at least this level of self blame and self criticism that so many of us have. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I sometimes feel a bit of a fraud when I know that I do still criticise myself. I share all this stuff with you guys and I share all this stuff with my clients and encourage them not to beat themselves up too much and to be more understanding and I still beat myself up quite regularly. And that might feel like I'm being hypocritical and it might feel like, you know, how can, how can I be helping you guys? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I say this to myself sometimes. How can I be helping you guys not to beat yourself up so much when I still beat myself up? But the thing I've really realized from that is I do still beat myself up. But I don't mean it as much as I used to. So I have these little dips where I'm criticizing myself but they don't feel as bad. They don't feel as true. In that moment, they feel true enough that I'm thinking them. But I know I'm being a bit dramatic and I know I'm being a bit unfair to myself. And when I'm not in that little pit, I don't believe them at all.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I, you know, I believe the good things about myself and that's a huge difference. I used to have a high baseline of beating myself up all the time with then some really quite low dips of criticizing myself even more. And now the dips aren't as low and they don't last as long and I don't take them so seriously. And I'm definitely getting a lot better at not beating myself up about beating myself up. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because then that adds a whole other layer, doesn't it? If we're criticizing ourselves for not being able to regulate our thoughts and emotions better, then we're adding more critique on top of the critique that's already there. And that bit I'm getting much better at. I'm getting much better at telling myself You beat yourself up because you care, you beat yourself up because you want to be doing all these things, but you know, it doesn't help. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So we don't need to do that. And you know, it's not really true. And sort of like with the tools, I'm much better at regulating it back. Cause that's what it's all about, right? This is about regulation. If you think about tools as in like mechanical tools or whatever. Anything that regulates itself, a thermostat, it doesn't keep things at the exact same temperature all of the time. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It doesn't do it perfectly. It notices when the temperature veers off and turns up the heating. Or it notices when the temperature goes the other way and turns off the heating. That's what I'm getting better at doing. I'm getting better at knowing when I veer away from things that work for me, and I'm getting better at making the adjustments to nudge myself back there, but I still find them hard. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I still struggle. There's still days where I don't time block. I don't follow my time blocks. I don't get started when I intend to. I don't make decisions about what I'm doing. I criticize myself and I don't update my to do list. There's days like that, quite a lot of days like that, but you know what? It's okay. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I'm still getting done so much of what I want to be getting done. I'm still helping so many of you. I'm still enjoying my life so much more and I'm quite enjoying the project of working on these things, because now that I see it as a little fun project of things that I can refine, rather than an inherently broken me that I need to fix, it becomes a little bit more of a like, Oh, I wonder if this helps. I wonder if that helps. And that's so much better.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If this has resonated with you, I really want you to think about which podcasts have you avoided listening to because you think you would never implement it perfectly? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Go and listen to them. Try it out. Try it imperfectly. If you think you need more support with this, check out my website for all the different services I have. If you're listening to this live, then it's kind of the beginning of March, something like that.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I have a new program for PhD students and postdocs where it's three months support. You get a ton of workshops, you get online coaching, you get an ebook and it is all about this stuff, learning to speak to yourself better, learning to organize yourself better from a compassionate and understanding perspective. So if you're somebody who thinks you can't change these things, but that this episode has given you a little bit of hope that maybe it could be easier than it feels right now, just drop me a message. Say I might be interested. I'll send you a bunch of information. There is an outline on my website, but it's always nice just to be able to chat about it.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you are listening to this on the day it comes out, on Wednesday, I have a free workshop to help you review your February and plan your March.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Again, message me for the details. I'll send you the zoom link completely free. There will be a little bit of information in it about my program, but don't worry. The majority of the session is going to be helping you develop this reviewing and planning habit, which is one thing that I've been doing since September, actually sticking to and finding enormously useful. So do try and come along if you hear this in time. I'm sure I'll run it again at some point soon if it's past that date, by the time you hear this. I hope today has been useful. It's been really interesting for me to reflect on these things too. So for listening to me chat and I will see you next week. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 04 Mar 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-25-five-things-i-struggle-with-that-might-surprise-and-reassure-you thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-24-how-to-plan-using-boss-mode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i>  I used to think I was good at planning. I used to think that I could like structure out all the tasks that needed to be done and figure out exactly how it needed to happen. What I thought I was bad at was implementing that plan. I thought that I lacked the discipline and the hard work and the focus to actually do the things that I had planned. </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> And for ages that was what I worked on for ages. I worked on trying to desperately stick to the plan that I had made, and then not doing it, beating myself up and trying really, really harder next week. And it took me a long time to realize that the problem wasn't my ability to implement a plan, or it wasn't only my ability to implement the plan. </i> </span> <i> The problem was that I was making stupid plans. I was making plans that weren't clear, that were unrealistic, that didn't have a focus. Plans that if another boss had given them to me, I'd have been like, what's this? This is not helpful. Yet I was giving them to myself. Every single week.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i> So we are gonna be thinking about how we can be a better boss for ourselves when we are in that planning phase, so that we set ourselves up for success each week. </i> </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 24 of the PhD Life Coach. This week, we're talking boss mode. Now, just to get clear straight up, I do not mean boss mode in the "girl boss" sense. This is not about how to boss yourself into doing things. This is not some vague call to get out there and boss your life and blah blah.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span>  Instead, what I mean by boss mode is how we almost lift ourselves out of the day to day for a period of time, just a short chunk of time, in order to take an overview of the task, in order to make some decisions, and in order to plan what we need to do. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, you might be thinking, Oh, I already do that. You know, I plot in some times to do things. I write a to do list. I do that already, Vikki. We're going to go so far beyond just making a list and planning in what time slots you're going to do things in, because there's so much more to it. Because we all know that we don't always do those things and just because we write it on our list doesn't mean it happens every time. And just because it's in our diary doesn't mean we adhere to it every time.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So we're going to be thinking about how we can put ourselves in the sort of boss mode that makes it easier for us to implement during the week. You might also be thinking, hang on, I listened to your first episode, which was all called how to be your own best supervisor. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And lots of you did. It's still my most listened to ever episode. If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend you go back and listen. But in that episode, we really talked about what qualities we want ourselves as our own best supervisors to have. And this time, what we're really thinking about is the more pragmatic side of, okay, when I actually put myself in boss mode, what do I even mean by putting myself in boss mode? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> How do I do it? And how do I want to show up? So we're getting much more into the practicalities of it. The other thing that is exciting about this episode is that I am going to be announcing my new group program for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. So this is essentially for anyone working in academia who doesn't yet have a permanent post. So if you're in teaching fellowships, that's fine. Research fellowships. That's fine. Any stage of your PhD. You can be a PhD student that's come straight through from a master's. You can be a part time PhD student who's doing this in retirement. Everything in between. Doesn't matter if you are a PhD student or you're in a temporary academic job, then this is the program for you. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So make sure you keep listening and I'm going to give you all the details towards the end. I am so excited. It's going to be so good. This episode is going to touch on some of the stuff that I will be teaching in that program. So have a listen, if you find this useful, there is going to be so much more in this group program. So this gives you a real taster of the sorts of things we'll be talking about. So, first, what do I mean by lifting ourselves into boss mode? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> What I mean is, a lot of us spend our lives in a single mode of just being us, and sometimes we're planning things and sometimes we're doing things, and often we switch between those, so we get partway through doing things and decide maybe we're doing the wrong thing. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We should do something different, so we go over there and do something different. And other times we have decided things and then we don't follow them and we argue with ourselves about it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And often we don't have a particularly thought out way of managing any of this stuff, of managing the fact that we're intending to do things and doing something different. And one technique that I have found really useful in my own life, but I've also been teaching now for quite a long time with my clients, is this notion of separating out the boss version of you and the worker, student, researcher, teacher, whatever you want to call yourself, the doer version of you, the you that does the work. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And when we can separate those things out a little bit, we can then start to think about how we want the relationship between those things to be. And we start thinking about how one can really help the other. Now, I've touched on this a little bit. Those of you who have already listened to my How to Manage Procrastination Part 2, that one, the second one, where I'm thinking about past, present and future self, I've touched on this a little bit there, but we're going to take it a few steps further in this episode. So if we can separate out the boss version of us from the worker version of us, then we can start thinking, okay, how can the boss version look after the version of us that needs to actually do the tasks and how can the version of us that actually has to do the tasks show up the way we want to for the boss version of us.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> By separating it out, it gets much easier to describe how we want to be, and it becomes much easier to separate the tasks of planning from doing and much easier to think about the best ways to structure our days and our lives.  </span> </span> <span> So when I'm talking about going into boss mode, I'm talking about pausing on the doing for a minute. So stopping answering emails, stopping trying to write, stop trying to do the jobs that need doing now and instead take a moment to look at this from one step removed. To look at this situation from the perspective of someone who is managing this situation instead of the perspective of someone who's actually doing it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, one way to kind of. build this in your head, one way to kind of make this clearer for yourself is to imagine how would I act if it wasn't me that had to do the tasks that are on my to do list, it was my research assistant. And in this case, I want your research assistant to be super able, really keen and enthusiastic, but has a limited amount of time and a limited amount of experience of doing these things. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Okay. And so what we get to do in boss mode is we get to think about how am I going to plan out the time, tasks, and understanding of this research assistant in a way that makes it as easy for her as possible. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span>  As with real life relationships, there's two main ways that you can have meetings, in inverted commas, with your boss in this context. So, yourself as boss. The first is in a planned and structured way. So this is where you might put aside some time each week, where you go into boss mode to look at where you're at, look at what you've been doing, what's gone well, what you might change. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> What you're going to do in the future. And if you haven't listened to it yet, go back and listen to the episode where I speak to Marie, who talks about her meeting with herself on a Monday morning, because that'd give you a real structure for this. So there's that sort of planned meeting. It doesn't have to be on a Monday. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It could be any time of day, any time of the week. But there's that sort of planned ahead meeting. I always have one with myself on the first of the month, where I look back at the last month and look forward to the next month, for example. It's planned, it's structured. You're sort of really taking an overview approach. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And then the second type of meeting is an emergency impromptu meeting, where everything feels like it's going a bit wrong. We've all had those moments, right, where everything just feels like it's going wrong, and we go to our boss and we're like, I just need help getting out of this moment. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And in that situation, we're going to handle it slightly differently. So in this podcast, I'm going to be thinking about planned meetings and about the impromptu meetings and how we can differentiate those and how we can use this sort of boss mode to keep ourselves on track and to make things feel a lot easier. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now in that planned meeting, we're going to be thinking about things like recognizing what we have done. So a good boss recognizes progress and allows an element of praise for the progress made so far, so that we're not constantly just looking at the next to do list. So we're actually taking a moment to go, you know what, January I actually got this done, I got that done, I know I didn't cross that off, but we did do these things. In that meeting, we're giving credit to ourselves. We're also being reflective. We're also thinking what didn't go so well and why didn't it go so well? How could I modify things in order to make this work better next month? And this is where we do it from that place of firm compassion. We've had that conversation before. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Firm compassion, where we're not just going to indulge the worker version of us, we're not just going to say, Oh, probably don't do that, it's a bit too hard. But we are going to say, if this person is consistently finding it difficult to focus for three hour blocks, why do we keep planning three hour blocks? Or if this person is consistently telling us that there's too much on the to do list, why are we putting more things on the to do list? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So we get to be reflective, and we get to actually listen. And I want to listen to those worries of worker us, the things that we're finding difficult, so that we can compassionately and not judgmentally and curiously start to investigate, are there ways I can make this easier for them? If we're struggling with getting on with writing because emergency tasks are landing on our desk, can we plan time to do emergency tasks. Even if we don't know what they are yet, because they're emergencies, if we have something unpredictable happen every week, can we plan in time to do those unpredictable things? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Do we need to help our worker self to believe that it's okay for people to wait for things sometimes? So sometimes the problem isn't that we don't have time to do those things, it's that we're telling ourselves, I need to help immediately, or else they'll think I'm useless, they'll think I'm not listening, they'll think I'm bad at my job, whatever it is. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And so in boss mode, when we're in this reflective portion, we might want to think about what thoughts we want to give the worker version of us. So, for example, we might decide that a focus thought for the week would be something like, there's no email that can't wait two hours, for example. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> When we're reflecting, we might notice things like the fact that we're struggling with motivation at the moment. We might notice that we're spending a lot of time thinking, I don't even know why I'm doing this anymore. And so when we're in boss mode, we can choose to actively put in time to help with that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, some of us can generate more motivation by simply reminding ourselves why we're doing it. So you might put in time in your diary to spend five or 10 minutes writing about why you wanted to do this PhD in the first place and why it's useful for you or why you're doing the research that you're doing. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Alternatively, other people get more of that from talking to other people. So you might then plan in time to talk with somebody else about your PhD and generate your enthusiasm and motivation that way. We get to problem solve for the version of us that has to actually do the work to make it that bit easier for them. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So in this reflective part, we're really listening to the challenges that we had last week, and then we're leading the way we're planning for how we can try and address those things in the upcoming week.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> In these planned meetings, we're also making decisions and that can sometimes be making the difficult decisions. So one of the things I used to do, and I think I've talked about this in past podcasts, but one of the things I used to do was realize I had too many things to do, but I didn't want to decide which things I was going to do and which things I wasn't going to do, because that felt really uncomfortable because a load of me still thought that I should be able to do it all if I was just organized enough. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So I would then just decide I was doing it all, get on with it, and then not do it all, obviously, and just wait and see which things I didn't do. And it was a strategy that lasted a surprising amount of time, considering how ridiculous it sounds now. But when we're in boss mode, it's our specific job to make those difficult decisions. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's our specific job to contact the people we need to contact to tell them that certain things aren't going to happen this week. Okay, so in this zone when you're planning, part of your role in boss mode is to go, you know what, there's not time for all of this. It's not that Worker thinks there's not enough time and she's panicking, there just actually isn't. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> In which case, what are we doing about that? Which things am I putting to one side? Which things am I just saying no to? Which things am I going to spend a little bit of time on? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> In this planned boss mode sessions, we also get to ask ourselves the question, how can I make this easy for her? So if we know we've got a writing block coming up, how can I make it really easy by spelling out in advance what the five key points I need are? How can I make sure she's got the resources that she needs to do this piece of work? How can I preempt what questions she might have and make sure that I've asked those questions in advance so that I'll have the answers by the time I need to do this? So we get to think ahead and think what would be really, really useful for me this week. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another technique that I find really useful when I'm in boss mode is to actually write notes to myself. So we all write to do lists, many of us will time block in some version, but the notes that I write, and I encourage my clients to write, are more extensive than that. I'm actually writing in sentences. I'm not doing bullet points of what tasks need to be ticked off. I'm actually writing instructions to myself. And the joy of this is that I can be more clear, so it forces me to really what I mean, but it also means that I can explain why I want myself to do this. So I'm able to write out, I want you to start with replying to customer emails because those are the most important part of my business. And I want to respond to them as promptly as possible. If you've still got time left at the end of this session, then I'd like you to also go to the whatever else, emails and prioritize those. But if you don't get to them, they can wait till tomorrow.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So I put actual instructions to myself and I try and preempt the arguments that my brain might have with myself. The reasons I might come up with as to why not to do the thing that you said, I try and preempt those things in the note. And so try and explain why we do particular things. I can make it really clear, which are the tasks that are the kind of must-dos today. So  </span> </span> <span> I follow, <a href="https://www.amandagoetz.com/" target="_blank"> Amanda Goetz </a> , I'm not sure how to pronounce her name. I'll tag her in the show notes. I follow her and she talks about her Two Do list, the two things that she needs to do in a day. In these notes to yourself, you can make really clear which things on your list are your Two Dos, the two things that you absolutely must do today, and which other things are things that will fit in if there's time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You can make that really clear by spelling it out. You can also use this as a moment to reassure yourself. So if you listen to last week's podcast, you'll hear about me talking about how to reassure yourself, and why we need to learn to reassure ourselves. You can do that in your notes. So in my, here's my little notebook if you're on YouTube, um In the bottom of yesterday's note to myself, when my boss was, my boss, me, was writing to myself, I wrote, this feels overwhelming, but we're going to do is a bit at a time and see how far we get. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Okay, so I made a note to myself and I would see that again during the day and be like, it's okay, boss knew I was going to feel overwhelmed. But it's alright, because we're just going to do the next bit. So you can use it as an opportunity to really explain out what we're doing and why. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It also forces you to reflect, though. Because, I don't know about you, but if I just jot stuff down on a list, it's like, oh, do this, do that, do that, do that, do that. I don't really think that much about how long all those things are going to take, whether that's realistic, how I might feel when I look at the list. I don't think about those things. I just jot it down in a list.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And that means that the first time I really think about it is when I turn up to do the list. Whereas if you are encouraging yourself to actually write out instructions to yourself, you rapidly start to realize when you're being unrealistic. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You're sort of writing all this stuff out and you're like, okay, yeah, this is way more than fits in a day. Or I've been writing for ages and I'm only halfway through the task, that maybe this is more complex than I thought. So forcing yourself to do it can actually make you re- reflect in that original boss mode meeting so that you actually write something that's more sensible anyway. It helps at both ends. It helps when you're writing it and it helps when you're reading it to keep you on track as to what you want to be doing.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another thing you can do in boss mode is make a priori decisions. So decisions ahead of time. And the reason that's so important is we all know that we can plan but we don't always follow the plan. Things come up and we have to make decisions on the fly about whether we're going to let those things interrupt what we're doing. Now, some things are obvious, you know, if somebody you love needs an ambulance, you are going to interrupt everything you do to get that ambulance. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Other things, I've got a bit of a tummy ache, or I don't really feel like doing it today, or the window cleaner's here and I can't concentrate while he's scrubbing the windows. Not quite so clear cut, They could be good reasons to stop working, there could be not good reasons to stop working. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> One of the things that you can do in boss mode is make some little mini rules for yourself about whether you would change your plan in different circumstances. So you say to yourself, this is the plan. These are the things I want you to do. These are the rough blocks that I've got lined up. Listen to my episode on role based time blocking, if you want to know more about that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We plan that all out, but we can also say, but if reviewers comments come back before Wednesday, spend Thursday on those instead of what I've got planned on Thursday. Or, you write to yourself, I'm expecting reviewers comments back any day. Please stick to this plan regardless, because we've got a good couple of weeks to do those, and there'll be time next week to work on it. So you kind of get to pre empt one way or the other things that might happen and what you want to do in that situation. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Another example of that is deciding what to do if you feel like your writing's just not flowing. Maybe you've blocked in time to do some writing and you never quite know when to persist versus when to kind of concede the point and decide, you know what, it's not happening today, I'm going to let it go. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You can in boss mode decide in advance how that's going to go. So, for example, you could decide, I've made it as easy for you as possible, I've given you some bullet points, I've given you the references you need, this is the paragraph we're working on, so we've made it dead simple, and I need you, i. e. me, I need myself to try my best to get into writing mode and get some writing done for at least 40 minutes. Okay, we are going to push in, even if it's feeling difficult, we're going to try and get in the mode. We're going to remind ourselves we only have to write the next sentence. We're going to, you know, really break it down. And we're going to keep doing that for 40 minutes. If, after 40 minutes, it's still, 40 actual minutes by the way, not 40 minutes of sort of doing it, sort of going on Twitter, sort of talking to the dog, sort of staring out the window. 40 minutes of properly deciding that we are going to make this work. If after that, it's just really, really not working, then you can decide a priori, that's the point where, okay. I'm allowed to go back and edit my references, or I'm allowed to go back and do some other task that feels less taxing and possible, but still is writing related. Now, those numbers aren't there to, like, give you a rule. You might not want to try for 40 minutes. You might want to say, after 10 minutes, it's not flabbing, I'm going to stop. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Or you might say, 40 minutes? I can force myself to keep going for two hours. I'll do two hours. Whatever you decide is up to you. But decide it in advance, because when you decide it in advance, you're not then reanalyzing all the way through. You're not kind of going, Oh, I could just stop and do something else. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I wonder if I should, after five minutes, I could just do something else. I wonder if I should, you're not using that. You're saying, no, we agreed. I was going to try my best to do this 40 minutes. And if after that, I can't, then that's fine. I'll go and do something different. So you kind of pre make those decisions. So have a think about what decisions you want to pre make. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The joy is, you can of course reassess these decisions next week. So when you're next in boss mode, you can say, Okay, we tried the 40 minute rule and actually, you know what, that worked pretty well. We're going to keep that. There were several times where I didn't think I was going to get into it, but I did. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So we're going to keep that one. Or you might go, you know what, that 40 minutes was just painful. Not once did keeping going for that long make me actually get in the flow of writing. So you know what? 20 minutes is long enough. If I'm not into it by then, I'll do something different. You get to reassess, you get to make it again, but you get to do it when you're in boss mode, rather than second guessing it the whole time while you're in worker mode. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So these are the sorts of things that you do in structured boss mode, the boss mode sessions where you plan it in advance, you're looking back, you're giving yourself reassurance and credit for what you have done, you're looking ahead, you're making realistic plans, taking the difficult decisions, explaining your reasoning and trying to make as many advanced decisions as you can to really set yourself up for the week. Now I keep referring to a week. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You don't have to do this weekly, you could plan to do them twice a week, plan to do them every morning, last thing before you start the next day, whenever you do them. But these are the ones that you've sort of structured in, in advance. And those are the types of tasks I want you to do in those boss mode meetings. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The other type of boss mode meeting though, is an impromptu boss meeting. And as I said, this is when you're just having a little bit of a breakdown and struggling and just like, I just need to lift myself out of this for a second. And the key rule with these meetings is that we're only trying to solve for this specific issue. Often we lift ourselves out and decide this is the moment to reevaluate our entire career. Nah, no. What we're doing now is we're lifting ourselves out and we're saying, right, I'm just going to stop even trying for a second. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to put myself into boss mode. My boss is calm and compassionate and clear. And I'm reminding myself that I can be all of those things. And we are just going to have a quick chat about how I am right now. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And this is where you might be deciding that, you know what, I thought I was doing that this afternoon, but I don't feel good, or some stuff's happened that's changed things, something's come in, something's got cancelled, whatever it might be. And you get to have just a quick check in with yourself to make a decision about what you're going to do. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> One big tip, slightly change environment for this. Even if it means just going standing on the other side of your desk. Okay, I'm not saying go off to another coffee shop or something like that. But, stand up, move from where you have just been sitting and stressing and things. Remind yourself what type of boss you want to be. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And ask yourself questions about what do I need right now and I want you to ask them from that compassionate, firm place. So, you're slightly sceptical, but very kind. So you're sort of saying, okay, are we tired? Or does this just feel difficult right now? Those sorts of questions. Are we the sort of tired that's gonna feel better because we have a nap? Or are we the sort of tired that's gonna feel better because we have a walk? What do I really need right now?  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Check in with your basic needs, you know? When did you last drink water, for example? She says, with her diet coke can next to her. I need to remember to ask myself that question more often. Where did you last drink water? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You can check in with those things. You can ask yourself, am I spiralling right now? Because often when we're in these sorts of moods, these distressed states, the problem isn't the specific problem, the problem is all the other things that we're telling ourselves. That because we're finding this paragraph hard, we're going to get further behind, we're never going to finish, we're never going to get a job. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And so when you go into impromptu boss made, you get to ask yourself questions like that. What am I making this mean? It's okay. What's the actual problem at the moment? And what are you telling yourself is now going to happen? So we get to just separate those things out. And this isn't easy if we're in the midst of feeling, you know, upset and stressed and things like that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And it could be that as your impromptu boss, the first thing you decide is she is not in the mood for any sort of logical discussion here. What she really needs right now is just get outside, go for a walk, and calm down a bit. And so you do that bit. And then you have the rest of impromptu boss meeting when you get back to make decisions about what else you're going to do. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You can do the thing that you need immediately there in the moment. What impromptu boss doesn't do is take that stress moment and decide to reorganize the whole week. They don't decide they're going to completely change the research project they're doing or whatever. They just figure out what do you need right now, that will actually make you feel better, not the things that just mask it, so we're not talking going off for chocolate or whatever. What would be actually helpful right now, as your boss, as the slightly more calm and sensible version of you, what would be most useful? And how can I help you implement that right now? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So that is boss mode, both planned and impromptu. If you found that useful, and I'm sure all of us need more of this in our lives, and you want to learn more about the specific how, so if you've left this episode going, okay, that's interesting, but how do I do this? What if I don't follow through? What if I still find it difficult to judge what's realistic? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you're asking all these questions of yourself, then you are perfectly set up to come onto my group program. So as I said, it's for PhD students and people in non permanent academic roles, so postdocs, teaching fellows, anyone like that. It starts the first week in April. It is going to run three months and it's going to include some taught workshops that are bespoke and specific to your program. It's going to include weekly group coaching sessions where you get to see other people getting coached, get one to one coaching yourself. You're going to get my ebook on how to be your own best boss with tons of exercises in it and things like that. And there's going to be some secret bonuses too, which I will tell you about soon, but access to other workshops, access to private videos and all sorts of things. You get access all the way through directly to me, so I will be able to help you with your specific issues and you'll be able to be in contact with the rest of the group, the rest of the community, so that you can support each other too. It is cheaper than my one to one coaching. It is 300 pounds for three months. And that includes all the workshops, all the coaching, the book, the community, everything is substantially cheaper than one to one coaching. I know if you heard my podcast last week, you've heard a little bit about it, but that is some more detail for you. I'm going to teach you how to do quarterly and monthly reviews and planning. I'm going to take you through those, how to monitor your progress, how to implement boss mode in your life in much more detail. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We're going to think about self management, emotional regulation. It's going to be amazing. I am so excited to the extent that I'm actually encouraging many of my one to one PhD clients to move across into that program. That's how good I think this program is going to be. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you want to know more about it, make sure you're on my mailing list. Go to www. thephdlifecoach. com, go to work with me, and then pick the sign up option for my free online community and you'll get all the emails about it. Alternatively, contact me through any of the different ways that you can contact me, vikki@wemburycoaching. </span> </span> <span> com or you can find me on Twitter at Dr Vikki Burns or on Instagram at the PhD Life Coach. Wherever you can find me, just send me a message. If you book in, you'll be directly in contact with me. You can tell me what's challenging you at the moment, what sort of support you're looking for, and I will explain everything to you about how to get involved. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you're a supervisor or another member of staff, please make sure you share this with people that you think would benefit from it. I might do one like this for senior academics in the future, keep your eyes peeled. Make sure you tell lots of people about it. Send me a message, just call it, I might be interested and I will take it from there. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We're starting first week in April, it's going to be incredible. Hope you found today useful. Let me know how you get on implementing boss mode for planning in your life. And I look forward to seeing you all next week. </span> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 26 Feb 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-24-how-to-plan-using-boss-mode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-23-what-to-do-if-it-feels-unfair-special-coaching-episode <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i>  This is the first in a series of episodes where I share a real life coaching session! In this episode, I talk with Ruth, a PhD student, who worries that succeeding in academia relies on having connections, rather than the quality of your work. She agreed to be coached for the podcast and we discuss why this bothers her, how it affects her work, and reach some conclusions that will help her move forwards.  </i> </span> <i> When you're listening, make sure that you relate it to your own life and think about how you can apply her experience to your own concerns. The session is slightly edited for time but mostly runs like a full session, so it'll also give you an insight into what it's like to be coached and how insightful it can be to listen to other people getting coached. Hope you enjoy!  </i> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> Vikki: Welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This is episode 23 of series two, and we have our first of my coaching episodes. So some of you who follow me on social media will have seen that I did a shout out for people who were willing to be coached right here on the podcast so that you can all hear somebody getting coached and learn from those experiences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And Ruth is one of the lovely people who got in contact with me to agree to take part in this. So welcome Ruth.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Thank you very much. I'm very, very pleased to be here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Thank you so much. So maybe introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about what's going on in your PhD life at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Okay, so, well, as you said, my name is Ruth. I'm a PhD student, in Spain, actually, and I'm doing a bit of research in a mixture of different social issues such as gender and translation, basically, related to literature, to fantasy literature and specifics. So I'm basically trying to track how different gender profiles present in fantasy literature and how that presents a challenge for the translation of the original materials in English into Spanish, because, you know, there's a bit of a trickery with the gender marking in both languages being different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So that's what I'm basically working on at the moment. It's been, it's been a while. I entered the PhD during actually during the pandemic. So some people were baking. I decided this was the way to go for me. Um, yeah, pretty, pretty risky for me to go that way, but not, not regretting it yet. So that's good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And I'm basically, I've done most of the, you know, previous work. And the readings and all the training you have to go to start researching professionally, so to speak, and I'm basically working on my thesis, just, you know, get everything on paper, all the work that I've been doing to try summarize everything into just one book. And that's what I'm at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: At the moment, because I'm actually struggling with this myself, uh, is this notion that you, to be someone in academia and to, you know, be part of it and just feel part of it. Sometimes it feels like. The more you work on your own, unless you have someone backing you and backing your work, you just don't feel like you're not going anywhere unless you have the right connections, so to speak. So it's like this fake propaganda of meritocracy of like do everything and just be the best and just invest so much time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And to my experience, I can work myself to the bone. But unless I know certain people that have the right place, or I'm, you know, touched by grace, and I am in the spot, in the perfect spot, at the perfect timing, it is very hard to navigate this kind of murky waters.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. So people listening, what I want you to be doing is thinking about how you feel about the stuff that Ruth said. You thinking these thoughts. Um, as we go through, this isn't reality TV. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: As we go through, I want everyone listening to be thinking about how would I answer the questions that Vikki asks? Would I say the same things that Ruth? What is that opening up? So that's just for everybody listening to be sort of Yeah, that's your task. That's your task, exactly. Um, and that way, what happens is that instead of just listening to your experience, you get to kind of connect it with your own experience. And so hopefully everybody listening will get something out of this for themselves. Sure. You mentioned some examples. Can you give me an example of where you think people have to have a connection in order to succeed?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: For example, I realized that if you want to publish, getting published is not easy, as per my experience, and I have been published before, I'm already a published author, but I was so lucky because I knew someone that needed a book chapter very quickly, someone dropped out last minute of a publication and they were in need of someone to just, you know, fill a space and I was around the same area of research, but, you know, if I would have been in that area of research, but I didn't know the person that was actually editing the book, I might not have got the spot because I, you know, I wasn't planning on publishing at that moment, I thought I wasn't ready. I actually got ready because someone came and said, Hey, I have a spot. Do you want to fill it? And that was such a great opportunity for me and I, everything came through, well, you know, publishing is, you know, always delayed and this re redoing and remarking and everything, but at the same time, I can recognize that I was offered a very, you know, scarce possibility because I was at the right moment I was available. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And I was known. If I wasn't known, maybe I wouldn't have never been offered that because. I might have, you know, some other people might have been researching on the same issue and they just didn't get that opportunity.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm going to ask you a question, which might sound a bit strange. Why is this a problem? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: No, I don't think it is a problem per se. I mean. Or maybe, well, maybe it is for the people that didn't get that spot. Because I was in no rush to get published at that, at that moment. Like, um, it was kind of early, but convenient for me. But maybe someone was in the last year, and that was kind of the last moment they could get something out, approved on time to present their thesis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And they didn't get that. So it was very lucky for me, but maybe someone else could have used a possibility to even like more eagerly because they had less time to do so. And they weren't so I recognize I was very lucky. But for example. I have the same flip side of the coin at the moment, a couple of months afterwards, a publication, well, I worked at a Congress and I presented a communication there and they contacted me afterwards to ask if I wanted to be included through that communication in another book. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I said, yes, I sent my elaborated materials and they said, sure, let's go with this. It's been over a year and I have known nothing else from them. I don't know anyone in that institution that I can contact straight away. And the people I've been emailing on and on for months have been ghosting me. So in that situation, if I was in a rush to get that, you know, book out, I'm not because I already have my, my hours completed in that regard, but if I was. Then I would be in such a difficult position because I don't know anyone that I can contact directly being like, could you give me a hand, help me out? Because I don't know their institution straight away. So  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: it's a really interesting comparison, those two situations, isn't it? Because in both of them, the bit that seems to be bothering you is almost a hypothetical situation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I'm very good at hypotheticals, I have to admit. That's kind of my thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because in that first one, if I hadn't known them It wouldn't have happened, and that's the bit that's worrying you. In this current one, if I was in a rush to get this published, this would be a perceived problem. I'm interested in this, why these hypotheticals feel like they bother you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I believe that I've seen myself in situations where those things have materialized, where I needed someone to help me out with something, and because I didn't know anyone, I didn't get it like that's, that's been my experience so many times, and I am fully aware of how the world works to some other types of experiences. I know that fairness is not entirely part of the game sometimes, depending on the area that you're working in. And academia seems to be one of those places where it just, it's so tight, like it's such a tight knot, that it sometimes it feels like very, very hard to just find a way to get yourself into the, into, you know, the thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: For me, being someone that tends to do things on their own, I even have trouble remembering that I have to contact my thesis director to ask for directions because I am so used to do things on my own that the notion of, you know, having to rely on someone else because it's how it works. It just feels contrary to the way I do, me doing things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And, I don't know, it kind of presents a mental, I don't know, someone may relate to this. But when you're used to doing things on your own, the fact of needing people to validate your, um, capacity or your, I don't know, ability to deserve a spot. It's tricky. It's not only about your work being good, because your work you can, you can polish, you can work on, on how you write and take another course and, you know, perfect your grammar or read more, more papers on the same issue, you will get the style, you know, um, those things you can, you can improve, you can always improve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: But connections are something so liquid and so depending on your personality so many times that you either have a great drive and big charisma and, and you've had the, you know, the enough life experience to get you through those places because I don't know, you're 25, 26, just fresh out of a master's degree or something. You may not have any work experience outside of this because you didn't have the time. Um, And you have to put yourself out there and advocate for yourself and your work, and you may not even have the tools to do so, because you've never had to, and those things are always what seem a bit. you know, challenging mentally, at least for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And that's, I know it's just hypothetical because that's not even my case. I started working when I was 19, when I was already in uni. So I've been used to being exposed a lot to the real world, but even that I recognize it's not easy. Sorry. So. I'm rumbling, I know. I don't know if I'm making sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, it's really interesting. It's really interesting seeing your sort of thought processes go through. I'm wondering, what do you, if anything, do you make it mean about you and your place in academia?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Uh, what exactly do you mean that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you, you have this, this belief that you have be very connected to succeed in academia and that the things, some things you have been connected and you've benefited from that and other things you haven't been connected and you've, um, you know, you've suffered because of that. We can think in a minute about whether those things, to what extent we believe those things are true and stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And those may be true or not. It's almost by the bye that whether they're true or not. What's interesting to explore is what we make that mean and what the consequences of thinking those thoughts are. Yeah. Almost regardless of whether it's true. Yeah, and so I'm interested when you are thinking you have to be connected to succeed in academia what does that mean for you in academia?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Well, it's a bit contradictory because I enjoy academia a lot and I've always enjoyed researching, even in my free time, which is spend time, you know, looking for, for things. And that's, that's why I've always enjoyed, being a translator because being a translator means facing a new topic pretty much every single day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: At the same time, uh, I feel like as much as I may enjoy this field, I don't entail a notion of me working in this my entire life. Not because I don't think I would enjoy it. But because I think it probably would be very challenging for me to earn a spot, unless my thesis goes very nicely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I want to relate you back to this notion of having to be connected. Because you're partly saying, you know, maybe I would have a future if I write a really good thesis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that feels a bit different to what you're saying in terms of being connected.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: It just, I don't know, I guess this is kind of where the insecurity comes in where you might think that even if you are the best. Unless you know someone that can get you places, um, it's hard for you to make it, as it is in pretty much, I would say, any other field. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um, and I, I have a struggle with, you know, the notion of not earning my position. in a place by myself. So even if I, like, probably that's another thing, even if I would have the connection, I'm not sure how comfortable I would feel using it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Which of those feels like the bigger barrier to you, so is it that you feel, you mentioned insecure, you feel insecure because these things feel out of your control. So there, there feels like almost a sort of a vulnerable side there. Of, I could work really, really hard and still not make it because I don't have control over these things. . But there also sounds like there's an element of I could probably make these connections, but I shouldn't have to. I disagree with this as a notion.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I'm just wondering which of the... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: it's a bit of both. It just feels like such a struggle that you need someone to recognize you. I think it's a bit excruciating for me because it feels so unfair and I have a difficult relationship with justice, I have to admit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and this is what's really interesting is there's this sort of double impact it's having here, where on one hand, you're telling yourself that you need this and that you may not be able to do that and that that means you could work really, really hard and still not succeed. So there's that quite vulnerable side, but then there's also this other side of, and I don't actually know that I want to get better at doing these things because part of me feels like I shouldn't have to, and that it's unfair that this is how it works, and those sorts of things. And I think it's really understandable that the two of those things co exist, but I want you to see how having those two things co exist makes it quite hard to know how to move forward for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Oh yeah, of course.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because on one hand you're telling yourself that you can't succeed unless you do these things... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I go through the game, but I don't want to go through the game  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: and you don't want to go through the game.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And the worst thing is there's like a third element to that, which makes it even more mentally., ah, noisy., Which is, I'm very good at social, at socially, you know, developing connections.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I could be really good at this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I could be at that 'cause I'm, I'm, I'm very extroverted. Um, I'm very chatty. I am quite easygoing with people that I don't know from like like, I, I, I'm the kind of people that makes friends in public transportation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So I see that I can make those things and I, if I wanted to, I could kind of make my way into those social arenas that seem a bit challenging because I do believe I could. It's just that it doesn't feel. I don't know. Authentic for one, and honorable for two. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: . Like, so, it's those things that I could, I just don't want to because I don't think it's fair. So that's, that's my mental struggle.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So there's obviously different sides to this. And people listening might not have this specific experience of having these conflicting thoughts about the need for connections and things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: But sometimes people have these conflicting thoughts about how hard you should work, for example. That, um, you know, I need to work harder than I am in order to succeed, but I'm not willing to work harder than I am, or I can't work harder than I can, depending on my circumstances or my health or whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So for everyone listening, translate this. If you don't have the same thoughts and beliefs that Ruth has around connections, translate it out to something where you, on one hand, think that you have to do something to succeed, but on the other hand, feel like you're not willing or able to do that kind of conflict that you have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, at the end of the day, it's a conflict of fairness in a way of like how you think things are and how you feel they should be to any extent.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely. So what we're going to think about before we even start thinking about what we're going to do or anything, what I want to ask first is what is the consequence for you of thinking these thoughts. Why is it even a problem that you're thinking these thoughts?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I think it gets you down because you're thinking, like, you have to, you know, making a thesis, like writing a thesis or working in any sort of PhD process, it's hard. It's hard work, you have to be mentally in the game, because it's so easy to get sidetracked to get distracted by life or anything else, and if on top of that, you have something, some voice in the back of your head saying, Yeah, but as hard as you were, you're not going to make it. Because they speak like that. That's always the voice. Always, like, you know, whispering evilly, um, even when it is, when it is our voice. So it's, it's very hard to, you know, get the strength to just sit on your desk and just work through all the materials you're just working with and, you know, the data and everything when you're thinking, what's the point? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Let's model it out. So I know that you've listened to a few of my podcasts which is brilliant. Um, have you listened to any of the ones about the self coaching model?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Oh, no, I think I skipped that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. That's even better because I was going to put it in for the listeners anyway. So those of you who are watching this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: On YouTube, we'll see, I pulled up my whiteboard. If you're listening on podcast, don't worry. I'm going to talk you through it anyway, but you illustrated a beautiful self coaching model without even realizing it and what you were saying. That's why I want to pull it out so that we can then use it as a structure to move forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So the self coaching model suggests that there are circumstances, which are the factual truths of a situation. You are a PhD student. There we go. Yep. That is a factual truth. That's a fact. You could show me evidence that PhD student. It's a factual truth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Um, then we have thoughts, which is the cognitive story that runs in our head. And tell me the thought, just so you have the  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: thought, um, you can work hard, um, but you have to have connections to succeed. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But you need connections. Yeah. But you have to have connections. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Connections. Okay. And then the next part of the self coaching model is feelings. And the purpose of this model is for us to really straighten out what we're thinking, how it makes us feel, what actions we then take, and what the consequences of those are. And the main purpose is understanding. So we're not going to judge ourselves for these thoughts, we're not going to, like, criticise ourselves, but we're going to see where things come from and use it to help us understand ourselves a bit better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: All right. So when you think you can work hard But you have to have connections to succeed. What emotion do you feel?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Oh, you feel discouragement.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Discouragement. Amazing. Okay, so I'm going to put that on the feeling line here. Now, actions. When you're feeling discouraged, what actions do you take? So this is not to make the discourage I cheer myself up and get on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I don't do that. When you're in the midst of discouragement, tell me what actions you take.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I, I try to, well, first of all I try to distract myself from it because Like, I, I can, at this point, um, I am very introspective and I know, cause I spend lots of hours with myself, so, I know we talk a lot. Um, so I, I recognize when I'm entering that kind of like pit, dark pit of this is not going anywhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So, I would play some music and I would go through something like, okay, let's sit and... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: these are things that you're doing. I'm going to pause you, cause these are things that you're doing because you recognize the discouragement. Yeah, because I recognize, yeah. I want you to stay in discourage. So, one of the things you said, that when you're discouraged, you get introspective. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you start spinning thoughts. What else do you do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I tend to do things with my hands, like handcrafts, things like that, or that keep my, my, you know, my attention going somewhere that feels productive. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. What else do you do when you're in the midst of discouragement? Not to make it feel better, but when you're like acting out discouragement.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Oh, clean. Clean.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I clean a lot. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Really common. What are the things that you don't do that you could be doing or that you would prefer to be doing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um, I try to, that's one of those things that I try to correct myself to do, but it doesn't always work, which is work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, so when you're in the midst of this arrangement, you don't do some work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, it's just do the kind of, it's very challenging for me to find, because I could sit on my laptop and just, you know, the distracting thoughts are so In and out that it's very hard for me to concentrate so I can try and you know, I'll do something that doesn't take too much out of me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I'll just read one paper and it just takes forever.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you do easier tasks. Do you, when you're feeling discouraged, do you make connections in your field?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um. Well, it's a bit hard for me to, well, I, sometimes I try to just go online and look for someone new or just drop a comment, but like I try to, to, um, say sometimes you get like in a revenge mood of, yes, I'm going to make this happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So you just go for like the opposite action. Yeah. It's like entirely changing. So it's like, yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's brilliant. And what you're really illustrating for everybody listening, what Ruth's really illustrating here is how we have multiple models running at any one. Oh, yeah. And that's what can be really complicated is one of the things that's really nice about using these models is it helps us straighten out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So when you're kind of going, right, I'm going to find some people that's not coming from discouragement, that's coming from determination or something.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, for example, but yeah, discouragement to me, it's a bit more. You know, immobilizing. Yeah, it's very hard. So I tend to go for. Yeah. So what I normally go is for something practical that has a like a productivity thing, kind of, you know, clean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So things that I can make in the moment, which, um. You know, um, effect I can see straight away, because it kind of gets me out of that discouragement.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It is something that we call buffering. Okay. So it is a, any task that prevents you or helps you not feel the emotion that you're not liking at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So if you don't like feeling discouraged, then we often, we clean. Uh, we scroll on social media, we eat, we watch Netflix. Everyone has their different things they go to for different people. Um, but it's usually something that takes your mind away from the thought feeling combo that you weren't enjoying. And it's rarely something that's actually productive. Some people spin into Tiny productive tasks, so they sort their references or something like that, but they avoid the big difficult things. So That sort of buffering procrastination when you're feeling a negative emotion is really, really normal.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. I think that comes with a PhD.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, absolutely. And this is why we need to learn this stuff, because we can manage this very differently if we understand it. So I'm going to take you through the model, especially for people that are listening rather than watching, and then we'll think about the result line. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So in the circumstance, we've just got, you are a PhD student, um, and you're writing or something like that. Your thought is you can work hard, but you have to have connections. When you think that you feel discouraged, when you feel discouraged, you distract yourself, you get introspective, you might listen to music, like do handcrafts and things, you clean, you don't sit and work, you tend to do easier tasks and you don't go out and make connections. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Now, the result is always the outcome of our actions, but it usually also relates back to the thoughts we're having. Okay. And this is going to sound slightly brutal, but go with me because we're doing this in a non critical way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: All right. All right. The result I see is that you don't work hard in this mode when you're feeling discouraged. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. You don't work hard and you don't make connections. This thought that even if I work hard I won't succeed if I don't have connections.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And then I don't do either.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And an action set that makes it really hard to work hard, and makes it really hard to make connections to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: No, no, no, I completely agree. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Do you have your reflections on that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with that. And that's why the more I realize these type of patterns, the more I try to, um, sometimes if I, if I'm In a mental space where I can actually stop this from like spinning too bad into procrastination. Um, I can at least force myself to sit down and just work something, even if it's just small, because it would make it progress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And at the end of the day, I have done something if it's not, even if it's not, you know, I finished this chapter is I wrote another paragraph. So that's another paragraph out. Um, but of course. Life takes you places and sometimes it just, it's just really hard to get out of those, um, of those.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is so good. So what you are doing, which is absolutely brilliant. You are using one technique that you can use here, which is called interrupting the model. And that is that you still think you can work hard, but you have to have connections. You still feel discouraged. But through sort of willpower and determination, you're kind of cutting off this connection with feeling discouraged and not working. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you are getting yourself one way or another to still work even though you feel discouraged. And that is absolutely a tactic that you can take. And particularly if the thought feeling combination feels really fixed for you, and something that is very uppermost in your mind, then sometimes it can be the best tactic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So one of the ones where I often recommend interrupting the model is where people think that something's going to be difficult or boring. Uh, if you can get yourself to a place where you're like, yeah, it's difficult. I'm still going to do it. Or yeah, it's boring. I'm still going to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can kind of interrupt the model and be like, yeah, I'm willing to do something that's boring. I can do something that's difficult. What I would say with this one is that sounds like something that you can battle through to some extent, but it doesn't sound like a fun way of getting your work done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm gonna write my PhD while feeling discouraged.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I, I have to say that it's not something that I, I don't know if allow is the word, but it's not something I try to focus myself. Um on like that that discouragement it is there like that thought process that you that we walk through It is there and sometimes it comes up as in well, this may happen and you may face this though I try to Kind of be like, okay Now the task is finishing this chapter and we're going to finish this chapter and if it goes right It will go great. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And if it doesn't, you know have the impact that you wanted to um Well, tough luck. What can you do? So, your work's still the same, it's just getting it out. So, I try to  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what you're doing here is you're illustrating a different technique. So this is great, you're working your way through these different techniques. And another technique is recognizing that just because I think this thought, and I do actually believe it's true, I don't have to spend lots of time thinking it because when we see a model like this, we can recognize that spending lots of time thinking, I can work really hard, but you have to have connections to succeed doesn't lead anywhere good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: No, no, it doesn't, it doesn't get you anywhere.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So you are, what you're doing there is you're sort of trying to squash that thought away. Yeah. And that recognises really well that thinking it isn't helping you. Yeah. But again, squashing it away is quite difficult because thoughts you squash away tend to pop back up again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. It is. So, I try to, like, Yeah. Yeah. You know, work through it and just, you know, every time that I get that notion, it's frustration and it's, it's angers. Cause you know, that's what battles with a discouragement is the anger that sometimes you're going to feel that you may feel that, and, and it's going to feel unfair and you, you may not be able to do anything about it, um, in this situation, once you face it, but at the same time, What for once you're not facing the situation yet, so it may not happen. I mean, yeah, it might be true, maybe not. Is it what, is it working? Is it getting me anywhere?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So this is brilliant. You're sort of finding all these different strategies that... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I trick myself into it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what, what works, what I think works with these things is to try and find strategies that actually feel okay when you do them too. So there were two things that came out while you were talking that I was thinking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: One is whether there are alternative thoughts. That you might want to choose instead. So sometimes, especially when we feel like there's a thought that is really true, but we recognize it doesn't help us to think it lots, it can be useful to pick another thought that we also think is true, by the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. So we're not going to pick. It's a meritocracy, and as long as I work hard, I'll be fine. We're not going to pick that, because you don't believe that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Because you don't believe it, so yeah. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So we're never going to pick a, I can do anything I want. You know, I'm not in the manifesting world we're going to pick a thought, that you believe is true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, but I did want to flag one thing before we do that, which I think is interesting, which is, why do you think, at the moment, when you're trying to write your thesis, Why do you think your brain is offering you these thoughts?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um, the negative ones, you mean? Oh, because I'm at the final stage. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Because I'm at the final stage and I see the end date approaching. . So, getting out in the real world and being, you know, a doctor. If you want, it's getting more real  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: what is your brain protecting you from? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Because I don't, ,by the way, just to put out there, I'm not a big fan of this notion of self sabotage and things like that. I think most of the time, the thoughts we have, our brain is on some level trying to protect us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I think, I think it's scary because it's the end of, uh. of a part of your life, like that you more or less have a notion of how it works, even as, um, you know, confusing as a PhD is, it is a PhD and once it finishes something new starts and new means you have to be a student again of whatever, you know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Not a real student, I think, literally, but you have to learn how to make your way in the world from a different part of it, which is being a doctor and just, you know, trying to find a work related to that and all those things. And, of course, it is a bit, it's a bit daunting. It's, it's new. It's challenging. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And it is a bit, sometimes I feel like my brain is like, well, we can take our time. We don't need to rush through things. And I say this because, um, when I started doing the PhD and I kind of pitched, I kind of pitched an idea for the research and I didn't actually go through them. Natural progress of like, you finish a master's degree and then you get contacted by someone doing research and they try to interest you in that and then you join a group. No, I finished a master's degree. I had nothing to do with what I was doing in the PhD and I got an idea for research and I contacted a doctor that was teaching in my university and I was like, Hey, I have this idea. Would you like to tutor me in this in this thesis? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Because I think I'm going to write this and I would really like for you to be on board with this because I really like how you do things. And I think we have this topic in common.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm going to interrupt. Sorry. Just as an interesting notice, you created a connection in order to allow yourself to do your PhD.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, I actually, well, I not been not really created, but kind of rescued because they were a teacher of mine from my university years, but that was like 15 years before prior to that, because I'm, I'm 35 years old, so I, I went back to, yeah, I, I looked them up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I was, I, I really liked the way they worked when I was a student and, and I thought, you know, they're doing this field, which is very related to the one that I want to do. And I know that we have a great connection as human beings because we worked before and it was very you know, peaceful and it was nice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So I contacted them and they were like, super easily on board. Yeah, I kind of, now that you mention that, yeah, it makes me,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: it makes me think that this notion that this is something that's going to be really hard for you and that's not fair. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: That's why I mentioned that I don't think I find it challenging because I am very upfront with people and I don't, I don't mind going like after someone in a way because I want to work with you and it's exciting for me. I just don't like the notion of it may be a requisite because it feels like using people, um, even if you're using each other, you know . </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Are you using your supervisor? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I don't think so. I think we're kind of working together. That's how I like to see it. Um, but I, I don't know, I have this battle with the concept of people using people, um, that I struggle a lot with, especially in today's world because I don't like it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: , let's go back. So we, so there's a possibility that, um, Your brain is trying to protect you from the uncertainty and the fear and things that, you know, the dauntingness, I think your words were, of, um, what's to come. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Afterwards, yeah. I wonder whether it's also protecting you a little bit from what you need to do at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Maybe, um, in the sense that I don't want to do it, do you think, or </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: just in the sense. It feels a little bit to me, and a lot of our brains do this, it feels a little bit to me like it's a lot easier to spend time worrying about whether if I don't have connections I'll ever manage to succeed than it is to sit down and do the difficult work of writing your thesis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: It could be. It could easily be because, um, well, it is, it is funny because it is easier in a way and it's so painful in the other hand.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying it's a great strategy on our brains part, but I think sometimes when we're getting ourselves sort of worked up about something that isn't actually a problem right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It can sometimes be a distraction from the fact that if we're not spending time worrying about that, we've actually got to sit down and write this thesis. And that's It's quite, you know, it's challenging and it takes cognitive effort and all of these things. And sometimes, um, our brains allow themselves to spiral on other stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, could be, could easily be. I mean, that's the, actually, it kind of pops very at random. You know, someone in a casual conversation mentioned something and you're like, here it comes again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um, so as much as I can, um, at a conscious level, at least, because that's the thing, the unconscious, uh, I try very, very actively to take myself away from spaces that can be, that can lead me to those thoughts. But sometimes it happens. So I'm not entirely sure.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It will be interesting to notice. I want you to just keep an eye. So it sounds like it gets triggered sometimes in specific circumstances, where somebody talks about, um, Either having an opportunity or not having an opportunity and things like that. I want you to spend a little bit of time noticing when else it pops up. Okay. Because I will take a pretty strong stab that it will come up when you're finding something difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Oh, I could look that up, definitely. I could look that up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It just feels, it's something I've seen with clients in the past, and I don't want to put thoughts in the back, so that's why I want you to observe it over the next week or two. Um, one of the things I've seen with clients in the past is that, and I see it in myself, I get to a bit of writing where I'm like, I don't know what to write now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's when it comes light. And then it comes with thought. Oh, there's just no point even doing this. No one's ever going to read it or whatever. Those thoughts come in and then it's like, oh, I don't need to do the hard thing because Yeah, because it's not going to get me anywhere anyway. It's not going to get me anywhere anyway and it's almost to remove you from that difficulty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Okay, yeah, I'll definitely keep an eye on that because I'm not entirely sure if that may be the case. It can very easily be the case because, you know, hard work is, is sometimes it's just your brain just escaping, looking for a way to escape the hard work. And now all that's left is the hard work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I actually want you to think about in advance now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. is what thought could be a go to thought for you, that you already believe, like I mentioned, that when you find that this pops up, how do you respond to yourself? So I'm a big fan of having little dialogues with ourselves and trying to nurture a very kind of calm and fair sort of response voice. So we don't say, shut up saying that, it doesn't help us anyway, go away. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: We don't say that to ourselves. But when we, if we know that our brain has a tendency to offer up thoughts that don't always help us, it can be really useful. So I do it with like exercise. So thought will come up. I don't feel like going to the gym or whatever. And my response is always, I try and do anyway, is That's okay. You don't need to feel like it, but we're going. Yeah. And that's like not very parental force . Don't be so lazy. You know? Get out. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. It's like, that's okay. You don't need to feel like it. But we are going, and I've kind of preloaded that thought. Does it work perfectly every time? Do I do everything myself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, obviously, no, it won't. It won't work every single time. But yeah, it really helps to have. something that you're sort of like, if I think this, then I'll think that. So what might be a thought for you that feels true, that would help you to feel an emotion that might help you to actually do the work and get on and do the things you want to achieve? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I think that in my case, um, because sometimes I would get into a very deep, dark, that noisy voice being like, You don't have to, um, you don't do this because it's not going to get you anywhere and you're not going to finish and it sounds very high pitched and very, very annoying. Um, and then I try, then there's another voice that starts quietly, but then it takes over, which is like, well, you've done it in the past. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: You've made the connection, you talk to people, you made it happen. It may happen again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how has that worked for you. Is that a message that has helped you? Is it a message you want to tweak?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Um, I think that using my own past as a proof that if I have done it in the past, I can make it again. It kind of makes me believe it because I am the protagonist. It's not, I'm using, you know, someone's experience of, you know, look at that person very far away in the past that managed to do that very amazing thing. It takes so much willpower to believe something that's conflicting with what you're seeing straight away. But to use some example from your past, and if you did it in the past, you can do it again. So I think that using my own experience as a way to boost my, my mood, it kind of works for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. I love that. I'm gonna add in a contradict. How though, do you then reconcile that thought with the bits of your brain that believes you shouldn't have to it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Oh, they're always arguing with each other. .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. That's why I, we need a thought I think that addresses both bits, because I think this is part of the challenge, and this happens so often, is that your go to thought to make the, you're not going to succeed if you don't have connections, bit of your brain feel better, then pisses off the bit of your brain that thinks you shouldn't have to, this is an unfair way, unfair system, this You know, uni shouldn't work like this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I wonder what thought there could be that placates both parts of this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: But um, the thing is, where I go, well, you've done it in the past. I kind of address both in the, well, not entirely both, but in a sense that, well, you, you have succeeded in the past without connections, so you may not need them. And you have made connections in the past and not out of ill motives. You've made it because you wanted to or because they just grew naturally, so don't, you know, try to not to fall on the, on the past, on the pattern of me making connections means I'm trying to use someone. Sometimes you make connections because you like them or because it worked for both of you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And, and it was just, you know, very collaborative, um, two people in the same field working  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So sometimes I try to not be so cynical about those things by, by telling myself, you have connections, you've made connections in the past, you're not, you know a mean person to, to have connections or to look for connections. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Sometimes you just really want to share your experience with work because it, it kind of gets a load out of your head. Like the same thing we're doing here, just discussing this, it's just very helpful to, you know, get it out um, and to share it with some other people that can have the same experience as you and be like, yeah, that happens to me too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So, so it's kind of a way of saying. And you've done this in the past, you didn't do it for the wrong reasons. So you don't have to do it for the wrong reasons in the future. Yeah. And that may be enough. So just, you know, try not to go ahead.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And the sentence that sort of popped into my head while you were describing all that was something around, I can succeed by making ethical connections. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, I do have, and I've always had a pretty strong set of morals to that regard. So, that's something that's pretty important for me to feel that I'm working ethically to the best extent of, you know, my living. So, um, that's, that's great.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You're capable of doing that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: And I think I am. Yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I, I am capable of making connections ethically. In line with my moral beliefs. . That will enable me to succeed.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Because that's probably where I would draw the line for myself. If my success means I have to be unethical about my methods, then I'm not going to be successful. Yeah. That's That's where I draw the line for myself. It may work for someone else or at a certain point, but that's my moral compass and I follow it. And I've been following it for some time. So sometimes it's even when I get in the very dark mental space of, you know, unique connections and see how these people made it work. Some part of myself would be like, yeah, but you would have never done that because it's not in your nature. So why are you even arguing with yourself?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. Those thoughts are already there. So if we can just get to a stage where those are just a little bit more accessible. So towards the beginning of starting to think, I need connections to succeed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: You can think, okay, but I know how to make connections. And I know how to make connections that are in line with my moral beliefs. Yeah. That's okay. And in future, I can use my connections for good. That's the other thing. People often, when they're worrying about networking and they're worrying about making connections and whether it's ethical or whether it's smarmy or whatever, forget that , even as a senior PhD student, we're in a position to make connections that help other people, that do it because it's helpful to other people. Um, and so I'm just wondering whether if you can have that thought, you know, sometimes some clients put them on post it notes and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I think, I think, yeah, I'm all around my office. Yeah, I do it a lot because sometimes, um, just seeing in front of my face, it's like, oh yeah, right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: You're right. Um, And I know I posted that for myself. So it's like, yeah, okay, just, you know, keep that in mind. Um, and I actually, this thought process walked through with you at the moment. I didn't realize that that was the issue for me. Um, so at some level I knew, because, you know, I, um, I discuss morals a lot because I like philosophical talk a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: So that comes up in very, very social situations very often. Um, But I realized that probably that's my issue with the whole thing. It's the feeling unethical about things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you know how to do it without that. And you know where your boundaries are and you accept that if I need to do this, then I won't succeed in that way, but I'll succeed in this way because I know how to make ethical connections. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah. Yep. That's it. Problem solved.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I would add to that for everybody. So anybody who's ever spent time with. like a child or something that we can give them logical responses, but they do also want to feel listened to. So the, the final thing that I would add is have a thought like that that's kind of your go to pre planned. If I hear myself saying these things, I will remember that, but then ask yourself. Are you struggling with something right now? Because if we think there's a possibility that these things come up at a time when you're worrying about the future, or at a time when you're needing to do something difficult in your thesis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Yeah, you're a bit anxious about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And these actions, then we can reassure that symptom. We can say, no, no, it's okay. We've thought about this. We can make that, that's all that's that's okay, that's fine. But what's, what's, what's wrong with you? What's actually wrong, hun? And then you can be like, you know what? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'm just getting freaked out about what happens after my PhD. Or you know what? I'm finding this bit of writing really tough. Be like, okay, let's, let's think about that. And then let's go for that. How can I support you in that? Because this is a distraction. Because we have dealt with that. We know how to do that. What's really the problem here?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: I like that. I like that a lot.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Ruth. I really appreciate you coming on. I hope that was useful. Perfect. So everybody listening, I hope that was useful for you too. I think lots of people struggle with notions of networking and whether they're good at it and whether it's ethical and those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So I think in that situation, this will have been super relevant. But as I say, also translate it out to anything else that's your kind of go to worry. Look, you can go back, listen to this again and watch the YouTube and kind of go through that process. if you want to hear more about the self catering model, I do have a full podcast explaining how to do that for maybe a month or so ago, so go back like four or five  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: episodes which will take, help you to take yourself through the stuff that I've done with Ruth. We use it as a structure in coaching when I'm actually coaching somebody else, but it's designed to be able to use it yourself. So when you feel yourself getting in a bit of a knot and you don't have access, coaching, then you have that opportunity too. So thank you so much, Ruth, for coming on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Ruth: Thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And thank you everyone for listening. </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 19 Feb 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-23-what-to-do-if-it-feels-unfair-special-coaching-episode thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-22-what-to-do-if-you-want-more-reassurance <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i>  Wouldn't it be nice if sometimes someone just told us that we were doing a good job, that we were enough, that we were doing things well enough and that they were proud of us. And yet so often, that doesn't necessarily happen in academia. Lots of us feel that our supervisors could give us more reassurance, our collaborators or heads of school could give us more reassurance, and it's really hard to keep pushing yourself to work as hard as we all do, when we feel like we're not getting the praise and reassurance from other people that we think would really help. In today's episode, we're going to be thinking about what you can do about that. And, clue, it's not all about asking other people for reassurance.  </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Hello  </span> </span> <span> and welcome to episode 22 of the PhD Life Coach, where we're thinking about what you can do if you don't get enough reassurance. This is something that comes up a lot with my clients at pretty much every stage of the academic journey. That they just wish somebody would let them know whether they're doing things right or not. Whether they're doing enough. Whether they're performing at the level that they're expected to be. And this is really understandable, right?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Academia is a really kind of intangible place. It's really hard to judge whether we're doing as much work as other people, whether we're the standard we should be, whether we're focusing on the right things. And often the kind of goal setting and review processes are pretty fluffy. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You know, most universities will have like monthly reviews or something for PhD students. They'll have maybe annual performance reviews for academics, but they're few and far between, and often they can be a bit of a paper pushing tick box exercise if they're not done well. Maybe one day I'll do an episode on how to make the most out of those review processes. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But for the moment It's enough to say that structurally there aren't many opportunities to get reassurance and praise from others. And sometimes even when we have success, we get publications, we pass parts of our PhD, you know, we pass our progress panels or whatever it might be. We still aren't sure whether we passed really easily, were we like flying colours, top of the class, or were we just good enough, scraped through. It can be really hard to figure out.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And that means that we can end up feeling really quite uncertain about our abilities, about our standing, how we're doing, whether we should be pushing harder, whether we can sort of take our foot off the gas a little bit. And it also means if we're really sort of desperate for this reassurance, we can start turning up a bit needy. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And this is something I see a lot. You guys might have seen it in personal relationships as well. When you're feeling sort of a bit insecure, maybe in the early stages of dating. So when I was still single and I was sort of on dating apps and things like that, if there was somebody that I quite liked and I wasn't sure what they were thinking about me, I'd be sort of pushing to get little bits of reassurance, right? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And we know in that context, that's not hot. That's not attractive to be sort of going, do you like me? How much do you like me? Do you like me enough? Um, and unfortunately, the same is true in academia. If we're saying to our supervisors all the time, or to our Heads of School, am I doing enough? Am I doing the right things?  </span> </span> <span> Then sometimes we end up showing up as somebody who doesn't trust their own judgment, showing up as somebody who kind of is putting other people under pressure to reassure us and make us feel a particular way.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It also means that we sometimes start doing tasks in order to get reassurance. So one of the things I see a lot with my clients is they find it easier to prioritize tasks that are for somebody else than tasks that are for themselves.  </span> </span> <span> So if somebody has set you a deadline to get a draft done, you're much more likely to hit that deadline than if you've set yourself a deadline to get a draft done. You're much more likely to prioritize getting your marking done for some other module organizer than you are for planning ahead for your own module, for example. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> When we're in need of reassurance for others, we prioritize tasks where we're more likely to get that praise and reassurance. And in doing so, we then end up neglecting things that are actually really important for us and our careers. Things that are real priorities for us. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So, in this episode, I'm going to give you some really practical tips about what you can do if you find that you are feeling in need of some more reassurance and even finding yourself seeking out reassurance from others.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> First thing is, we're just not going to judge ourselves. It's totally understandable. As I say, it's a complex world, we don't know necessarily whether we're doing it well, and it's nice to be praised by others. So, let's not beat ourselves up, let's go at this compassionately, this is something that we want to address and we want to learn some skills around. But there's nothing wrong with us for the fact that we quite like getting praise and reassurance, okay? There's nothing wrong with you. But let's figure out some alternative ways of doing it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The first one is to notice reassurance you're already getting. I remember getting, and I can't remember whether I've ever talked about this on the podcast before, but I remember getting my first ever module reviews back when I'd done some teaching for my old supervisor, and 95 percent of the comments were really good, you know, she's enthusiastic, she was clear, she was this, that, the other, and then a few were she went a bit too fast. One told me I was sarcastic. outrageous. Now I'm like, yeah, but at the time I was outraged. Um, and what we often do is we disregard the good ones and we focus in on the things that reinforce the things that we're worried about. And partly that's a problem because it means we're focusing on something that actually reinforces our worst fears. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But it also means we're missing an opportunity to get reassurance. There's a known phenomenon that's part of the imposter syndrome, and I talk about it in the course I do on how to overcome imposter syndrome. It's available for universities. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And that is that when we receive praise or reassurance, if we're somebody who kind of doubts ourselves and feels like a bit of an imposter sometimes, we disregard that praise and feedback, either on the grounds that I only did well because I was lucky, or on the grounds that I only did well because I worked really, really, really, really, really hard and so it doesn't really count, because I exhausted myself trying to do it.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Sometimes we disregard it on account of the fact, yeah, it looked alright on the surface, but they didn't know how chaotic it was behind the scenes. They didn't know how late I was up. They don't know how there was a couple of bits that I just winged, or whatever.  </span> </span> <span> And so we sort of, instead of taking this reassurance, this reassurance that we really want. Instead of taking this reassurance, we disregard it. We say that, oh no, not that sort of reassurance. That doesn't count. That's not really evidence that I'm doing well enough. That's not really evidence that I'm good enough. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> They're only saying it to be nice. They're only saying it because I was lucky this time. So the first real lesson here is to notice reassurance you're already getting. Some people only give reassurance in a very kind of throwaway remark. Ah, you did well this week. And then carry on. Grab it. Grab it and remember that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I used to keep, and I recommend all of you do if you don't already, I used to keep a folder of nice things people say. That was what it was called. Nice things people say. And if anybody ever sent me an email thanking me for anything, I popped it in the nice things people say file. And it's a really nice place to look. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I also used to keep all my thank you cards from students. Loved having those. So keep anything you get, and then when you're feeling like you never get enough reassurance. You can revisit these things. So you notice the stuff you get, you keep the stuff you get, and you can revisit the stuff you get. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because I guarantee all of you are getting a lot more praise and reassurance than you are giving yourselves credit for at the moment. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The second thing you can do is seek specific reassurance. And I want you to really notice that word, specific. When we say things like Am I doing well enough? Am I about up to speed? Am I where I should be? Really generic reassurance. Then it can be a little bit annoying to be on the receiving end of that because you feel like you're just like, yes, yes, you're fine, you're fine, stop worrying. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You feel like you're having to manage that person's emotions, to manage your emotions. But also it's hard to, I mean, that's a big question. Am I good enough? Good enough for what? So if you want reassurance, one thing you can do is get really specific about exactly what do you want reassurance about? What is it that you're worried about? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Is it that you're not far enough through the research that you're doing at the moment? Is it that you're all good enough at writing, whatever good enough means? Get really specific and ask for advice about that thing. That way you're much more likely to get focused advice. You're much more likely to get something that's actually specific and useful. And if people tell you that actually there are some things that you do need to develop, you get much more specific advice because, you know, if you say to somebody, am I doing well enough? If they say yes, That's really easy to disregard, because it's like, oh, well, they don't know. But if they say no, what does that even mean? What are you going to do with that? So if you're going to seek praise and reassurance, get really, really specific about what you're asking for feedback on. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You can also look for evidence as reassurance. Sometimes we only count praise and reassurance if it's in the form of somebody saying, You're doing really well, Vikki. I'm proud of you. You're doing really well. When in reality, a bunch of people don't say those things. But if they keep coming back to you to ask you to do something, then that's praise in itself, that means they trust you to do that job. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If they give you relatively minor edits, or thorough edits, but no sort of really big structural changes, the absence of heavy critique is reassurance in itself. This was something I really had to work on as a supervisor, because my tendency, if I was giving feedback to a student, I'm going through a manuscript, and I'm trying to do it in a hurry, as always, because we've all got too much to do. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> My tendency would be to focus in on the bits they had to change. And I got feedback from students that sometimes it was really good to know what they'd done well, partly from a getting a reassurance point of view, and partly from the point of view of actually learning why it was done well. And so I had to really train myself to comment on paragraphs that I thought were fine and explain why I thought they were fine, as well as comment on paragraphs that I thought needed to change. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So is that something that I learned as a supervisor? Maybe your supervisor doesn't do that. Maybe your collaborators don't do that. But one of the things that I asked my students to do in parallel is, if you give me a manuscript and I've got a couple of paragraphs that I haven't put comments on, that means I think they're good. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Yeah, give me the benefit of the doubt here. I'm going to try and put more positive feedback in your work, because you said you'd like that and I can see why that would help. But if I haven't, and there's no comments in that section, let's take that as praise. Okay, so look for evidence of reassurance, evidence that someone thinks you're doing a good job that goes beyond them just saying, yeah, I think you're doing a good job. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I would also really recommend joining a community of some sort. So all of you who are in departments have colleagues around you, whether you're a PhD student or an academic. But there'll often be other communities that you can join. Groups at the university, writing groups, at the University of Birmingham we have my PhD Life Coach membership, that's definitely created a community amongst the PhD students. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> By having a community where you can kind of cheerlead each other, it can be another source of reassurance and praise. So with my students in the membership, it's wonderful. We had one of our sessions yesterday. They're all in Zoom webinar and getting in the chat and they're telling us about papers they've had published and things and they're all cheering for each other and looking up each other's papers and they're talking about it on social media. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> They're sharing in each other's celebrations and they're sharing in each other's successes. So look in your university for opportunities for those sorts of communities. You can build them yourself. These can be just small friendship groups or they can be organized structures. So academics will have access to training programs where you can meet people, um, offered to the things like action learning sets and stuff like that, where you can have people that you meet with regularly, and you actually can give praise and reassurance and champion each other. Look out for all of those opportunities.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> For PhD students and postdocs, if you're listening to this in real time, it's the beginning of February. I am very excited to announce that at the start of April, I am going to have a group coaching program available for PhD students and postdocs to sign up as individuals.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So as you may know, I have the membership, which is at one university at the moment. It's open to other universities. I am in some discussions at the minute, but that relies on institutions investing and all of those things, which, as we know, can take time and persuasion on my part. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And if you're an individual student, you might think I don't have access to that. Now, all of you have access to my free monthly coaching which will be on the 14th of February if you're listening to this live. So next Wednesday make sure that you are signed up for my email list if you want to make sure you get the details of that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But all of you, if you are either a PhD student or a postdoc, will have the option to sign up for my new group coaching program on how to be your own best boss. It's going to be three months. You're going to get workshops. You're going to get coaching sessions. You're going to get my ebook on how to be your own best boss. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's going to be amazing and it's going to be an incredible community. You are going to get to know each other. You're going to champion each other. You're going to meet people that you can work with outside of this on zoom, where you can provide support and reassurance and praise for each other.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you want to make sure you get all the information about it, it's literally, it's not even open to purchase yet, it is just at the being launched stage right now, then make sure that you are on my email mailing list. So go to www. thephdlifecoach. com, click on work with me and you'll find my mailing list there, make sure that you are signed up there and you'll get all the information. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you are listening to this a bit later, it's going to start on the 3rd of April. So you've got till the 3rd of April to sign up. So get in touch if you want more details. It's going to be amazing.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Even if you don't go into a program like that, though, there's other places that you can get free community. Make sure you're doing that. Make sure you're celebrating your friends. Making sure you're sharing with them the things you're doing. So you can get that reassurance and praise from your peers.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, if you're an academic You might be saying, oh, but what about us? Like I say, there are places at your university you can find these things. You can build collaborative groups where you can do this for yourselves. But if you think I should run a group program for academics, let me know. Drop me an email. It's sort of tootling along in the back of my mind. I'm being careful not to do too many things at once, which is always my tendency. But it is tootling along in the back of my mind. A group program for people who are more senior than a postdoc, who are at any stage of their academic career. Possibly over the summer, possibly a have the best summer ever kind of vibe. So that we rest when we want to rest, we write when we want to write, we get stuff done and actually enjoy it. Let me know whether you feel like that would be useful. I feel like it might be.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Anyway, I'm getting distracted from reassurance and praise, but I hope that was a useful sneaky insight for you all. So how else can you get more reassurance and praise?  </span> </span> <span> My next tip is probably the most important of all of them, which is I want you to ask yourself, when did you last give yourself reassurance and praise? I hear so many clients say, I just need them to tell me I'm doing a good job, and I always ask, When was the last time you told you, you were doing a good job? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> What proportion of the time do you tell yourself you're doing a good job, versus what proportion of the time do you spend telling yourself you should be doing more? That you're not enough? That this isn't good enough?  </span> </span> <span> If we're wanting more reassurance and praise from others, we could almost always be giving more reassurance and praise to ourselves. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, some of you will say, as clients have said to me in the past, Yeah, but I don't know if I'm doing enough. I don't know if it's good enough. So I don't trust my judgment. And the way I always answer that is You're trusting your judgment that it's not enough at the moment. You're believing yourself when you tell yourself you're not good enough. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And you're believing yourself when you're telling yourself you're not working hard enough. Or that you're working as hard as you possibly can be and it's still not enough. You're believing all of those things. Why do we trust our judgment on what we're bad at, and not trust our judgment on what we're doing well at? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We need to start saying things to ourselves that we do believe. Oh, you worked hard today, Vic. Good work. Things like that. Not, you're the best writer ever. We don't need to say that to ourselves. We need to acknowledge when we've tried hard. We need to acknowledge when something's successful. We need to acknowledge that there are things that we're doing well. The more we can try and get in the habit of reassuring ourselves, and at least reducing the amount that we're actively rubbishing ourselves, the less we find we need reassurance from other people.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because usually, when moaning we're not hearing it from others, it's because we need to hear it from ourselves. It's not just that it's the easiest thing to change, because we've got control over our own behaviour much more than anybody else's. It's not just a pragmatic thing. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We need to hear it from ourselves. We need to tell ourselves that we're enough and that we're doing enough and that we're doing a good job within the constraints that we have.  </span> </span> <span> I used to have a little cartoon in the pandemic, which was just this little guy with a little sign. It's like a little cartoony man with a little sign, that said, Under the circumstances, you're doing rather well. And I thought, you know what? That basically sums it up. Under the circumstances, whether it's the pandemic or just the general higher education sector, you're doing rather well. And I think we can all tell ourselves that a little bit more often. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> My next tip is we delve a little deeper and we ask ourselves, why do I need this reassurance? How do I anticipate feeling if somebody told me I was doing a good job? And why do I feel Like, I need to, and why do I think I need to feel that way? Because sometimes what we're looking for is for somebody to take away discomfort. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> At the moment, we're feeling like something's difficult, we're feeling uncertain, and we feel like somebody else's praise will take away some of that uncertainty, or it'll make it feel a little easier, give us a little bit more confidence that we're able to do it. But if we can get to the bottom of why you feel like you need that, we can address that need directly. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So instead of thinking, I need praise because I need to feel more confident about my abilities, we can think, how can I feel more confident about my abilities? So we don't work on getting the praise, we work on building our confidence in the things that we're trying to do  </span> </span> <span> if we want praise because we feel disconnected and isolated and lonely and all of these things. Then we go, Oh, I want reassurance just so that I feel connected to somebody else. Well, I could work on just feeling connected to somebody else, and there's a lot better ways to build relationships and to build connectedness than asking for praise.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span>  Is it because I want acknowledgement? Is it that I'm working really hard and I want someone to recognize that, because even that, we don't necessarily have to ask for praise. Then we can make sure that, okay, I need to make clear to somebody how many hours I'm working, what I'm getting done, so that they acknowledge it. So they can actually see how much I'm doing. We can address these needs more directly if we understand where these more superficial needs are coming from.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And then my final tip, is sometimes we look for praise and reassurance because we don't like feeling uncertain. </span> </span> <span> We don't like not knowing if we're good enough, not knowing if we can finish on time, not knowing if we can get everything done before the end of term, whatever your goals are. It's really hard to not know. It can feel really uncomfortable to not know. And so we seek reassurance and praise from others to reduce that discomfort. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The final tip is knowing that we can choose to get a bit better at managing that uncertainty. So instead of having to make the uncertainty go away with reassurance, Being okay with not knowing whether I can finish this whole thing or not. Being able to direct our attention to, I don't know if I can finish this whole thing by September, but I do know that I can do this bit today and being able to direct our focus to that.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Being able to remind ourselves it's okay to be uncertain. To go back to my dating analogies, it's okay at the beginning of a relationship to not be sure where it's going. It's okay to have those levels of uncertainty, and if anything, I would say it's healthy to have those levels of uncertainty. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> At the beginning of a relationship, It's not your job to know whether it's a forever relationship or not. That comes later. In the same way, it's not your job right now to know whether you can do your entire PhD in this amount of time. Your job right now is to know whether you can do this task now.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> More we can direct the focus to that and kind of get used to the fact that there's nothing inherently unsafe about being uncertain. That we can direct ourselves to the things where we do feel more certain and we can allow ourselves to feel uncertain about the other stuff, then suddenly we're in much less need of reassurance, because we don't need these negative emotions to go away, these uncomfortable emotions to go away, because we trust we can look after ourselves while we feel uncertain. We trust that we trust that whatever happens we'll figure it out. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> My final one is you can borrow a bit of reassurance from me. I am confident that anybody who spends their spare time listening to podcasts called the PhD Life Coach is doing all right. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You're putting the time in. You're thinking about your practice. You're trying to do the best you can. You're actively learning how to regulate your thoughts and emotions so that you can be successful and still look after your mental health. If you're choosing to listen to this sort of thing, take the reassurance from me as a starting point that I think you're doing just fine. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Make sure you sign up for my mailing list to hear more about my group programs and I will see you next week. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 12 Feb 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-22-what-to-do-if-you-want-more-reassurance thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-21-eight-things-phd-students-and-academics-can-learn-from-the-traitors <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i>  video1901085470 </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i>  This is the first time I have ever had to put a spoiler warning on my podcast. I'm so excited. If you have an intention to watch series two of the UK Traitors and you haven't yet seen it, please go listen to a different podcast. There's 60 something of them out there. See what you can find that I published last year, that might be of use to you now and come back to this once you've watched. If you didn't watch and have no intention of watching, I'm not fully sure we can be friends, but we'll go with it. I trust you. That's fine, don't tune out. It's all good. You don't have to have watched The Traitors for this to be an immensely useful episode, but if, like me, you got a little bit obsessed with The Traitors, then you are going to love this episode Because we're going to be identifying eight things that all PhD students and academics can learn from The Traitors. This started out as five things you can learn. I got carried away. I might add more as we go through. Who knows? I'm a little overexcited. </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 21 of the PhD life coach and we're talking about The Traitors. Oh my goodness, I can't remember the last time that I was as excited about a TV show as I was during The Traitors this year. Absolutely immense. And I think the thing that made me love it the most was also being on Twitter alongside it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So I'd watch the episodes, I'd be seeing what other people were saying. Afterwards we'd be dissecting the cliffhanger, figuring out what we thought would happen next. And It was just truly amazing, and got a little bit obsessed, got lots of my friends into it as well, and now I figured out a way to weedle it into my work as well.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Because I thought, you know what? There's lessons in here. There's stuff we can learn from The Traitors, other than, it's amazing television. Now, those of you who know me well, will be very impressed to learn that I have resisted the temptation to buy a cloak. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I nearly bought a cloak for my YouTube. If you didn't know, I'm on YouTube as well, just a kind of recorded version of this podcast. But I hope you'll be impressed to know I restrained myself. I mean, I confess, I did spend about 10 minutes just now with a shawl over my head, seeing if there was a way to kind of recreate the Claudia vibe. But frankly, without the fringe, it wasn't a winning look and I decided against it. So look at me being mature. Very impressed with myself.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Anyway, if you haven't seen The Traitors, just to bring you up to speed, 22 people put in a Scottish castle with Claudia Winkleman, TV star extraordinaire. Three of them are made Traitors and the rest are Faithfuls and the faithful's job is to find the Traitors and banish them from the castle. Because if they get to the end of the series and there's any Traitors remaining in the castle, they will take all the prize money at the end of the game. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So Faithfuls are on the lookout for Traitors, Traitors are trying to go undetected and persuade people to banish Faithfuls instead. So they're all sussing each other out trying to figure out what's going on and everyone's trying to convince each other that they are a faithful and they deserve the prize pot. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I watched series one, loved it. Watched the US version, it's okay. Australian, pretty good. I haven't watched series two of those yet, but series two just went absolutely wild in the UK and I just found it, apart from just super exciting television, I found it such an interesting insight into human behaviour that I thought would be super relevant to all of us. And a cheap excuse to keep talking about it.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So, lesson one is, clever is not enough, you have to be persistent too. Those of you who watched it will know that Jazz was a bit of a legend for working out who were Traitors from about the third or fourth episode all the way through to the very final and everybody's been calling him Jazzatha Christie and things like this and marveling at his skills and he was really good. In a game where you're taking in so much information all the time, they're together all day every day, he seemed to have more insight into what was going on than pretty much anybody else. He was really good at the detecting part of being a faithful. However, the thing that he was much less good at was convincing other people of his thoughts. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, at first, you could argue that was a tactical thing. He was holding back so that he didn't sort of stick his neck out too much and get murdered by the Traitors for having too, too good ideas, essentially. And we know that happened. So at first, this was a good strategy. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But in the later stages of the game, and particularly once he got through to the final and end game, it became a real limitation. He would sort of vaguely raise his suspicions. Somebody would say that they didn't agree, and he would stop talking. He would kind of go, oh, okay. And we made excuses when he was biding his time at the beginning. He's just being tactical. But at the end, he just wouldn't or couldn't persuade other people of his amazing ideas, his amazing insight. And it really reminded me of people I've known in academia who have been super clever, got amazing ideas for new research, or different ways of teaching, or different ways of organizing the administrative side of academia. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And who struggled to put across those viewpoints, and so they weren't always listened to. Now, you may argue, quite rightly I think, that some of it is on the others to listen. So in the case of the Traitors, I thought it was ridiculous that Evie and Andrew and Molly didn't listen to Jazz more when he was expressing really legitimate concerns. They just immediately brushed him off. So it's definitely on the people around us to listen, but as with everything we talk about in coaching, we only have responsibility for our own behavior. And I think Jazz has to take responsibility for the fact that he didn't push his ideas forward in a convincing way and persistently enough to make change happen. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, this, as those of you who know me will know, that isn't something that I have struggled with in the past. I'm pretty good, some would say too good, at pushing my ideas forward. What I have struggled with in the past is being persistent when people couldn't see that what I was suggesting was a really sensible thing to do and in certainly in the earlier parts of my career and sort of mid career I would get really frustrated that like two years after I'd suggested something a few times people would do the thing and act like it was some amazing new idea. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's like, dudes, I said this two years ago! But I hadn't been persistent, and I hadn't been patient with the fact that sometimes you have to say the same things multiple times for people to actually understand where you're coming from or why what you're saying is important.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, this isn't being Maddie. Those of you who watched it last season will know that Maddie was just noisy and banged on about it over and over and over again. Sometimes she was right, sometimes she was wrong, but she wouldn't let it go. I'm not suggesting that we channel our inner Maddies. I was probably a bit too Maddie at points in my academic career. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But I think there's a happy medium. I think if we have Maddie at one end who bangs on about her ideas over and over and doesn't seem to care that no one's listening - love her, you know, all due respect Maddie, but same and then Jazz at the other end, who had great ideas, but wouldn't try and convince people in any meaningful way, I think there's a place in between, where we can bide our time, like Jazz did, but know that sometimes people are going to disagree with our ideas initially, but when they've had more time to think about them, or where you've presented more evidence, they might come on board. Sometimes people just aren't quite ready to hear it yet, but if we can keep going, if we can listen a bit longer, look for other opportunities where they might be coming around. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> As an example, when Jazz heard Andrew talking about Harry, Jazz should have used that as his opportunity to be like, Right, Andrew gets it. Andrew knows. I can really, really be persistent now. I can really push. So I want you to think about ideas that you've been trying to bring up, whether it's research ideas to your supervisor, whether it's ways to change things at the university to your head of school, for example, and think, are there ways that I could be a little more persistent, a little more persuasive so that I could bring more people on board? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Jazz didn't win the prize because he wasn't able to bring the right people around at the right time. And he left himself in a position where he needed to persuade somebody that he was never gonna persuade. If he'd moved a little faster and a little more assertively, he may have been able to work with Evie or with Andrew to get Harry out and we can learn from that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Lesson two is that there are lots of different ways to play this game. So in the Traitors, obviously there's the Traitors and the Faithfuls who play the game very differently. They've got different tasks that they need to do. But even within those, but even within those, there's a huge range of different approaches. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> They're the people that go straight in, I'm going to be myself no matter what and see what happens. There's others that try and play a kind of long, slow game. There's people that were desperate to be Traitors. We saw Paul describe himself as cruel at the beginning when Claudia asked him to describe himself just to make sure that he was made a Traitor. All the way through to we heard in one of the Uncloaked episodes that Diane had got into absolute fits of giggles at the idea that she could ever be a Traitor, and Claudia decided not to make her a Traitor on account of the fact she didn't think she'd ever keep a straight face. So, there's different roles we can take, different people go into it in different ways, and there's a huge number of different ways to succeed. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We know Harry succeeded in the sense that he won the money, but was it worth the emotional toll of letting Molly down like that? Maybe. It was a game, but it was a different way to play. Molly got all the way through to the final without having basically done a great deal, I would say, other than just be lovely, so no one was worried about her and no one suspected her. That's a highly successful game. She had a huge amount of airtime. She was able to participate in every game that was going. She got a helicopter and everything at the end, and even if she didn't win the prize money, that's a hugely successful participation in a TV show like this. Diane goes out in the middle in absolutely iconic style, and is pretty much the toast of every town in the UK. There are lots of different ways of being a great player.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The same is true in academia. We kind of get sold this one path where you've just got to get lots of grants and lots of publications and, you know, progress up a research route and be the research superstar that's running huge labs or huge research projects and so on. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> When in reality, there's a bunch of different routes to professor at most universities and there's a bunch of different ways to have a successful career. How are we defining success? Are we defining success as, you know, Prof before 40 and making tons of money? Or are we defining success as making a meaningful contribution to the lives of your students and your research contributions? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> There's a whole bunch of different ways. And one of the biggest problems is that we often look at other people's way of succeeding and think that that's the only way to do it. And if we're not cut out in our minds to do it like that, then we can't succeed in academia. I want you to think about all the different ways that you can succeed in academia. You can pick a way of playing that plays to your strengths. You can pick a way of playing that you enjoy and that feels sustainable for the whole of your career.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You don't have to go in there being the pantomime baddie like Paul. As an example, Wilf, from the first series. I'm not going to give first series spoilers in case you're going to go back and watch it. But those of you who've seen it will know that his game didn't go exactly as he thought it would. But I've heard him talk on a podcast about how he's glad that it worked out like that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> He's glad that he had the experience that he had, and he's got a lot more out of it afterwards than he thinks he would have been had it turned out the way he'd originally intended. You can play this game however you want to play this game. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Lesson three, and it kind of connects to that, is that whatever you do, people will criticize you for it. We saw Sonia getting banished because she was a big personality who was influencing the room and all of that. And then we saw Meg fall under loads of suspicion because she was really quiet and not saying anything. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We had people who were banished for not speaking up enough at the round table, and people who were banished for speaking up too much and getting people's backs up. Whatever you do in the Traitors and in academia, people will tell you that you could be doing it a bit differently than you are. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I remember getting criticized for being too ambitious, that I wanted to progress too quickly and that I needed to kind of slow down and take my time and not get people's backs up and things. Other people were really impressed with the trajectory that I took and the things that I took on. And I'm really glad I did the things I did because I had some wonderful experiences. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Whatever tactic you take, someone will tell you, you should have pushed yourself forward, but not like that. You should have been quieter, but not like that. You get to pick. In my opinion, the best way to play the academic game is to turn up in a way that you can be proud of.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Where when you stop and think about what sort of academic do I want to be? What is my purpose for doing this? Why am I here? What do I want to achieve? How do I want to show up? Are you doing those things? Are you showing up the way you want to show up? If not, that's okay. And that's things we can work on. You can listen to other episodes of the podcast, there's other support if you're not showing up the way you want to right now. But when you're making decisions about how you need to be in order to succeed in academia, there's no right answer. You get to choose to play a game that you're proud of. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Lesson four, be trusting, but not too trusting. So this is in honor of the lovely Molly, who, by the way, if they don't make her a Blue Peter presenter, I'm starting a riot because I think she would be. An amazing Blue Peter presenter. Did you see her scrambling up over those rocks in the final episode? Amazing. She'd be so good. But we all saw her let her loyalties and her friendship get in the way of that final decision. Does she stand by it? It's hard to tell from her interviews whether she regrets it or not. But I think it's an important lesson that erring on the side of trusting people can help you go a really long way in both the Traitors and in academia. Working with people you like is a really important part of academia. And so building those relationships so that people want you to be involved with things is really important. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You know, it's one of the overlooked things about Molly. She got to the final because people liked having her there. And the same is true in research. People recruit people because they like having them there, they enjoy working with them, they carry on collaborative partnerships. I've carried on collaborative partnerships and even started collaborative partnerships with people where our research didn't necessarily gel in an obvious way from the outside, but we loved working together and so we made it work and it actually ended up being amazing. But it wasn't the obvious like tactical choice. We did it because we liked each other. And you go a really long way like that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> The downside, as we saw with Molly, is sometimes you can be too trusting. You can assume that everyone has your best interests at heart. An example I see here a lot when I coach PhD students is supervisors who encourage you to stay on and do more research in their labs. Particularly in the science and engineering end of things, often I see the most able PhD students recruited into postdoc positions within the same lab. And the supervisors really selling this as an amazing opportunity for the student. And sometimes it is. I mean, I'm talking here as somebody who stayed her whole career in the same department, and I don't regret it.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> For me, it actually was an amazing experience, because the postdoc that I was recruited to had a ton of freedom about what I got to do. And so, whilst I stayed on, I changed what I was doing a lot, and I took real ownership of it. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> One thing I see, though, is that sometimes supervisors encourage people to stay on in their lab because it's better for the supervisor. They know they've got a safe pair of hands, they know that person can run the next project really well, they know how the kit works, they haven't got to train somebody, and sometimes the students are too trusting that their supervisor has their best interests at heart. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It's unusual for a supervisor to be actively wanting to screw over a student, but we have to remember that supervisors have got their priorities too. They've got their own stresses, their own progressions that they need to make, so sometimes it can just be worthwhile just to step back and be like, okay, is this entirely for me? Or is this a bit about them, too?  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And this happens at every level. You know, your head of school trying to persuade you to take on a new administrative role, because it's going to be great for your career, great for your next promotion prospect. Is it? Is it actually? Or do they just need somebody to do that admin role? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Again, not suggesting they're being Machiavellian, not suggesting there's anything dark. But sometimes we can be a bit too trusting and go, Oh, okay, if you say that's good for my career, I should do it without questioning, Why is it that they're asking me that? Is it because it's best for me? Or is there an element of it that's best for you too? </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Now, if there's an element that's best for the head of school or the supervisor as well, that's fine, that's not necessarily a problem, but let's make decisions knowing that. Let's make decisions going, there's reasons this is good for me, and reasons it's not, and there's reasons it's good for you too, and reasons it's not. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And let's then make a decision from there. So be trusting, but not too trusting. Make sure you've got all the information that you can and that you're weighing it up in a kind of slightly sceptical, measured sort of way when making decisions. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Lesson five, pull together on tasks. So, You will have seen in the show, in between all the murders and the round tables and the banishments and everything, they have big tasks that they have to go and do. They're collecting barrels that are worth certain amounts of money, or rowing across lakes and putting shapes together, or whatever it might be, and all the Faithfuls and Traitors are united in trying to do these tasks. And one of the things that struck me was how many of them say what a relief it is to be doing the tasks, because they almost relax from the kind of playing of the game and they all pull together to achieve a common goal. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> I've seen this in departments where, you know, back in the day where departments used to get inspected, everyone would sort of pull together to be ready for the inspections. I've seen it happen. We used to have like a poster day thing for our third year undergraduates when they finished their final year projects and everyone pulled together to make it work and even though there were different members of staff who had different opinions of each other and things, everyone kind of pulled together to make this amazing day for the students and staff. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So, where you can see tasks, where you can pull together and just enjoy creating something, enjoy achieving a goal, really try to do that. Academia can be a competitive place and that can get really tiring if we're always focused on right what's on my to do list, what do I need to do next, how can I get ahead, how can I be ready for a job interview. Sometimes doing some of the extra things that are kind of fun, where you're pulling together with people that you otherwise wouldn't work with, or maybe are even in competition with, can just create a much nicer environment. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> All of these things are so much easier with friends and you'll also find that people just give themselves a little bit more grace if you know each other as well. So where if you don't know people in your department and you get a bit of a grumpy email from somebody, you might be a bit like, Oh my God, they hate me or ooooh they're a terrible person or whatever it is. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you know that person and you've been doing some activities with them and things, you'll be like, Oh, she sounds a bit grumpy today. What's going on? You know, just be curious about it because you've got other things to compare it to.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So make sure that you're getting involved. You're getting to know other people so that we all just take some of that pressure off, give each other a little bit more grace and enjoy this amazing academic setting that we can be in. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Sort of leading on from that is lesson six, which is enjoy the random friendships. So, series one, one of my absolute highlights was the friendship between Amos and Andrea. Again, go back, watch it, really hard to describe, but these are not people that you would expect to be besties in real life. They're like 30 years apart, he's a doctor, she's an older retiree, and they just loved each other, they just hung out, they played badminton in the gardens, and were just super protective of each other and really enjoyed each other's company. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I think those random friendships, you only really get either in taking part in something a bit unusual like The Traitors, or in kind of workplace settings, because in most hobby based things, you're with people that are similar to you. I mean, it was one of the things I used to love about circus when I used to do circus stuff. I met all sorts of different people that were nothing like me and came from all sorts of different places and backgrounds and experiences and ages and things. And I love the random group of friends that I have from circus. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> But often, you know, you go to a tennis club, it's a lot of people like you, go to a running club, it's a lot of people like you. And work is one of the places where there'll be people of lots of different ages and seniorities who have this one shared interest of the academic subject, but who in many other ways could be really different from each other. And I think allowing yourself space to enjoy those friendships, to get to know other academics who are very different from you and just enjoy the fact that you would have never met this person if you hadn't shared this one academic interest. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> In fact, I recently went back to my old university to talk about our membership program, and I took the opportunity to kind of wander around the department and have some chats with people, and I realized it was one of the things that I most missed about work was the kind of random conversations with people that I wasn't good enough friends with that I would stay in touch with, but who I really liked and I enjoyed talking to. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And I really had a lovely time doing those natters. And one of the things, when I was saying to somebody how much I enjoyed it, One of the things she said was, yeah, but it's the first thing to go when we're busy, isn't it? And I thought that was a really insightful comment, because I don't think I'd really thought about that when I was still working at the university, that actually, as you get more stressed, you have fewer and fewer of those sort of incidental conversations. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> You work from home in order to get stuff done. You close your office door so that you're not disturbed and you can get things done. And these are all the things that productivity dudes tell us that we should be doing in order to get more done with our time. But I think we should reflect that sometimes that means we're cutting out some of the things that make this fun and enjoyable. So I think we can learn from the Traitors to make space for some of those random friendships, those unusual conversations, and to enjoy them. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Lesson seven comes from the gorgeous Claudia Winkleman, who I love with an unhealthy amount of love. Bless her. She's amazing. And that is to take it seriously, but not too seriously. Where I think she pitches it absolutely perfectly is she gets utterly involved. So she's screaming in the tasks for them to hurry up, giving them time updates and things like that. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> She's proper gutted when some of them go home. You can see her in the background on the round table, kind of cringing and kind of going ahhhhh. Anyway, she gets really, really into it. She takes it seriously. She's not one of these slightly too cool for school presenters who sits back and judges everybody. She is right there in the castle with all of them. And that's what makes it such a joy to watch.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> On the flip side though, she does keep just a tiny bit of taking the piss out of it as well. So those of you who've watched it in as much detail as me will remember that her teasing Harry and Andrew for only recruiting men to being Traitors, talking about how it's like the olden days. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> She's just teasy enough that she's not taking it so seriously it's silly. She'll tease a little bit. There was the odd occasion in the round table where I'm pretty confident she was giggling. So she just teeters that line between taking it very seriously so we can see how much she loves it and not getting like angry and carried away, seeing the fun in it as well. And I think that is a real lesson for academia. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We need to take this seriously. We are doing important work. Our research is meaningful. Our teaching is meaningful. But we don't have to take it quite so seriously. We can make space for some laughs. We can make space to enjoy the things we did wrong and laugh about them. To have those moments of levity. So make sure you're taking it seriously, but not too serious.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And then my final lesson, lesson eight, is for everybody who, like me, was on Twitter going, Oh my God, I would have noticed this. I can't believe they haven't picked another Traitor.  </span> </span> <span> I can't believe they can't see that Harry's a Traitor. The lesson here is that it's way harder than it looks. We get this beautiful curated version of the Traitors where the producers hint, they show us all the right conversations so that we can pull this story together and kind of know what's going on. </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> And in that situation, it's really pretty easy to see, oh yeah, if I was in there, I'd have known this, that and the other. Except, no you wouldn't. You'd have had about a billion conversations because you'd have been in there for hours and hours and hours. And actually, it's really hard to pick out anything meaningful when you're having quite so much going on.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> How does this translate to academia? For me, it's because when we look at other people, we're always seeing their curated version. We're seeing the TV produced version of their lives. We're seeing the bit they choose to make public. So we get to see the successes. We get to see the maybe carefully curated failures that actually show how clever they are or whatever it might be. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We don't see the messy insides. We don't see how much they beat themselves up. We don't see where they have regrets or where they've still got hopes that they haven't achieved. We see other people's curated versions and we compare it to our messy version. And because we think our version is messy, we think we're not as good as them. It's not that, it's just like the people in the Traitors. They have access to all the conversations that go on in that castle. And you have access to all the thoughts that go on in your brain.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> It also means if when we're looking at somebody else's curated version, we think that we know what they should be doing, because sometimes we do that right too. We look at people like, oh, well, he doesn't pull his weight or whatever. We don't know what's going on in his castle. We think we can see this really clear story about what he's doing, what he should be doing and so on. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> We don't know what's going on in the castle. There could be all sorts of things. So the flip side of not judging ourselves too much, because our castle feels messier than theirs, is that also not thinking that we don't necessarily know what's best for them either. Because we don't have access to all those thoughts that are inside their heads either, all the stuff that's going on in their past and their lives that's affecting their academics that they're not presenting as part of their curated story. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So having some respect, whether we're talking about the people who are in the Traitors, or people in our careers, that everybody had their reasons for doing things, and nothing is quite as straightforward as it looks from the outside.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> So! Those are my eight lessons.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <ul> <li> <span> <span> Clever on its own isn't enough. You need to be persistent as well.  </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> There are lots of different ways of being a great player.  </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> People will criticize things you do no matter how you behave. So you get to pick a gameplay that you can feel proud about yourself. </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> Be trusting, but not too trusting.  </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> Pull together on tasks, because everything is better with other people around. </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> Enjoy the random friendships that you can make through academia.  </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> Take it seriously, but not too seriously.  </span> </span> </li> <li> <span> <span> And remember, everybody has a messy internal world. Don't compare yourself too harshly with other people's curated version. And don't assume you know what they should be doing when you don't have access to their whole messy story.  </span> </span> </li> </ul> </div> <div> <span> <span> I hope you enjoyed this. I loved it as a cheap excuse to keep talking about the Traitors. If you haven't watched it, why not? Go and watch it. I hope that this has convinced you that you should.  </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> If you have watched it, apparently Australia one's out on iPlayer now, and US is coming soon, so that is going to keep me occupied for the next couple of months, and I'm going to try not to binge them too badly. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <span> Thank you so much for listening, and see you next week. </span> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 05 Feb 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-21-eight-things-phd-students-and-academics-can-learn-from-the-traitors thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-20-how-to-improve-your-writing-with-guest-dr-katy-peplin <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i>  How to be a better writer is one of the most common questions asked by PhD students and academics of all levels. While there are tons of useful "how to write" books on the market it can be difficult to translate this learning into actually improving your own writing. In this episode, I talk with writing coach Dr Katy Peplin about ways that you can support yourself to get better at writing and look after yourself at the same time! Hope you enjoy - there's some great advice!  </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> Here are some links if you want to hear more from Katy: </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> Free: </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <a href="https://thrivephd.myflodesk.com/jbldpqafen" target="_blank"> Template Webinar </a>   </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <a href="https://thrivephd.myflodesk.com/snjo1kkuy9" target="_blank"> Work more intentionally toolkit  </a> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <br/> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> Paid: </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <a href="https://www.thrive-phd.com/community" target="_blank"> Community  </a> </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <a href="https://www.thrive-phd.com/store/writinggroupguide" target="_blank"> Your Guide to Running a Writing Group </a>   </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <i> <a href="https://www.thrive-phd.com/workshops" target="_blank"> Self-paced workshops  </a> </i> </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 20 of series two of the PhD life coach. And I have another guest with me today. I am super excited to introduce Katy Peplin, who is an expert in all things writing when it comes to PhDs and academia. And that is what we're going to be talking about today. Welcome Katy.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Hi, I'm So excited to be here.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: We are super glad to have you here. So, tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, sure. My name is Katie Peplin and I am the founder of ThrivePhD. So I work with grad students all around the world in all sorts of disciplines. Basically, to help them be humans and scholars at the same time, because I find that academia kind of forces you to choose one or the other. And many of us, have trouble, myself included, balancing both. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: So, I have all kinds of things that I do that support people, but, I really especially like working with people who are finding grad school really hard and would like for it to be easier.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Perfect. As I said, we're going to be thinking mainly about writing today. I know you support people doing a whole variety of things, but I always think it's useful to know what the people that are trying to help us struggle with themselves. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So my last couple of episodes has been about procrastination and that's something that I have worked on my whole life and I'm still thinking about. So, what do you find hard about writing?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Well, the short answer is all of it. I am not a natural writer. I have always been more of a verbal person, and so there's something that kind of short circuits in my brain where, like, I feel like I have a fully formed idea or paper up here in my brain, and then I'm just really bored with the process of getting it out. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And then when it doesn't come out perfectly, that's really frustrating to me. And then when I have to redo things or revise things, that can be really frustrating for me. So it's definitely not something that I've come to naturally. I specifically really struggle with, like, coherence, there's a lot of things that in my brain make total sense, and then when they're on the paper make less sense, because I don't ever fully, none of us ever really fully download everything that we mean into a sentence. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And so I, um, I struggle a lot with that translation between what can feel really finished in my head and what other people can understand.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah. For sure. And I hear that from clients so much. I'm more of a struggle to get on with it girl. Hence the procrastination comment before. Once I get going, it tends to be too long, but I'm reasonably okay at editing. But I hear from my clients a lot, just this, this notion that it sounds okay in my head and then just doesn't make sense. It's just not clear when it's on the page and really struggling to know how to pick that apart. Are there other things that you see with your clients? Things that they particularly struggle with? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Well, I think that a lot of people just struggle with the idea that if writing doesn't feel easy, it's probably not good writing, if that makes sense. So I have a lot of people who come to me and they're like, man, I really struggle with like getting myself. It feels like I'm wrestling with alligators or sort of whatever their metaphor is. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And in their head, I sort of realized that because it doesn't feel easy because it doesn't feel like something that they're good at, there's this automatic assumption that it's not good or that it won't ever be good. And so I see a lot of people kind of short circuit themselves at various parts of the process because it doesn't feel like it's working. And so that must mean that it's not. And often it's not working, but that doesn't mean that it won't ever work.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, I think we have this picture. People seem to think that a published paper came out that way. That like, if you're a top professor, you just pull up your keyboard and type introduction and off you go and it comes out looking something like that. And I'm sure there must be a few people that it goes a little bit like that, I guess, if they've been writing about the same thing for 30 years. But for the vast majority of people, it never ever looks like that, yet somehow that seems to be the standard that we compare ourselves to. That if it's anything other than coming out of my head completely articulate, then I'm obviously not good at this.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yes, and I remember, like, asking some of my professors, because I was a first generation grad student, I didn't have any access to the process, I didn't know what it looked like, and so I remember asking, like, okay, when you sit down to write Professor X, like, what does it look like? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And nine times out of 10, they couldn't tell me. So they didn't have an articulate process themselves. But then when I realized that everything that I was comparing myself to was published and in order to get published, it went through multiple rounds of revisions, usually professional editors, usually a couple of different types of professional editors, sometimes writing groups, sometimes workshops, sometimes. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Things that were supported over years, research, sabbaticals, all kinds of support, teaching load reductions. And here I was trying to write something of that same caliber by myself in my office, never having done it before while working and teaching and being very busy and also trying to like keep my body and brain alive. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: It wasn't, it wasn't a fair comparison and I didn't know that. And so I just thought there was something wrong with me.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, and expecting all that stuff in your first draft too.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, yeah.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: That this should be just how it comes out. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's really insightful that you asked that question even. The fact that you knew that you didn't know that, if you see what I mean. Because I think often, I was the same, first generation PhD student. And I think often we don't even know that people might have a process for doing these things that we don't have.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: I remember when I was still teaching, I would spend quite a bit of time showing my PhD students and my undergraduates, all the file names that I had that kind of sat behind a published paper. So I'd show the, with the dates going through and the increasingly haphazard filenames that they have. I was preached to not to do what I did. But the increasingly haphazard names were until you've got one that's called final, final, submitted, final. And then you start getting all the revisions as well. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I think just seeing that really helped. Now, today, we were thinking about not really so much how to get on with writing. If people are listening and are struggling with getting on with writing, I would send you back to one of my really early episodes, episode four, where I talk about how to write when you're struggling to write. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And that's really about some of these thoughts that we have that we're not good at it, that it should be easier than this, and how we can overcome those thoughts and get on with it. But today I know you've got some really useful tips about how people can actually improve their writing and get better at it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, because I think that for me I thought that there was this huge gap. Like, I am not a naturally athletic person. And so, like, I remember being in gym classes and realizing that, like, I was never going to be able to just, like, wake up one day and run a mile, like some people would. And that if I was going to have to do it, I would need to build up to it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And there were specific kinds of skills that, if I did them frequently, would help improve it. And when I had this sort of lightbulb moment, which I'm sure came from my therapist, that like writing is a skill, and it was also something that I could improve through conscious effort, it was really exciting to me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Not because I was excited to like do a bunch of drills and like learn how to write better, but because it was something that I could control. It was something that like I could consciously and intentionally do, rather than just brute forcing my way and like hoping that if I just wrote for 20 years, I would get better. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Because like, you will, if you write for 20 years, every single day, you'll probably improve a little bit. But there are also things that you can choose to do that will help you build those skills faster and more intentionally too.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: I love that because so often when I'm coaching people, I'm trying to get them to recognize it's a skill and to see that thoughts like, I'm not good at this. I'll never be as good as them and things like that really hold them back. But even if you believe you can get better, it's not necessarily easy to figure out how. Yeah. So if people listening, I'm sure they will be, so people listening to this podcast are everyone from new PhD students all the way through to full professors. And I know from my coaching that people struggle at every level with, with writing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Where's one place that they could start?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: My favorite place, and the one that I think is really accessible to people, is to think about reading as cross training for your writing. So, so many of us scholars feel like, understandably so, we're buried under mountains of reading. We can't possibly keep up with it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And so it seems a little bit counterintuitive that I'm like, read more. But a lot of the reading that I see my clients doing and I even have done myself or it's very targeted. I call it like search and rescue reading where I'm like, okay, I need to go in and I need to understand this concept or I need to make sure that these citations are in order. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: I need to check out that methodology. I'm very rarely reading to understand how this works as a written text. And I'm a humanities person, so it makes sense that I come at that a little bit more, um, naturally than maybe some other people do, because it's part of my training, but when I started to think about paying attention to how other writers wrote, It really, really helped me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And so, like, concretely speaking, that means that when I write, I often have a separate color of highlighter where I'm like, good sentence, or I really like the way that this introduction is structured, or I really enjoyed the way that they incorporated these quotes. I basically just make like little love letters. And for me, I store them in Zotero. They're tagged in my thing with like good introduction or loved that conclusion or sort of whatever the nomenclature that makes sense to you is. But then I started to build a library of different kinds of introductions. For example, this person had an anecdote, this person started with the stakes, this person did this. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And the more that I could kind of think about how they were working. The more I could realize that I probably have seven different choices for my introduction and why don't I try one instead of just like opening up a blank document, like you said, and typing introduction and hoping that the perfect one will come to me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: So really thinking about my reading as yes, it's important for content reasons. And yes, it's important for me disciplinarily, but it's also really good for me as a writer to see other people write, and in that way, I gave myself a lot of permission in the later stages of my PhD to read for fun, and to read journalism, and to read nonfiction books, and to read fiction books, and to read YA books, and all sorts of different things, because it helped me, it helped me build a vocabulary to describe my writing, to describe other people's writing that I wasn't going to get just sort of like stumbling around in the dark. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. One of the things we talk a lot about is reading with a purpose. So you talk about search and rescue. I actually see that as a technique that a lot of students also need to learn. So I still have students who believe that if you're looking for information, you start at the beginning and read till the end and can't understand how they're ever going to get through their pile of reading because it takes them three hours to read a paper. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So that search and rescue that you're talking about, super useful if your purpose for reading that article is to check what methods they use or to get a quick summary of their findings or whatever it might be. But I love this idea of reading with the purpose of figuring out why that article works. And I think it's a particularly useful reminder for all our scientists. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Um, I was a sport and exercise scientist, so we were pretty interdisciplinary, but I was kind of at the psychology immunology end of things. So at the borders of sciences and social sciences. And that close reading wasn't such a thing. That kind of analyzing how they made their argument wasn't something that really got emphasized. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I think the idea of reading an article so that you can figure out how did they link their paragraphs together? How did they finish their introduction? Where did they go next? Is. Something that's really useful. Is there anything that people should be careful of doing that, or any tips to make it more effective? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Um, I have a whole webinar that I'm happy to put, yeah, that's like free, um, that people can play with. It's about sort of like building templates, and I think that it's especially useful for people who write in fields where there are pretty rigid structures that you're expected to write in. That there's an introduction, there's a method section sort of. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: On and on and on. And so I often think about it, and I do not in any way mean this in a derogatory sense. Many writing styles have a formula, or there's a variation of three or four different formulas. And the more that you can kind of figure out and then do it, then it's a lot easier to say, okay, in this person's introduction, they have one paragraph that introduces the stakes. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: They have one paragraph that talks about their experimental design, and they have one paragraph that talk, sort of previews the findings, and I'm just making that up. But then you can say, okay, for me to write my introduction, they wrote about whales, and I'll be writing about macrophages. But who cares? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Because I just need one paragraph that introduces the stakes, one paragraph that, you know, talks about my experimental design, and one that previews my findings. And that makes it so that you have actual tasks to complete and actual things you can check off of a list. And that's not to say that you won't then need to revise or change it or your advisor might want something different, but you've started somewhere instead of trying to invent the idea of introducing a paper every single time from scratch by yourself. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think you talking about the different subjects there raised something else for me that I think actually it's really useful to be reading something that's sort of within your field, generally, so you understand it and the structures are likely to be similar. But that's actually a different area than you're writing, because I know even if you go to an article thinking I'm reading this in order to learn, if you're writing about macrophages and they're writing about macrophages, it's really hard to a not be intimidated that they're doing it better than you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: But B, think, okay, I need to do it like them, but not so like them that I'm plagiarizing and all of those things. So, I love the idea of finding an article from somewhere sort of tangentially related to what you do, where you know the styles are going to be similar, but where it's completely different content. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that is one of the big fears and I know that plagiarism is a big problem and in no universe am I saying that people should go out and plagiarize. I think that many of us were taught that independent work has to come directly from sort of like on high, through our brains, into our keyboards, and we can't look at anything else, and we can't reference anything else, and we can't take a look at how other things work, and I often think about it in terms of, like, recipes, like, if you and I both make chocolate cakes off of the same recipes, but we're in different countries, we use different measurements, our stoves are different, our access to ingredients are different, as long as we document those differences, we'll never create the same cake. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: We're going to have two completely different cakes. And so I think that many students stop themselves from this kind of close analysis of other people's works because they're so worried about doing their own independent work that They don't use the kind of free help that's available to them, which is the shoulders of the giants that you can stand on if you'd like. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Definitely. It's like I shared with a client just recently these, you can get these documents of sentence starters. Yeah. Where, completely content free, but they sort of say, you know, if you're trying to disagree with an article, you could start with a sentence, a couple of words like this. If you're trying to add extra evidence, you could start like this. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And honestly, she was like, this is, this has changed everything. And sometimes even just those small things and you can pick them. You can, if you Google sentence starters, you'll find about a thousand people listening, but, but you can do that for yourself within articles too, can't you? Sort of. Well, how did they introduce the fact that they're now moving to something that contradicts what they just said? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: How did they show that this was now the final paragraph of the introduction? And what did they say? Absolutely. Those things, I think, can really help. And then you're stripping out content, so it's never going to be plagiarism. No. Because you're stripping out the actual science and just using almost the connecting words. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah. And I think that so, academic writing in itself is so structured, you know what I mean, compared to like fiction or creative non fiction or some of the other genres, that there aren't that many different moves you can make. There are only so many ways to introduce a paper. There are only so many ways to say that you disagree with this author or disagree with that author. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And the nice thing about using some support for the structure and the argument is that it helps get you to really see the difference between, this is the structure that I'm using to communicate my argument, this is what's important to me, that I disagree with that author, or that I agree with this author, or that our methods are completely different, but our results are the same, or whatever. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: That's your intervention. That's your scholarly contribution. It's not reinventing the form of the introduction for everybody who's going to come after you.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Perfect. So. Definitely more reading, targeted reading, and picking out how they did what they did. What else can people do?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: I'm also an evangelist, practically, for writing groups. Um, I was saved. I, I thanked my writing group in my dissertation acknowledgements. I regularly thank them. We're all good friends today. But I came from a department where my advisors and my faculty members wanted to see polished drafts. which is a completely reasonable boundary for busy faculty to have, which is like, come to me when this is ready and I'll give you the final levels of polish and we'll talk about, you know, kind of the fine grained things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: But if that's the only structure that you have, and the only available Feedback. For some people, it can be, and I'm not exaggerating, years between when I set out to write a chapter and when it was ready for my advisor to finish. And I felt like I was alone in foggy woods and had no idea and that I couldn't ask for any help until it was this, like, mysterious final polished draft. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And so I joined a writing group, and the people in my writing group had nothing to do with me disciplinarily. They weren't in my department. Um, they were in completely radically different fields. We all worked on massively different objects. But the magic of that writing group was that it gave me a structure for the in between. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: So we would all check in on Wednesdays and we would talk about our progress. It gave me deadlines where I was like, okay, I need to have something to share by Wednesday. So, um, , we're gonna have a latte and buckle down and get something to share by Wednesday. And I know that these people aren't, you know, they won't ever need to decide on my funding packages or get me a job. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: I can send them something that I'm not. proud of yet, and we can work on it. But the, the magic was they, because they didn't share the same disciplinary language as I did, they needed me to explain things to them that made me a better writer. So when I would send work to people in my department or people in my field, we all had a common language, and so we skipped over a lot of things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: I didn't need to explain that theory. I didn't need to explain what I meant by this. And sometimes that's appropriate. You're giving a 10 minute conference paper. Nobody needs you to back all the way up and explain, you know, this fundamental idea. But as a writer, especially for me, because I tended to jump to the very highest levels, And people would have trouble following me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: It was so useful to have friendly faces who could ask me very gently and constructively, what do you mean by this? Like, I was with you until here, and then I completely lost it. And because they were smart and reasonable people, I knew that they were getting lost. Because I wasn't being clear and it felt like it wasn't a punishment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: It was just a chance to explain. And so we would record those meetings. I would get the transcripts later. I would spell it out. But having that structure in between was a complete game changer. Because before that, I was really just writing and trying to figure it out all by myself. And that wasn't efficient. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: It wasn't effective. It was isolating and it really created a breeding ground for me to be like, I am terrible at writing and I will never get any better because the, the goal that I was aiming for was so far away and there was no support in the meantime. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So in a second, I'm going to tell you why I disagree that that's an entirely appropriate way of supervising. Cause I don't think it is. But I love this writing group thing. So. Let's get a bit more specific about it. So how did you, how did you even find them and what was the structure? How did you make them?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: So this one was through my university. One of the life hacks for any PhD student is that you probably have some office on your campus that emails you regularly. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Um, because I work with graduate student support that I know that they have a family. thousand different names in a thousand different places. But I know that my emails came out on Friday afternoons when my brain was checked out already. And I would go through that email and I would be like, that sounds good. That sounds good. That sounds good. And I got a lot of support and help for free from my university, not through my advisors, not through my department, but through like the graduate school. And so, in one of those emails, they said, you know, we're recruiting for interdisciplinary writing groups, they're free to join, we'll match you with people that have similar schedules, go for it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And so, we didn't know each other, we were all sort of randomly put in this group together, and then it was up to us to decide on the structure. So, we. Agreed on a meeting time and a meeting place and sort of how we would handle it. There were other groups that had much more rigorous schedules than we did. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And they were like, we want everybody to have 5 new pages every week. And my group was a lot more like you sign up for a week. You send something between 5 and 10 pages. You tell people what you're most interested in. And actually, there's so many different ways to write a writing group and like to run it that I've seen them be really, really successful and look wildly different from each other. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: But I do have like a resource called like how to run a writing group where it says like, okay, here are some activities that you can try or here are different formats that you can try. But I think the idea that almost all of those groups boil down to that you have a shared agreement about what people are going to do in the writing group, and you have a shared understanding of what kind of feedback people are and aren't looking for. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: So I was not needing any of my people who study ancient Judaic texts, which I do not study. I was writing about cats on the internet. I don't need them to help me with like this scholar. said something that would be really useful here. I needed them to help me with like, okay, you made a really big jump from this idea to this idea. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Explain to me how you got there. And another person in the group had, um, English was not their first language, and so they really wanted help with, you know, sentence structure, and does this make sense, and are these the right words, kind of thing. Um, so each member could have a little bit of a different aim for what they were using, but because we had an agreement to be really clear about it, nobody felt like they were wasting their time, um, giving grammar advice to someone who didn't need it, or, you know, vice versa. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Perfect. And you've mentioned a couple of resources. I'll get you at the end of this to tell everyone where they can find you and all of this stuff. And I'll link to it all in the show notes. So if you're listening, you will be able to track down all this stuff because there's, Katy has a ton even beyond what she's mentioned already. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Um, So one of the things I think that's useful with that as well is to remember what you get out of reading other people's as well. And I guess it goes back to your point about, um, reading and learning through reading too, that in these writing groups, it's a little bit like with, I do group coaching, as you know, watching somebody else getting coached, you can learn just as much about yourself as you can getting coached yourself. And I guess you see the same in writing groups.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Absolutely. And I think that there's a real pressure as scholars to be as effective and efficient as possible, you know, um, every minute needs to be moving your own projects forward. And so I know a lot of people who are drawn to improving their writing skills, whether that's spending a little bit more time reading or joining a writing group or any of those kind of things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And they're like, that sounds great. And I would love to, but I do not have time. I'm so busy with everything else. And I think that a lot of - when I think of the the faculty members who I know who are producing at that very highest level that you look at their CV and you're like, how are you getting all of this done? How are you moving things so move so quickly through the pipeline? 8 times out of 10 they are working with a group of colleagues, or co authors, or writing groups, or people that know them forever, and they have built structures of community around their writing. Whether that's an editor that they used for 20 years that always goes back and forth with them, or a co writing team, there's a thousand different things, but Almost always it's effective and efficient, not just for your writing, but for everybody else's in the group to see other versions of it, to talk through ideas, to practice these skills, to get better. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: There's no substitute for it. And just because it's not directly moving 45 minutes, the indirect benefits are so huge. From your mental health, from your building connections in the field. My writing group, we have nothing in common, and one group member helped another one get a job at a university later, because they could vouch for them. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And that was a relationship that we wouldn't have ever fostered without this writing group. So I think that it's sometimes okay to take a little bit of time and quote unquote step back. Share, read other people's things, um, build some of those extra skills, even if it's not, full steam ahead on your work for those 45 minutes. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, because that focus can feel like such a good thing, right? You know, who's ever going to argue with, oh, I just need to get my head down and get my thesis written. You know, it sounds like such a worthy thought, doesn't it? Yeah. Often it's, it's really preventing you from developing in these, these sorts of ways. So I think that's, that's great advice.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Before we go on to what other things you'd recommend, I want to back up my point about supervision. And the reason I don't think that's helpful, and I say this from a place of love. So, okay, if academics are listening, and I know they do, I've been you. I was a full professor at the university and I've had that super busyness and that idea that I don't have time to trawl through really rough drafts. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: But my problem with it is, is it reduces feedback down to a single function of ensuring your argument is clearly argued and your spelling, punctuation and grammar are correct. And I think that's fundamentally misinformed. So in the same way that when you read a paper you can read it for a whole bunch of different things, I believe you can read a draft for a whole bunch of different things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And for me, what I always used to try and do with my students and what I now encourage the people I work with to do, Is to be really clear why you want them to read it. So as a supervisor, you get a really rough draft from a student. It's really easy to be like, Oh God, do they think this is good? And then really stress out that they think this is good and how much development you're now going to have to do with this student. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: If they think this is a decent piece of work and this is going to get me, take me hours to put line by line comments and blah, blah, blah. Whereas if students and supervisors can just have a conversation about it. Often, all the student wants to know is, am I making roughly the argument that you thought I was going to make? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Have I missed anything obvious? And then the supervisor doesn't need to read it for line by line edits. They need to have a quick scan through it and say, yes, but have you read the work of so and so? Why are you saying this bit and not convinced of that? Make the case clearer or remove sort of thing and to give that really broad brush sort of feedback so, you know, that they're sort of along the right line. So, what anyone listening who's in this situation, whichever side of it you're at. I'd just really encourage you to look at it at all stages, but to look at it at an appropriate level of detail and ask for it to be looked at at an appropriate level of detail, and to use your supervisor for what they're most useful for, which is, is this conceptually strong? Do I cover the bits of the existing literature? Is there anything I've missed So supervisors, if you're only asking for polished drafts, pull your fingers out. Talk to your students properly.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yes. And I, I probably am too gentle. There's different sort of protocols with it, but I always stress when I'm working with faculty in that position, it saves you time to intervene earlier in the draft. And so I know that, like, as a student, I would sometimes go six, seven, eight months, maybe, without a supervisor checking in on the idea. And there was nothing more demoralizing as a student than spending eight months on a draft even with all of the extra work that I was doing to check for comprehension and have people in my department read it and sort of move it, and then have my supervisor be like, this is great, except for I disagree with the main concept or this wasn't what I was expecting or you wrote 20 more pages than I thought you would or this isn't what a chapter looks like at all. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And the number of times that I was sent back to, if not literally the beginning, very, very, very close to it. totally increased my time to a degree. It totally challenged the relationship that I had with my supervisor. Like, it definitely shaped my own beliefs about the efficacy of my writing. And if somebody had just said, hey, I would love to look at your outline and we'll just make sure, oh, wow, this outline is 17 pages long. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: This is too much content for one chapter. Break it up. That would have saved everyone involved sometimes literally years of work. So, um, it's more effective for everyone to intervene earlier, but even if you're in a situation where your supervisor is, for whatever reason, not open to that, there's usually other places you can go. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Definitely, definitely. One of the things I really like about this coaching is that I really sit on both sides of it, you know, being a PhD student, I've supervised PhD students, and I work with both sides of it now. And I can't imagine anything more terrifying than not knowing what my student is doing for six or eight months, that they could be completely off on a tangent. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I just think it puts an enormous pressure on that next piece of work that the students always got to be really good, really, really, really good before it goes in and that puts pressure, but then it also the longer you take over it, we often tell ourselves the better it needs to be. So yeah, totally agree. Have that conversation, if you possibly can. So, are there other techniques, approaches, ideas that people can use to improve?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: The other idea that I would love to share with people, because when I heard it in a podcast being discussed probably years ago, I think I broke down in the car and was crying as I was driving home because it was so useful for me, was this concept of the taste gap. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: So this is an idea that I think I heard about it from Ira Glass, who's a podcast producer and interviewer. And he was talking about how frustrating it is for people who are artists or writers or anybody who's in a sort of skilled trade to be working on something and know without a doubt that there's a gap between what you like and admire and want to be in the field and what you're producing right now. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Because I think that so much advice and like mindset work, which is all really valuable in its own right, can kind of sugarcoat the idea that like, if you just keep going, it'll get better. But to have somebody just flat out say, you are not making work at the quality that you want to be making work at, and that gap feels awful. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: He calls it the taste gap between, like, what you're making and what you want to make. He says that gap feels awful, and the only way to get through that gap is to keep making things, and to get feedback, and to solicit, and to run it through multiple items. He said there's no other shortcut for it. He says you could read every draft, you know, of every book that's ever been written about how to write more effectively. You can try every skill, drill, you can hire every editor. There's no shortcut for it, really, other than trying and not being where you want it to be and trying again. And when I heard that, it released something in me, because I was in this battle between, like, My therapist was saying, who cares if it's crap, just write it down. It's probably better than you think it is. And in a lot of times it was. I'm my own worst critic. Many of us are. But it also was really radically freeing to have somebody be like, yes, it absolutely is not at the same level as this book that you're reading or as the scholar who's been working for 40 years. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And It's not expected of you to be writing a field changing text every time you sit down, but let that gap motivate you as much as it demoralizes you. And for me, that was so helpful just to have somebody acknowledge that and then be like, okay, and this is your way through it, you just got to keep going. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Cause I think people don't expect that uncomfortable, you know, so, you know, they expect it to be a bit difficult, they expect it to be a bit confusing, but that idea that you do know what you want to write or how you want it to be, but you just can't get it like that. You remind, when you were talking, you reminded me of a conversation I had when I was at school with this boy who was in my class who was really good at art and I was sat next to him in art class and we were drawing like fruit or something. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And he was just like, I don't understand why you drew the apple that shape. You can see that it's not that shape, can't you? I'm like, yes, but I can't draw it the right shape. And he's like, but you look at it and then you draw it the shape you see. And I'm like, yes, I'm trying. And I just, and he, he was just so good at this and he did it so many hours, he just could not understand how I didn't, and I think often supervisors are a bit like that, you know, the ones that have been writing for years and are really experienced, but I don't understand why you would write it in that order, because, you know, it doesn't make sense. And so I think they sometimes struggle to know how to support students who are in this uncomfortable gap. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: But on the other hand, I was so frustrated because I could obviously see, Stuart, thank you, that it didn't look like that apple, I knew that. But staying with it and keeping drawing it over and over again when I kept telling myself how rubbish I was, it's really uncomfortable, and I think that's often why people end up giving up things like art and music and sport, because doing something you're bad at over and over again is really hard. And I think that telling yourself that, you know what, it's going to be uncomfortable, but that's okay. Is, is huge.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, it, it really kind of goes back to what I was saying in the beginning that so many of us feel that if we feel bad at it, or if we have like objective evidence that we're not where we want it to be, that we'll never get any better. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And so I have clients and everybody responds to that feeling a little bit differently. And some people will like work to the point of burnout in order to just keep going. And some people will avoid it. And there's all sorts of behaviors in between, but all a lot of it boils down to it is uncomfortable to work very hard at something that is difficult. It's hard. And no matter how many times you do it, no matter how much support you have, writing is hard. And you might have forgotten that because you're in a place where everybody just treats it like this is commonplace. We all need to do it. There's no sense it is still wildly challenging to create new knowledge and then put it down in a written form so that other people can access it the way that it's in your brain. Like there's no other. It is a wildly challenging task. And just because it's uncomfortable doesn't mean that it's not worth doing or that you're not worth investing in it or that you can't get better at it. That discomfort does not automatically mean that the idea is bad.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: The other thing that struck me as you were saying that is I think the discomfort also shows that there's understanding coming too. Because I was thinking about the people I know who don't write, who aren't in academia, who, this just wouldn't be a thing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And they would read one of my first drafts of an academic article, and then they'd read a real academic article, and I don't think they'd see a massive difference. So a non expert eye, none of it makes that much sense, it all sounds complicated, and they wouldn't necessarily see the difference. And I wonder if a thought that might help a little bit is that if you can see the difference between published academic writing and what you are currently producing, that is an understanding in itself. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: That is you understanding what good writing looks like. And I think on top of that, if you can get to a stage where you can pick apart which published academic writing you like better and understand why, because I know at the beginning everybody thinks if I don't understand it it's because I'm stupid rather than because it isn't very well written. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: I think if you can start to actually see that this is clear academic writing and mine isn't there, then that's the beginnings of getting there, isn't it?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm thinking about how my husband and I, he's a musician and I like music and we go to all sorts of things and our favorite of the, the performances that we go to often are the dance performances because neither one of us are a dancer. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: We don't know enough to pick it apart. You know what I mean? We don't notice the mistakes. We don't see them. We just go for the pure pleasure of watching bodies in motion. And that doesn't mean we don't have opinions and we don't talk about things and say, I preferred this company to that company, or I really liked this, or I really liked that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: But there's something so wildly freeing about watching other experts really excel in a field that you don't have any skills in. And I think that it's really easy to be a dancer and be like. I messed up this thing. I messed up that other thing. And to realize that those mistakes that feel life altering on the stage are probably only noticeable to a very small section of people. They feel noticeable to you because you're so focused on not doing them. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: And sometimes it's nice to be able to remember that, like, this is an incredibly difficult thing. And like you said, to the majority of the population, that difference between this paper and that paper, that gap that feels so huge to you, is probably not as visible to other people.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: I just think, yeah, that's fantastic advice for anybody listening. So thank you so much for coming today, Katy. If people want to hear more from you, and I'm sure they will, you've sort of teased people with a few of these webinars that are available. Where can they find out more from you?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Katy: Yeah, the best place to connect with me is the website, social media platforms come and go, and so like the website is the one that I control, so it's thrive- phd. com, and there is a place to sign up for my newsletter, it goes out every Thursday, and it always has the most up to date news about what I'm working on, and what things are available. I really put an emphasis on free resources and low cost things, so, I would be honored if anybody checked me out. But thank you so much for having me. This was, the, the light I needed in a gray winter day.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yes, it is very cold where we're recording this. I highly recommend all of you get onto Katy's newsletter. I enrolled and read it every week. There's tons of stuff. And I think of all the people who work in this world, Katy is one of the people that has the most free and accessible resources. So definitely get in there. And if you're in a position to do so, look at her paid stuff as well. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope this has been really useful. It's been useful for me and has inspired me to get on with some of my writing jobs too. So I will see you all next week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 29 Jan 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-20-how-to-improve-your-writing-with-guest-dr-katy-peplin thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-19-how-to-stop-procrastinating-part-2 <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span>  Procrastination is one of the biggest issues that my PhD student and academic clients talk about. And so it probably shouldn't have been a surprise that when I came to do an episode about how to manage your procrastination, it didn't all fit. I recorded it. I didn't even notice that I'd been talking for over an hour and when I came to process it, I thought, you know what, this is two episodes. So I split it into two episodes.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Last week I talked about the NICE model that I've come up with to help you in the moment stop procrastination. So you're noticing, investigating, choosing and embracing. If you haven't listened to that episode already, go back, check it out. Today is the second half of that episode and here we're really going to be thinking about how we can set ourselves up to avoid procrastination a little bit more in the future. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> These two parts were, as I say, recorded as a single episode, so we are gonna dive straight in. I hope you enjoy. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> I run a lot of workshops on a lot of different topics. I have lots of individual clients at the moment, and this is something that's coming up with lots of different people.  </span> <span> And on my dog walks and all of that, I've been reflecting a lot on the nature of procrastination. And one of the things that's really struck me is procrastination is a breakdown in the relationship between the current us here, today, current me, past me, who set the plan, and future me, who wants me to have done the plan. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, you may not have thought about yourself in that kind of way before, in this sort of past, current, and future you. But it can be a really useful headspace to get yourself into. Because often we think about ourselves as just being, we're, we're just us, aren't we? And we're going through life and we're making plans and we're doing some of them and not doing other ones and achieving some things and not achieving other things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Whereas actually, if you could separate it out a little bit, and almost have a separate past me, is one person. Current me is one person and future me is somebody else. Then what we can do is we can start thinking about the relationship that we have with those versions of ourselves. Now, just to really emphasize, when I'm talking about separating these things out, I'm not imagining, I sometimes fall into the gap of like, future me is going to be amazing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You know, next year's Vikki's going to do so much stuff. No, past me is very, very similar to me, especially near past, you know, just in the last few days. And future me is going to be pretty similar to me too. Now, hopefully we might modify a few things here and there, but future me is going to be pretty similar too. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But thinking of it as a relationship, that I have a relationship with past me, and I have a relationship with future me, can help us create environments where procrastination is less likely. And that's because I want you to think, if we think about these as a series of relationships at the moment, I want you to think what procrastination does to that relationship. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let's think about it when we're planning what tasks we're going to do, because people often forget this bit. They think about procrastination as being implementing in the moment, but actually one of the things I realized is one of the reasons I never implemented my to do list the way I intended is because I made stupid to do lists. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> For years and years and years and years and years, I made to do lists that I knew even at the time there was no way I could do. Completely unrealistic, completely unachievable, made them anyway. Fit of optimism, fit of denial, and then beat myself up because I couldn't do them. And for years I thought that I was somebody who couldn't deliver, who didn't do the things she intended, and I blamed myself for that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And it took me ages to realize that it wasn't a problem of implementation. It was a problem of stupid planning, which is still me. It was still, um, something that I was doing that I could change. So I still took responsibility for it, but it meant I'd been looking in the wrong place all this time. I'd been working, trying to work out how could I make myself do all this stuff that I had planned rather than going, let's plan more sensibly. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So let's start with the planning you. So at the point you're, current you is planning, and when we're planning, we've got kind of near future, so the me I'm going to be tomorrow, this week, and future future me, okay, far future. And so when we're planning, we need to think, am I coming up with something that is clear, that is realistic, that they are able to do, i. e. near future, and we need to think, am I planning something that is going to get me where. far future me wants to be. So there's the me in the next few days that's going to have to actually do these things, and there's the me at the end of the year that wants these things to have been done. And often when we're in that planning mode, we're not really thinking straight about near future me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Sometimes, I don't know about you, but suddenly we think near future me, tomorrow's me, is going to be an absolute genius. She's going to be able to smash through all of this. She's going to be so much more motivated. She's going to get so much done. We come up with unrealistic things.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Or in the moment, current me doesn't want to have to choose between things. That was always my problem. I'd look at my to do list or my ideas of the things I could do, and I didn't want to pick because I liked them all. And so I sort of just scheduled them all in, in an over optimistic way, and let it be future me's problem. But I didn't really think about it like that. I was like, well, we'll make it work. </span> </div> <div> <span> But if we can think about these relationships, then when we're planning, we can think, okay. What is realistic? How can I make it clear for them? How can I make it understandable and achievable? And this goes back, again, if you haven't listened to the How To Be Your own best Supervisor podcast, go back, listen to that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It's really important. This, this planning mode is almost when you're in boss mode and you're planning for the future you that has to do the work. So we're thinking Is it achievable? Can I do it? And we're thinking, is it going to get me where I want to be?  </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, a little bit of time's gone past. We're in the implementation phase now. So we're in the phase where we actually have to do the things on our to do list. Now we're thinking about past me, who set this for me, and we're thinking about future me, who wants this to be done. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And of course, we're thinking about ourselves. And what's happening when we're procrastinating? This is the zone where we procrastinate in this implementation phase. We're saying to ourselves, I don't want to though. I don't want to because when I do it, I'm going to feel uncomfortable, I'm going to feel bored, I'm going to feel guilt, whatever it is. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So I don't want to. And often we start to justify it by saying, well, past me, when I planned this, I didn't know that I was going to be poorly, I didn't know that I was going to be on my period, I didn't know that this thing's going to happen, whatever it is. Or, oh yeah, I was a bit unrealistic when I planned this, so yeah, I'm just going to readjust. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We sort of discount the wisdom of past us and use that as a reason that we're not going to do the thing. We're not honouring what past us had planned and intended. Sometimes, as I say, that's because past us planned something stupid, unrealistic, bless their little heart. Other times, it's because it just feels a bit uncomfortable now and we're using that as an excuse not to have to do it. </span> </div> <div> <span> And we're also often not thinking about the future us. Other than, again, having this really optimistic thing that future us is going to be loads better. Okay? So we're thinking, oh, silly past us. They thought that I'd be able to do this, but actually there's just not really time, so I'm not going to. And I can do it tomorrow. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Future me's got it. Okay, so we're being dismissive of past us and we're being over optimistic about future us. And the irony is that when we shift and we are now future us and we're trying to implement now, we're probably going to do the same thing. We're going to go, oh, past us was super over optimistic because she was, by the way, but I'll try again tomorrow because I'll be better tomorrow.  </span> </div> <div> <span> And so it just keeps shifting down the line. Instead, what we want in this moment, when we're in the implementation phase, is we want to be able to say, I trust past us. They had a plan. They had a plan where they tried to be clear, where they tried to be fair, and they tried to be realistic. I am going to do my best to implement it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because the irony is, if somebody else had asked you to do this, you would probably do it. That's the relationship that we want to build with past us and future us is that we are as accountable to past us and future us as we are to other people. All of my clients and me say, I will always do something if my boss asks me to do it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I'm never going to say to my boss, Oh yeah, I just didn't. You know, I find that really hard to do. Obviously sometimes it happens, but rarely do we do that. When somebody else is waiting for it, I need to get this done or they're going to think badly of me. We're really happy. We're perfectly fine. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Apparently, for future us to think badly of us, to past us to think badly of us. I want us to build accountability to past us and future us as the most important accountabilities in our lives. Because then we get to go, Okay, past us. This is what we decided. I'm not sure I'm convinced, because I don't know that we have time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But I'm going to do everything I can do to prove you right. I'm going to try and get as much done as possible. So when you hear the thought, I don't have time for this, we can say, I know, but this is the time that past us gave us for it, so let's see how much we can get done. I don't know that I can write all this in this. No, but I can use every bit of this hour. Because that was what past us decided.  </span> </div> <div> <span> So we get to honor past us and do our best to implement what they planned. And the more past us took future us, I mean now, into account, the easier it is to say, you know what? I trust her. She made okay decisions based on the information she had at that stage. </span> </div> <div> <span> She made okay decisions and I am going to do my best to honor them. Now. We can then build that knowledge into future planning if we realise, ah, past us is still giving us too many tasks, really. We can build that into our next planning session. Okay, I remember I often give myself too much to do, so let's think about that and plan more realistically. But in this moment, we're not just going to write her off as an idiot, we're going to do our best to do the things that she said we could do.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other thing we're going to do in this implementation phase is be kind to future us. Once again, most of you would go out of your way to help a friend. You would put yourself out there to do something if it would help them out and make their lives easier. </span> </div> <div> <span> We need that relationship with future us. You know what? I'm going to do this now so that tomorrow's me doesn't have to. She is going to be so grateful to me that I've done this and she doesn't have to. She's gonna be so proud when she opens up this document and sees that I've written another couple of paragraphs. That's wicked. I'm gonna do this, but so that she doesn't have to. I'm gonna do this because I know that she is still very similar to me and it's not gonna be any easier for her than it is gonna be for me. So we're gonna go with it now. Okay, so that's the implementation phase.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And then the final one is the review phase. And often we don't have a formal review phase, but we do think in our minds, I should have done that already and I didn't. We start looking back to past us. And what we commonly do at the moment is we judge past... </span> </div> <div> <span> so now we're in that phase where the current us has Is now looking back at what we have or haven't done and we can look back and go, we can judge far past us that made the plan and be like, well, she made a stupid plan anyway, we can look at the near past us. So the one yesterday who didn't do it and go, Oh, you should have done it. You're so lazy. You procrastinated again. We can be judgy. Or, much more helpfully, we can be compassionate and curious and be like, Ah, that's interesting. We came up with a plan. You didn't implement the plan. I wonder why that is. What was it that made it difficult to implement? What thoughts didn't we overcome? What circumstances made it feel more difficult than it was? Okay, and we get to review with that sort of compassion. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because we know that when we don't build that compassion in at this stage, and we start blaming past us, we should have done this before, all we're doing is inducing feelings of shame and guilt in ourselves, which make it much harder to get on and do tasks anyway. So the more we can be like, okay, that's interesting, she didn't do it as implemented. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It is what it is, so we can get curious, or we can just accept, it's what it is, I am where I am, what's next? And then the cycle continues. We now get to plan, we get to implement, we get to review. And at every stage, we think about building this relationship, honouring this relationship between past us and future us.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If that feels really difficult, really alien to you what I would really suggest is that you just keep it on the kind of really small timescale. So anytime any task feels overwhelming, shrink it down until it feels like something you can manage. So in this case, I want you to think about yesterday's you as past you, today's you as current you, and tomorrow's you as future you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> What did yesterday's you think that you should do today? I want you to do your best to honour what yesterday's you thought you should do in the interest of building that relationship. Past you needs to trust that you will do the things you say you'll do and current you needs to trust that past you had a decent plan. So let's try and honour that.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let's also, in this moment, think about future you. How can we be kind to them? What will they be grateful is done because we did it today. When we're planning, how can we plan something that is as easy and straightforward and helpful and positive for future you to do as possible? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> How can we, when we're reviewing, how can we look back and be as kind and mindful and compassionate and curious as we can be about our past self. So we slowly build these relationships over time. And these are exercises that I'll introduce to you in later podcasts. Over time, you can build a stronger relationship with the future you, who's maybe a year down the line, five years down the line, so that you can kind of use her as inspiration, maybe even as a source of information and a source of ideas, but at the moment, let's just stay with yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's and we build a relationship where we trust that we are going to do what yesterday's us wanted us to do and we are going to plan so that tomorrow's us has a really nice day where they do the things that they want to do.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because Thing I find fascinating when we think about this as relationships, relationships with our past self, relationships with our future self, is how completely illogical it is. And this is not to beat up on anyone because we all do it, but I want you to notice how illogical it is. We think that past us was wrong for putting these things on our to do list. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We shouldn't be doing these things today that past us said we should. So there's something wrong about past us. But I'm also going to beat myself up about the fact that I'm not doing it. We don't just go, Oh, okay. Yeah. Yesterday's me thought I should do that today, but actually I don't think I should. So I'm not going to and leave it there. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We simultaneously say, Oh, I shouldn't be on the list. I should never have said I'll do it today. And guilt ourselves about the fact that we should be doing what past us said. So we've got this really weird relationship with past us. And then similarly, future us, we have this situation where we're telling ourselves that they're way more capable than us because, Oh, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. It'll be easy tomorrow, da da da. They're way more capable, but equally we're not willing to do anything for them. We're not willing to say, you know what, I'll take that for the team. I'll get that done today so that you don't have to tomorrow. So we kind of really respect them as amazing, but not enough to actually make their lives a bit easier. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And then current us, when we think about our relationship with our current selves, so often we're telling ourselves there's no way I can do this today. I don't feel up to it. I'm too tired. There's not enough time today. I'm, you know, poor little me. I'm all incapable. But we're also prioritizing us and our comfort over all the other versions of ourselves. So we're telling ourselves that today's us is a bit useless because we're not doing the thing we should be doing. But also, the most important thing I can do is make today's me comfortable. You know, I cannot force poor little today's me to do these things that I intended. So it's a very strange combination.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And one of the good things about it is when you notice what a strange combination it is, something almost automatically shifts. So when you realize that you are thinking things that are just contradictory to each other, it's called cognitive dissonance, where we believe different things, but where actually you put them on the table together and they don't make sense as a whole, that feels really uncomfortable. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> That's naturally uncomfortable when you realize that. And while that's uncomfortable, that's also a good thing because it makes us go, All these thoughts I thought were true, literally can't all be true, because it's contradictory. And that's when our brain starts to figure it out, and our brain starts to go Oh, okay. Past us was doing their best. Current us is capable of doing this stuff. And it might be a bit uncomfortable, but I'm willing to do that so that future us doesn't have to do it. And suddenly it all gets a little bit clearer.  </span> </div> <div> <span> It doesn't happen overnight. Don't worry, you're not going to listen to this and just go away and be like, Oh, don't procrastinate anymore. But I want you to keep this stuff in your mind when you notice, when you go through that NICE model. I want you to notice what you're thinking about past you, what you're thinking about current you, and what you're thinking about future you. And use that awareness when you're planning, when you're implementing, and when you're reviewing.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear where is your procrastination breaking down? Which bit, is past you unrealistic? Is current you refusing to follow what past you did? Is future you sort of held up as this like icon who will do absolutely everything? Which bit of this breaks down for you and which bits do you want to strengthen in the future? Let me know. Let me know on social media, join my community. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If there are other topics you want podcasts, I have a million ideas always, but if there are specific topics that you want, let me know. One of my community has requested one on peer pressure and that thing where you look around and think, Oh my goodness, everybody at my level is further ahead. So that is going to be coming up. I'm going to do that. Thank you for that suggestion. If you have other suggestions, get in contact. Let me know. I love doing these more responsive episodes. So thank you all for listening and I will see you next week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 22 Jan 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-19-how-to-stop-procrastinating-part-2 thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-18-how-to-stop-procrastinating-part-1 <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i>  I'm not even going to ask whether you procrastinate or not, because you definitely, definitely do. I know you do. We all procrastinate. Maybe you identify as being a procrastinator, someone who does this all the time. And maybe that's something that you really dislike about yourself. Or maybe you just find yourself procrastinating from time to time and it kind of annoys you.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Whichever, this is the episode you've been waiting for. I spoke to the students in my coaching program this week. And the biggest thing that they identified as a problem at the moment was that they were procrastinating. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> They'd come up with all these amazing goals at the time of recording. It's like the 11th of January. So we're in that sort of new year's resolution period when reality hits and all those plans we actually have to do. And their biggest challenge was that they were happy with the plans they'd made, but they were procrastinating doing the actual task. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> I helped them in my coaching program and I thought this was the perfect episode for all of you guys too.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> </i> Hello and welcome to episode 18 of series 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And today we are talking about how to manage your procrastination. Notice, this episode is not called How to Stop Procrastinating. If we tell ourselves this is the year we're not going to procrastinate, we are setting ourselves up for failure. We are going to procrastinate for the rest of our lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But, it doesn't have to be as painful as it feels right now, and it doesn't have to feel so out of control. So today, I am going to help you learn how to manage your procrastination from the perspective of someone who is still pretty good. at procrastinating.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, sometimes as coaches we wonder, how can I help somebody else stop procrastinating when I've been procrastinating this week. I've procrastinated this morning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sometimes it's easy to feel a little bit hypocritical. But then what I always remind myself is, actually, maybe, maybe that makes me the perfect person to talk about procrastination. Because if I was sat here going, Oh yes, I never do that. Oh yes, I used to procrastinate, but I stopped. I learned how to, and now I just don't procrastinate anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then, that feels like a really long way from where I suspect you are at the moment. And where Well, a really long way from where I am. I think if I was listening to a podcast with somebody going, Oh yes, I just don't have that problem anymore. I think I'd be a bit intimidated. I think I'd feel a bit like, well, okay, but I can't even imagine what that would feel like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A day where I don't procrastinate is a pretty big day. I can't even imagine what that would be like. And so I think actually hearing from somebody who's in the midst of this management themselves, who is actively coping with these things at the moment can feel way more achievable. And hopefully you guys can also see that whilst I procrastinate, it doesn't stop me achieving the tasks that I want to achieve. It doesn't stop me getting this podcast to you. It doesn't stop me running the workshops that I run, running the individual coaching that I run. It doesn't stop me doing any of these things. As an academic, so many of you will know, I had a 20 something year academic career before this, finishing as full professor in the UK. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I procrastinated through the whole of that. And it didn't stop me achieving any of the things I wanted to achieve. Now, along the way, I thought it was going to. I thought procrastination was going to scupper everything. I spent so much time beating myself up for it. And in reality, the beating myself up just made me procrastinate more.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The difference now isn't that I don't procrastinate. It's that I'm much less judgmental of myself when I do procrastinate, and I have much better tools to help myself move on from procrastination. And the reason I have those better tools is because I understand much more about why we procrastinate. And that's what we're going to focus on today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're going to focus on understanding why we procrastinate, and I'm going to introduce a toolkit to get yourself out of it. If that feels good, if that feels like what you think you need in your life, make sure you're also following me on Instagram because I've got a series of videos coming out over the next couple of weeks where I'll be giving specific tips that aren't covered in this podcast today about managing procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am the PhD life coach over there, make sure you are following along.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But before I get into any of that, I have one tip for you. And this is a tip that applies to a lot of different things. But in this context, the tip is Stop calling yourself a procrastinator. Stop telling people that you are someone who procrastinates a lot. Because what that does is it reinforces that this is a fundamental part of who you are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is just like a bad habit that's so ingrained. Or maybe you see it as a personality flaw, or that you are, you know, badly disciplined, or unmotivated, or any of these things, and that they are somehow chronically so.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everybody procrastinates, so it makes no sense to call ourselves a procrastinator. You are also a task doer. By virtue of the fact that you are doing a PhD or you're in your academic career, you have achieved a whole bunch of things in your life. You are also someone who completes tasks. But when we focus on telling ourselves that we are someone who procrastinates, then we just really reinforce that in our heads and make it so much harder to deal with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if it's a personal flaw, then we're going to have to take massive action in order to change that. If it's a personality trait, we probably can't even change it at all. Where in reality it's just a series of behaviours, if anything it's a habit. And we can modify habits. We can shift things a bit. We can make it feel easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, first tip. Stop telling yourself you are someone who procrastinates. You are someone who completes tasks. That is also true. You may be someone who sometimes procrastinates, but it is also true that you are someone who completes tasks. Let's keep telling ourselves that bit because that's so much more likely to move ourselves forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I mentioned that lots of you will think that you procrastinate because you lack self discipline, you're lazy, or you lack motivation. Those are the most common reasons. When I talk to my clients, when I think back to how I justified it to myself, those are the most common reasons people come up with as to why they procrastinate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just can't get on with it. I'm too disorganized. All of these sorts of things. None of these things are true. These are lies that we're told by a capitalist society that wants us to produce as much as possible , from a higher education system that wants us to do as much work as we can for the good of the university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so we're told that if we procrastinate, if we put tasks off, it must mean there's something wrong with us, or perhaps that there's something wrong with the task. Maybe it means that we shouldn't be in academia. We're not good enough to be here. Or maybe I don't like it enough to be here and all of this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Any of you who've ever procrastinated doing something that you like, know that that's not true. It's not about the task. I don't know you. I procrastinate having a bath. I sit on the sofa going, Oh, I'd quite fancy a bath, that'd be really nice, but I don't think I can be bothered to move. I procrastinate having a bath. Have you ever done that? Ridiculous.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But it illustrates that it's not about the task and the fact that I have achieved quite a lot of things in my life tells me that I'm also not unmotivated and I'm also not lacking self discipline and I'm not lazy. I'm definitely not lazy. So why do I procrastinate? Why do you procrastinate?   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason is really simple. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason we procrastinate is we are avoiding emotions that we anticipate we will experience when we do that task. I'm going to say that again for you. Procrastination is avoidance of emotions. I want you to think about the last thing you procrastinated.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Let's pick something that's commonly procrastinated. Maybe you've got a piece of writing to do. That's a common academic thing that gets procrastinated. How are you feeling about that piece of writing?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you think it's going to be difficult? Are you not sure where you're going to start? Do you think you're bad at writing? Do you think you haven't got time to do it? If you're experiencing any of those thoughts, then you probably anticipate that when you do it, you're going to feel confused. You're going to feel unclear.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you're going to feel guilty because you should have done it before in your mind. Maybe you're going to feel anxious because you're worried that your supervisor or your reviewers aren't going to think that it's good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are anticipating that when you're writing, you are going to be feeling those negative emotions, It's not a surprise that we put off doing it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> None of us like feeling confused, shame, guilt, all of these feelings. We don't like feeling those feelings. And so if we think a task is going to induce them, then we put off doing it. It's the same as exercise. We put off exercising if we think we're just going to be exhausted and hot and sweaty and uncomfortable.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even neutral tasks, I've been putting off doing my expenses for ages. They're mostly under control now, yay me! But, I've been putting off doing them for ages. And it's because I anticipated that it was going to take a long time and it was going to be boring. Those were the two things that I was anticipating that I was going to be bored for a long time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I don't like being bored. I'm somebody who very much enjoys doing fun things, doing a variety of things, sort of jumping around, do do do, I don't like being bored. And so I procrastinated doing it. So you can procrastinate things because they're boring. Now, if it's a fun thing, so go back to my example. I procrastinated having a bath this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, I have bathed this week. So, this is like an extra one for fun in the evenings. , I procrastinated going. Well, why would I do that? Because I anticipate I'll feel lovely and warm and relaxed and luxurious when I'm in the bath. Bit I was procrastinating was the effort it would take to get there. So I anticipated it would be lovely when I was in it, but I also anticipated that it was going to be effort to get off the sofa, put my stuff away, take the dog for a wee, go upstairs, get in the bathroom, all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that was the bit I procrastinated, was that effort I felt it was going to be. So when we procrastinate, we are avoiding feeling emotions. Now this changes everything. I've told people this in my, in my workshops and that sort of thing, that procrastination is emotion avoidance and almost every workshop, somebody puts the little mind blown emoji in the chat for me, even just understanding that this is why you're procrastinating can change everything because it changes that narrative. It's not a fatal flaw of us, it's nothing wrong with us as a person. We're not missing motivation, we're not missing self discipline, we're not lazy, we're just avoiding an emotion that we don't like even knowing that can change your relationship with procrastination. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because we stop beating ourselves up about it quite so much, and instead focus on what we can do about it. There's a little model I made up called the NICE model. And I have a worksheet on this. So if you want the worksheet to actually use when you're procrastinating, make sure that you are part of my community . It's completely free. I'll put the link in the show notes, but you can also just go to my website, the phdlifecoach. com, click on work with me, and you'll see an option there to join my community. When you're part of my community, you will get emails from me somewhere between weekly and occasionally, depending on how it goes, with useful hints and tips insider stuff that doesn't appear anywhere else on my material. And you will also get access to my free group coaching. So this is for PhD students or academics all the way up through your career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Once a month, I run free group coaching. You dial in, you can watch other people getting coached, or you can put your hand up and get coached yourself. You get one to one support with your specific problem. And you get to see how I help other people and learn how to apply that to your lives. It's an amazing group. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People dial in from all over the world. So make sure you're in that. And if you are in that, I will send you my how to stop procrastinating worksheet. And that explains to you the NICE model. It's called the NICE model because the N, the I, the C and the E stand for something. So it's a little acronym, but it's also called the NICE model because the whole way through this we're going to be compassionate to ourselves because too much of the time we beat ourselves up for procrastinating. We beat ourselves up for the fact that we still haven't done this thing we intended, and we make it mean loads of things about who we are as a person and our prospects in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not doing any of that because when we beat ourselves up we make it harder to do it next time because we're reinforcing this idea that we're not a good person and we're not someone who gets things done and therefore it's really easy to sort of lower ourselves to our own expectations. So, it's the NICE model, because we're going to be nice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Now, what do the four things stand for? Let's start at N. N stands for Notice. We have to notice that we're procrastinating. And I know that sounds really obvious because if you're meant to be writing and you're scrolling on Instagram, then you're probably procrastinating. But often in our heads We're telling ourselves a slightly different story. We're not telling ourselves we're procrastinating. We're telling ourselves we don't quite know what we need to write anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're telling ourselves I don't really feel like it today. We're telling ourselves I haven't got time to do it today. Sometimes you might actually be doing a task that feels productive, like organising your email, or making a planner. But maybe that's procrastination too, because you're not doing the thing you actually intended to do in this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you're sorting out your references rather than writing the next section. That's also procrastination, because we're avoiding doing the difficult bit. So, the first job sounds dead simple. We just get to stop and say, I'm procrastinating. I've noticed that I'm procrastinating and we're going to do it with compassion. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we are not going to be going, I've noticed I'm procrastinating. Oh my God. I always do this. I'm so useless. I'm never going to get this done. I'm going to have to do twice as much tomorrow. And all of that narrative that our brain loves to spin off into, we're not doing any of that. What we can do, we're just going to stay here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Look at that. I've noticed I'm procrastinating. That's really interesting. And importantly, in that moment of notice, we're going to stop doing the thing that we're doing instead. We don't have to start doing the task yet. In fact, we're not going to start doing the other task yet. But we are going to stop doing the thing that's kind of covering up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, my worst thing is the scrolling on Instagram, scrolling on Twitter. You may have other things, we call it buffering, things that you do when you're procrastinating. Maybe you're someone who does busy work to procrastinate doing harder tasks. Maybe you're somebody that goes off and chatters to people or you go and eat or those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm a scroller. I know a lot of you will be too. I want you to say, okay, I've noticed. I'm procrastinating and we'll get really specific. I've noticed that I'm choosing to scroll on Instagram instead of writing the email to my group that I intended to write in this slot. So we're noticing that we are procrastinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're noticing what we're procrastinating from, like specifically the task that we're procrastinating from and what we're doing instead, and we're doing all of that nicely, non judgmentally. Look at me, I'm choosing to scroll through reels rather than write that email. Okay, that is good to know. Because there's actually inherently nothing wrong with any of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's nothing wrong with scrolling on Instagram. You know, I have some of my career stuff on Instagram. Sometimes it's just nice to look at Instagram. There's nothing wrong with any of these things. The only time they become a problem is if we're doing them instead of the thing we intended to do. So no tasks are inherently bad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just, if we're doing that instead of our writing, then we won't achieve the things that we set out to achieve. So we notice I'm choosing to do this instead of that.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second step is I, is investigate. This is where we get to get curious. Now, those of you who have been with me since the beginning will remember in my very first podcast, I talked about how to be your own best supervisor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you haven't listened to that one, go back, it's one of my favorites. And one of the qualities that we suggested you, encourage in yourself is curiosity. This notion that we can go, Oh, that's really interesting. I wonder why I'm doing that. I wonder why I'm not doing that. And so the questions I want you to ask yourself here is how am I anticipating feeling when I do this task?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> i. e. why am I procrastinating it? Now some of you might have found it difficult to pin down exactly what task you were procrastinating. So for me, one of my most common reasons for procrastinating is when I haven't picked specifically which task I'm doing right now. So maybe I've written a bit of a generic to do list for the day, but I hadn't decided exactly which one I'm meant to be doing now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so if you found yourself in that notice section saying I'm procrastinating working on things on my to do list, I want you to notice That that isn't a specific task. Working on your to do list isn't a specific task.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So maybe, in your investigation phase, one of the things that you will realize is that you're not clear on which task you're meant to be doing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe we know which task we're meant to be doing, we're not convinced we have all the information that we need, so we anticipate feeling a bit confused, a bit unsure. Maybe, and we all have tasks like this, tell me it's not just me, maybe it's a task that you should have done ages ago. I live in a new build. We're meant to have contacted the developers cause we've got a few snags and I've been procrastinating it for, I don't know how long, months, literally. And when I do this exercise with it, now thinking it through, the reason I'm procrastinating it is , I feel shame about the fact that I've procrastinated it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's literally nothing inherently wrong with doing the task. I don't anticipate feeling any emotion at all when I do the task as the task itself. But whenever I think about that task, I feel guilty that I haven't done it before. And that's the bit I'm avoiding. I'm avoiding the feeling of guilt.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, it's a little bit silly. I acknowledge that in a compassionate way, because the second it's done, I won't feel guilty about it anymore. But there's something about guilt that even a little bit of it just feels horrible. So notice, are you anticipating you're going to feel guilty because you're telling yourself you should have done it before? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are you anticipating it being really boring? What are the emotions that you think you're going to experience when you do this task? And that's what this investigation phase is about. It's not about catching yourself out, it's not about beating yourself up, it's about just really understanding. Because then you can go, okay, yeah, fair enough, of course you're procrastinating, if you think this is going to be really hard, or if you're really unclear on what you're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we dig around, we investigate. And then C is for choose because any of you who have done any of my self-coaching stuff before knows that we get to choose our thoughts and feelings. We don't have to just accept the ones that just float to the surface naturally. We can choose which ones we spend more time thinking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  If my thought is, I should have done this before, and that makes me feel guilty and so I'm procrastinating, well you can look at that and go, okay, is it true that you should have done this before? Because sometimes, actually, you've just been super busy. Maybe you shouldn't have done this before. Maybe it's perfectly understandable that you haven't done it already.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe it's true that you should, in inverted commas, have done it before. Maybe, let's say, you could have done it before. But what else is true? That you'll feel better once it's gone, that it will only take a couple of minutes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe those things are also true. And when we choose to think this will only take a couple of minutes, maybe we feel purposeful. And when we feel purposeful, we're way more likely to do it than when we feel guilty. So, for those of you who haven't done the self coaching stuff before, do look back about three or four episodes ago, I had a whole episode about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But essentially the questions we can ask ourselves is this thought true? Are there other thoughts that are true that are more helpful? And then the final one relates to the E part of this model, which is what if it's true and that's okay? So the E part of this is embrace, which is maybe it's true that this is going to feel uncomfortable.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe the thought is, this is difficult, and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, and that makes you feel uncomfortable. E is embrace. Maybe it's okay that you're going to do something that's difficult and you're going to feel uncomfortable. Maybe it's true that this task is boring and maybe that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because this is where you choose between the C or the E. You can choose to reframe it, you can choose, okay, you know what? I'm going to think of ways to make this less boring. I'm going to make it into a game. I'm going to have music on. I'm going to have hot drink with me. I'm going to do it somewhere nice. I'm going to go to a coffee shop or whatever. You can choose thoughts, feelings, and actions that will make it feel less difficult, that will make it feel less boring, for example. If you think it's going to be difficult, you can choose to make it simpler. Okay, how can I shrink it down? How can I make it clearer? How can I give myself the guidance that I need? So you can choose, through your thoughts, feelings, and actions, to make it feel less uncomfortable, to feel less boring, to feel less shame about it. And, or, you can choose to embrace it. Because I'm going to ask you a difficult question that I asked my students in my membership this week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that is, what made you think you can have an academic career without doing something difficult and without doing something boring? And to be honest, doing something difficult and boring, quite a lot. And I say that with love, you know I'm not being mean to you, you know I'm not beating you up, because I have to say it to myself too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What made you think this was never going to be difficult or boring? This, think about the process of research, think about the process of going from a new PhD student to a full professor. You think nothing's going to be difficult and nothing's going to be boring. You think you've got to wait for the time when it feels easy and exciting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Come on now, sometimes we just need to tell ourselves, you know what, it's going to be difficult, but I am capable of doing difficult things. I am willing to be bored for a while, and that's okay. Because do you know what's more difficult? And what's more boring? Listening to yourself still having not sent the damn email to the developers that I meant to have sent.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's what's more boring. Listening to myself going, Yeah, I still need to do that. I still need to do that. That's more boring. That's more uncomfortable. Not doing the task is more boring and more difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's my nice model. You notice, acknowledge, you're procrastinating. I'm procrastinating. I'm choosing to do this instead of that. Investigate. Why is that? I'm choosing to do this instead of that because I'm anticipating that is going to make me feel this. The reason I'm anticipating feeling that is because I'm having this thought. thought. Because remember, it's not writing the paper that's going to make you feel uncomfortable. It's the thought you're having about it. I should be better at this. I'm never going to be as good as other people. This is going to take forever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's those thoughts that are making you feel uncomfortable. So in that investigation, what thoughts am I having that are going to make me feel uncomfortable? What emotions am I trying to avoid feeling?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we choose. We choose to focus on a different thought. We choose to generate a different feeling. We choose to take actions that actually change the way we might feel about it. So we put ourselves in a circumstance where we're more likely to think, Oh, actually I can get on with this. This is quite clear.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or, E, we choose to embrace it. We choose to tell ourselves, You know what? I've done difficult things before. I am someone who is capable of doing difficult things. This feels difficult, but I am able to figure things out. I am a researcher. That was a thought that one of my students came up with, that has really helped her. I'm a researcher and I can figure this out. Or we can embrace, you know, if it's boredom you're anticipating. That's okay. I am willing to be bored. I don't have to make the boredom go away. I'm just willing to be bored. I'm willing to do something boring for an hour in order for this to be off my task.   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that is the nice model. Let me know, make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can get the interactive worksheet that you can use to work through that, and let me know how you get on.  </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 15 Jan 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-18-how-to-stop-procrastinating-part-1 thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-17-how-the-phd-life-coach-university-membership-supports-students <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> <i> In this episode, I'm chatting with Tara Wittin, Head of the University of Birmingham Graduate School and Danielle, who is one of the participants in my university PhD Life Coach membership programme. We talk about how the membership works, what benefits the students get from it, and how it fits with the other student support available at the university. Whether you're a student or an academic, have a listen and hear why consistent long-term coaching support is so important for all PhD students  </i> </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 17 of season two of the PhD Life Coach. And I have guests with me again this week. This time I have Tara and Danielle. Tara who is the Head of Grad School at the University of Birmingham, and Danielle, who is one of the PhD students that is part of my PhD Life Coach membership. So, Tell us a bit about yourself, Tara. I'll start with you first. Tell us a bit about what you do and maybe the moment that brought you to where you are at the moment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: So as you said, I'm Head of the University Graduate School. The Graduate School at Birmingham supports both postgraduate researchers and postgraduate taught students. We lead on the postgraduate student experience at an institutional level. We offer a range of social, academic, and wellbeing activities throughout the year. So trying to create those opportunities for postgraduates to meet each other, develop their skills, showcase the amazing work that they're doing, and access support as well. I've worked at the university for nearly 10 years now, and prior to that I was a student with a little bit of gap in between and I've been in this role for just over two years.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: What brought you here? What made you want to do postgrad development?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: I kind of fell into doing postgraduates, as a focus, but I've worked with postgraduates, as a key part of my role for about the last eight years now, and so it's definitely an area that I really enjoy working in, love hearing about all the work that postgraduate researchers are doing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Fantastic. That's what I love about it as well. Whenever I do workshops, I get the students to tell me specifically what they're researching at the beginning. Not like I'm a geography student or whatever, but specifically what they're researching. And there's such a mass, especially at a big university like Birmingham, there's such a huge array of things going on. It's really cool. So how about you, Danielle? Tell us a bit about you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Oh, hi. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me on, Vikki. I'm a final year PhD student at the University of Birmingham. I say final year. I was in my third year. I've now sort of gone into my fourth year. but thanks to the coaching, I'm not being so hard on myself about that, but I can get into that later. My research background is mainly philosophy. And so my PhD is focused on philosophy of education and it's about methods of preventing extremism in schools and critiquing some of the current methods, and exploring the idea of whether teaching children philosophy could have any effect on building resilience to extremism.  </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: This is why I love asking people about their topics because people are doing such interesting important things. What brought you to that? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: You know, to be honest, I'm kind of one of those annoying people that fell into it a little bit. It wasn't like the PhD was my dream goal. I loved doing philosophy at university. I ended up being lucky enough to do a master's in philosophy, and it was through that that my passion for it really started to grow even more. And I had the supervisor, for my dissertation who really, really believed in me. I think he could probably see something that I couldn't, and then my supervisor took me aside one day and said, there's this scholarship in Birmingham that I think you'd find really interesting, and then I applied for it thinking it's worth a try. If you don't try, nothing will happen. And then I, I got it and I just couldn't believe it. And I thought, Oh my, oh my goodness, I'm going to Birmingham. </span> </div> <div> <span>   </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: For anyone watching this on YouTube, you'll see me smirking and the reason I'm smirking is because both of you have talked about falling into your roles and both of you have then, without noticing the irony, talked about all the reasons why you were perfectly qualified for the role that came along and that you've ended up being really good at. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: There's a whole bunch of coaching we could do around this story of, Oh, I just fell into it. I just happened to fall into it where there was a member of staff who knew who I was, thought I was really good and I'd done a bunch of research on this before, but yeah, yeah. I just fell nothing. I did but that's a conversation for another day. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So back to Tara then. What issues do you see amongst your postgrad community? What difficulties do you see people having? </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: I think it's well documented that doing a PhD can be really challenging and by its nature is demanding. It can also be isolating because, doing a PhD quite often, well, depending on discipline, but quite often the PhD researcher is working independently. We know that that can create some common challenges so loneliness, we know that our PGRs come from all different backgrounds, and it may be that they're older and they might be working alongside doing a PhD, they might have a family and a mortgage. So managing the balance between doing a PhD and everything else going on in their lives. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: Obviously some PGRs have a scholarship and funding but others are self funded and even those who have a scholarship with everything that's going on in the world at the moment, we know, that some people might be struggling with finances and also sometimes establishing and maintaining a good relationship with their supervisor. We know that that's such a key relationship. Sometimes that relationship is really good and sometimes there can be difficulties along the way and all of that can come together to potentially have negative impact on mental health and confidence which is why we think the coaching can help with some of those things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. Do you recognize that stuff amongst yourself and your cohort and things, Danielle? Are there other things you see?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Yes, certainly. I recognize it in myself and just through many interactions with some of my peers, you know. Um, I think especially the isolation part, I hear that a lot and I definitely experienced it, probably more towards the start of my PhD journey, but I think just the fact that you're researching something so specific, and you don't necessarily have classes to go to where you're seeing people regularly, where you maybe would start to make some friends because you see people and, you know, you see them maybe once a week and you start to go, Oh, hi, again, you know, and build that up. But you don't really have that regularity when you're doing a PhD. It's just kind of you at home at your laptop, researching away um, and if there are events, they're kind of quite spread out and far apart. So it's, it's hard to build connections that way.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Yeah, and the financial strain as well. I mean, I'm extremely lucky that my PhD is funded. That funding is now running out, but there's plenty of people do a PhD and it's, it's not. And they have to balance that with trying to get some sort of income to support themselves, doing this thing that they're not getting paid for and the amount of work that a PhD takes, you know, you really, you, you probably should be getting paid to be doing all that work. But yes, it can be, it can be a real strain, I think and especially one thing I've found extremely helpful is talking to other PhD students because there's no one else that really is going through what you're going through. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Even if your research is different, you're still, you can still relate on so many things that, you know, it is quite a unique experience. Compared to sort of, other jobs or things like that. And it's always so cathartic to speak to other PhD students and you're just like, me too, oh my god, you know. So, but yeah, as I say, it's sometimes hard to find that. </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, no, for sure. And I recognize all of those things from the clients that I work with. The other one that I see a lot is a PhD is really that period where you go from being someone who's researching research that other people have done, and kind of summarizing and critiquing to some extent to really putting this is my position and why it's my position. This is the data I've collected and the argument I'm making and that transition is a real kind of identity shift really turning into a researcher. And that's something I see people really struggle with. People are saying not only is it a lot to do and I'm not sure whether I'm good enough, but who am I to be putting that position out into the world? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: There's so many like big clever researchers out there and I'm just little me, and that's a real transition. And then I also see with We have a lot of part time students who come to the membership. And those who are listening, we've been referring to this membership kind of obliquely. We will explain that in a second, what that entails. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Um, but we have a lot of part time students and people who are doing professional doctorates and those sorts of things where they're doing it alongside a job. And there, there's a real identity shift that they're confident and professional and senior in their working life. And now they're essentially a kind of beginner researcher in an academic world, and there's an awful lot of sort of, oh I know how to write like this and I know how to organize myself over there. But I don't know how to do it in an academic environment. And so that's something that I see a lot of people struggling on that I don't think is always looked after and supported very easily by universities. Um, so, before we explain what the membership is, Tara, why even did you think this is such an important community to support? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: So our thinking was that there's obviously a lot of well being support available at the university, but we felt that it would be beneficial to have something that was really tailored to PhD researchers and their particular pinch points and challenges and that that could potentially be best delivered by someone who had experience of academia like yourself. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: And that's what really prompted us to bid for some money to be able to develop a program of activity specifically tailored to PhD researchers. The other aspect to this is it's trying to put something in place to help support people and to act as sort of early intervention before it contributes to or becomes a bigger issue, potentially a mental health crisis ultimately. And we felt that this could fill the gap between the day to day support that a PGR might get from their supervisor, and the support that they might get from wellbeing services and counselling etc at the university. And this is something that comes in between of those two things and adds that extra layer of support. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, absolutely. And why are they an important population, Danielle, do you think? Why are you important to the population? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: I, I guess we're kind of, as, as PhD students, we're kind of potentially your next colleagues. If you know what I mean, from the perspective of the academics in the university, we're the next generation of potentially your colleagues or people going out into the world with really, really important research that could have an impact. And there's potentially going to be research output from those PhD students, which is good for the uni, you know, I've, I've got a publication and it's affiliated with the University of Birmingham. So, the university ought to care about their PhD students because they could be contributing to the research output, which universities really care about. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And I just think it's important to prioritize their mental health, considering, um, like you say Tara, their challenges are maybe a bit different from other sort of levels of university. You know, you're going to face different challenges than an undergraduate might, or even a master's student, because during my master's, I did really well. My, my writing was always, um, received really well. And then at PhD level, I was writing in the same way and suddenly it just wasn't, it really wasn't up to scratch. And I thought, oh my goodness, this is a, this is a completely different ballgame. This is a different level. So yeah, I think it's, it's important to sort of have something tailored to the challenges you would face as a PhD student, just because it is it is different.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. I just think PhD students are so fundamental to so much of university strategies, because, as you say, it's not just that you contribute to research, often in a lot of topics, you're the ones doing the research. So certainly on the more science and engineering end of things is often the PhD students that are actually collecting the data that then underpins the grant applications, underpins the publications and those sorts of things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So they contribute enormously to the research activity of the university. You know, most supervisors and lecturers will accept they can't do this stuff without you. Certainly on that side of the university, it's slightly different potentially in sort of the more arts and humanities subjects, but then at the same time, you know, you're a student body, you're not employed to do our research for us, you're here to train and learn and develop. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I actually think, even before the membership Birmingham was really good at this, but there can be a tendency for phD students to fall down the cracks, that there aren't as many of you as there are undergrads, and so undergrads get lots of support , lots of attention, lots of thinking about how we can do that well, and then lots of attention on research and how we can do that well, and there can be a tendency to forget the support that's needed in the middle. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I think what you were saying, Tara, about where there's this gap between supervisors and what they provide, wellbeing and what they provide, and of course, we can't forget to mention the huge array of skills based training that's available at Birmingham and other universities. But in the middle of that, there's this gap where the students aren't necessarily in need of specific mental health wellbeing support, but they're procrastinating more than they'd like to. They're getting overwhelmed more than they want to. They think they're the only ones that feel like this. They know there's a bunch of ways they could get technical support for things, but they don't necessarily feel like they've got time or brain space to engage with things. And that's the sort of little zone that I think coaching fits in so well. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So maybe now would be a good time for me just to give the listeners a bit of a summary of what we do. at Birmingham. So it's been running at Birmingham since February, this year and it started out for the first six months, students got, access to two sessions of online group coaching a week. So they would dial in on Tuesdays, there would be a specific topic. So it would be a thought you might be having, like I have too much to do or something. There'll be a little bit of input from me, discussion in the chat and so on. And then people have the opportunity to come on for one to one coaching. So imagine you're in your Zoom room, you can only see me, there's a bunch of people in there and people taking turns to come on. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: They appear like this next to me, like Danielle is now, and we have a conversation about something that's specific to Danielle, but everybody else watches and has the opportunity to think about how that applies to them. And I'll ask you in a minute, Danielle, what you've got out of watching other people because I think that's a really important part of it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So the Tuesday session has a topic to it. Thursdays is just open coaching and students sign up for the membership and they just get put into a Slack channel and then they have access to all the information so they can come and go as much as they want. Some students come almost every session. Other students come in when it's necessary for them when they're struggling with something. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So that was how it ran February through June. And then we decided at the beginning of the academic year that we would also embed my workshops. So some of you listening will know I run, two hour workshops on particular topics, like how to write when you're struggling to write and things like that, that I offer to other universities as like one off options. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: We've embedded those into the membership as well. So throughout this academic year, The students get one monthly workshop and the two sessions of coaching a week as well. And that's an opportunity to do a kind of more in depth dive into a specific topic that really teaches some more tools. So there is still coaching, but it's more workshop, more input from me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And so that's how the membership works. The university pay for it on a monthly basis, which means that it's free at the point of use for all PhD students in the university and so there's no, you know, it's, it's equitable in that sense. There's no sort of thing as to whether students can afford to invest in things for themselves, it's overall provision for the university. So, I mean, let's go Danielle first. So what do you feel like you've got out of it so far?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: I think I've, I've got an awful lot out of it to be very honest and I was chuckling to myself when you said it started in February, because it was almost like divine intervention or something, whether or not, you know, anyone believes in that. But around February time was a time when I was really, really struggling, so it couldn't have come at a better time. I'd had to cut a huge portion of my thesis out, just because it wasn't really working for the thesis. I've kind of You know, brought myself round to it, but at the time it was a big kind of kind of shock to the system. I just felt like, oh my god, you know, I've got a year left and I'm having to start again, essentially. So that along with some other things I was just really struggling I think with my confidence, with my self belief. I really was not feeling very happy a lot of the time because I think as a PhD student a lot of your happiness tends to come from how well you're doing at this PhD which probably isn't right, you know, just because maybe something over there isn't going so well doesn't mean you don't deserve to kind of take care of yourself or, you know, have other nice things happen. But I guess the sort of unhealthy mindset I was in was if I'm not doing well at this PhD, then I don't really deserve to enjoy anything else and it was my supervisor who said, have you heard about this And I said, no, actually I haven't. And she said, I think it would be really useful for you. You should have a look into it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: I then sort of started going to some of these coaching sessions and I think I felt quite motivated to do so because I knew I wasn't in a great place and I thought, well, at this point I'll, I'll try anything, you know, I really need to try and get my confidence up here because while I've always had a harsh inner critic and sometimes that leads to good work, at this point, it was just a barrier. It was really becoming a barrier to me getting anything done and making any progress. So I started going to these coaching sessions and pretty quickly I started to find it really helpful. Just kind of thinking about the way Vikki sort of separates the situation from the thoughts that you're having. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And I think one of the first times I interacted with Vikki the one to one session, and I was kind of terrified. I thought, oh, I don't want to put my hand up. I look so weird. My hair is a mess. And then it was almost like she read my mind or something because she said, you know, this is not about, this is not like a fashion show. We're just we're all here to support each other. And I just thought, yeah, okay, right. That's fine. But I'll just go on. And it was just the way I started to explain what I was thinking about what my challenges were, and then Vikki sort of challenged those thoughts that I was having, you know, and sort of asked me questions like, and how do those thoughts make you feel regardless of you know, whether they're true or not, how does that make you feel and what effect is that having on you? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And it really sort of got me to wake up a bit at the sort of things I was saying to myself and it almost kind of hurts in a way where, you know, someone points out, you're really not being very nice to yourself, you know, you're quite hard on yourself. And you go, Oh, actually, yeah, um, I'm not actually being very nice to myself at the moment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Let's think about that. Let's look at that. So over time, I really tried to internalize those things. And I think by doing more and more coaching and, you know, just turning up whenever I could, if there was space in my schedule or my diary, I would just pop in because the benefits I got from it would then motivate me to, I'd probably get more stuff done, like if I didn't go for those two hours and just worked, I'd still be feeling maybe not necessarily in the best place, but if I went for, you know, the hour or two hour session, I'd then feel really motivated and I'd You know, nine times out of ten do work after I'd been, whereas maybe that would, that day could have been a write off otherwise. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And the more and more sessions you go to, the more and more you start to get into the habit of challenging those thoughts and then when they come in, you're more likely to notice them. Instead of just believing them right away, they just, you know, you're more likely to go, hang on a minute. Why am I saying that to myself? Let's look at the evidence for why that actually isn't true. So, yeah, needless to say, I have found them very helpful.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And yeah, there's some challenges that have come up recently that I think if I hadn't had those things in place, maybe would have knocked me down, you know, but they, they didn't. And I was surprised and I thought, okay, I can handle more stuff now. </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: This is good.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Oh, it's so nice to hear. It's like, you know, when you know that's why you do something and you're like, yeah, this is exactly what it's meant to do, but you still hear it. And you're like, that's so nice. And a little bit more about what you got out of watching other people getting coached. Cause the thing is lots of people listening to this will be familiar with the notion of one to one coaching that you get like six sessions or whatever, and you deal with a specific issue and that can be very helpful. It’s not very sustainable in terms of providing it for every PhD student in the university throughout their entire PhDs. But it can be really, really powerful. And sometimes people think that the online group coaching is a bit of a kind of like a less good version of that, and I think you get tons out of watching other people and I'd love to hear your perspective on that, Danielle  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Yeah, I think you get a lot from from watching other people. On the one hand, you might see someone being coached who has very similar struggles to yourself, and then you can sort of translate that into your own life and your own challenges and take that advice on board. Um, but also what I find interesting is when you watch someone who has a completely different challenge to you, and initially you might think, oh, I don't have that, that problem. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: But as you delve into it, you sort of see that the root of it is kind of similar. Like one example, and you know, I won't name names or anything. But I remember one, one girl came on and she was sort of struggling with working too much, you know, and she couldn't stop working and she couldn't separate work from fun things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And she was just at her desk all day, constantly working. And initially, I must admit, I felt a little bit envious. I thought, I wish I had that problem. I wish I, I couldn't stop working and, and, you know, making so much progress. But then as we delved into it, I realized that we did have similarities in that she couldn't separate work from, you know, having fun and things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: I thought, okay, while I'm not necessarily sitting, writing and working all day, I am thinking about it all day and all night and I can't really separate. And you know, enjoy the fun thing because I feel guilty that I'm not doing work, and also a lot of similarities just around not feeling like anything's ever good enough or sort of lacking in confidence and things like that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: So, while initially I thought, oh, we don't have the same burdens, it came to be that actually there were a lot so I ended up getting a lot from it. and also I think it's nice when you're seeing someone being coached to kind of, you know, without kind of interrupting too much put little messages in the chat and sort of say, Oh, I've been there. I've been there. And, you've got this and good luck. And there's just a lot of support. I think like, you know, when I was coached, you'd notice little messages popping up from people just being really supportive. So, yeah, I think, I think you get a lot from, from seeing other people being coached.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I think that's so interesting. I love that example because I think it really illustrates the issue because when people, we call it coach on the action line. So when people only focus on the behaviors that somebody is doing, you would think that somebody who isn't doing enough work needs completely different help than someone who's doing too much work. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: If you're focused on behaviors, you'd have them in two completely different workshops, but actually both can come, as you say, from believing nothing you do is good enough, because some people, when they believe nothing that they do is good enough, feel disenchanted and the way they enact those feelings is by avoiding their work and avoiding their supervisor and procrastinating and all of these things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Other people respond to those thoughts and feelings with what we often call frantic action, the kind of not necessarily productive, certainly not healthy, sort of like, must just keep doing things and then it'll be fine kind of approach to stuff, when actually their problem isn't overworking or underworking. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Their problem is this belief that nothing that they do is good enough. And that that is a big problem, that that's not just an area of growth. That means something about them and their future and their abilities and all of that stuff. So actually they need the same things. It just manifests in different ways. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I think that's where, when you're on the more kind of thoughts and feelings ends of coaching, you really get to that stuff. </span> </div> <div> <span>   </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: I think it's also helpful when you see someone who's maybe just started the coaching, like maybe you've been to a few sessions, and then you see someone who's never been coached. And I think it's a nice opportunity in a way to see how far you've come, because you see someone that's still maybe really struggling with confidence or really struggling with something that you previously in We're really struggling with and sometimes seeing that can just sort of inspire you to to realize I remember when I felt like that, you know, and look how far I've come. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: I'm still, there's still challenges, of course, but, you know, I've managed to work through that. And then you have something else to give where you can then offer support and reassurance to that person.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And that's so valuable as well. So we've had three regulars, I think now hand in their thesis and over the last couple of months, one slightly earlier than that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And a couple of them still come to the sessions preparing for their viva and career planning and all that. And it's so nice when somebody's going, because I'm like this, I'll never finish my thesis. And that's their absolute true belief. And then having one of the regulars in the chat going, I believed that for ages and I submit ed mine and it was actually okay. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And then you're like, Oh, really? Okay. And so, yeah, having that almost generations of people going for, even just in this short period of time that we've been doing it, having that sort of generations has been really, really lovely to see. So Tara, what do you see and hear about how people benefit from the membership? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: So the broader feedback we've got very much reflects some of the things that Danielle's talked about. People have talked about how it's helped to motivate them, how it's helped to build their confidence, and given them the skills to navigate some of the challenges that arise from time to time.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: We've definitely heard people talk about how they found it beneficial to hear from others who are experiencing the same thing, And I think that really helps people to know that they're not alone and they're not the odd one out. And this is something that lots of people are experiencing. And something that's been really nice is seeing the community side of things develop. So as Danielle said, people are supportive when others are being coached, but also outside of the coaching sessions themselves on the Slack community. It's been really nice to see people chatting and getting to know each other. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: And in feedback from PDRs in the coaching community, people have talked about how it's helped them to connect and to find a community of people, which I think brings huge benefits and, and it's something perhaps we didn't expect when we launched the coaching, it's, it's, the coaching in itself is beneficial in lots of different ways, but that wraparound community, is great as well.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Definitely. And I've seen it and we'll talk in a second about how it interacts with the rest of your provision, but I've seen people starting to go to some of the live things together as well, because I think there's sometimes, you know, you guys put on some amazing stuff live on campus. And sometimes there's that bit of, I don't know anyone that's going, I'm not sure whether I'm brave enough sort of thing. And I see people in Slack going is anyone going to the shut up and work session at Westmere because I thought I might go and people oh yeah yeah I'll come I'll meet you there sort of thing. So it's definitely translating into some into some in real life support as well which has been which has been amazing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: The other thing that I see a lot is where If you see somebody who has the same sorts of issues as you, you just have a little bit more distance from it than when it's your thing. You can sort of see their thoughts as thoughts, rather than just the truth. And when you hear somebody beating themselves up, and you can see how amazing this person is, and how well, objectively, they're doing, and things, it's almost much easier to be like, well, why, why would you be saying that about you? Cause you're amazing.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And then you start going, well, hang on. I say that about me. And actually I'm, I'm probably about the same as them in terms of where I'm at and things. And I think sometimes just seeing that little bit of distance, from it, seeing it in somebody else, seeing them have that realization can be like, well, if that's true for them and I can definitely believe it's true for them, then maybe it's that's possibly true for me too, and I think that's, I think that's the other benefit.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Because the thing I didn't discuss at the beginning, you guys talked about how you got where you are. I came to this stuff as a participant. So I'm not 100 percent sure whether I have ADHD or not, but I certainly have tendencies in that direction. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I came across a online group coaching program for adults with ADHD, which is based in the U. S. And I joined that membership and the sessions run just like our sessions and I gained so much. I think I was only coached by her maybe two or three times in the year that I was in the membership and I gained so much from watching other people getting coached. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And the more I was doing it and the more I was feeling myself develop, the more I was like, our students need this. Our staff need this too, but that's for another day. But our students need this. This would be so good. And that was where the sort of the idea initially came from. And that was where I decided to train and then ultimately decided to leave my job and do it full time, was seeing how transformative those sessions were for me, when the only thing we had in common was a cluster of symptoms. You know, these were people from all different walks of life. And I was just like, PhD students have so much in common in terms of the challenges that they have, that this sort of a community, this sort of space would be hugely important.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And the other thing I wanted to add is why I think it's different from a social space. So you talked about the importance of community and having people to talk to and things. And social interactions between students is hugely important. We want to encourage everyone to have lots of informal interactions. And this could be a great way to meet people, especially for people, distance learners and part time students and things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: But where I think this is different from informal interactions, it is a moderated space. So there can be a tendency, in coaching, we call it to get in the pool. We have a tendency that when you're with friends, if a friend says, Oh yeah, this is really rubbish, isn't it? I'm really struggling. The other friend goes, yeah, no, it totally is. I agree. It's really rubbish. This is awful. We're never going to finish, are we?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And you kind of get in the pool and swim around together in the misery. and sometimes, you know, one of you is the one that tries to lift each other up and stuff. But having that, that space where you can have honest, conversations about how you're feeling and the thoughts you're having, but with somebody there who's trained to be like, no, hang on, should we look at that thought, let's see whether that's actually, is that true? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Is there anything else we believe? Is that helping? Those sorts of things. It is, it's a different thing.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Yeah. I would completely agree with that. and I think sometimes you maybe wouldn't take that from your friend or your friend maybe wouldn't want that sort of advice. Maybe you're sitting having a coffee and they just want to vent. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And just for you to be like, Oh, that is awful. I'm sorry. That's terrible. It's, you know, it's rubbish. if you started to maybe try that's To coach them, it might not be welcome. You know, the dynamics not really right. So yeah, I think having a sort of external force that's, you know, trained in that way. And you're also in that environment where you're expecting it, I think. It's far more productive as well.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Definitely. And I'm really glad to hear you say that because the one thing that we do talk about in coaching sessions, and I have to be really mindful of is there's no peer coaching allowed in Slack. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So you can be supportive of each other, you can cheer each other on, you can empathize all of those things. But we don't, we want you to be peer support, but not coaches. Cause that's not what people are trained to do. And I have to be cautious on it. Now that I'm a coach, if I'm like with friends and things, I have to be careful. I'm not going, is that just a thought? And that's not to say I'm not compassionate in sessions. I'll absolutely say, you know, Oh yeah, that does sound really challenging. You know, I understand why you're upset by that. But can you see how it's coming from these thoughts that you're having? So yeah, I think that is, that is really important. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Um, Tara, so how does it fit? Obviously, Birmingham already had a whole bunch of provision, provided not just by the grad school, but also by the library and the colleges and various other places. So how do you see this sort of all fitting together? Because I imagine there are some universities that are like, we've got stuff right. You know, we do workshops on procrastination. We do things on how to do a lit review. We don't really need this as well. Where do you see it all fit together? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: My view is that a lot of the other workshops that are offered are often one off and I think that's a benefit of the coaching that it's that regular check in and and you see people going through that journey, and overcoming their challenges and eventually submitting and doing their Viva. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: And I feel like the regular coaching complements the existing support. So, the library does some great PGI development workshops but they do tend to be those standalone workshops. And the same with the University Graduate School. We do a series of flagship events. We do three minute thesis and we have a research poster competition and a postgraduate research festival. I suppose they, they quite often tend to be helping PGRs develop those harder skills of presenting at a conference, whereas coaching is perhaps some of those softer skills, which are equally important.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: How about you, Danielle? Because obviously you get offered all this, this suite of support.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Um, well, I must say I completely agree with Tara that I think the coaching compliments the support that is already available because it's true, Birmingham has a lot of great stuff going on. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: And it's interesting how some of the things I've been to recently, I've sort of seen people that I've seen in the coaching, and then we sort of talk about it. But yeah, I think the coaching is, the regularity of it, I mean having it twice a week so that, you know, at some point in your schedule you might be able to go along, and also the fact that it is specifically tackling what thoughts you're having, and what kind of struggles you're facing at that moment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I agree because It almost sounds like we're doing down one off things. I think one off things are super useful to teach specific tools, to give specific input, but it doesn't provide the same thing as the ongoing stuff. But also one of the things I see is that often there are psychological blocks with the students to engaging with those things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: They don't think they have time to go to a session about how to write a lit review because they just need to write their lit review. And so one of the things that we do with coaching is try and work through some of those blockers so that students can see actually if I invest an hour to go to that lit review workshop that the library puts on, </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: that could accelerate me much faster once they can get past those blocks that think they don't have time to do it. And similarly, you know, you talk about three minute thesis and things, I've coached people who are doing three minute thesis who they're getting all the support about how to do it from you guys, but they're still terrified of the thought of standing up and what if I mess up and what would I make that mean and all of those things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And then that's another way that the coaching sort of backs up and supports these different things. So what I'm seeing is a flow in both directions. Quite often in the chat, in the session, somebody will be like, Oh, Danielle, you should try the, you know, the shut up and write sessions. Oh, you should go to this I went to this thing in the library and it was really good. Why don't you try that? So there's sort of a referral out to all those things from each other. And there's also the thing that we support the engagement in those activities. So I, I see that it's the coaching a sort of a little hub that connects all these things together and provides that sort of live community. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And then over time, as more universities join, we'll add more sessions as well. Because one of the things I know, I do always get messages from students going, I really want to come, but I always have this regular thing on a Tuesday and Thursday, so I can't come to those sessions. And so over time, as more universities join, we'll be able to add things at different times of day. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Thank you so much, both of you for coming. What would you as a sort of wrap up? Tara, what would you say to staff members about this program? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: I would say to staff members that it's extremely beneficial in so many different ways. It can be the difference between someone suspending their studies or even dropping out altogether and from what we've seen so far, obviously, it's only been running for quite a short space of time, but even in just these early days, the feedback that we've had suggests that it's having a really big difference to, the experience that PGRs are having at the university and having a big difference to the way they're experiencing the research culture at the university as well. The fact that it's online, as you've already said, people can join, regardless of whether they're a distance learner or they're part time, and as well as learning some of those skills to help them to navigate some of the challenges, to motivate themselves and feel more confident, it's also giving access to a really supportive community. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: No, I agree entirely. I've just started doing some supervisor training as well, and I see the frustrations that supervisors have when they're like, I don't understand, we set a goal, they're perfectly capable of doing this thing, and they haven't handed it in, and supervisors start to assume that the student's just not motivated or just not hard working, where we know there's, there's a lot more going on than that, and so I really think it can help with some of the frustrations that supervisors have because the things we're managing are the things that worry supervisors about their students.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Supervisors want their students to have good well being. They want them to be productive and to hit goals and things. They don't want them in 100 hours a week working ridiculously and burning out. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: They want them healthy and happy and doing their thing. And this just really contributes to that, I think. How about you, </span> <span>  Danielle? What would you say to students who are either skeptical about coming or considering it?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Danielle: Um, I guess I would say don't, don't be skeptical until you've tried it, you know. It's what have you got to lose by just trying it, you know. And it's quite a gentle way of trying it out because like you say it's a webinar. You don't have to volunteer and put your hand up you can just sort of sit there and see how other people are coached and and gently get yourself into it But also as you get braver do put your hand up because I think you can get so so many benefits from the the one to one coaching and just kind of you know sharing what your challenges are and having someone challenge those thoughts that you're having about yourself and it also might just help someone else as well who's sitting there watching you. So I would say, yeah, just, just give it a go. What have you got to lose? Yeah, I would, I would just say if you can find a little bit of time in your, in your schedule, just give it a try. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: Love it. Tara, if there's other universities thinking this sounds great, but we have to pay for it. You were so central to helping this happen. How do you convince, where does the money come from, and why do you think the university invested in it?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tara: So in our case, we bid for funding from our institutional Research England QR funding. so that's a pot of money which can be drawn on to try and enhance research culture. Um, and for us, we felt that trying to support the well being of the postgraduate research community was central to that. It's recognising that postgraduate researchers are different from other students and perhaps need that tailored support, and it's worth investing in if it helps more PGRs, stay in their studies, finish their PhD, ultimately, you know, perhaps get academic jobs and have a positive experience of university life throughout whilst they're doing their studies. </span> </div> <div> <span>   </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: And I think that research culture stuff is so crucial, isn't it? Because as Danielle said, a lot of these students will go on and be future academics. And one of the things I talk about in the supervisor training is how when we can't manage ourselves and our own emotions and our own thoughts, we can then sometimes become difficult supervisors because actually if we're feeling time pressure and that that means something really important, it's really easy to accidentally then put pressure on the people around you as well.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: So I really believe we're developing a group of academics who will look after their students in a different way because of the things they're learning while they're a student. So research culture money is always somewhere that people can look. I do think it's something that could potentially be priced into doctoral training center applications, things in the future as well, because there's often development stuff there. To be completely up front for everybody listening. It costs 10, 000 pounds a year, which is payable monthly for 10 months a year. And you only need one student to stay when they would have left, and it's paid for itself. It covers off the fees of that student, even aside from the benefit it brings. And we've already got just from the, what is it, eight, ten, ten, eleven months now we've done. We've already got examples of students who say they would have left if it wasn't for the program. So it has already paid for itself in that sense, even above and beyond any of the other benefits. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for all your participation in the coaching, Danielle. It's been amazing. And Tara, thank you so much. I am so grateful to the University of Birmingham because I think they have shown such foresight and such commitment to their PGR population, , in looking for something, you know, it's not either people, you know, we talk about these funds that you can apply from. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Vikki: There's people trying to do that all the time, you know, there's tons of different projects all over the university that people can invest in. And I just think it says really good things about the university that they chose to do something that's for this really important, but often overlooked group. So I am super grateful to you and to the institution for, for all of that commitment. And I think PhD students at the university are super lucky to have people who are looking after them the way you guys do. So thank you so much guys. And, thank you everyone for listening and see you next week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 08 Jan 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-17-how-the-phd-life-coach-university-membership-supports-students thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-16-how-to-achieve-your-goals-using-the-self-coaching-model <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i>  It's new year. We've all got goals. We've all got new year's resolutions and we all have faint memories, maybe strong memories of all the previous times that we've tried to achieve things, and it's just not worked. If that's you, if you have a long history of not achieving the things that you set out in the new year, or achieving different things, or still achieving them but beating yourselves up for all the other things you didn't do, you are in the right place. We're going to be thinking about how we can use self coaching to make sure that we actually achieve our goals this year. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 16 of season two of the PhD Life Coach and this is our very first episode of 2024. So happy new year. I hope that your festive break was everything that you wanted it to be, that you were able to get the balance of productivity and fun and rest and recuperation that you intended.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Little extra tip for you. If you didn't, let's practice some acceptance. Often we make this time a year a time to go, Oh, I intended to do that, but I didn't. I intended to rest, but I didn't. I intended to work, but I didn't. And then we start the year beating ourselves up. It helps no one. We can learn from that. We can learn maybe about being a bit more intentional next time, but let's get to, I had the holiday that I had. It's where we're at. What do we do next? There is no need for us to beat ourselves up for how we spent the holiday and how it relates or didn't relate to what we intended to do. Once it's done, it's just a circumstance and we get to choose what we think about it. So focus on acceptance and let's look forward today instead.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So what we're going to be doing today is really thinking about self coaching and our goals. And I'm going to show you why most of the goals that we choose, we don't stick to. It's not you. It's not you lacking discipline or motivation or being weak willed or any of these things we tell ourselves. It's because we're not really taught how to do this. And so today's going to have two sections. I'm going to have a short bit about choosing your goals. And then a lot more about how making it much more likely that you will achieve your goals. But I'm going to start with the controversial bit. Which is, if you generally don't stick to your New Year's resolutions, I'm going to recommend you don't make New Year's resolutions. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Let's make three month resolutions. Let's decide what we're going to get done between now and Easter. Especially for academics, terms can be a really nice length of time to stick to something, to achieve something. So, we've got so much information that tells us that when we decide something on January 1st, we're very rarely still doing it on December 31st. That's okay. Let's learn from that. Instead of beating ourselves up and saying it'll be different this year, it'll be better. Let's just decide where we want to be by March 31st. So this is the context that I'm going to work in this time. Okay?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So first, what goals are we setting? The biggest things that I see people getting wrong are non specific goals and too many of them. So I want to be healthier this year. We've all had the training about making goals smart, you know, making them specific and measurable and all that jazz. But I'm going to teach you a bit that I don't think you will have heard before. And that is, I want you to ask yourself, how am I going to feel when I achieve this goal? So when you lose weight, how are you going to feel, when you get that grant submitted, how are you going to feel, when you run that marathon, how are you going to feel? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Whatever your goal is, ask yourself how you're going to feel. Because this is why a lot of us want to achieve goals, right? We think we'll be happier when we lose weight. We think we'll be more proud of ourselves when we get that grant. We think we will be more self confident when we've done that presentation. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The problem is, what most of us don't recognize is that that change in emotion when we achieve a goal is usually pretty brief. All of us have achieved things in our past, but we don't spend lots of time going, Oh, do you remember that time I ran 10k in 2004? I'm so proud of myself. I've really got a strong confidence for myself as a runner. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> No, we look back and go, Oh my God, I can't believe I did that then. Couldn't do it now. Could I? I'm useless. I'm lazy. I don't run anymore. So if you're expecting goals to change the way you feel, it makes it really, really hard to stick to. Because you're starting from a place of feeling the same way you always feel, and you're chasing this thing that's just simply not likely to be true or not true for a long time. We want to feel confident, but in order to do that, we have to put ourselves in a load of situations where we don't feel confident in order to do the thing that we want to make us feel confident. But if our goal is to feel confident, then we don't want to do all those steps. You know, if we want to feel fit and healthy, then we have to put ourselves in positions where we're not going to feel fit and healthy. You've got to feel fat and unfit for a while while you're doing the training in order to get there. And if our goal is to feel fit and healthy and the way to that is to definitely not feel fit and healthy in the meantime, it's really hard to do it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other thing is we often want to do this because it's fun and exciting and it's part of the person we want to be and we commit to too many of them, and so instead of making it fun, it actually just makes it all a massive stress. You know, I've had years where I've set this work goal. I've set a fitness goal. I've set a crafting goal. I've set a writing goal. I've set a skincare routine goal. You know, I, I genuinely have years where I have like 12, 15 different years resolutions and they're all great in principle and they will all in theory make me feel good in a variety of different ways, but actually what happens is I start thinking, Oh, I can't do all this. I'm failing at this already. There's too many things. And then I feel overwhelmed. I feel disappointed in myself and I don't achieve any of them.  </span> </div> <div> <span> So what we're going to do is look at our lives holistically and pick one or two goals that we think will make the biggest change. Maybe one work goal and one personal goal. And I can hear you saying, yes, but I need to change my food and my exercise and my working habits and the amount of time.... </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I said, yes, that's fine, but you're not going to. You're not. Not all at once. We're only picking for three months now. And so let's pick what are the two that we're focusing on for this three months. Let's just pick two. Maybe you just pick one. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If you need to pause at this point, then do, or carry on listening, but come back to it, but you need to have a specific goal that you need to achieve in the next three months. Have that specific goal in mind as we go through the second part of this podcast. And I'm going to pick a work related one because it's relevant to all you guys too. My goal is that by the end of March, I will have a self paced course for anybody who wants to learn how to be their own best supervisor. So I'm getting to the stage now, I'm doing lots of workshops for universities, which is amazing. And if you want me to come and do one at your university, I do them online. They go brilliantly. They're wonderful, but not all universities book them. And some students want them at times that their universities haven't booked them. And I'm actually pretty full with individual clients at the moment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I have a bit of a waiting list, so if you're thinking you'd like to be coached by me in the new year, please do get on the wait list, because at the moment, all my time slots are taken up, and I want to be able to support more people than I do at the moment, and I also know that individual coaching is out of price reach for a lot of PhD students, particularly, and some academics as well, and I want to be able to have some of the coaching advice that I give be accessible to everyone. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, obviously I offer my podcast completely free to you all. And so you, you get a lot of value from that, but it's not the same as a structured program that helps you actually implement this in your life. And so my goal is that by the end of March, the kind of the content and the recordings and all that stuff is done so that I can then be thinking about marketing and getting it all out to you guys after the Easter holidays, ready for the summer. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So that's my goal, is to have a self paced course on how to be your own best supervisor ready for launch by the end of March. I've said that for real out loud in the public. I mean, I've done that before, so it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen. But that's quite exciting. I hope you guys are excited. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If you want to make sure that you're the first to hear about it, then make sure you get yourself on my mailing list. So if you go to the phdlifecoach. com website, go to work with me, you will see a link there to sign up for my email. You will get some occasional hints and tips from me, you'll get access to my free group coaching and you'll be the first to know about this course when it becomes available. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So, that's my goal. Now, what we're going to do is I'm going to take you through a technique that I developed, I'm super excited about it, that uses the self coaching method to prepare you to achieve your goals. Now, as a reminder, those of you who haven't heard me talk about it before, self coaching model was developed by Brooke Castillo and it enables us to understand why we do the things we do and why we achieve the results we achieve. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It divides things into the circumstances, so the facts of the situation; thoughts, the cognitive story that we tell in our head; feelings, the emotions that we have in our body. So we have circumstances, thoughts, feelings. Our feelings drive our actions, the things we do. And then our actions drive our results. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And Brooke and all the coaches that have been trained by Brooke use this model to help people understand where their feelings come from, their thoughts, and therefore how they're in control of them and how they can modify those thoughts. And I find it super useful. It's the basis of a lot of my coaching, but what I've done is I've turned it all around to help you to achieve your goals.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And so we can use it to pre plan how we're going to do this. And we're going to do this in three different ways. Your first job is we're going to turn the model upside down. So your goal, your result, is going to be at the top of the model now. So our result line is at the top. And I'm going to put a self paced course called how to be your own best supervisor will be complete. Now, one of the things I will do in my own time that I'm not going to reveal here on the podcast is get much more specific about what that means. So what does exist mean? How many components am I expecting it to have? What stage of done counts as done? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So I'm going to specify that all out a little bit more and I would encourage you to do the same with your goal. So that's in the result line. And now what we get to do is we get to say, okay. What actions do I need to complete in order to achieve that result? And we really get to drill down into this. We really need to get down to all the specific actions that we'll need to take in order to do that. </span> </div> <div> <span> Particularly the ones that are happening sooner. Now, when we talk about drilling down into these things, sometimes people can get really overwhelmed and say, Well, I don't know all the steps. I like to think about this like looking out over a landscape, you know, I'm looking out of my window here. I can see, I can see the rest of my room and then I can see my garden and then I can see buildings and trees and stuff in the distance. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The stuff that's up close I can see in lots of detail. I can see my keyboard here and things like that. The garden I can see in some detail and then the stuff that's further away is a bit more fuzzy. I'd really encourage you to do the same with your actions. So have a fuzzy plan as to what it looks like in each month, but have a somewhat more detailed plan of what it looks like this month, and then a much more detailed plan as to what it looks like this week. You don't have to have every single step all the way planned out. That can become procrastination when we tell ourselves that. But let's have detail of the bits that are close up and vague pictures past that. Then when we get closer, so if I walked up to my French windows now, I'd see the garden in much closer detail and I'd see the houses beyond in sort of somewhat more detail. As time passes and we get closer to those things, we crystallize and turn into slightly more detailed plans as we move through time, as we move through that landscape. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So specify out what actions you need to take in order to achieve this goal. Now, lots of people will get you that far. Lots of people who are teaching on goal setting will get you as far as you need to plan exactly what you need to do in order to achieve this goal.  </span> <span> What they don't do is the next bit. We know that our feelings drive our actions. Those of us who've been doing the self coaching stuff for a while know that our feelings drive our actions. If you're feeling a bit like, oh, I don't know much about this self coaching stuff, go back a few episodes. About five, six weeks ago, I did an episode called how to self coach and why you should. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So go back and check that one to get lots more detail on all this stuff. But we get to think, how do I need to feel in order to do these actions? And for me, it's probably somewhere in focused and purposeful, I think. Because I'm aware, and this is barrier anticipation, this is something else you can do, we've talked about before, but I'm aware that I'm really busy with clients at the moment. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I have a lot of one to one clients, I have a lot of workshops booked. And that's super exciting. That brings money into my business. It's wonderful. I love the work that I do, but it means that I have fewer time gaps to be creating the long term stuff. And many of you will be familiar with the idea that it's inordinately easier to turn up at a meeting that you've got booked than it is to do the thing you intended to do when you're only accountable to yourself. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> That's a barrier I anticipate for myself is when my week is as full as it is with coaching and teaching is that I'm going to have to be really focused in order to be producing the things that I want to produce. So I think I'm going to choose focused as the feeling that I want to experience. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And then we get to think, well, where does a feeling of focus come from? And it comes from our thoughts. And I can see that I might be starting to have thoughts like, I don't have time to do this, and so on. And so I need to figure out what thoughts are going to help me to achieve this goal? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> What thoughts are going to make me feel focused, which will mean that I take the steps and then achieve the goal of having this course ready for you all by the end of March. And the thoughts that I'm coming up with at the moment are things like, I know what the next step is, because that's really key for me, is not having too much of a big picture in my head, knowing exactly what's next. </span> </div> <div> <span> So a thought like, I know what the next step is. And then a bigger picture thought, I feel like, I'm sort of thinking this through as I talk to you. I think a bigger picture thought of this is going to be so useful to people in the long run. Bigger picture thought like that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because often it's easy to put off these things because I know I'm useful in my one to one sessions. I know I'm useful when I run my workshops. And sometimes when I'm getting on with tasks just for myself, I'm a bit more like, it might be useful. Whereas with it, I know this is going to be so useful to so many of you. And so I think those two thoughts, I know what I need to do next. And this is going to be so useful for people. It's going to be super important.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> What we've done is we've kind of backfilled our model. We've gone, what's the result we want to achieve? What actions do we need to take in order to do that? What feelings do we need to have in order to do those actions? And what thoughts do we need to have in order to have those feelings? Often we don't do any of that stuff.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now what we're going to do, we're going to put that model to one side. And I want you to think about the next three months. And I want you to think, how do I want to feel over this next three months. Now this is putting feelings in the results line. This is putting feelings as a goal. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And I don't want you to be thinking specifically about any one of your goals at the moment. I want you to think more generically about how you want to feel this year. Because often we have contradictory ideas in our heads. We set ourselves a goal of running a half marathon or making this course, but we also feel like I want to feel relaxed this year. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I want to feel calm this year, these sorts of thoughts. And what we often don't notice is how these things can be in conflict with each other, unless we straighten it out in our heads. If we want to do something that's energetic, and it's going to require some kind of commitment and purpose and things, and we want to feel relaxed and calm, those things we can use to argue in our heads when we don't want to do the thing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So imagine you've picked a running goal. Let's go with that. Imagine you've picked a running goal and you want to do this half marathon, but you also want to feel relaxed this year. And it's really easy, if we haven't thought this through, to be like, I know I said I want to run this half marathon and I do, but tonight I feel like I really need to relax rather than do my run. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So, you know, and I do want to be relaxed this year. That is a goal of mine. So yeah, I think I'll do that one. And we haven't worked out how we're going to balance these out when they're in conflict with each other. Here we have two choices. We either get to pick that actually the feeling we want to generate this year is something that is compatible with the goal we're trying to achieve. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So, I like excited. Excited is an emotion I really enjoy. That kind of enthusiastic, bubbly excitement. That kind of, not excitement, I'm not an adrenaline junkie, you're not going to find me on lots of roller coasters and all that stuff, but that kind of enthusiastic, ah, this is so exciting kind of feeling, I really like that feeling. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And whilst yes, I probably, you know, feeling relaxed and stuff is good, you know, general life goals, but actually the feeling of excitement and like, Oh, this is happening. This is going, this thing's going on here. This is cool, is a really pleasant feeling for me and is compatible with my goal. So that for me feels like a really good combination. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now you might feel. I want to do the race or I want to write that grant or whatever it is. I want to finish my PhD, but I also want to feel relaxed and we don't have to make these fully compatible with each other, in the sense that relaxed is probably not going to be the emotion you need to drive the writing of your thesis, for example. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But we have whole lives. We can decide, I want to feel this emotion when it's work time, and I've got stuff to do on my thesis, or I want to feel this emotion when it's time to do my runs to get me ready for the half marathon. And I want to feel this emotion at other times. And so we get to sort of separate it out, so that when we're telling ourselves, Oh, but really I want to feel relaxed, I don't kind of want to do my work today, because relax is really important to me. We can remind ourselves, No, no. Relaxed is our goal for 5pm till bedtime. That's when relaxed is our goal. This time, our goal is getting the work done, getting the race done. And for that, I need a different emotion. We get to kind of remind ourselves where there's conflict in this and just make a priori decisions about what that looks like. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If we've got two goals and they're in competition with each other, which one wins? Which one is for certain times of your life and which others. You can also look at how things that feel contradictory might not be. So if you want to feel relaxed, but you also want to get your PhD finished this year, how can you make that not contradictory? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> How can you be purposeful in a relaxed way? How can you channel relaxed as the not overthinking, the not beating yourself up, the not kind of having to really justify exactly what the right next step is. The relaxed can be, I'm going to relax and get on with this piece of work. What do I need to do next? That, let's go and relax. We can do that. So a kind of relaxed productivity rather than a relaxed, just sitting.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So we get to plan this out in advance. Really think about how you want to feel and how this whole picture fits together. This is also a moment where you get to see if you are still committed to trying to do more goals than I told you to, which I know some of you will be. I was. I still have to battle with myself on this. Then this is where you get to see how other goals are in competition with each other here. So if, for example, you've got four different goals, all of which require you to be focused, then it's a question, can I do focused with four different goals? Probably not. Probably not. So how do I then divide that out? Do I deprioritize some of them?  </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, don't get me wrong. You don't have to only, like, prioritize one bit of your life. There's certain things that you're kind of just vaguely trying to do, but I'd really encourage you to have your specific goals, your priority goals as it's quite narrow. Okay.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> People who know me are going to be laughing at this episode. I am aware I am learning as I do this, guys. Okay. I still had too many goals last year. I am really, really going to be kind of focused and try and practice what I preach this year. I understand that for those of us who are excited about lots of things and who feel like there's lots of different areas of their life that they want to tweak. </span> </div> <div> <span> It's so tempting to have too many, but when we start modeling it out like this, we really see the challenge behind that. So really, really one or two things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You may have noticed that when we went back through that model, we started at results. What actions do we need to take? How do we need to feel to take those actions? What do we need to think to make those feelings? We didn't do anything with our circumstances. And that's in line with the model. The model suggests that the circumstances just are what they are, and that we choose what thoughts we have about them. So from that perspective, The circumstances are largely irrelevant, we get to decide what thoughts we're going to focus on. However, all the stuff I do is also informed by exercise psychology, behavior change science, and all this other research that suggests that whilst our circumstances aren't responsible, for our thoughts, feelings, and actions, they can influence them. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So the next thing I want you to do is I want you to think about your circumstances. Think about your environment and whether those circumstances make it easy to have the thoughts you want to have. When you think specifically about your goal, how can you make the circumstances way more conducive to thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings that you need to feel? So, for me, one of the circumstances that I want to make sure exists by about the 7th of January, something like that, because I'm not going to do it now before the Christmas break, one of the things I want to make sure exists by the end of that first week is a clear plan of what I'm making. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because it's so much easier for me to think the thought, I know exactly what to do next, if I've got a nicely specified out plan that I actually trust. Now, I could choose to think that regardless. I don't have to have a clear plan in order to think I know exactly what to do next. I could make this up as I go along on a wing and a prayer and still tell myself I know exactly what the next step is, but it's inordinately easier if I have the circumstance of there's a plan on my whiteboard over there. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Okay, so that's one of the circumstance things that I'm going to make so that I can make it as easy as possible to think the thought, I know what I need to do next. The other thing that I'm going to do, and I've already committed to creating this, is I'm keeping one day a week free of individual clients. So when I say I'm full with individual clients, I don't mean I have individual clients all day, every day, cause I have other work I have to do on the business. Creating this podcast for you guys, doing my emails, doing my social media, all the liaison stuff that's behind the scenes, all my workshops, and now producing this course. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So I have one day a week where I don't have any one to one clients. I do sometimes have workshops on it. I always do my strategic planning on that day. And by creating that circumstance where I have a day that is almost clear most weeks, then I know I've got a space in which to do the work that I need to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I also have other periods of the week which are set aside for workshops, but there aren't workshops in them every week. And so one of my other circumstances that I'm going to create is a diary where when I'm not doing a workshop in that space, it says course production. So I'm going to create a diary in which course production is put in as a diary slot. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Okay? So that's a circumstance. It doesn't change my thoughts. It doesn't force me to think particular things. It doesn't induce feelings in me. But I know that if I have a diary where I've specified when I'm going to work on these things, it's not guaranteed I'll do it, but it's much more likely that I'll think the thought, it's time to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> my course, and that that will make me feel focused. So I want you to think with your circumstances, how can you make them more conducive to the thoughts you want to think? Your goal is around running, how can you make sure that your circumstances, you have a good raincoat, that you have a wet weather plan that you do, if it's not nice weather out there, how do you make sure you have a training program? How'd you make sure you have a training partner? So you have some accountability, whatever it might be. How can you make that circumstance more conducive?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because then we've got this conducive circumstance. We've got thoughts that are easy to think in that environment that create feelings that mean we're more likely to do the actions and we're more likely to achieve our goals. So we've created a whole model that is supportive of creating that goal.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other thing you can do with your circumstance is make sure it's really easy to remember what your thought, feeling, action grouping is. Often people do this work and then they don't look at it again. So I want you to also think, how can you not only identify thoughts now that are going to help you, But how can you remember what those thoughts are? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Do you want to have them on your phone screen? Do you want to have them on the wall? Do you want to have them on your computer somewhere? How are you going to remember these thoughts? If you're someone who journals or keeps a diary, do you want to write them down at the beginning of the day? How are you going to keep these thoughts in the utmost part of your head. </span> </div> <div> <span> Because that's the other problem with goals is we often set them and don't really go back to them. Now, if you guys have listened to my Christmas episode where I talked about seven things we can learn from Santa, you'll know that one of those is about tracking your progress, that I talk about how you can follow Santa on Christmas Eve as he goes around the world on Flight Tracker and other apps and how important it is to track our own progress in our own work and other projects as well. So think about not only how can you track your action progress, but how can you track the thoughts that you're having? How can you keep track of how you're feeling and how you're thinking about your goal so that you can try and make sure that the thoughts that help you stay uppermost and it doesn't turn into lots of, Oh, I can't be bothered today thoughts, or, um, I've already messed this up thoughts.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> What I do inside my membership with my students who are in the long term membership the university can sign up for, every month we have a review meeting where we do this for the month. So we use a self coaching model to look backwards over the last month to see what we achieved, what thoughts we were having a lot, our feelings and how that all fitted together, and then to look forward for the next month. So once a month, we revisit this. And that's something that I'm going to build into this self paced course for all of you guys is worksheets and sort of structures so that you can build that sort of review process into your lives as well. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So really think about, when am I going to revisit this? How am I going to keep track of what I'm thinking about it? How am I going to make it more likely that I think these thoughts more often? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The final point I want to make, and this relates back to an episode from a few weeks ago where I talked about why you should act without thinking, so again, if you haven't listened to that one, go back and listen to it, is there are times when you don't want to have to negotiate through all of this stuff. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I've had clients in the past talk about how sometimes they get caught up in self coaching. They get a bit obsessed with, Ooh, what am I thinking? Why am I thinking that? What else could I be thinking? Da, da, da, da. Instead of actually doing the things, they get caught up in this sort of little web of self understanding. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It's totally normal, totally understandable, but it's useful to spot, because the other thought that you can have in advance is, I don't have to feel like doing this to do it. And that is a thought I am still nurturing it on several things, but that is a thought that will help you achieve so many goals. I don't have to feel like doing this to do it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because most of the time, if we don't feel like doing the thing, we either don't do the thing or we spend a load of time trying to make ourselves feel like doing the thing. And in the long run, making yourself feel like you want to do the thing. Great strategy. Love it. But there in the moment, if we renegotiate every single time, but I don't really feel like, you know, maybe I'll do some self coaching, just pick the thought. I don't have to feel like doing it to do it. And off we go. This was the plan. Boss Vikki decided this was the plan. My job is to do what we're told.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Maybe we re evaluate at the end of the week, maybe we re evaluate at the end of the month, whatever it might be, but I don't have to feel like doing the thing in order to do the thing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I am on this journey with you. Okay. I'm going to have a personal goal, which I'm going to keep to myself. And I have that work goal. None of this is stuff that comes easy to me. I'm not going to say, and last year I did this and da da da. Although, should we do this? Let's do this. Hold on. I haven't looked at this for a while. Maybe I should have done. But I, for those of you not watching, I just pulled out a rather sexy looking planner that I've used somewhat intermittently, to see. What things that I said I was going to do last year. last year, I set it as things that were going to exist by the end of the year. And, um, in typical Vicki style, I'm just looking at this. </span> </div> <div> <span> Uh, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, um, 11, 12, 14 things. So here's an example of what not to do. Um, of these, the wellness ones I'd say were forty percent there. Solid handstand. You know what? Considering how not that much exercise I've done this year, my handstand is not bad. I've been actively practicing for the last six weeks or so. Solid handstand, I reckon, is going to be ticked off by the end of the year. Solid chin up. Solid might be a big word for it, but it's there, or there abouts. Which, considering I'm heavier than usual, is saying something. Tidy streamlined house. Tidy would be a big word. Streamlined, pretty much, so 50 percent on that one. </span> </div> <div> <span> I finished my novel. Yay. Uh, fun memories in my sentimental box. Had lots of fun memories. Nothing's in my sentimental books yet, so that's not done. New garden, done. New guide pack started, done. Some work with Results UK, the charity, yes, done, did that. Uh, got married, enjoyed the process, 100%. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, all over that one. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I'm not going to read out the financial goals there, but I have hit all of them. The exciting thing there. The beginning of the year, I wanted 6, 000 podcast downloads by the end of this year. And, I am on track to, depending on how these ones go, get close to 20, 000. So we've smashed that one. So thank you everybody. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When I look back at these, I've I've achieved some, but not all of them. And I'm going to celebrate that partial success, like we always do. But when I look at the ones that I didn't achieve, it's because when it came to doing those things, I renegotiated with myself. I renegotiated whether I felt like doing the thing or not. I didn't specify out for all of these exactly what I need to do to achieve it. I didn't specify out exactly what I needed to think and feel. This is something that I've been introducing in my life since about September time, and it's been really, really working for me. So my meta thought, that kind of meta cognitive, where you actually see your brain and things, is going to be. I don't have to feel like doing this to do it. What will yours be do you think? Have a ponder. Let me know. Jump on social media. You can find me on Instagram at the PhD life page on Twitter at Dr. Vicki Burns, and let me know what your goals are and what thoughts you are going to try and nurture with them.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I'm going to try and remember in the podcast to prod you about them in a few m </span> <span> onths time. And we can share where we're at and reset for the next term. Thank you so much for listening today. I really hope that's been useful. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Do make sure you're checking back in with all the past episodes from last year, which I think will be super useful for if you haven't done your strength based review of the year, go back to that episode with Professor Jenn Cumming. I highly recommend it. At the point of recording, I haven't done mine yet for this year, but I'm really excited I'm doing it on Monday. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And next week, I have another guest. I'm not going to tell you who. So you'll wait and see, but it's a super good one. It's already in the can. And I look forward to seeing you all then.  </span> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 01 Jan 2024 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-16-how-to-achieve-your-goals-using-the-self-coaching-model thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-15-seven-things-we-can-learn-from-santa <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Merry Christmas! Now, I'm recording this on like the 12th of December, my study is chaos, there are boxes everywhere, I've got half open packages, wrapping that needs doing over there, But I've decided I'm getting ahead of myself and I'm recording my Christmas episode. So this is coming out on actual Christmas day because that is a Monday. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So if you're listening to this on Christmas day, Merry Christmas to you. If you're listening to it in the follow up too, I hope you have had a wonderful festive season, whatever you celebrate. And today you lot seem to love my little listicles of different things you can learn. So today we've got seven things that you can learn from Santa Claus himself. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach. This is episode 15 of season 2 and it's Christmas Day. Now some of you are thinking, why are you releasing an episode on Christmas Day? Firstly, because it's a Monday. And I set myself the challenge that I was going to release an episode every single Monday, apart from during a break in the summer. And partly because not everyone celebrates Christmas. Some of you might be working today. Some of you might be just not particularly enjoying where you're at and want some of your usual routines. So we're here if you want it on Christmas day. And if not, you might be listening to this on Boxing Day or in that weird period of time between then and New Year when no one knows what day of the week it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whenever it is, I hope you find it useful because we are thinking about Santa. Santa completes the biggest project of the year every single year, delivering all those presents all around the world, and I think we can learn a lot from how he does it. This is slightly tongue in cheek, but I still think there's some important lessons in here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first lesson we're going to learn is from Santa's naughty and nice list. Now, let's think about the logistics of how this works. Everybody's told Santa has a naughty and nice list, but one of the really important bits is that he starts with a presumption of nice. Everyone is on Santa's nice list unless they do something naughty. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I just think that can be a brilliant model to follow. Often we sort of go with this idea that, you know, someone has to prove themselves to be trustworthy. I have to, you know, wait and see whether they're useful or not. If we can start from a place where everyone in your working environment has the potential to be on your nice list, has the potential to be useful, has the potential to contribute something interesting, something valuable to your research, or to your wider academic life, then we just start from a much more open and interested place.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're much more likely to recognize the opportunities, to recognize the value that we can get or create with these other people if we start from the presumption that they're on our nice list, that they're there to help us. So that when they make a critical comment, we don't jump to, Oh my goodness, they're saying that because they think I'm stupid or because they're a horrible person. </div> <div> We go,  <span> Oh, that's interesting. I wonder if there's anything in that. I wonder if that's something I need to look at in my research. I wonder if there's a way I can take that into account or whatever. We look at it as though it's coming with the best of intentions. It's coming from somebody who's on our nice list. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> It just changes so much of the ways that we interact. It's the same as if we're giving critiques to things. Sometimes when you're critiquing other people's work, whether you're doing reviews or just reading a peer's thesis, you can sometimes read it and be a bit like, Oh my God, how did you not do this? This is so scruffy. Did you not put any effort in? But if we can start from a presumption that they're on the nice list and we're on the nice list, we can think, They probably did their best here, and there's reasons that it's not clear. I wonder what those reasons are. I wonder whether they don't fully understand this, or I wonder whether they think that this order makes sense, but I can just explain to them why it's not quite right. When we start with a presumption of niceness, it changes all of our interactions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a naughty list. Santa has a naughty list. If it's good enough for Santa, it's good enough for us. And now he has his whole team of elves on the shelf reporting back. That's a whole thing, huh? I don't have small children in the house. Happy days. No one reports back on me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you can have a naughty list. You can have people that you don't feel comfortable interacting with for a bunch of reasons. There is nothing wrong with having boundaries around who you work with. One of the reasons that some of my collaborations worked as well as they did were because I forged them on the basis of people that I liked. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yes, they were strong scientists. Yes, we have things in common in terms of our research interests. But my best collaborations came out of friendships. They came out of people that I just wanted to spend more time working with and so we design projects to make that happen.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Case in point, Professor Jenn Cumming. If you haven't listened to her episode from last year where she helped me do a strength based review of the year. Make sure you do. You can follow it through and answer the questions yourself so that you can review this year. It's a really fun activity to either end 2023 or to start 2024. Jenn and I had some research in common, sort of, but not loads, But we really liked each other, and we really enjoyed working together, and just as importantly, we brought complementary skills, both personality wise and academically speaking, which meant that we were a really good research partnership, a really good collaboration. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So have your naughty and nice list. Collaborate with people that you like. Have people that you have boundaries. That's absolutely fine. I don't work with these people because I don't like the way they work, or I don't like the way I tend to behave when I'm with them. <span> So there is nothing wrong with having your boundaries, but let's start from a presumption that everybody is on the nice list and everybody has something to contribute.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Lesson two, look after your reindeer. They are all part of the team. Santa gets all the glory, but he couldn't do this without his reindeers. He couldn't do this without the people that pull his sleigh. We all have people that pull our sleighs. We all have people who make the work that we do possible. It may be your supervisors, your collaborators, your managers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It will almost certainly be administrators, technicians, people around the university who support you and help you to achieve the things you achieve. We have our teams at home, we have our friends, our family, our partners if you have them. Sometimes it feels like we are single handedly carrying this enormous sack of research, like Santa, all on his own.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we all have a team of reindeer, even if you don't see them regularly. Make sure they feel appreciated and make sure you remember they exist. You don't have to do this all on your own. If you don't feel like you have many reindeer at the moment, like you feel like you're doing this on your own, try and find them. <span> I promise they're there. I promise there are people that are cheering you on and who are trying to help pull you through this. Find them and look after them. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Lesson three, it's fun to track progress. So my step mom is a little bit obsessed with Flight Tracker for reasons that none of us quite understand. She's under a flight path in her house and she likes to know which plane's gone over and at Christmas, you can track Santa. So all the way through the time zones, you can check where he is delivering presents and he appears on Flight Tracker with all the others. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's various different places you can find this, but you can see where he's going and she and the grandchildren get really excited spotting where he's going and how he's getting closer and closer to us here in the UK. And just seeing something getting closer can really, really build excitement, build momentum, and make you feel like you're getting somewhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have a whole episode on why you should get rid of your to do list and have a done list instead. So if you haven't listened to that already, then do check that out. I've mentioned already the episode about the strengths based review of the year. Make sure you are tracking your progress. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Make sure you can see how far you have come. Santa is going a long way in a night, and you are going a long way in a year. But when we see it happen, sort of day by day, it feels really slow. You see the days where you don't move forward and you see the things that you intended to do this year that you didn't do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it can make us feel like we've made no progress. But if you can track the things that you have done, even at a really rough level, I'm not very good at actually sort of doing the consistent little habit trackers and all that sort of stuff. But I do know roughly what I've got done each month. When you look back through that, it really helps you to have thoughts like, ah, I'm actually getting somewhere, I know more than I did, I'm further along than I was, I'm making progress here.  <span> And those thoughts can really lead to feelings like, purposefulness and motivation that make it so much easier to do other things. Track your progress the way my step mom tracks Santa. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Lesson four, wrap as you go along. Like I said at the beginning, I'm currently in a big pile of wrapping paper, empty boxes, parcels that are ready to go. And it's the 12th of December. I'm starting wrapping. I'm doing a bit as I go along, because when you do it all at once in a massive thing, it's a bit of a nightmare. It's so much less intimidating to just wrap a couple of presents. You also have less worries about them getting found then. Because if they find them and they're wrapped, it doesn't give as much away.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I know there's a whole bunch of you going, Yeah, but then I have to get the wrapping stuff out and it'll just be much easier if one day I can just blitz it, get it all done when I'm really in the mood and I can get everything out and just do it in one go. <span> And I see the same pattern with writing. People say, Oh, I'll get writing done when I've got a clear day and I can really get into it and get loads done at once. The problem is fully clear days very rarely come along, and when they do, you suddenly feel all this pressure to, like, do everything and get it done, and you beat yourself up if you don't get as much done in that day as you intended to. And I'm sure in the run up to Christmas, many of you listening to this were like, Oh, I'll get them all done in one go, I'll get them all done in one go, and then you don't have time to do it, and then suddenly it's Christmas Eve and you're doing it in the middle of the night.  </span> <span> Ready for Santa to deliver, in case anybody literally is listening. But when we tell ourselves, I'll just do it all in one go, it'll be easiest, it's really hard to keep that progress going that we mentioned, keep that momentum going. So wrapping your presents as you go along really takes the edge off it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> Doing your writing as you go along, doing your references as you go along, stops you having that huge pile of it to deal with at the end. And if you're still saying, yeah, but it just feels like a lot of hassle to do it like that, ask yourself, how can I make it easy? So with your wrapping, how can you have one thing of wrapping paper, one sellotape, one scissors that live somewhere that you can get to them easily, so that when you buy a present, you quickly wrap it and it's done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In your academic life, how can you have it so that the document that you are writing at the moment, when you open it, it's absolutely clear what the next thing you need to write is. Because yesterday's you wrote a couple of little bullet points for today's you, so that when you start, it's dead easy and you know exactly where to go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if it feels like a big thing to start where you're going, oh, I don't want to. Think about how can I make it as easy as possible for me just to jump into and to do a bite sized chunk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I think of when I think of wrapping up as you go along is something that I have always struggled with and this is properly finishing things off when they're done. So often we will do a presentation and then that's it over. We will run a workshop. That's it over. On to the next thing. And we don't have time to stop and think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Wrapping things up as you go along also covers, after that presentation, just stopping for a minute to make a few notes about how you might do it differently next time. What you need to change. Maybe even making those changes in the slides while it's fresh in your mind. It's after you've run a workshop, making a handout so that it can actually be useful there in the future for other people who are going to do this workshop. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's tying off those loose ends. It's making sure if you run a conference that you do send out the feedback forms and you analyze them and you actually do something with it. It's doing that last 5 percent so that a job is actually finished and it's yielded as many benefits as it can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's something I'm still working on. It's something that some people are much better at than other people. I am very much the sort of person that's going along quite fast and when it's done it's out the way and I'm on to the next thing without really thinking about wrapping it up. But if we can do it, as we go along, finishing up things that we've done, not only does it mean we yield the full benefits of that thing, which is super important, but it's also so much easier to just tidy off the to do list and mark it as completely complete.  </div> <div> Otherwise, we have so many tasks that are like 98% Percent finished other than that last little bit that just then clutter up our to do list, clutter up our brains and make it feel like we've got a thousand things to do when in reality, the issue is that we just haven't quite finished the things that we've done. Wrap them up as we go along. Let's keep those to do lists clear, keep us moving forwards. </div> <div> Lesson number five! Santa recognizes that different times of the year are for different things. At the moment, Santa is super exhausted, because he's just whizzed all the way around the world to deliver all his presents, and he's now back off to the North Pole, or wherever you believe he lives, to chill out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> He's not going to do a lot over the next month. He's going to eat all those mince pies we left out for him. He's going to relax with Mother Claus, chill his beans, sit in a hot tub overlooking the snow, and reflecting on a job well done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then he might start thinking about how he gets ready for next year. Maybe we're looking back and reviewing how well these deliveries went. Is there anything he can do to make it more efficient? He can start working out who's on his new naughty list, who's on his new nice list, planning who's going to get what. He does different things at different times of year. I know these lessons are getting super tenuous, but go with it, okay? There's some really good stuff in here, in amongst the cheese.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In academia, it's really important to recognize that there is a cycle to the year and that you don't have to do all the things all the time. When you're in the midst of your heaviest teaching terms, you don't have to be beating yourself up because you're not writing tons of papers. It's useful to think about how you can wrap as you go along and keep some little bits moving, but it doesn't have to be at the same proportions as at other times of the year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There'll be other times of year where there's just a little bit more space. I'm aware there's often not that much space, but there'll be just a little bit more space to be thinking about some of those longer term projects, thinking about grants, thinking about promotion applications, those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For PhD students, your PhD will be in phases. There'll be times when you're just desperate to get going on data collection, but you haven't, you haven't finalized your design yet, or you haven't got your ethics approval, or you haven't got your assay working or whatever it might be, and you're in the midst of that, we have to recognize the phases that we're in and focus on the things that are appropriate for that phase rather than beating ourselves up. Santa does not sit there in June beating himself up about the fact that he is not yet delivering presents. He is in the midst of logistics planning or whatever Santa does in June. And he knows that the busy bit where he's delivering it all will come in due course. When he's in the midst of the delivery bit, maybe occasionally he wishes that he was just chilling out somewhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But he knows that this is his really busy period and that it will calm down again afterwards. Try to stay in the phase you're in and focus on the things that need doing in that phase rather than wishing you were somewhere else beating yourself up because you're not doing all the other things as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now some of you, especially the academics who listen to this, might be saying, that's all very well, Vikki, but marking eats into my Christmas now, exam prep eats into my Easter, my summer used to be for research, but now there's annual reviews and module planning and all these other things that squish up the holidays. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I get it. I've been there. I recognize that the phasing of the years isn't as pronounced as it perhaps once was. That is a fact. Those of you familiar with the self coaching model that I used, that I would describe as a circumstance. That the universities have spread out the academic load so that it stretches into holidays more than they used to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, what I also see is lots of people making that worse, making it mean that they never have time to themselves, that they can never have a break, because there's always something to do. And what I would really encourage is for you to consider, how can you phase your year and your thoughts within the context that you're in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yes, there are tasks the university requires us to do at all different times of the year. And maybe we resent that, I get it. But we get to control the pressure we put on ourselves. We get to control the stories we tell ourselves about what we should be doing at the moment. Maybe we can slightly modify our expectations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we don't necessarily maybe get that six week period in the summer where we can exclusively do research anymore. But maybe in the summer it becomes 50 percent research instead of 10 percent research. Okay. And instead of resenting the fact that it's not 100 percent research, we enjoy and make the most out of the 50 percent that we do have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whilst there are structural things that make this harder, our thoughts telling ourselves that other people should be different, we should be different, and this shouldn't be like this, just make it so much harder. We can pre decide what phase of the year we're in and how we want to divide up our time within that and then enact that plan without telling ourselves that we should be doing other things as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lesson six is that you can adapt your story to suit you. Now, Santas all around the world have slightly different versions of how they get in the house and when they leave their presents and where he lives during the year. I think in the Netherlands, my friend told me this, in the Netherlands, he comes up by boat from Spain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do I have any Dutch listeners? Is that true? I find that very strange. In my head, he lives at the North Pole in a unspecified country, the North Pole, but there's different versions of this story all around the world. And even within cultures, there are different family versions of how Santa gets in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those of you who don't have a chimney I'm sure we'll have had discussions with your kids about what your version of how Santa gets into your house is. I remember a boyfriend I had at university when he and his brother were little. they were terrified of the idea of Santa coming in their house. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So to this day, I believe, Santa leaves their presents in the front porch because the little boys didn't like him coming into the lounge. So we can adapt our stories to suit ourselves, even when it's a massive tradition like Santa.  <span> And the same is true of your academic story. You get to tell your academic story. You get to decide what's meaningful for you. You don't have to follow the perfect linear path of a research-focused career that we get kind of sold as the only version of academia. You don't have to follow that. There's a whole variety of ways to succeed in and out of academia. PhD students, a bunch of you will stay in academia, but a huge number of you won't. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> There's a whole different version of your story out there that is just as valuable, just as important, just as meaningful. Just as valued as any other. Within academia, you can have a story that is a teaching focused story or a research story or a combination of those. You can be an applied practitioner. You can be qualitative. You can be quantitative. You can tell your story the way you want to tell your story.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want to think more about this, that I have a few episodes that will be relevant. I did an interview with Kirsty Sedgman earlier this year on her book On Being Unreasonable, really recommend the book, really recommend that episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She talks about different routes to success within academia and how sometimes maybe we need to be a little more unreasonable. And there's also a series of episodes from earlier on in this year where I talk about how to tell your academic story. Because not only is it important for us to tell our academic story to ourselves so that we value what we're doing, being able to tell your story in a coherent way is a really good route to getting new jobs, getting promotions, and generally being recognized for what you do. </div> <div> So if you're not clear on what your story is or you feel like you do a little bit of everything and you're not quite clear what you are or where you want to progress, then those episodes are really, really useful for you. I do also have a promotions package where I do six sessions over 12 weeks and I help you work out what your academic story is building towards a promotion application or a job application or something like that. I have a waitlist at the moment, but if you're interested in that, get in contact with me through my website, or any of my social medias, and I can add you to the waitlist. I'm hoping to get new clients in, in kind of mid to late January, something like that, there should be some spaces. So get on that waiting list. If that is of use to you. You can tell your story, however you want to tell it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And lesson seven, Santa knows that everything is more special when you believe. We've all seen little children who see Santa for the first time, or they come down and see the presents under the tree and their little faces light up, and it's all so magical and wonderful. </div> <div> Everything is better when you believe. We are living in a time where academia is under huge pressure, whether you're a PhD student, academic, it can all feel a bit rubbish. And, I don't want to tell you that you have to see the positives in it all the time because there is a whole bunch of things that are really, really challenging at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's not you not being strong enough. That's not you not being resilient enough. It's, it's tough out there and that's okay. But Everything is better when we can believe that what we're doing is important. That the small interactions we have make a difference. That the research we do is interesting and valuable. That the teaching we do makes a difference.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, find the bits that you believe. I'm not asking you to believe things you don't believe. Find the bits that you do believe and make sure you spend as much time thinking those as thinking the thoughts about the things that feel a bit rubbish. <span> When we nurture that magic, we nurture that belief, and we start to spend more time on those bits that we believe, that make it all feel special and important and meaningful, everything becomes so much easier.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> I really hope you enjoyed today. We have gone through some tenuous links to Santa. But I think there's some useful stuff to remember in there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have your naughty and nice list, but start from the assumption of nice.  </div> <div> Look after your reindeer. You're not doing this alone.  </div> <div> Track your progress the way we track Santa on Flight Tracker.  </div> <div> Wrap as you go along. Tie things off.  </div> <div> Remember that different times of year are for different things and that's okay. We don't have to be 100 percent everything all of the time.  </div> <div> Remember that you can adapt the story to make it yours, you don't have to have the same academic story as everybody else. </div> <div> And finally, it's all so much more magical when you believe. So find the bits that you believe in and make sure you think them often.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening. I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas period. My next episode comes out on the 1st and don't worry, I'm recording that one in advance as well, because I'm resting over the holiday period, as I hope you guys are too. Enjoy the rest of 2023 and I will see you in the new year. </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 25 Dec 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-15-seven-things-we-can-learn-from-santa thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-14-how-to-stop-feeling-guilty-when-you-rest <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i>  I've spent so many holidays where I've kind of intended to do some work but not really planned when or what, and then didn't really feel like it at the time, so I didn't, but I felt guilty about the fact I wasn't working because really I should, in inverted commas, be working, and then I also wouldn't do any of  </i> <i> the really fun stuff that I wanted to do either because I should be working so I shouldn't do that stuff. But then when I did work, I'd feel guilty about the fact that I wasn't resting and really I probably needed to rest and I wasn't spending more time with my friends and family and doing the other things I'd intended to do over the holidays.  </i> <i> And it just turns into this big pile of guilt where whatever you do, you just feel bad about it. And you don't get either the work done or the rest, or the quality time with your families. And just finish the holiday feeling a little bit like w </i> <i> ell, I don't know where that went. And now it's turn time and we're back on again till Easter. It's not a good feeling. I know you felt it too. I don't feel it anymore because of some of the things I've put in place. So let me share those with you today and let's figure out how not to feel guilty over the Christmas break. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 14 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And we are going to be talking about feeling guilty over the holidays and how we can avoid it. I know you've experienced this. More and more the holidays become a time where we get to catch up on work. Where we get to finish things off that didn't happen over the autumn term, where we just want to get ready for the new year so that we can start not feeling quite so stressed. But then at the same time, we're exhausted and we need a break. </div> <div> And it's really hard to balance out those things. So we tell ourselves, we'll just do what I feel like through the holidays. And in reality, all that means is that we have to make decisions all holiday long and usually they don't come from our best self.  </div> <div> So today we're going to think about where do these thoughts that generate guilt even come from? What are they? And how can we use that information to make more intentional decisions about what we want to do this holiday? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to once again refer you back to my old episode from last year about how to rest through the holiday period. So that one, I'm not repeating the content here, that one is a lot about planning exactly what you want to be doing, when you want to be doing it, and talking about the benefits of doing that.  <span> So make sure after you've listened to this episode, you go back and check that one out because they're super complementary of each other.  </span> <span> But I want to start today's episode by asking you, why do you feel guilty? And for some of you, you might feel guilty about working over the holidays. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might want to work, you might be genuinely excited about doing your work, but you feel bad that you're not spending more time with your family or spending more time resting. For others of you, you feel guilty that you don't really want to work and you think you should. You think good PhD students will work over the holidays, good academics will work. And you feel bad that you don't feel like that.  <span> Some of you will be feeling like you're gonna feel guilty either way, whatever you pick, you're going to be disappointing some part of your life and you're going to feel guilty regardless.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so my first message today is to remember where these feelings of guilt come from. If we think about our self coaching model, where we have circumstances, we have the facts of the situation, we have the thoughts that we have, the feelings we experience because of those thoughts, and then the actions and results that we take. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we remember that model, guilty is on the feelings line. It's an emotion. And what that means is it comes from the thoughts we're having, and they can either be the thoughts that we're actively having now, or they can be the kind of wider beliefs that we have. So you might have a thought, or a wider belief, that good academics write over Christmas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might have a thought that I need this time to get ahead of next year. You might have a thought that my family will be disappointed if I work during the holiday. It's a whole bunch of different thoughts that you might be having, but that's where the guilt is coming from. It's coming from these thoughts that we have, and often it's magnified by the fact that our thoughts are contradictory to each other.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can simultaneously believe that other people expect us to work over Christmas, believe that we shouldn't have to work over the holiday period, and believe that there are some bits that we'd quite like to do. We can believe all of those things, and it's in those contradictions that the most intense emotions happen, because we're telling ourselves things where we can't win, where we're going to end up feeling guilty one way or another, because they're mutually exclusive of each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Unless we plan specifically what we're going to do, they're mutually exclusive of each other. But the good thing about knowing that it's our thoughts that are creating these guilty feelings is we can choose which ones we spend more time thinking </div> <div> instead of just allowing these often contradictory thoughts to pop up and believing them as absolute truths, we can look at them and go, okay, I've got all these thoughts. I've got all these beliefs. Some of them come from my childhood. Some of them come from the things that adults said to me when I was very little. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of them come from the supervisors around me and the things I hear there, the academic context that I work in. They come from a whole bunch of places. But I get to decide which ones I'm internalizing. I get to decide which ones I'm repeating. Other people might put these things in my head. Other people might expose me to these ideas. But I choose the ones that I spend time on.  </div> <div> And so what we get to do is we get to examine each of these thoughts in turn. Is it true that a good academic in inverted commas would work over the Christmas holiday? Do you believe that? How are you defining good? How are you defining work? How much work? How do we know that good academics do that? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What if some good academics work over the holiday period, and some don't? Is this an all or nothing thing, that if you do, you're a good academic, and if you don't, you're bad? How much is enough to make you good? When we start to query these thoughts like this, we start to see how fuzzy they are, and how hard to pin down they are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is doing one hour of work over Christmas enough to make you a good academic? Is there a minimum quantity we have to do to be a good academic? How are we defining this anyway? In what ways does not working over the holiday period make you a good academic? Because often we have this really vague notion of what a good academic is, but even that's contradictory because a good academic is somebody who produces lots of work and is efficient and so on, but it's also somebody who could stay in this career for a long time. It is also somebody who's a good role model for the people around them and doesn't put other people under pressure. It's also somebody who doesn't send emails on Christmas Day. There's a load of definitions of a good academic. Which version of a good academic works over Christmas and which version of a good academic do you want to be?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, some of you might be listening to this going, but I love my work and Christmas is my opportunity. The festive period is my opportunity to spend a little bit of time on the bits that I love. And if that's where you're at, happy days, let's plan it like that. </div> <div> But let's make sure that it's being driven from a desire to do the thing rather than trying to assuage a guilt, that you should be doing that thing. And if you do want to be doing the work, then how do we assuage any guilt you have about the other things that society tells you you should be doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because we then get to pick holes in those ones too. So some of you may believe a good parent wouldn't work over Christmas. A good parent would be there with their kids all the time. But again, what are we calling a good parent? How wide is your definition of a good parent? Is a parent who has a job where they actually have to go into work over Christmas a bad parent? How much time do you have to spend with your kids in order to be a good parent? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, it's a really loose definition that we're beating ourselves with, that we're not a good parent, we're not a good academic, we're not a good friend, we're not a good self carer, without really choosing what that means. The best way to reduce your guilty feelings over this period is to just take a minute to define it for yourself.  <span> What would make this a good holiday for you. What would please, what is the balance that works for the academic side of you, the social side of you, the resting side of you and any other sides that you want to feed during this period? What's the best combination? that works for you in this period.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I talked about a method of thinking through these things a while ago, of thinking of your life as a plate, that you've got a series of foodstuffs on your plate at any one time, and this can be really useful to plan your holidays. So I want you to think about this upcoming period as a plate, okay? And I want you to first of all think, when does it start and when does it finish? So what's the point at which normal life stops and becomes the festive period. And what's the point at which we revert to normal?  </div> <div> Because often that gets a bit fuzzy around the edges, doesn't it? As to when do we start to taper down to Christmas? Do we gradually break back up? So decide the size of your plate. What time period are we talking about?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, for example, I I'm recording this on the 15th of December. I have my last client facing work today. I'm working the 18th and 19th on kind of behind the scenes stuff. And then I'm not working from the 20th of December through till the 2nd of January. That's a no work. And then I've got three days where I'm doing behind the scenes work. And I recommence with my clients and all my classes and those things from the 8th of January. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the boundaries of my plate. First job is figure out what are the boundaries of your plate? And you want to take into account the people around you. So my husband's a teacher. He finishes on the Tuesday, the 19th. So that's partly why I'm working through while he's still working and then I'm not working while he's off. So that's kind of set my boundaries. You may have children. You may just get to decide this stuff. You may be traveling. So just decide what the boundaries around this plate are.  </div> <div> And the important thing to remember about a plate is It's a fixed size. Now, over Christmas, we get pretty good at stacking our plates high, metaphorically and literally speaking, but it's still a fixed size. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a fixed amount of time, and there's 24 hours in all of that. And what we get to decide is what proportion of our plate do we want to spend in inverted commas on different things? What bits of our plate do we want to fill with different elements because often what we do is we think, Oh, I, what I really need is I need to rest, but I really need to get on top of things. And I really need to clean the house and I really need to see my family and my husband's family and everybody else. And I need to spend time with the kids and they need to do this. And I need to start my new health regime that starts January 1st, et cetera, et cetera. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what we don't think is, okay, what proportions of all of this stuff. So when you've established how big this plate is, how long this time period is, now you get to decide, what proportion of that do I want to spend on my own? What proportion of that do I want to spend with my immediate family? My extended family? What proportion of that, if any, do I want to spend working? And I don't want to present this plate as any right answer. You could spend 100 percent of this time working. And if that's what's right for you, then happy days. But let's love it. Let's go look at this plate. I'm so excited that I'm going to get this work done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm so grateful I've made the decision that I'm not going to visit people this Christmas. I'm so grateful that I get to focus on this thing I really care about. Let's love the choice you made. And similarly, you may decide you're going to do no work at all whatsoever. And you're going to fill your plate with family and self care and fun and interesting things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you fill your plate with jobs at home, projects that you want to get done that you don't normally have an opportunity to do. Happy days. But then as we plan in the proportions, we also get to plan the thoughts we have about it. So that we're not in the family portion of our plate, and telling ourselves we should be in the work portion of our plate.  <span> Because we get to decide that we like this combination. that we've planned and when we hear ourselves feeling guilty, which we will, we get to reply to it and we get to say, no, no, but I shouldn't be working. I know you think we should, because that's what society tells us. That's what I tell myself a lot. But remember, we decided, we decided that today was for this. And so we don't need to feel guilty because we're doing what we planned. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thought that really has helped some of my clients with this is thinking about what productivity even means. Because I hear a lot of clients say, I really struggle to not be productive. I find it really hard to do nothing. And firstly, no one's telling you, you have to do nothing. You get to decide what you do.  <span> If you want to jam pack your Christmas full of activities and games and trips and seeing people and all of these things, jam pack it. That's fine. It doesn't mean you have to work if you don't want to work, if you feel like you need something other than work. So no one's saying, the options here are not working or doing nothing. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a whole array of life in between those. And I want you to think about what that could be for you. What do you want to pre plan? Now I'm not suggesting you make some big to do list for Christmas, but thinking, what things do I enjoy doing? What would give me the vibes I want? What would give me the experience I want that's not working? <span>  I want you to remember as well that productivity isn't only work. The way I define productivity, and I'm sure you won't find this in the dictionary, but I like it, so I'm giving it to you guys. The way I define productivity is when I do exactly what I intend to do. I am productive. when I do the thing I intended to do. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's useful for me for two reasons. One, it helps me to recognize all the ways that I'm productive that aren't just working or doing something concrete. For example, if I decide that I've got a day with my little nieces and nephews, then my intention for that day is to have lots of fun with my nieces and nephews, to have a chance to actually have a chat with my sisters, so I can actually see how they're doing and have a nice natter with them. So it's kind of two sides there. Spend time with the little people. Spend time with my sisters. And so if that's my goal for the day, then being productive is doing those things. Being productive is being present and intentional and having fun with my nieces and nephews. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And being productive is making sure that I actually spend some time talking to my sisters rather than just kind of coordinating children. So those are the things that count as productive for that day. I don't need to do anything else. I don't need to have cleaned the house in order to be productive. I don't need to have done some work because the intention for that day is creating connection. And by the end of the day, I have created connection. So it was a productive day.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Reading is another one. So I have this thing. Not sure why sitting down reading feels really luxurious, but luxurious in a way that makes me feel slightly guilty like I should be doing something else. And it's something that I'm actively coaching myself on, that if I'm reading whatever I'm reading, I can say to myself, no, this is something you're intending to do more. So there's nothing else you should be doing. If you are reading, you are doing something that you have an intention to do more than you do at the moment. So that's okay. And I kind of actively talk my way down from it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second reason I like this is because it enables me to be a little bit more intentional about the time when I'm not working. Because rather than it being, Oh, I'm not doing much that day and feeling a bit discombobulated by that, which I think a lot of us do when we don't have things sort of planned. Some of you might be like, oh no, I love a day where nothing's planned and I can just potter, but other people can feel quite uncomfortable with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It enables us to go, okay, so why am I doing this? What is the intention here? Okay, the intention is to physically rest my body. And if the intention is to physically rest your body, then you can do whatever you like as long as you're physically resting your body. So rather than telling yourself off for spending too much time messing about on your phone, you can say, no, I can mess about on my phone because my goal for today is to actually rest my body. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If the goal for your day is to make your physical body feel better, then you might say, you know what, I am going to spend a couple of hours messing about my phone, not worrying about it too much because I need to rest. But I also feel better when I go for a walk. I also feel better if I spend a bit of time stretching or whatever feels good for you. So you get to plan a day that includes those things.  </div> <div> If your goal for the day is connection, you get to think ahead, Oh, how can I, how can I make this a really lovely day?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the things I ended up talking with a client about this week is jigsaws. So there's something about the winter holiday and jigsaws that for me is synonymous.  <span> But one of the things I love about jigsaws is the potential for incidental connection. So I used to run team building courses in the Lake District and it was residential. So in the evenings, there'd be times where they weren't structured activities and people would just be kind of hanging out and it was a really mixed cohort.  </span> <span> They were all PhD students. They came from all over the world and some of them knew each other really well. Some of them wanted to go to the pub and stuff and others didn't, and they didn't know each other. They didn't want to drink. And some of them were more introverted and things like that. And I always used to want to try and help people feel included, but without forcing people to have conversations if they, you know, if they just needed some time to themselves. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things that really helped with that was having a jigsaw out in the social area. So I'd get a jigsaw out and I would just sit and start pottering with the jigsaw. And what I would find is that people would wander over and join in. And often when they wandered over and joined in for quite a bit of the time, we're just doing the jigsaw.  <span> We're sort of asking to pass things over and dah, dah, dah. Sort of mutual work side by side, but other times we would start talking, but it would be very low pressure talking because we're not sitting, looking at each other. You can have long periods of silence in between the chat, but we had bits of nice conversation. </span> <span> There's evidence that side by side conversation is a lot less intimidating, a lot easier to be open. It also makes it much easier for somebody else to come over and join in. So if you're sat having a face to face conversation with somebody, it can feel quite bold to just walk up and join in the conversation. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of you may be very happy with that, but a lot of people feel awkward about interrupting a conversation. Whereas actually, if you're doing a jigsaw, it's really easy to just come over and join in doing the jigsaw and be like, Oh, can I just do this corner? Yeah, yeah, of course. And you don't feel like you're forcing yourself into a conversation, but you will end up in that sort of interaction. </div> <div> So jigsaws. Big tip for the Christmas holidays. But you get to plan what does being productive look like for you in this holiday. Is it lots of walks? Is it lots of lie ins? Is it clearing out that room that's been annoying you for ages? Is it having actual conversations with your family? Because sometimes it's so easy over this busy period to spend time with everybody but not time with anybody. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I've, you know, I've got a big family. I have four sisters. I have originally four parents, we lost my dad now, but four parents, I now have eight nieces and nephews. I have a lot of friends. I now have my husband, my stepdaughters. It's really easy to jam pack in all these visits where loads of people are there, but you don't actually have decent conversations with any one of them, especially when the kids were little. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now the kids are a bit bigger, it's an awful lot easier. But there were Christmases where I came back and I was like, I've spent all day with my family and I don't think I've had a single conversation about anything other than, you know, what do they want for lunch? Who's got the spare chairs? We need to figure out where this is. Whatever it is. And we haven't actually had a conversation about anything.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas when we can be intentional and decide that is the goal. Then we can make sure that we do have that time to sit down and I'd say, you know, how actually are things with you at the moment? How's that going? Oh, I haven't spoken to you about that for a while. How's that? And actually be intentional. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, one of the best ways, because what people often say to me is, this sounds all very good, Vicki, but I plan what I'm going to do and then I don't do it. And I have two answers for that as well. So first answer is usually you don't really plan. So when I worked with clients this week, and I've said, you know, what are your plans for Christmas? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People have given really vague answers. You know, I'll do some work. I'll probably do this. I might do that. And that's not planning. That's where it becomes hard to follow your intentions because you haven't really specified what your intentions are. I might do some work over the holidays is not a plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There is no way of getting to the end of the holidays and going, yes, I did that. Because what's might? What's some? What's work? Who knows? So. First thing, when you tell me you've planned and you don't do it, you usually haven't planned. I want really specific plans, exactly what are you doing and exactly when, or exactly what are you not doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is what people don't do is they don't anticipate the barriers to doing that thing. And this is going to become a big deal when we start thinking about New Year's resolutions and all that jazz, in a couple of weeks time. But we go, oh, I'm not going to work this holiday and set that as our intention. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we don't think about what's going to make that difficult. And usually the work thing, what's going to make that difficult is emails coming in that we're still checking. it's the thought I should be working. It's hearing that other people are working. All of these sorts of things. And so we get to plan for those barriers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way around, if you decide there is a piece of work that you want to get done, maybe you've got a grant application due or you've got a review process in the new year and there are things you want to do, the other things that can get in the way are not really feeling like doing it, oversleeping, , unexpected invitations, and you get to anticipate what those might be and plan for them. </div> <div> So we do this a lot in exercise psychology. I've talked about it before in previous episodes. But if you want to run more, you need to think what's going to stop you running. What are the thoughts that will stop you? What are the environmental conditions that will stop you? What's the work stuff that will stop you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you get to plan in advance what you're going to do in those situations. Does it mean you do it every time? No, of course not. Does it mean it's much more likely that you will? Yes. Because instead of going, oh, it's raining, I can't run. You go, oh, when it's raining, I do squats inside instead. Or when it's raining, I put on that nice new raincoat that I got and I go anyway. So you get to decide, and it's the same true with Christmas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to think once you've planned out what you want this festive period to look like, what are going to be the barriers to achieving that? And then once you've done that, you can start to plan from a really curious place. How will I overcome those barriers? </div> <div> The final part of this, because they're often a big barrier, is other people. So the final part of this podcast is how do we manage other people, and other people's expectations over Christmas? Because often this is the time when our supervisor is simultaneously telling us that we need to get some rest and that we need to catch up that thing we haven't done. We often get very mixed messages from supervisors.  <span> And where our friends and family are telling us what they expect us to be doing over Christmas. I have a few hints for you here. They're related to not feeling guilty about rest, but they can apply to anything where you're having other people sort of think they have an input into what you do and say. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> First thing I want to remind you is how other people feel is in their models. Our model is our circumstance. The thoughts we have, the feelings we have, the things we do and the results we have. We are responsible for our own models. If we are upset, it's because of the thoughts we're having. Now we might decide that's justified. That it's an entirely appropriate thought, based on the circumstance that we're in, i. e. the behavior of other people. We may decide it's completely reasonable to want to be upset about it, because of that behavior and the thought we have about it. But we're still responsible for that upsetness. We get to say, yeah, I am upset, and I'm upset because I think this, and I stand by that. I stand by the fact that that was unacceptable behavior from you, and so I'm upset. We take responsibility for our own models, and other people are responsible for their models.  <span> You cannot make somebody else frustrated. You create their environment, their circumstance, and they have thoughts about you that make them frustrated. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason we know that's true is because different people will have different thoughts about you. The same behavior will make some people think you're hilarious and other people think you're the most annoying person they've ever met, because they have different thoughts. And that's how we know that their feelings are their responsibility. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not saying be selfish. I've touched on this in previous episodes, not saying be selfish and just, you know, do whatever you want. But you get to decide what's appropriate behavior for you and what's okay. And you allow them to be responsible for the feelings that they have about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because when we run around trying to make everyone happy, we're trying to make our supervisor happy, we're trying to make our inner critic happy. We're trying to make our family happy. We're trying to make our kids happy, our parents happy then the one person we don't make happy is us, and we usually don't make all of them happy either, because what they want is contradictory.  </div> <div> Whereas if we can focus on what I want, and what makes me show up as the best version of me, and allow other people to manage their own feelings about that, then suddenly we're in a much calmer place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Suddenly we're able to engage in the ways that we want to engage. We become an easier person to be around because we're not sort of saying to our supervisor, yeah, yeah, I will, I'll get that done. And then saying to our kids, yes, yes, I will take you to Santa's grotto. Yes, yes, that's fine. And then realizing that you've committed to two different things at the same time, and now you're just snappy with everybody because you're telling yourself you've messed up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We get to be responsible for our own feelings. So if you hear yourself saying, I have to do this or my mum will be disappointed, I have to do this or my supervisor will be cross, you don't. You get to pick. And if you decide to do something because you predict your mum will be disappointed if you don't, know that that is a choice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that is a reason. You could decide to spend time with your mum because you know she'll be disappointed if you don't. But, you're not doing it for her feelings, you're doing it for your feelings. Because when she feels disappointed, you feel guilty and you don't want to feel guilty. So if you choose that because people will be disappointed that you don't visit them, you are going to visit them, let's just own that as a choice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to go and see them. I want to go and see them because I don't want them to be disappointed, and I suspect they will be disappointed if I don't. But that means it's what I want to do. Rather than what we often do, which is I've got to go because otherwise she's going to be disappointed. I don't really want... <span> by the way, mom, if you're listening to this, I do not feel like this. I am very excited to see you at Christmas. There is nothing about guilt that makes me come and see you at Christmas. I see you all the time. for those of you who don't know, I moved back closer to my mom. So she's now about 400 meters away from where I live and I see her all the time. But for other people, it's not like that. </span> </div> <div> And what we end up doing is going, Oh, she's going to be disappointed if we don't come home, so I have to, but I don't really want to. And so we end up turning up in that mode, like, Oh, I don't really want to. And similarly work. I have to do my work. I don't really want to, I'd rather be with you lot, but I have to do this.. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's just a horrible way to do anything. You don't turn up and be productive with your work when you're like that. And you don't turn up and be a fun family member when you're like that either. If we can say, you know what, I know that you'll be disappointed if I don't come. And I actually don't want that. I want to be a daughter who shows up and comes, but that's what I want. So I'm going to do what I want and I'm going to turn this into something that's really nice and what I really want. So we take responsibility for our own models. We accept that when we choose to do something, it's because we want to do it. We actively want to do it. And we allow other people to be responsible for their models.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now what does that look like? Because everybody else doesn't do this coaching stuff that we do, and so they might not realize that they're responsible for their own models. And so they may be saying things like, oh, you're really disappointing me not coming home this Christmas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I wish you didn't have to spend so much time working. Or your supervisor's saying, you know, are you really taking 10 days off? I can't remember the last time I took 10 days off. I just, you know, I can't even imagine doing that. You know, surely you want to be doing some work. How do you manage when other people think you are responsible for their emotions? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the key is establishing boundaries. And to establish a boundary, you have to be really clear as to what a boundary is. So this is the final thing I'm going to teach you today. A boundary is something you impose on yourself. So a boundary is not saying to your supervisor, please don't email me over Christmas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's a request. You can ask that. That's fine. But it's up to your supervisor whether they do that or not. They get to pick because they're autonomous adults who get to choose these things. So that's a request. That's not a boundary. If you email me over Christmas, I'll be really cross. That's not a boundary. That's a threat.  <span>  A boundary would be, I'm not planning to check my emails over Christmas. So if you message me, I'll get back to you on the 2nd of January. That's a boundary. You're telling somebody this is where my boundary is. And this is what I'll do. I'll just not reply. So they know in advance what those conditions are.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the key thing is you have to believe they're reasonable. And as long as you believe they're reasonable then you enforce your boundary. So you say, yes, I will come and visit the family, but we're only staying till four and I am going to bring my own food for my child because, you know, they have some specific things that they eat. So that's, that's my boundary. That's what I'm going to do. You get to set boundaries that are to do with your behavior and what you will or won't do if they don't honor your boundary. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that can just help so much with all of this, you can specify out to your supervisor when you will be available, what you will be doing, to your heads of school if you're an academic. You get to specify to other people how long you'll come for, what you'll do and what you won't do. But all from the place of the things that you are in control of. And you get to remind yourself. That you are allowed to make these boundaries. You're an autonomous adult who is responsible for their feelings and responsible for their own behavior and this is what you need this holiday.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want to hear more about dealing with annoying things people say at Christmas, I have an episode about that too. I think it was episode nine or 10 last year, something like that. And it's mostly for PhD students, but it will be applicable to some of the academics as well. It's about how to manage when people say things like, Haven't you finished yet? Oh, you've been a student forever, haven't you? And all those annoying things that people often say during these family periods. So make sure you check out that episode too. It will really build on this work on boundaries. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, to conclude. We've got this wonderful time of year coming up. Let's decide in advance what we want on our plate. Let's be really specific about that, which makes it so much easier to stick to. Pick what works best for you. Remember why you want that. Try not to renegotiate with yourself as you go along, because now when you don't feel like doing the thing that you said you were going to do on that day, you can say, yes, but this is what we decided. This is what makes up the best plate.  <span> It might not be exactly what I want to do right now, but it's what makes up the best plate overall. It's what makes up the best combination that I'm looking for. And you can remind yourself of that as you go along.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Be compassionate, when you make a plan like this, you also don't have to stick to it 100%. But at least this way you know what you haven't stuck to and what you have stuck to. And make sure you celebrate those partial successes. A successful holiday is not one in which you do absolutely everything you intend. It's one in which, overall, the plate was roughly what you wanted it to be. So celebrate those partial successes, and enjoy this festive period.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There is an episode coming out on Christmas day and on New Year's day. Rest assured they are pre recorded. I am not working over this period, but they are there if you want them or they'll be waiting for you in the new year if you're putting boundaries around your podcast listening as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening and I will see you at some point over the next few weeks.  </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 18 Dec 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-14-how-to-stop-feeling-guilty-when-you-rest thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-13-why-you-should-act-without-thinking <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> On this podcast and in my coaching sessions, I spend a lot of time talking about thoughts. Talking about how the thoughts that we have shape our feelings and actions, and how we can intentionally modify our thoughts, not to just make stuff up, but to focus on thoughts that we already believe, but that we know serve us better, in order to feel better, do the actions we intend to do and achieve our goals. So there's lots of focus on thoughts.  </i> <i> In this episode, I'm going to turn that completely around and tell you the opposite. If you want to know why and how that still makes complete sense, I promise, keep listening. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 13 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And today we are going to be thinking about why you should act without thinking. Those of you who are regular listeners will know that this is not what I usually talk about. Usually I get you to really analyze your thoughts and feelings in order to figure out why you're doing the actions you're doing and to try and generate thoughts and feelings that will make it easier to do the actions. And I stand by all of that. Okay. Super useful. If you want to know more about it, go back and listen to more of my other podcasts where we talk about it lots and lots.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But today we're going to be thinking about that action line. Now, if you don't remember the self coaching model, it has five components. I have a whole episode on it, by the way, if you haven't listened to that, it was a few weeks ago, go back, check that out. But the self coaching model really helps us to understand why we do the things we do. So we have five bits. We have the circumstance, which is the factual truth of the situation. We have thoughts, which is the story we tell in our head, the kind of cognitive processes. We have feelings, that's the F line, that's the emotions we experience in our body. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We have the A line, actions, those are the things that we do, and they can be the things that we do externally that everybody can see, or the things that we do in our head, like worry and ruminate and beat ourselves up. And then we have the R line, which is the results line, and this is the outcomes of our actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what the self coaching model tells us is that thoughts create our feelings, feelings create our actions, and actions create our results. And by doing that, it can be really empowering. We can see that it's not our circumstances that are making us feel this way. It's the thoughts that we're having about those circumstances. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we can see what the consequences of those thoughts are. And then we can decide whether we want to keep that model or not. In some situations, it will be perfectly appropriate to keep a negative model, to keep a model where you feel angry or you feel frustrated because you think it's justified. And I talked a little bit about that last week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times, you might see how those thoughts are really not serving you, and you might start to pick holes in them. Query, are these thoughts really true? Start thinking of other thoughts that might be helpful. And this is work that I would encourage everybody to do, that I am constantly doing, that I work on in my workshops with my one to one clients, and in my membership as well. </div> <div> So why am I now talking about the action line? Why am I talking about acting without thinking? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's because sometimes we can get in a thought trap. We can sometimes get ourselves into a situation where I'll do that when I feel confident enough, or I'll do that when I feel motivated enough, and we get caught up in generating the thoughts, thinking, okay, what do I need to think in order to feel confident? What do I need to think in order to find this task interesting? And sometimes that can just really slow us down. And it can create the impression that unless we're feeling the right, in inverted commas, emotion, we can't do the action. </div> <div> Sometimes it makes things more complicated than it needs to be and sometimes it means that we're almost doing the same thought work over and over again, trying to work out what do I need to think in order to feel motivated to do my exercise or whatever. What I'm proposing instead is that you select a set of actions that you know are in line with who you want to be and where you always feel better afterwards. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The feeling better afterwards is a funny one because think about that model. Circumstances followed by thoughts about them, feelings, actions, results. There's nothing in that model that allows for an action making you feel better. Sometimes that's really useful to remember. We don't want to get into a situation where we only feel good about our day when we've been as productive as we think we should be, for example. So where we think that the act of being productive is what makes us feel good. It's not. It's the thoughts we have about the tasks that we've done that make us feel good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so in many ways, it's really useful to remember that actions don't cause our feelings, that our thoughts create our feelings. However, the one thing that the model doesn't really characterize is actions that have physiological effects. And physiological effects that directly, biochemically, affect our feelings in a way that is separate from our cognitive processes. It doesn't really allow for that in the model. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let me give you some examples and then I'll tell you a little bit more about mechanisms by which that happens and why you might even want to do it anyway.  <span> My go to's are things that I've never regretted doing. They're things that I've procrastinated doing. They're things that I've put off for ages and ages and ages and things that I regularly don't feel like doing, but that I've never regretted doing. Once I'm doing it, I always feel better.  </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're things that are in line with my future self. They're things that the me that I want to be more of in the future does these things regularly. And they're things that plausibly have a biological effect on my health. <span> So for me, those things are having a shower. I'm not a cold shower girly. I know you guys might listen to people on Instagram telling yourself you need to freeze your tits off every morning. I'm not a cold shower girly. I'm just a shower, girly. It's nice. Okay, let's just have a shower. Feel clean. Love it. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Going for a walk, drinking a glass of water, putting some music on, and having a bit of a stretch. Those are my kind of five go to actions that I try and do even when I'm not thinking thoughts that are particularly conducive to them. So shower, walk, water, music, and stretching. I accept, model purists out there, that in order to do those things, I need to have a thought and my thought will probably be something like, this will make me feel better, which will make me feel purposeful, it will make me feel willing and then I'll do the thing. So, I accept there does need to be a little bit of cognition that takes you from not doing the thing to doing the thing. What I don't wait for though, is motivation to do the thing. I don't try and coach myself to really want to go for a walk, to really want to have a shower, to really want to drink water. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My thoughts that I try and nurture for it are way more pragmatic. Just Just go for a walk. You always feel better. You never regret it. Just a kind of much more focused on doing the action line, rather than worrying about whether I'm wanting it for the right reasons or whatever. It's thoughts and feelings that are just focused on, let's just go do the thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to kind of highlight the difference here, the difference for somebody who's worried about thought work and sort of needing to feel motivated before you do something, the thoughts will be I should do this thing. I don't really want to do this thing. Let's try and make myself want to do it. I wonder why I might do it. I wonder what I might get out of it. Let's try and generate some enthusiasm for it. Really sort of staying in that. Or, more commonly, because most people don't do active thought work, more commonly are, I'll go later. I'll feel like it later. Okay, so almost making yourself, um, like, what's the word, almost making yourself like a victim to your mood. So if I don't feel like it now, I'll do it later when I might feel like it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My side, where I'm talking about acting first, these really pragmatic thoughts is when you hear yourself saying I don't really feel like it, saying, yeah, I know, but we are going. You know, I want you to channel the most pragmatic mum you know, who has children going, I don't want to go to school. Okay, but it's a school day. So off we go. It's that sort of no negotiation, no wasting lots of time persuading you that you want to go. We just are. Let's go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the reason this only works with activities that are in line with your future self and that create a physiological effect, is because it's really hard to sustain things that you've just told yourself, I've just got to do it. Whereas when it's something that you know you will feel better once it starts, then you only need to get yourself out there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, it's a little bit like I think I've talked before about the different levels of bravery it takes to do bungee, parachute, those sorts of things versus climbing up something or along something because bungee, parachute, you've only got to be brave for a second! Once you've jumped, not a lot else you can do about it, you're doing it. Whereas those other things you need to be brave for a more sustained period of time and keep yourself slowly moving up the high and scary thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, using this action first approach with tasks that you know once you're doing them, you'll be glad. There is not one day, even when it's minging outside, there is not one day where I've regretted taking my dog for a walk. I go out and it's like, it's so cold. It's so rainy or whatever, but he's so happy. And I'm outside and it's fresh air and I'm moving. And there's something a little bit smug about being out when the weather's not that great. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you're like, look at me. I'm out in the rain. And. You just know that once you do it, you'll feel better. Similarly, I don't know if you guys get it, that whole you're sitting on your sofa, you're sitting on your bed, like, I can't be bothered to shower. I just can't be bothered, it's too much effort. But once you get in there, you're like, ah, so warm, so nice. It's those things, it's where you just need to get going and then you'll feel better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in our model, where actions can't create our feelings, we follow through that traditional circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions, results, why do these things actually make us feel better? First reason. I mentioned the physiology. So those tasks that I mentioned all elicit physiological responses in our bodies. These might be different physiological responses depending on the thing.  </div> <div> We know that being outside, particularly in nature, elicits biological responses in the body. We know that exercise is, exercise is associated with post task reductions in blood pressure. So you get lower blood pressure after you've exercised, you get releases of oxytocin and things like this, particularly where it involves anything social. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We know that physical activity generates It's called cytokines in the muscle. So these are molecules that communicate with our immune system and interestingly with our brains. And I might do a whole session on this at some point because it's pretty cool stuff. So most of the people who know me from academia think of me as a teaching focused member of staff. And that's what I was for like the last 10 years of my career, I'm really focusing on teaching leadership. But for the first 10 years or so of my career, I was a psychoneuroimmunologist. I looked at how psychological factors affected our immune system. So why we get ill when we're stressed, essentially. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And as part of that, I was part of a broader community that was interested in interactions between stress and immune function. And whilst I looked at how stress affects immune function, there was a whole bunch of colleagues around the world who looked at how the, how immune function. affects our feelings and our stress levels. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Products of our immune system can talk directly to our brain by various direct and indirect mechanisms, which change the way we think, feel and behave. It's why when we feel poorly, we'll generally act in the same way, no matter what we're infected with. When you then tie that to the fact that I was also in a sports science department where I collaborated new people who looked at how exercise induces cytokines, these immune products, you can sort of tie it all together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can see how exercise secretes cytokines, which talk directly to the brain, which change the way we think, feel, and behave. Interestingly, and I once did a FameLab entry about this. It went horribly wrong. That's another story. You might be able to find it on the internet. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Interestingly, fat tissue also produces cytokines that talks to our brain and changes the way we think, feel, and behave. That's really exciting. Anyway. I'm getting on a tangent. If you want to hear more about that, let me know. Um, you can always contact me on Instagram, where I'm the PHD Life Coach, on Twitter, where I'm still Dr Vikki Burns, although if you search the PhD Life Coach, you'll find me anyway, or through my website. So let me know if you want to know more about that stuff. </div> <div> But basically, all of these behaviors actually induce physiological changes in our body that can change the way we think, feel, and behave. So acting first can directly, biologically change all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second reason is because you're changing your circumstance, and whilst changing your circumstance doesn't necessarily change the way you think and feel, you can train yourself to do so. When you take an action, that means the result is you go out on a walk, your circumstance is now, I am on a walk. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when you're on a walk, you can have whatever thoughts you choose to have. And for some of you, it might be, I hate walking. This is boring. Why am I even doing this? Hope this is over soon. In which case you'll get a little bit of biological benefit, but you won't get as much psychological benefit. I know that for me, even unconsciously, even in my unintentional model, I like being on a walk. And so the tendency is for my thoughts to be, Oh, this is so nice. I'm so glad I got myself out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's why it's really important what you pick for these act first things, because this only really becomes reinforcing if it's a task that once you're doing it, it's very easy for you to think thoughts that make you feel good. I have never stood in a shower and gone, Oh my God, I wish I hadn't done this. Never. Okay. So this is why I'm not suggesting you do act first for your HIIT routine or your, you know, something that you don't really want to be doing, or that you don't enjoy there in the moment. This is for things that as soon as you're doing it, you find it very easy to have thoughts that make you feel good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the second reason. So first, direct biological effects of the physical activity that you're doing, whether that's because of the exercise you're doing or the changes in temperature that you're experiencing or being in nature or those things. The second thing is putting yourself in situations where you know it's easier to think the intentional thoughts that you want to think, where they're more likely to come up just by chance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the third reason is it reminds our brains that we can do things that we didn't want to do in the moment. By taking something that actually is quite easy to do, when we don't particularly feel like it, i. e. things that we generally enjoy once we're doing them, we remind our brain that we don't have to actively want to do something in order to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can just intend to do it. We can do it because we planned it. We can do it because it needs doing, just that really pragmatic, okay, just needs doing thing. We don't have to generate all these really positive emotions in order to do it. And I talked about this a little bit last week when I was talking about being able to do boring things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So learning to act first, learning to act from a, Oh, well, we're going to do this because we know it makes us feel better and, you know, it's on plan, so let's go. If we can practice that with things that we actually quite like doing anyway, then we can sort of generate that feeling. for other tasks as well. Become sort of training for those tasks too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the fourth reason, I think I told you there were three, there's four. I've given you a fourth one. The fourth reason is because it gives you a glimpse of your future self. So I mentioned that I only do this with tasks that are really in line with who I want to be in the future. Okay, the Vikki that I want to be really consistently in the future, regularly goes out for walks, jumps in the shower without faffing about sitting on her bed on the phone for 20 minutes before she gets in there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Gotta love that! Don't tell me it hasn't happened to you. Um, she stretches regularly. She puts music on to make things feel nice and improve the mood. It's things that I want to do more in the future. And so when you then do them, even though you don't particularly feel like it in the moment, you're glimpsing that future you, where this is just part of what you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've talked before, and I'm going to do a whole episode about it, about motivation and the kind of spectrum of motivation, but one of the most beneficial forms of motivation is integrated motivation where you do it because it's what you do. It's just, it's just me. It's just what I do. And so the more we can generate a sense with some activities that we do them without thinking too much. They're just actions that we do. We're rehearsing that sort of integrated regulation and making it much more likely that these will just become part of our lifestyle and part of our future selves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what can you do on the basis of episode? I always want you to go away from these episodes and actually try something. I don't want these to be those podcasts that you kind of listen to with good intentions and then just wait for the next one and don't change anything in your life. So what I want you to do is I want you to pick one thing that you think fits that criteria that you might want to act without thinking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So something that you decide in advance that you, you mostly enjoy when you go and do it. That is something that you aspire to do more in the future, but that at the moment you sometimes procrastinate or put off. Okay, so. Pick your one thing. Oh, and the other thing is it needs to be plausible. Okay, it needs to be something that is actually achievable now. So maybe you have a desire to have regular massages, for example, and there's probably physiological benefits associated with that. But maybe that's not financially possible for you at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it needs to be something that always makes you feel better. That's in line with your future self, that you often procrastinate at the moment, but that is plausible to do in your current scenarios. Okay. And next time you're feeling a bit fuggy. Next time you're feeling like you're just not getting on with things. You can feel that you're procrastinating from tasks. I want you to just go and do the thing. </div> <div> Some of your brains will be going to, I'm going to do the thing and I'm going to do the thing every day. And I'm going to do the thing for 20 minutes and I'm going to do the thing. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You don't need to, we don't need a routine here. We don't need a new structure. So much goes wrong when we try and make things too complicated from the start. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just the next time you're feeling a bit meh. You're going to go and do the thing. Or the next time you think about doing the thing and hear yourself saying, Oh, I don't, I don't really feel like it today. That's when you're going to go, I know, but we're going to go anyway. And when you do, I want you to really try and remember and absorb how it feels. How long was it uncomfortable for? Usually hardly any time at all. For me, the ridiculous thing, and this is where it shows it is a little bit more about my thoughts and not just my physiology, is, once I've decided I'm doing the thing, I already feel somewhat better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when I start putting my shoes on, putting my coat on, putting my hat on at the moment, I'm recording this on the 1st of December and it's freezing! Um, when I start getting ready, I already feel a bit better. Okay, so it's not even the physiology of walking that makes me feel better, having made the decision that I'm going to do the thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So actually for me, I really feel uncomfortable for a very, very short amount of time. Notice that, because it makes it so much easier to decide to do the thing in the future if you're really aware, I'm going to feel uncomfortable for about three minutes, because I can't really be bothered. But after that, I feel fine. It's okay. I quite enjoy it. And then I start to feel better. </div> <div> And then I just want you to just be really mindful of the thoughts you have while you're out there and the feelings that you're generating for yourself. Really try and remember when it feels good, try and make that really vivid. Try and make that really stick in your mind so that next time you want to, there'll just be a little bit less resistance and it will be easier to act without thinking. </div> <div> I would love to know what activities you choose, whether you pick some of mine or whether you've got some others that you fancy trying out. Do let me know on Instagram or Twitter or through my website. Um, also on LinkedIn. Forget that. Always find me on LinkedIn too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As a final note, it's coming up to the end of the year now. I've got some amazing podcasts coming up. I am going to do shoutouts back to ones that I think you should listen to from last year, because there's a bunch of absolute crackers, um, back there too. So keep an eye out for those on my social media as I remind you on those. </div> <div> Make sure you are following me. Make sure you're on my mailing list so that you can come to my online free group coaching that I do once a month. Got one booked for December and for January. Keep an eye out for those. If you're not on my mailing list, you just go to my website, go to the work with me button, and then there's a sign up button there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You'll get occasional emails, they're not very regular, and access to those monthly free group coaching. I am also booking up workshops for next year, so I do PGR workshops, all the way through the year on a whole variety of topics, like how to write when struggling to write, how to be your own best supervisor. How to overcome imposter syndrome, what to do when you feel behind, what to do when you've got too much to do, all of these things. If you're a student, talk to your university, ask them to book them. They can book them one at a time, or they can book them in a series. They get a little bit cheaper the more you book. So talk to your universities about that. If you're an academic, you can book them at department level, at school level, university level. Whatever works for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also have supervisor training too. So if you're a member of staff and you think that would be of interest to your university, please do get in contact. you can use the form on my website, or I am Vikki@wemburycoaching.com. . You can find me, not a problem. So lots of different options to work together. Lots of ways that I can support you. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 11 Dec 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-13-why-you-should-act-without-thinking thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-12-five-things-you-probably-need-to-hear-right-now <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> If you're listening to this in real time, it's the beginning of December and we are on the final run in to the winter holidays. And I've had a ton of clients and workshops this month. It's been amazing. So had lots of new individual clients, both PhD students and academics, and done a bunch of workshops, including my supervisor workshops, which went really well. And one of the things that has really stuck out to me is how many people needed to hear the same things. So my clients come for a whole variety of different reasons. My workshops are on a whole variety of different topics, but often I spot themes that kind of run through the things that people are experiencing. And I think particularly in this run up to the winter break, where we've got two, three weeks left before the break, we just start seeing a lot of patterns. And so this week I'm going to be talking about five things that I think you need to hear right now, based on everything that I've seen with the rest of my clients this month. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hi everyone and welcome to episode 12 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. This is going to be one of those fun ones where I give you just a bunch of unrelated tips. So I did one last Christmas, if you haven't found it, please check it out, which was 10 things that I learned from Stardew Valley, the computer game that I'm still playing, worryingly addicted to. I also did one at the end of the sort of summer term. So in the run, in fact, it was one of my last ones before I finished for my wedding and long summer break, where it was seven things I've learned this year. And that's actually one of my most listened to episodes. If you haven't checked it out, then do. They're completely unrelated to each other. There was no particular pattern to the things I was talking about. It was just reflections I've had from the year. And it seems to have resonated with people a lot. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this is going to be another one like that. And as I say, this has really come out of listening to all my different clients and noticing patterns in what they're experiencing. <span> So today we have five things that I think you are likely to need to hear right now. And the first one is it's not just you that's finding this hard. One of the most common things I see causing issues with clients is when they believe that the fact they're finding things difficult at the moment means something about them. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> So these are people who are doing their PhDs, working in academia, senior leaders. I work up to a really high level. And lots of people are feeling like they've got too much to do, that they're not getting things done, that they're not producing work to the quality that they want it to, they're not even being the colleague they want to be because they're kind of rushing around and not able to do things to help other people as much as they want to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then they're finishing the night feeling exhausted, feeling like they haven't done half the things on their to do list that they intended to do, and beating themselves up. for it. And what I see is a lot of people making the fact that they're finding it difficult mean that they're not good enough to be in academia. That they will never get a permanent job, or that they will never get promoted, or they will never get recognized as much as their colleagues. That maybe they should be doing something else. That other people can't possibly find it as difficult as you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm here to tell you that that's just not true. It's tough out there at the moment. And virtually everyone is finding it difficult. For different reasons, admittedly. And different people in different situations have things that make it harder for them or easier for them. But everyone's finding it hard. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This doesn't mean anything about you, it doesn't mean anything about your abilities, and it definitely doesn't mean anything about your prospects. And the reason that's so important is partly because we can stop making it mean something about us, thinking that this is something specific to us and we're like weirdly incompetent or weirdly fragile. But it also means that we can keep a little eye on that perfectionist side of ourselves, you know, the bit of you that's telling you that you have to do it really well, and you have to do it on time, and you have to do everything to the best of your ability, and you simply don't have time. It helps to know that other people aren't doing it brilliantly either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember once missing a deadline. There was some admin deadline. I can't remember what, some form or other that I had to fill in. And I, I hadn't done it and I felt really bad about it. And I submitted it to the office staff like two days late or something like that with a hugely apologetic email about, you know, I'm sorry, I held you up, you know, all this stuff's been going on, da, da, da, and they came back and were like, firstly, we don't mind when you're late because you're always nice to us and apologize, so, you know, we cope, but secondly, we only five other people in the department have actually submitted it anyway, so you're way ahead of most people. </div> <div> And I've had the same with submitting book chapters as well, where I've written a big, grovelly message asking for a week's extension because I can't possibly get it done by the deadline, and the editors responded with oh, I've given somebody else six months, so take as long as you need. But I'm like, what? Okay, I can just ask.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So remember, other people are finding it hard. Other people are not living up to the standards to which you're trying to hold yourself. It's okay. Yes, we can try and do the super important things well, but let's just try and get some of the other stuff done. And worry a bit less about whether it's perfect. No one else is doing everything perfectly. No one else has got an empty to do list. No one else feels on top. It's fine. I remember I used to say, I don't need to have my head above the the surface anymore. I just need a good snorkel. </div> <div> And whilst I don't think I even really knew what I meant by a good snorkel, it was that, I think looking back, it was that idea that you don't have to panic about not being on top. No one's ever on top during the academic year. It's fine. But if we have a snorkel, if we look after ourselves, if we remind ourselves that this is entirely normal, then we can actually tootle along slightly behind for a really long time without having to feel terrible. So that's my first thing that I think you need to hear.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My second is that you don't have to do all the things on your list. And, plot twist, you're not going to do all the things on your to do list. Every single one of us has made a to do list, around this time of year for things that we're going to get done before we break up for Christmas. And every single year, we've said we have to do all the things. And as we get closer and closer to the deadline, we've taken things off it because we're like there's no way I'm going to get that done. That's going to have to wait till January. But we usually don't admit it until the very last minute that it's not going to happen and it will have to wait.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we admit it in a way where we criticize ourselves a lot for it and feel really bad about it. And when we sometimes maybe even make it worse for other people because we don't give them a heads up in advance that we're not going to be able to do this thing and we maybe need some more time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to look at your list. Look at the ridiculously cutely over optimistic list you've made. I know you have, we all have, this ridiculously cute, overexcited list of all the things you're going to finish before the holidays, or during the holidays, even worse. We'll talk about that one another day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All these things we're going to finish, just look at it now, take a few off it. I want you to find at least two things that you can throw into January, and I want you to find at least two things that you can just decide you're not doing. And I want you to find at least two things that you can just smash out quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can't remember whether I've ever said this on a podcast before, but with a client I used to work with, we laughed a lot at the idea you don't have to correct the fonts in a form. So you know those stupid word forms that all universities have for quality assurance or whatever it is, and they're just the most badly designed things you've ever seen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And every time you write in it, the fonts change. If the fonts don't work, don't correct them. Just write your stuff in them. It's fine. The fonts are somebody else's problem. We spend so much time trying to make something look tidy because we want to do it properly. Just put your stuff in the form and hand it in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If they can't give us a form that works properly, then that's on them, not us. Sorry, university people, but it's true. It's true. Decide what things you're just going to get done. Have you got modules review to do? Have a ponder. You know, it's important to reflect on our teaching. Take 10 minutes. Write down a few useful points. It is better done than sitting on your to do list stressing you out. So, two things to throw forward, two things to just not do, and two things that you can just do badly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you owe anyone feedback? If you owe them feedback, how can you give them quick and dirty feedback now, rather than detailed feedback in two weeks? Because trust me, if you're a supervisor, I coach your students, I coach students like your students and trust me they almost always would rather get some quick feedback about whether they're roughly on the right line so they can keep moving and stop imagining what it is that the supervisor's thinking and why they haven't been back in touch, than to wait and have really really detailed feedback later. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have that conversation, see what might be useful to keep them moving in the meantime. Students, if you're waiting for feedback, please, please, please remember the context that your supervisors are working in. There's a ton of other stuff you can do. Let's not use our time making up stories about why the supervisor hasn't replied yet because your work was that terrible. Let's just assume your work was probably fine and they're drowning. So speak to them, see if there's quick advice you can get, but also focus on your own stuff and things that are in our control. That's not one of my five. That's a little sneaky extra for PhD students. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number three is a soppy one. But I think it's an important one to remember, which is that someone out there is doing something now that they love because of you. So any of you that teach, there are people who appreciate you in a way that you will probably never understand. The thing that. used to really surprise me when I was a lecturer was which students thanked me for things. </div> <div> So I would get emails from people like at the end of the academic year or the module or whatever, thanking me for the module. And sometimes it was from the people I expected. Sometimes it was from people who were really engaged and did all the extra stuff. And so I knew them quite well and things. And that was always nice. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I love hearing from those students, but the ones that always used to really touch me were when I got an email from somebody where I was a bit like, don't remember who you are, especially in a big lecture. It's really hard to know all your students and things, but I can remember a few specific occasions where I got messages from people saying what a difference my teaching had made and how they were going to do this thing in their career now because of loving the module things and I had no idea. No idea that I'd had an impact on these students because they were the quiet ones that just got on and did their thing and you don't always know the impact that you're having. Somebody out there is grateful to you. Somebody is glad that you've done the things you've done. Someone is where they are because of you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> PhD students, this is true of you too. You might not be involved in teaching, it might be a lower level, but I bet you've done outreach, or I bet you've been involved in an open day. When I look back, and I think of the number of open days I worked, and the number of people who came to those open days, talked to me, and then for a whole variety of reasons, I'm not saying because of me, but talked to me and then for a variety of reasons came to my university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they had the undergrad experience they had partly because of those interactions that we had at Open Day. Any of you who have been ambassadors on Open Days and done the tours and all those sorts of things. It makes a huge difference. You are having impact that you probably don't even see. And it's so important to remember that when you're drowning in tasks and feeling like nothing's going well, you've changed people's lives. That's what I'm saying. You have changed people's lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tip four, you can find something boring and do it anyway. I had a really wonderful workshop with my membership students from the University of Birmingham where I have the ongoing membership program, where they have access to two sessions a week of group coaching. We had a session about doing jobs that are boring. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things that was really interesting was that everybody believed that in order to do tasks that are boring, you have to make them less boring. And yes, there's things we can do to do that. We can, we can do body doubling where we work with somebody else. We can put nice music on, get a hot drink, you know, light a candle. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of my students has got a writing candle that she only burns when she's writing now. And now the scent puts her like in writing mode, which I just love as an idea. So we can make it pleasant. We can do things to make it slightly less boring. But, I know this sounds, this was revolutionary to me. Some of you might be just going, this is not revolutionary. But I'm going with it because it was, the students loved it when we talked about it. Which is, something can be boring and you can choose to do it anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So on this podcast, I often talk about our inner voice and how we talk to ourselves. And one of the ways that we try and encourage people to talk to themselves is a more compassionate way. So sort of avoiding falling into those kinds of self critical voices that we often hear and thinking in a more compassionate way, but as we get further through this process, you can generate different types of thoughts that help you. And I am a big fan of very pragmatic, slightly bossy women. They're my favourite people. I love them. Hopefully I am one, who knows? But I love having those people in my life.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so one of the things that I do is, as well as having a kind of compassionate It's okay, I understand that you're finding this hard, that kind of voice. I have that kind of compassionate, understanding voice, because I really need that.  <span> But, I also have a slightly pragmatic, bossy voice, that I really find useful. And, for me, it sounds something like Why did you expect to be able to do a job without doing anything boring? Come on, chop chop, let's go. That kind of just, well, yeah, obviously, you need to do something boring. Why don't we just do it?  </span> <span> That kind of voice, not a, oh, you shouldn't find it boring, not a kind of you get on with it, you'll say lazy, critical voice. Just a very pragmatic, well, yes, obviously. Should we do it anyway? Let's go, kind of voice. And I'd really encourage you to explore that sort of voice. Ask yourself, are you willing to do something boring in order to get this done? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> The other thing that my students found really useful this week was the notion that it's a lot more boring to faff about not doing a task and constantly see it on your to do list over and over and over and over again than it is just to do the task. So ask yourself, how boring is it to do this task versus how boring is it knowing I haven't done it, worrying about whether someone's going to tell me off about it and trying to gee myself up to do it and then deciding not to after all.  <span> Okay, you can have boring tasks and you can do them without making them any more interesting. We can just get them done. So consider me the bossy, pragmatic woman telling you that right now. And forgive me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> My final one. We're back to soppy again. My final one is that what you do matters. There is nothing I love more than the very beginning of my workshops, where I always get my PhD students, my supervisors, to tell me what they do. What specifically they research. I don't want to know that you're a geography student.  <span> I want to know what you're researching. So whatever topic, whatever discipline you're in, I want to know the specific thing you're researching. And I love it because I just hear all this incredible, fascinating research that is happening all over the world. I was going to say the country, but I do talks internationally now as well. </span> </div> <div> So I hear all this incredible work. So PhD students, you're doing such important, interesting research that has an impact on the world or is just interesting and kind of for the betterment of the human soul or whatever it is, whether it's got pragmatic application or not. It's such interesting and important work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lecturers, professors, you're doing research, you're doing teaching, you're doing administration, you are keeping these institutions running at a time that is really challenging for so many people. You are looking after these students, you're giving them transformative experiences while doing your own research. You're all doing stuff that matters.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we get bogged down in the there's too many things to do, I can't possibly do them all and feeling overburdened by everything. It's really easy to lose sight of how important what we're doing is. And I don't say that to encourage you to overwork. Okay, I don't say that to encourage you to burn yourself out desperately trying to do this thing because it's so important. That's not why I tell you.  </div> <div> I'm telling you because it's so important you recognize how important your work is and how important it is that you can sustainably contribute to that work. Because your work isn't going to be important just from now till Christmas. Your work is important from now in the future for years and decades. We need you to look after yourselves. We need you to be able to continue to do this important stuff. So please try and remember you matter, what you do matters, and you can look after yourself in this challenging period. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope those five things are useful. So a rundown. It's not just you that's finding it hard. Don't make it mean anything that you're finding it hard. It doesn't. Everyone's finding it hard right now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Second one, you don't have to do all the things. Go delete some things from your to do list. And really query when you get a thought in your brain that tells you no, no, no, but I actually do. Vikki doesn't know. She hasn't seen my list. I really do have to do them all. Really query the thoughts you're having that are making you think that. Because it's not true. Because you're not going to do them all. Because there's too many. You told me there's too many. Okay? You're not going to. So what we get to do is we get to decide which ones we put down, rather than reaching the end of term and just seeing which ones fall off the edges. Okay, decide mindfully now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Third one, someone out there is doing what they're doing because of you. You have had impact on far more people than you think. Don't forget that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Fourth one, you can do boring things. They don't have to make them interesting. You can just crack on, get them done. They're gone. Don't have to be bored anymore. Just get on with it. You'll be fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the final one, what you do matters. You're part of a bigger picture. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening. We are going to have a bunch of podcasts about looking after yourself in the run up to Christmas and all of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Final thing though. If, especially if you're new to the podcast, but even if you are one of my diehards, who's been here since the beginning, I want to send you back to this time last year, because I have an episode called how to avoid the end of year panic, listen to it now, super useful. I have an episode that was episode seven, by the way, episode 11 is how to rest over the holiday period. </div> <div> Definitely make sure you check that one out. PhD students, one specially for you, episode nine, How to Cope with Annoying Comments at Christmas. This is for everybody who gets asked, Oh, are you going to finish yet? When are you going to get a proper job? Oh, does it take a long time to write it? Any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Academics, probably relevant for you too. My Nana used to ask me every single holiday if I was enjoying having a month off because the students weren't there. Never quite understood that I kind of still have work to do. So check that one out for sure. If you're starting to think about reviewing this year and setting goals for next year, which you absolutely should be, please do check out episode 10. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was my first guest episode with the amazing Professor Jenn Cumming. It takes you through a whole bunch of questions that will allow you to review your year in a strengths based way. So instead of looking at what we didn't do, it looks at what we did well, how we brought our strengths to it, and how we can take those strengths into the next year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Definitely look at that one. I've already mentioned the 10 lessons I learned in Stardew. Check that out. And then I will remind you again nearer the time, but there is also one, episode 12, with um, the wonderful Dr. Karin Nordin about how to set New Year's resolutions. So go for some nice crispy winter walks, stick your headphones in, listen to these podcasts and look after yourself in the run up to the break. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 04 Dec 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-12-five-things-you-probably-need-to-hear-right-now thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-11-how-to-manage-your-emotions-when-everyone-is-stressed <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> If you're listening to this in real time, it's the end of November 2023 and it's that time of year when it just feels like everybody around us is getting stressed. It's the run up to Christmas, we're finishing things off for the end of term, we're trying to achieve our final goals, we're trying to get ready for the holidays, we're thinking about what we want to achieve next year and everyone's kind of run out of energy. And to be honest, if you're listening to this at a different time, you may well be feeling like that anyway, because more and more the academic year feels like that all year round. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> If you're trying really hard to kind of look after yourself and stay on top of your own stress levels, but you're finding yourself surrounded by other people who are stressed, other people who are complaining, then this is the perfect episode for you. We are going to be thinking about how can you manage your mind when those around you are losing theirs without needing to push them out of your lives, without needing to solve their problems, how can we study our own emotions and look after ourselves, no matter what is happening around us?  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the PhD Life Coach and we're going to be thinking about how to manage your mind when everybody around you seems to be feeling stressed, too. Now this has come up partly because of some supervisor training that I've been doing. So, as you know, I run workshops for PhD students, but I have now also developed training for supervisors, which really thinks about us as humans in this supervisory relationship. I know from coaching PhD students that your supervisors have an enormous impact on your experience as PhD students, and I know from my coaching of academics that the quality of your relationships you have and your experience of supervision affects your experience of academia too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a two sided thing. And so my supervisor training is really designed to help supervisors figure out what relationship they want with their PhD students and how to be more intentional about how they create that within the context that we're not superhuman supervisory machines and that we're all too busy, overworked, and feeling under pressure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it's a really cool course. Hit me up if you wanna know more about it. But the reason why I wanted to talk more about it today was because some of the tools that I introduced in that I think are really useful for lots of people, because what I see when I talk to students and when I talk to members of staff is that the people around us can have a really profound effect on our stress. I want you to imagine you go into the department, you bump into a colleague, whether it's a fellow PhD student, fellow academic, whatever stage you're at, you bump into them in the corridor, they tell you all about how they've got too much to do and they don't know how they're going to do it, and so you sort of listen to that and empathize and feel, yeah, it is like that, isn't it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get settled in your office or at your desk and somebody else comes over to moan about their supervisor. Or to complain about university administration not being effective or to complain that things should be doing differently and then you're just about to try and get going on what you intended to do and somebody else needs your help because no one else will help them and they've been abandoned and all of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And suddenly we're in this position where we are surrounded by people that are having their own struggles and who sometimes remind us of our struggles. I certainly experienced those days where you go in and feel like, Okay, actually I'm going to get on it today. There's stuff I want to do, I'm feeling okay. And by the time you've talked to a few people in the corridor, You've lost the whole will to get on with anything because we allow their emotions to sort of infiltrate our emotions. When they're feeling like that, we change the way we think and the way we feel, and it can have really profound effects on our actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, you might have seen things on Instagram and other bits of the internet where they talk about you know, mood suckers and eliminate them from your life because you need to surround yourself with positive people. No. No, no, no, no. A. Not realistic. B. Not desirable. C. What about people who have mood disorders, mental health problems, etc, etc? Not useful! We're not shutting anybody out here. We don't need to shut anybody out here. Because shutting them out implies that we have no other way of coping or managing this. We can still have people around us who have whatever perspectives they have, and we can, with some skills, with some practice, with some support, be still responsible for our own emotions and behavior. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you find yourself thinking well, no, but people do upset me, people do frustrate me, they do affect my mood, then, that's okay, it's understandable, we're taught this stuff growing up. You know, how many times have you either said to a child or had said to you, oh don't say that, you'll hurt mummy's feelings? Okay, we get taught that we're responsible for other people's feelings and that they are responsible for our feelings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Today, what I want to introduce you to is a notion called emotional adulthood, and how this can enable us to take control over some of these things. So this is something that I was taught as part of my training through the Life Coach School with Brooke Castillo. And she talks about this notion of emotional adulthood, which is taking responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's saying that whatever circumstance I'm in, so whatever the factual situation is, whatever people's behavior is, I am responsible for the thoughts that I choose to focus on and the feelings that I therefore experience. Okay, this is not saying... I always have to put a bunch of caveats up because people always have perspectives on this I can probably hear you say, yeah, but does that excuse bullying? What if people are behaving unacceptably? And of course, if somebody is bullying you, I wouldn't want the thoughts that you choose to be. That's okay, I can put up with it. You might prefer to choose thoughts like, This is unacceptable, and I'm going to do something about it, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, being responsible for your thoughts and feelings doesn't mean always thinking positive thoughts, and it doesn't mean only experiencing positive emotions. It means accepting that if you are feeling frustrated in the moment, it is because you are thinking, they shouldn't speak to me like that. Now, if you stand by that, you think they shouldn't speak to you like that, happy days, we get to be frustrated and we get to decide what we want to do from a place of frustration. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's fine. But we also can recognize that there are a bunch of other thoughts we can choose to have about that situation. And the joy with emotional adulthood, if we can take responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings, is it means we don't have that situation where people can drag us down, people can ruin our moods, where people can upset our intentions. It also means we're not dependent on other people to make us feel happy. Or to make us feel secure, or make us feel confident. Because that's the flip side of this. If we are on one hand at the sort of whim of the people around us to determine our mood, because they affect our mood, we believe directly, then the opposite is also true, that we rely on those around us to make us feel better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's something I see in the supervisor student relationship a lot, that students want their supervisor to make them feel secure. They want them to make them feel confident. And one of the exercises we often do in coaching is to identify what you want to hear from your supervisor and figure out how you can tell that to yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So often I'll have a client and they'll say, I just want my supervisor to tell me I'm doing a good job. And what we do instead, because we don't have control over the supervisor, we, you know, we can request more positive feedback, but we don't know what we're going to get. What we do instead is figure out how can I make sure I'm telling myself I'm doing a good job? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Cause usually when we need to hear it from somebody else is exactly when we're not saying it to ourselves. So emotional adulthood is taking responsibility for your own thoughts and feelings.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, what does this have to do with being in an environment where everybody's feeling really stressed? It means that when somebody is telling you all about their stresses, you don't have to have the thought, yeah, they're right, things are rubbish, and get down about it. You don't have to have the thought, Oh, I need to help them. I need to make them feel better. You don't have to have the thought, Yeah, they're right. Everybody's completely out of order. This is terrible. ? You don't have to have any of those thoughts. You can think, Oh, they're having a really tough time right now, aren't they? That's a shame. Yeah, I feel bad for them. You can have a thought, That's a really interesting perspective. You can have a thought, yeah, those things are true, but I can still be okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a whole bunch of thoughts that you can have that don't translate to you immediately just sucking up the emotions of those around you. And it's not easy, okay? I'm not gonna lie, you're not gonna listen to this podcast and then just go away and it'll all be water off a duck's back, it doesn't bother you, yeah? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not that we don't empathize with the people around us. But there's a big difference between jumping in and joining in in their negative mood and empathizing and staying with them. So as coaches, we get taught how to hold space and how to, we call it, not get in the pool. So I will never jump in and be like, Oh my gosh, yes, it sounds like your supervisor's horrible. Oh, you definitely have too much to do. That's terrible. We'll never do that in a coaching session. That doesn't mean I don't empathize with you. That doesn't mean I don't say, Wow, okay, that sounds like a lot. Yeah, I can, I can see why you're feeling like this, if those are your thoughts. I can see that this supervisor's not behaving the way you wanted them to. That must be really hard for you to accept.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, I can empathize. I can understand your emotions. I can understand your thoughts without jumping in and telling you that you're right. And sometimes we can channel that a little bit more in our... personal interactions at work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't mean start coaching people. Never start coaching people without their consent. Don't just jump in but you can choose not to get in the pool with them. You can watch the thoughts they're having and think how interesting it is and to decide how you want to respond to those thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that people always say when we talk about emotional adulthood is that some elements of our emotional reaction to things are not within our control. And I agree, especially if we have mental health problems, there can be biological causes for the things that we're experiencing. Anybody who has menstrual cycles will have experienced the impact that hormonal changes can have on how we perceive things and people that have experienced trauma in their lives may also find themselves reacting in a more heightened way or in an inappropriate way because of those past experiences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of that is absolutely real, is absolutely true, but it doesn't negate the fact that we still get to choose what we think about that. So one of the things that I've noticed is when I'm being a bit hormonally irrational, what really helps in my thought processes is just acknowledging that that's the case. And not in a blaming myself way, but in a, yeah, things always feel a bit worse at this time of the month. That's okay. We don't have to turn this into, and I need to change my life and I need a new job and I need to change everything. We don't need to, because we know that at this time, everything feels like a really big deal. And that's okay. Because I can look after myself in that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I don't try and tell myself it's not a big deal, because, you know, arguing with a hormonal person, we've probably all tried it, not ideal. And especially when it's ourselves. Well, yeah, I don't have to convince myself it's not a big deal. I just have to remind myself that, yeah, it feels like a massive deal at the moment, and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So by taking responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings, it slightly buffers us from all the people around us. And that might sound a little bit heartless, you might be thinking, but I don't want to be separate from these people, I want to help them, I want to improve that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I would argue that jumping in the pool with them and getting down too, getting stressed and overwhelmed too, doesn't help anyone. It doesn't make you feel better, it doesn't help them, and it creates an environment that becomes self fulfilling. Because if we all are just at the whim of each other, then I listen to you being overwhelmed and stressed and anxious, and then I talk to somebody else about how overwhelmed and stressed and anxious I am, and they talk to somebody else, and then it just spreads like wildfire through departments and we've all seen it happen.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So being responsible for your own emotions doesn't make you heartless and it doesn't make you unempathetic. In fact, it enables you not only to look after yourself, but also to make positive change in the environment you're in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the other models that I talked about in my supervisor training actually comes from psychotherapy, but I'm not using it in a psychotherapy sense. And that is the Karpman Triangle. It's called the Drama Triangle. It was developed by somebody called Karpman. And it's a really useful model to help you understand human behavior. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So imagine a triangle, and in one corner it says victim, one corner it Karpman rescuer, and one corner it says persecutor. Victim, rescuer, persecutor. And what Karpman proposed is that when people are under pressure, when they're in difficult situations, they position themselves and other people in one of these places on the triangle. So maybe when we're feeling overwhelmed, we've got too much to do, we put ourselves in the position of victim. We say, this isn't fair, the sector's broken, everything's terrible, there's nothing I can do, I can't change anything, I can't improve anything, we're very much in this victim mode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, importantly, that's not saying that we're not affected by structural things. I very much believe that there are structural issues in academia at the moment. But when we take on the victim role, we abdicate all responsibility for any element of self regulation and just say it's entirely their fault. I can't do anything about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, and we then position others as either the baddies, the persecutors, the ones that are causing this, university management, who are ruining everything, as often we talk about, or we position other people as the potential rescuer. They should help me. My supervisor should be making me feel better about this. My head of school should be fixing this for me. And the problem here is we're always looking outside of ourselves for solutions. So instead of the victim taking responsibility for their own emotions and their own thoughts, and how they therefore behave, they look for others to either save them, or others to blame so they can pass on responsibility for why they're in this situation and what they're going to do about it. That's because it's easier. It's much easier to blame somebody else and it's much easier to expect others to swoop in and rescue you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other real key feature of this triangle is its volatility. How quickly you can flip from one to the other. So I want you to imagine a situation between a supervisor and a student here. And the student has positioned themselves in victim. They think they're not getting enough supervision. And they're going into a meeting where they are hoping that their supervisor will help them with this. So they've positioned their supervisor in potential rescuer mode here. And they have the conversation, and the supervisor says words to the effect of, really, you should be able to manage this for yourself. It's not something that I have time to give you more support with, so you need to go back and try again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What's going to happen if they stay in this drama triangle is that the student will likely quickly flip, so that the supervisor is now in villain. They're now in persecutor. Okay, they've gone from being a potential source of support to, to blame for my feelings. If you're not going to help me, then you're a baddie. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, that flicks. And so then the student might be like, well, that's not good enough. You should be, you know, you're not doing your job properly. That's not fair. So they're then starting to blame the supervisor. Now put yourself in the position of the supervisor, who a second ago was a potential rescuer in the eyes of the student, now is a potential persecutor, in the eyes of the student, and that doesn't feel nice. None of us want to be a villain. None of us want to be the persecutor. So we now flick with, well, you never try hard enough. You haven't done enough work. The only reason I haven't done your comments is because you were late giving them to me in the first place. You need to show more independence. And now the supervisor has swung themselves round into being victim and is putting the student in persecutor mode.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, we flick between them and those of you who are out there going, Oh, no, I'm nice. I'm nice to my students. I'm lovely. We don't have these problems. I want to ask, do you position yourself into the position of helper, position of rescuer? Because the other thing that happens is a student comes in saying, oh, I'm really struggling with this. I'm finding it difficult and the supervisor sweeps in. I can help with that. Let me do that bit for you. Let me make a plan for you. I'll give you the papers you need to read. I'll structure this out for you. I can monitor you more carefully.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you put yourself in this rescuer mode. And what happens, it sounds really nice. It sounds like you're helping. You want to do what's best for them. But what it does is it reinforces to the victim that they can't sort these things for themselves. It reinforces to the student that they need the supervisor to rescue them. It reinforces to the supervisor that the student isn't capable, And maybe it stays like that for a while, while the supervisor is able to help. But then maybe the supervisor starts to resent it a bit. They start to think, oh, I've helped this person so much, and they're not grateful, and they're not making any progress, and then the supervisor flicks themselves into victim and positions the student as the persecutor. I've given you all this help and you're still not pulling your weight. I've done so much for you and you don't seem to care.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when we position ourselves as rescuer, and we do that in a kind of contingent way, we expect a level of gratitude, we expect a level of personal change and development because we've helped them so much. When that doesn't happen, plot twist. It's probably not going to happen. Then suddenly we start feeling like the victim here, that the student's taking advantage of us, that we're doing too much for them. And the student is now in persecutor.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would be amazed if any of you listening to this today, haven't found yourself in this triangle. It might not be with your students and supervisors. It might be with managers. It might be with your family. It might be in relationships. Okay. We see the same dynamics. People who've done this in more of a psychotherapy context, see this with our families of origin. See this in the families that we live in now, I'd be amazed. So don't worry if you found yourself in one of these positions, it just makes you a human being.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when we start to notice it, we start to see the negative consequences of it, even the negative consequences of being the helper, being the rescuer. And by understanding it, we get to choose something different.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the years following Karpman's description of this triangle, Choy described a triangle called the winner's triangle. I don't like that phrase, I'm just going to say. I don't think winners is a particularly helpful psychological construct, but I really like the triangle. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what Choi proposed is that instead of taking on the role of victim, we want to take on a role of creator. And this is where we take responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings. So that idea of emotional adulthood. And where we are willing to be vulnerable because we are taking responsibility without blame. We're able to share the things that we're finding difficult because we're not beating ourselves up for them. And we're not expecting others to beat us up for them. We're not having to protect ourselves. We're taking responsibility while admitting that we're finding things hard. That's the kind of creator role so that's the alternative to victim.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They then proposed coach instead of rescuer. So here, whereas the rescuer swoops in to try and fix it for them, the coach helps the creator to be self empowered, helps them to come up with their own solutions, provides some structure and support and prompts and challenges to think how can they help themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the final one is Challenger instead of Persecutor. Because sometimes things need to change. So none of this is about accepting whatever environment we're in. Maybe you're experiencing some bullying. Maybe your department is doing something inappropriately. Maybe there are things that you think should be done differently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we're in persecutor mode, we just moan about the baddies. We moan about university management not doing what they should be doing. We sort of fall victim to, it's unacceptable, it's not fair, all of those sorts of thoughts. In Challenger, we challenge constructively. We say, you're not responsible for my thoughts and feelings, but I am saying this is unacceptable. I am saying we should be doing this differently, and here's an option. Here's a way we could do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And similarly, it's not swooping in and fixing it, because sometimes that kind of challenger role, if we allow it to go to its extremes, it can put us in rescue mode. So one thing I see a lot is people who have very strong feelings about equality, diversity and inclusion, very important and very worthy feelings about those things, and they want to make things better in their environment. And they start out challenging and calling for it. And then when other people don't step up, they step into, I'm going to have to do it all, aren't I? I'm going to have to be the one that creates socials for all the different diverse groups. I'm going to be the one that has to set up new systems for these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And therefore they're putting themselves back into that original triangle. They're putting themselves back into rescuer mode because people didn't step up when they were in challenger mode. So we can flick between these two triangles. That's human. We're not going to beat ourselves up for that. But, trying to think intentionally about staying within the winner's triangle, the constructive triangle, whatever we want to call it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Staying within creator, where we take responsibility for ourselves. We're vulnerable and open because we can be kind to ourselves. Coach, where we seek to self empower others and ourselves. And challenger, where we seek to give constructive feedback to make a difference in things that are important without just fixing it all ourselves and without just blaming other people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I want you to think, where have you got difficult conversations coming up? Do you need to talk to your supervisor about some work that you haven't finished yet? Are you a supervisor who needs to talk to a student about deadlines that are being missed? How can you think through those interactions in advance? And think, how can I not go in there as victim? How can I not go in there seeking rescuing? How can I not go in there treating them as the persecutor here? How can I put myself in a position where I'm moving between being a creator responsible for my own thoughts, a coach, and a challenger? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love to hear how you get on with trying that. I think it can really fundamentally change the way our relationships work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing that came up when I was doing the supervisor training this week with it, we talked about these triangles in that. And a question that I got a few times was, what do you do if the other person stays in the original triangle? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's imagine you take on a more coaching role. Whichever way around. It doesn't have to be, you know, the student can coach the supervisor too. It doesn't have to be a hierarchical thing. You put yourself in the coaching role, and the other person stays firmly in victim mode. No I need you to solve this for me. And it is difficult. What I would really encourage is that you have to stand firm. You have to maybe help explain why you're doing it the way you're doing it. But what often happens is because it feels uncomfortable for you to be in coach mode while they're over here in victim mode, sometimes we feel that kind of pressure to go into rescuer mode because the victim will just feel so much better if we flop into rescue mode and just tell them what to do. In the short term, they feel so much better, but in the long term, we know it doesn't help. So we have to stand firm. So we have to coach ourselves. To remind ourselves that just because they are in victim mode, we don't have to rescue them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are responsible for their own thoughts and feelings. If they choose to stay in victim mode, that is entirely up to them. All we can do is create environments in which we're happy with our behavior. We're comfortable that we've stayed in coach mode and hope that in time we can help them to see how beneficial that is. So stand firm.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now one of the things that's challenging about all this stuff, as always, is this all sounds very nice, Vikki, but how do I do it in the moment? And this is something I touched on briefly last week. If you haven't listened to last week's episode with Alex Connor, where we talked about ADHD, maybe because you don't have ADHD and you didn't think it was relevant. Listen to it anyway, I promise. There's stuff for everyone in there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things that he talked about is how somebody with ADHD is likely to never be able to thought plan their way out of some inappropriate reactions. So if you have ADHD, you have problems with emotional regulation, you are probably at some point going to snap defensively when somebody offers you criticism, for example. And yes, we can work on developing that, but it's probably going to happen. So if you're experiencing that and you're thinking, well, there's no way I can stop that happening and therefore, if it happens, then I failed at this emotional regulation. What I'd really encourage you to think is you now have a choice about how you respond to that. So in that primary moment, you responded defensively, let's say, you attacked back because you felt hurt, just like a dog who's in pain might snap at you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That bit, we might not be able to coach away, might be able to work on it, might be able to help us to develop the skills to take a breath and calm that moment, but we may not be able to coach that away, whether you've got ADHD or not. What we can coach is how you react to that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if we put I responded defensively in the circumstance line, that's just a fact, let's say, then we choose what we think about that. And often what we think about that, if we're unregulated, is I'm a terrible person, they're going to hate me, they're not going to want to work with me anymore, and then that makes us feel overwhelmed, or upset, or angry, or frustrated, or embarrassed, and all of those things, and then we start behaving in weird ways after that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So even if you have reacted in the moment, even if there in the meeting, you put yourself in victim mode or you put yourself in rescuer mode without meaning to, once that's happened, it becomes a circumstance and you get to choose how you respond to it. Now, imagine the difference. If you went into a meeting and you were feeling very victim y, you were feeling very, like, everything was everybody else's fault, and you went in and you had that conversation and things, and you weren't able to regulate yourself in the moment, and then after the meeting, you sort of realized what was happening and how you could have done it differently, then imagine the difference between thinking, oh no, I went in as a victim, they're going to think I'm useless, they're not going to want to work with me anymore, and thinking, ah, yeah. I could have handled that better, didn't I? Okay, it's understandable. I get it. I was under a lot of pressure, but that could have gone better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just think the different emotions there and the different actions there. Because if we make ourselves frustrated and we make ourselves embarrassed, we're probably going to hide from that person. We're probably going to avoid speaking about it. We might double down in our defensiveness, put them back in villain mode. Well, it was their fault. You know, I only reacted like that because they were horrible to me. Whereas if we can choose our thoughts about that uncontrolled reaction and go, yeah, that wasn't ideal. We can feel comfortable to go back and have a conversation and say, look, I'm sorry, that wasn't okay. Um, this is why, I have problems with emotional regulation or I got really wound up, but it wasn't okay. And I apologize for that. How can we move forwards? You can address it more readily.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way you can manage all of these things is by going back to this idea of boss mode that we often talk about in the podcast. So boss mode is where we sort of almost lift ourselves out of our student selves or our current academic selves and make ourselves one level more senior than we are at the moment. And in that mode, we get to think how we support this person.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, if you have a potentially difficult meeting coming up, or a presentation coming up where you think you might get challenged, and you might feel like a victim, or you might struggle to regulate your emotions, you get to sort of look ahead and be like, Ooh, I've got that thing. I'm worried about that thing. I'm worried how I'm going to react then. You can put yourself into boss mode, take a nice notebook and a hot drink and go and think, how do I want to show up? How would I show up if I was in creator mode? Where I'm vulnerable, willing to share that I'm finding things difficult. So... If you're going in and you're asking for support, victim might be, I just don't know what to do. I haven't, you know, I need you to help me. I'm just not coping, victim mode. Or creator mode. We go in and say, okay, this thing is specifically what I'm finding difficult. I know, you know, I feel awkward about the fact I'm finding it difficult, but I, I am and I want to share that with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, this is the specific bit. This is how I've tried to help myself. This is, you know, how I'm taking responsibility for it, but I've really appreciate some thoughts and guidance about how I can take this forward. It's such a different conversation because you're thinking, okay, how would I show up if I was willing to show my vulnerabilities and I was taking responsibility for my behavior and for my progression.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, if there's something you've got to have a difficult conversation because you've got to tell somebody you're not happy with how things are, how different would it be if you were treating them as a persecutor? You're like, this is your fault. It shouldn't be like this. It's terrible. Versus going in there as a challenger saying, look, I understand why things are like this. I get where it comes from, but this is the impact that it has on me that I'm seeing, and these are the ways that I think it could be changed in the future. So you go in in that much more constructive way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, if you know you're having a meeting with somebody who's going to want your help, and you think they might position themselves as victim, what are you going to do in order to stay in coach mode? Yeah, we don't have to be good at this in the moment. We don't have to be able to just switch it on like a tap and be the perfect human being all the time. We don't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We get to look ahead and go, Oh yeah, that might be challenging. How could I show up? What could that look like? Yeah, even if it's just, I know we're all pressed for time, even if it's just in your head in that five minutes while you're walking to the meeting. Or in that five minutes while you're grabbing a drink before you turn your Zoom call on, even if it's just in that time, how do I want to show up? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What would that look like? How do I take responsibility for myself in this meeting? We get to just coach that so we can think it in advance by putting ourselves in boss mode, then in the meeting or in the interaction, whatever that interaction might be, we do our best, deep breaths, always help everything, taking that moment to pause before we react. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if we don't, if maybe it doesn't go as we want, then like we were saying with the ADHD stuff, you can put yourself in boss mode afterwards and go, okay, that went like that. I get it. I have compassion for the fact it went like that, but what can I do now to reconcile it for myself, to reconcile it for other people? So by putting yourself in boss mode, it can just help you to set these intentions, which makes it so much easier to then do in the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you expect yourself to just be able to react like this intuitively in the moment, then you're setting yourself up to find it really, really challenging. Let's choose intentionally, practice behaving like this, and then evaluate it afterwards and try again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It may be that what you want to prepare for is those more informal interactions. So if what you're finding is that when you go into the department, you're inundated with people telling you how terrible things are, and so you're finding yourself not going into the department, i. e. changing your circumstance, perhaps what you want to do instead is to put yourself in boss mode, and think, how am I going to regulate my own emotions when I go into the department and encounter people that are complaining to me? How am I going to retain thoughts that help me? How am I going to maintain emotions that I know will help me get things done? Whilst also giving time and space to my colleagues to have whatever emotional experience they're having. And you can plan that stuff in advance too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then finally, when we're in boss mode, we can also think about how we take responsibility for hearing the things we need to hear. Because like I said at the beginning, we often want to hear from our supervisor that we're good at things, that we've done enough, and so on. I want you to spend a little bit of time thinking, how can I make myself feel heard? How can I make myself feel more confident? How can I make myself feel valued? Because we are going to hear our own voice more than any other voice we ever hear in the whole world. And so we get to choose which thoughts we focus on more, so that if we want to feel more confident, we can think thoughts that make us feel more confident. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if we want to feel more secure, we can think thoughts that make us feel more secure. And if we want to feel happy, we can think thoughts that make us feel more happy. It's not a panacea. It's not going to fix every mental health problem that anybody has, but these things can really help. We don't have to make the negative thoughts go away. They can be there and we can choose to give more space to the thoughts that help us feel the way we want to feel in a particular context.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Remember. The way we want to feel in a particular context might not always be positive. When we look around the world, as it is at the moment, there is a whole lot of things that I feel angry about. And I'm sure you do too. There's a whole lot of things I feel upset about. There's a whole lot of things I feel scared about, to be honest. And I don't choose to make that go away. I know what thoughts are causing those. I know that I have a lot of thoughts about how politicians should run this world, how our leaders should behave, what decisions should be being made, and those thoughts are what make me angry and frustrated and scared, and I choose not to change those, because I think at the moment it's perfectly appropriate to feel angry, frustrated, and scared. So this isn't toxic positivity. This isn't make yourself feel happy, chappy all the time. This is knowing that even in those situations, you have responsibility for those thoughts. They just might feel completely appropriate for you right now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I choose to do instead is to focus on thoughts where it might lead to more purposeful action, where it might lead me to do something that might make a difference, or where in the short term, they can co exist, where I can say, I am really angry and upset and scared about what is happening in the world, but right now my focus is this task. Right now, I'm going to believe that it's important for me to record a podcast and speak to the people who are looking forward to this, because in my own little way, I'm supporting people out there in the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I choose to focus on that. So I allow the negative thoughts to be in my head. I allow them to be there because I think they're appropriate. I don't want to challenge those thoughts. I think they're perfectly fair. But at the same time, I give more space to the, I can make a difference to PhD students and academics who are having a really tough time and who are doing really, really important work by getting some of my work done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you can choose to do that too. There may be some negative thoughts that you don't want to think. They feel disproportionate. If you're thinking that everything's terrible and there's no point even bothering with my work. You might not want to keep that thought, because that's the sort of thought that, it doesn't lead to anything good, it doesn't lead to you making it better for anybody else, and it doesn't lead to you getting your stuff done either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that sort of thought, you might want to pick apart, you might want to challenge it. In what ways isn't it true, what else do I believe? Should the world be different? Yes. Can I still do my job? Yes, absolutely. I really hope this has been useful. It is a challenging time for an awful lot of people at the moment. Let's take responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings and have a lot of compassion for ourselves that we are in really tough circumstances right now, and that's okay. We can still support ourselves. We can still be kind to ourselves. We can still tell ourselves the things we need to hear and support ourselves through whatever we need to do over the next few weeks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Be kind to yourself. Doing all of this does take energy. You're not going to immediately find yourself able to regulate all of your emotions, and that's probably not even desirable. Be kind to yourself and reclaim some of this power over your own thoughts and emotions. Thank you so much. I hope you found this useful, and I will see you next week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 Nov 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-11-how-to-manage-your-emotions-when-everyone-is-stressed thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-10-how-to-do-academia-with-adhd-with-guest-dr-alex-conner <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode, we're going to be talking about all things ADHD. So whether you have it yourself, you think you might have it, you sometimes wonder, or whether you work with, know, or love people who do have ADHD, then you are going to learn so much about how to support yourself and how to support other people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just to give you a heads up though, before we start there's one very short mention of suicidal thoughts when we're talking about mental health in ADHD. It's not a big topic of discussion, but it does come up, so I wanted to mention it. And there is also a little bit more swearing in this episode than there usually is, so you have been warned. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach, and I have a guest with me again this week. I am super excited to introduce Alex Connor, who is a good friend and ex colleague of mine and expert in all things ADHD. So today we're going to be thinking about how ADHD impacts people while they're doing their PhD, what support they should be getting, and how they can support themselves through that process too. So Alex, tell us a little bit about you and what you do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Well, hello. It's nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I'm Alex. I've worked in, in ADHD. I have this thing called knowledge equity. I learned because someone told me which, so I've worked in brain science, as you well know, Vikki, for, for decades and including publishing a little bit on neurodivergent conditions, including ADHD, but I'm also a consultant now in ADHD, I'm an ADHD coach, but I have ADHD now. I was diagnosed as an adult. And what that's taught me is a lot of the science and a lot of the advice you give as an ADHD coach isn't particularly helpful. I often call it the ADHD hacks, tips and tricks that either don't work or stop working. Because we're all so different and really it's that, it's that sort of triumvirate that brings me to the table. I don't know about the word expert, that makes me nervous.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'll, I'll give the word expert, that's okay. You can borrow my belief in that for a while. And one of the things I love about talking with you about this stuff is you were right at the very beginning of my, my journey of...  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Inappropriately. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Inappropriately,at the beginning of my not diagnosis, and I'll tell that story as well. So I, I'm not diagnosed with ADHD. Um, I've always thought of myself as being relatively chaotic, but I get through by being kind of... clever and able to wing it, but that I'm very disorganized and all of those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, anyway, that was just my life. It was all good. And then, um, not long before the pandemic, actually, um, Alex and I knew each other in various ways through work. And we, um, we were having coffee to talk about different, like things we collaborate on and stuff, weren't we? And we got on talking about your ADHD and you said to me, anyway, when were you diagnosed? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I was like, um, What now? And you, I mean you can tell the story, but you were mortified, I remember.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh, it's not the first time I've done it as well. I approach that conversation very differentlyl these days, but yeah, awful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I guess from your point of view. We shouldn't be kind of just throwing around diagnoses, but I think I remember you telling me at the time that, um, it just hadn't crossed your mind that I didn't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Sorry.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love it. And it opened up so many things for me because it was from there that I started thinking, ah, All right. And started, you know, knowledge accumulator and all that started listening to podcasts and all that. This was before your podcast existed, but listening to, Kristen Carder's, Focussed podcast, entering her program ultimately. And the comedy bit is I'm still not diagnosed because I've waited two years on the waiting list. Finally got, um, referred for my appointment, forgot to fill the forms and got embarrassed that I hadn't replied to the emails and they discharged me a year later.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard the same story. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, anyway, so that's our background and how this all came about, but Alex, catch up to speed anybody listening who isn't, how would you define ADHD? Because we see tons of stuff on social media.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yeah. And, and, and the first thing is this, there's lots of different ways it presents any, anything on the TikToks or so on. It gives you a simple answer to what is complex. question, klaxons and red flags should be going because it's, it's not so clear. In general, in general, it's, it's a problem with how we, um, we convert our intention to do things with our action to do things. How, how we choose what to think about and for how long, and what not to think about. How to stop thinking about stuff, how to stop doing stuff, how to do stuff that we know we've got to do. We would really change the name if we could to Intention and Emotional Regulation Disorder because that's a lot of what it is, including our emotions. Really, a deficit in everybody's language means lack of, right, except scientists like us, medical people, which, where it also means, doesn't work properly. So we haven't got less attention. We just don't always get to choose what to pay attention to and for how long. And about half of us are hyperactive, maybe more actually as well, either internally or externally. And it can cause so many problems. Well, what it is medically is very different to how it feels. And that's...  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Before you go on Alex, sorry, we're going to do the interrupting thing because that's ADHD too. say a little bit more about that internally and externally thing because I think that's one of the things that meant it never got sort of seen in me earlier.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yeah, and actually, in gender terms, that's often the case. I am certain, after reading a lot of papers on this, that that's a cultural thing, that women and young girls are oppressed from demonstrating their hyperactivity, in the same way as young boys are. And so they internalize their hyperactivity, not, not all of them by no means. And, and what we notice is when you get to adult levels, the diagnostic levels are similar. Because everybody's culturally internalized and maybe even biologically internalized their hyperactivity. So I always say it's like there's bees in my head. It never bloody stops, except so I have quite a well established alcohol use disorder and other things. And that was the only thing I used to find apart from, uh, heroic amounts of cocaine that would just quieten it down for a while. Um, and, and if you've got this busy brain or busy body and I have both. It's inherently incredibly frustrating and kind of debilitating, or it was for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, for sure. I think mine probably falls somewhere in between the two, which is I think most people who know me would know it as verbal hyperactivity. So internally, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of 47 stories at once. Um, but the way it presented for me especially as a child, I'm somewhat better at kind of, some would say masking, some would say managing, um, it now, but as a child, it was certainly an absolute inability not to say the thing that was in my head, whether somebody else was talking, whether it was impertinent, whether it was just enthusiastic, whether it was, I remember being a teenager having, you know, when you have your first few jobs as a teenager and stuff. I could not work for somebody who I thought I knew how they should do it, and they didn't without telling them. how they should do their jobs.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Without being asked as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, without being asked. Absolutely. But it was in my head, so it was out of my mouth. And, um, yeah. And that, as you can imagine, sometimes it went really well, other times less so. I maintain I've grown into my ADHD because as you become a leader saying a lot of these things becomes more appropriate.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yeah. Yeah, it does. Power, social power and social capital are big things, aren't they? They allow it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure, for sure. Okay, so we know, well, do you know, I mean, I'm going to put you on the spot now. Do you know any statistics about students having sort of rates of ADHD amongst undergraduate students, research students?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yes, of course I do. Um, so, the numbers are always, science in ADHD is crap because it isn't funded properly, the researchers are fantastic, their levels of funding is laughable, so they do what they can with the money they've got, and it's great. So the estimates of ADHD in adults, generally in the population, in different countries as well, take out America, and... China and a few like that, but in general, you're looking at two and a half percent of the population, one in 40 people probably would qualify for an ADHD diagnosis, and the number of people being treated or medicated for that is vastly lower. So all these things about it's overdiagnosed, it's just nonsense. Um, what we know is that you, if you have ADHD, you are less likely to access higher education in the first place. If you get into university, you are less likely to, uh, get the grades concomitant with your intellectual ability because the structural barriers in place are, are ableist, frankly. You are less likely to stay in university. You're more likely to leave. And even after that, you are less likely to be employed concomitant with your intellectual and academic. qualifications. So I have numbers, but they're boring. Really it's, it's so obvious that we, we don't access it well enough. We don't do as well. And most of that, almost all of it actually would be mitigated back to standard normal levels with support and or treatment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What I find fascinating, and I don't know if there's research on this or whether it's just me speculating, is I meet an enormous number of women with ADHD in higher education, and I don't meet anywhere near as many men. And I wonder whether that's just my biases of who I'm meeting and who's talking to me, or whether it's something about women with ADHD kind of... plowing into the, you know, with, with education, there's like clear instructions and you're eager to please and you've got tons of energy and you're enthusiastic and you find it all interesting. And I see them struggling more with burnout and those sorts of things, rather than with low performance. The ones I, I've had, and I know there's a selection bias as to who I'm engaging with, but I was a personal tutor as you were for a really long time. And that was certainly a sort of pattern that I was seeing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: So the first thing to say is there are fewer men and women with ADHD than. Without in the whole higher education sector, it's, it isn't, it isn't a breeding ground for, you know, it isn't a career that's positive for ADHD. There aren't any really, there are better ones, but actually it's support we need. People with ADHD can do any career they want to, as long as they're supported in it, it's about intention and an ability. What we have noticed a lot, and predominantly, sorry about the anecdotes here, but what we've noticed, so I co founded a charity called ADHD Adult UK, and what we notice is that women, adult women, are much more likely to talk openly about their ADHD. The stigma is there for both genders, obviously, I'm using gender advisedly, um, but it does, there's far less, far less, um, reticence in, in adult women we've noticed and men. Men contact us on the down low so much and the, the, the terrified nature of admitting to anybody this thing is strange. It seems more than a lot of other psychiatric illnesses like, depression, anxiety, and none of them are particularly loved. If you consider your ADHD a difference, by the way, instead of a disability, I apologize. I'm not telling you what you are. You people can choose absolutely how they identify. I think it's somewhere in the middle for me, but I was just, just using it medically then. Yeah. I think it's more about culture.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, I think there's also just an element of like attracts like that, um, you know, I tended to talk after all my realizations, I tended to talk a bit about not just undiagnosed ADHD, but the things that I found difficult. And then I would get students approaching me going, Oh my goodness, you're a professor and you did this and you found that and you, and you, you struggle with this, you know, you, you fail to turn up to meetings or whatever it is. Um, and I think that's probably where I get exposed to a lot of women with ADHD is because they see me and then see me see it as a sort of a safe space to come and to come and talk to me, I think. Okay, so you sort of touched on this a little bit, but thinking specifically about PhD students and academics who are the, the sort of audience of this podcast, um, in what ways is academia challenging for people with ADHD? Um, other than in every possible way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yeah, I mean, it is a really... What I would, what I would do to answer this question, really, is, is I would have a look at the diagnostic symptoms of ADHD and I would choose any one at random and I would ask, how, how would that be if you had ADHD? How might that affect you? So, for example, if you look at the key challenges of postgraduate study or in academia, um, time management. organization of a PhD of experiments or research and, and, and the thesis, managing relationships with a hierarchy like a supervisor, facing feedback and criticism when you have rejection, sensitivity, emotional dysregulation, procrastination. You've got to start a thesis. It's a big, boring book. Finishing a single project when you're bored. Add to that that you're more likely to be a mature student with life baggage or children, as they like to be called, and any level of intersectionality adds a second additional stress onto that. The financial constraints, having to have more focused learning objectives when you're someone that struggles. It's like, it's like the anti ADHD, and I don't say that lightly. If it's your special interest, your hyper focus, then fantastic. Even then, achieving the actual PhD has phenomenally obvious structural barriers.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, for sure. And we'll talk in a second about what universities can do to support that. But in a, in a past podcast, I talked about getting my PhD and how I accidentally ended up in the most ridiculously supportive environment that I could have done. They didn't know it was an ADHD supportive environment. They weren't doing it on purpose. And to be honest, they weren't even doing it specifically for me. It was just how they supervised me. Um. And so I had never really experienced, and I'm still sort of figuring out in my head, how, how the things that I find difficult have impacted me versus not, because so much of the beginning of my academic career was in this very sort of supportive and connected, um, setting. Which meant that after that, there was many, many, many years of feeling incredibly overwhelmed and incredibly behind. whilst at the same time performing really well, which is a weird combination.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It is, but it's something I have to say a lot to people who say, but you did really well, is doing well is not the same as healthy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes, no, definitely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It's so important. It's so important. At the point at which I was probably, and I remember literally being called, oh yeah, you're the golden child or something like that, when, when I was doing all right, was that I thought seriously about suicide, uh, trigger warning, and you, you don't know what, nobody would understand why if they don't understand the difference between external and internal success and being something you're not and the, the, the massive, and this again, gendered, I know, but especially with women, making everybody else happy at the expense of your physical and mental health is, is, is a pandemic. And, and it's a gender heavy pandemic as well. I, I, I can't deny that really. And the amount it costs us and especially women is just huge.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So what should universities be doing more of? Because we have, we have academic listeners, um, in all sorts of different roles, but also for the PhD students that are listening, what should they be asking their universities for? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: No, it's really good. Follow the evidence firstly. So giving you, so you, I know you're not diagnosed, but I'm fairly certain I know how you'll react to this. So, how do you feel, Vikki, when I tell you that most universities give ADHD people who are bored in an exam an extra half an hour? Would that, would that have helped you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Not on any level.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: And actually the evidence, the papers say the same.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Time was not the problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: No, and there's some brilliant universities out there who are now giving structured, monitored exam breaks. So they stop the clock for 20 minutes and you just walk around a bit and then you're not allowed to chat but you can go and that I think is much healthier if that's what the individual needs, which is the main thing really, ask them. When you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD and we all express our... the core symptoms are very similar, the, the expression of them is based on our psychology and culture and lots of other things. So what would help, what has helped in the past, we have metacognition problems, so we often go, I don't know, I've never, I've never thought about it and that's not being obtuse, it's because we don't pay attention to what we pay attention to either. So maybe start with, when were you successful and when did that feel easier for you? Because there's success that comes at a cost and then there's success that feels like skiving, right? And, and I know, I know a little bit about your accidental ADHD friendly background. When you were having these lunchtime meetings that you thought was fun, but you were learning loads, that's what you need to do. You know, that's your, that's your reasonable adjustment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. That sort of, for me, anything that created social connection and enthusiasm, I can work as hard as you want without burning out as long as I'm enthusiastic about the thing. I don't get the kind of absolute hyper focus where the enthusiasm turns into, um, burnout feelings. My burnout comes when I'm trying to do lots of things that I don't want to do, and I don't think I should have to do, and that are boring, which as you can imagine, as I got further into this, it became more and more often. Um, but as long as I feel connected and enthusiastic, I can do loads and love it and still have a life outside it. Um, and so that's why I'm, you know, we talked. Before a bit about our, our own businesses, but that's part of what I'm trying to bring into my business more now, because I've worked on my own for a year and, um, trying to now think, right, actually I need to have some of this more social and sort of opportunities for enthusiasm with others and it's making a world of difference. So yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it. What, when has it been good for you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: I've got three or four just very quick examples of things that can work for some people with ADHD, most I would say, but before I do, if you're out there and you're thinking, wouldn't that work for everybody? Yes. Yes. We wish all the things that work for ADHD would work, we think for everybody. And so it doesn't need, we don't need special. It's just that this, this is this, we need this. It's not just, it would be ideal. We need it. It's like saying, you know, an elevator to the 50th floor would be ideal for everyone but for someone in a wheelchair it would be a requirement and that's why if this sounds like well isn't that everyone yes it is um but some of the things that might work is what we'd really love is if universities and some of them do this is to not demand a diagnosis for reasonable adjustments. They're reasonable for a reason, um, 90 percent of adults who would qualify of an ADHD diagnosis aren't diagnosed, 80 to 90%. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: The NHS waiting list is, can be up to 13 years at the moment, Vikki. So, most students who, who got referred by their NHS GPS at Freshers week would not be diagnosed by the time they graduate. So, it isn't super helpful to be saying they should be getting a diagnosis. When you're writing modules or courses, any learning objectives, any assessment, we would ask, we would like you to ask, What is this approach necessary to achieve the learning objectives. So if you are measuring time keeping in your module, great, include it. If you think, oh, well, they've got to be resilient. Are you measuring resilience and your definition of resilience? Well, they've got to be able to do that because they're resilient. Is that your job to measure resilience? And if it is great, knock yourself out. If it isn't, are you measuring working memory? Why? Why is that? You're, you know, if you're not, are you? I, as you know, I speak German, um, half of my life, and I thought I couldn't learn languages. And it turns out I don't have a working memory. That's a really short term scribble pad memory, not the, I've got good memory, good short term, good long term, but my scribble pad in front of me, I don't really have an effective one. Most of us don't have a good one. So when the bit about... in languages where they read you out a passage and then they say was Jean Luc or was it Henrietta that was at university? I would be thinking I've never heard those two names in my life. And so I couldn't answer the question. And that's not a problem with my, with my language. So if you're not testing working memory, why are you expecting people to remember? Um, education for the students, really for the staff though, and the support systems, it's a recognized neurodevelopmental disorder and the symptoms are manageable, both medically with drugs, medically with treatment and non medically with talking therapy and technical support. If you could shape teaching and the support of teaching the assessment to take into account executive dysfunction. And that means that the planning and organization the brain does, the higher order functioning of the brain. So, specific examples would be short, clear milestones written down. A deadline reminder would be really helpful as well. Um, if you could enable agency and empower students with ADHD to, to be able to, to self author how they achieve the learning objective. So what, helping them understand what their strengths are and why they're doing this, what are their goals? If, if it really doesn't matter how they demonstrate the understanding of, of a bridge being built to you, some of them might prefer an essay, some of them might prefer a presentation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: If it really doesn't matter what, you know, could we be flexible? Is that okay? Um, we burn with shame on feedback. Feedback can be the most destructive thing. There's a thing called Rejection Sensitive Disorder or dysphoria. No one likes rejection. Of course they don't. If you've got sunburn, a slap on the back hurts a lot more and it's a bit like that. Call it emotional sunburn sometimes. So solicited feedback. So if you, if you have a student and you, and you need them to know something, great. If you don't, asking a student what kind of feedback would be helpful. It's a fantastic way for them to, to author their own learning and then it isn't feedback. They're asking for constructive criticism. And then if you've got ADHD on, on its own, you're very much in the minority. Um, so promoting awareness of commonly coexisting conditions. I call that ADHD plus, which I've stolen unashamedly from the, from the deaf community. Any conversations around available support and adjustments, ask is, has this person got a coexisting condition as well? Depression, anxiety, um, they might be autistic, they're loads and loads of different things and some physical things as well. So that would be something we would really encourage. the last thing is if there's one bit of advice I can give any organisational group trying to support people with ADHD, it's to remember nothing about us without us. It's so important to listen to people with ADHD and hear what we're saying, because otherwise you end up with an extra half an hour on exams that doesn't help anyone.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is super useful because, like I say, it speaks to both the different parts of the audience of this podcast, I think it's really useful to know these. I would add one for myself, and I think it goes alongside that education of tutors. The thing that changed my mental health around all of this, unbelievably, when I realized that this might be what the issue was, was people who would respond to my issues with Oh yeah, of course you do that. Yeah. But yeah, well, that's okay. Rather than, whereas previously, so previously I would, um, well, I still do, you know, forget to put meetings in my diary or forget people's birthdays or, you know, carry on doing something for too long and then realize that I was meant to switch something or all those kinds of things that are really, really typical and tutors and lots of helpful people in my life would always say things like, Oh, you know, I don't understand because, you know, you know when it was, you had it in your diary, you looked at your diary. So I don't understand how you didn't just turn up those sorts of things, you know. Have you tried a planner?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Yes. I own all of them. And I might go and buy another one today, then it'll change my life. So we have a, so we have a podcast that's silly that I've got the background here. We're starting season two on November 6th. Vikki, if you want a massive, massive clanging plug.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: One of our merch is, is a t shirt that says ADHD making simple things look difficult. That's how it feels, right? Just awful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and, but somehow, and I don't know if this is just me, you can tell me, somehow it feels so much better to me, when someone says, well, yeah, of course that's hard. You know, what, how can, what ways can we make it easier rather than either the just word you just need to X, which for me always takes away the idea that this is hard. It's like, well, There's this really simple solution. Just do that. All that shock. I even went to coaches. It was partly why I wanted to train as a coach because I've had basic accountability coaches in the past who, when I would come, I just start avoiding them after a while, as I'm sure you can imagine, you know, I'd go to a coaching session and. They'd be like, Oh, so how did you get on? No, I didn't do any of those things. Oh, but you know, we went through the options and you pick the one you like best. You seemed really motivated and really keen. I was like, yeah, yeah, I was. Yeah. It was definitely what I wanted to do. Why I didn't. And they'd look at me like, like there was something wrong with me, but not like it was ADHD, you see what I mean? Like I was just. Completely inexplicable to them and just having coaches or friends who know about ADHD to say, of course not. That's okay. It's groundbreaking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Shame and the guilt. One thing that people think is that we get bored, we don't want to do things because we find them boring. No, we really are interested. Sometimes I can't hear verbal, verbal instructions. For example, if someone's talking to me, it's, it's like the words jumble in my head, even though I really, really am interested. I want to do these things more than anybody wants me to do them. The shame, the guilt, and the self hatred burns inside of me that I've done it again. And I look down and I've learned the kings and queens of England in order instead of applying for that promotion. And I can't believe it's happened again, again. And so what you're saying is that people saying to you, Oh yeah, of course, you know, because, because you, your brain works differently or it's a disorder, whichever you choose, and therefore your abilities here are clear, but you have challenges here. It's such a, such a relief. It almost makes me want to cry at the thought that I'm not just a dick. Yeah. Sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to. You can say that. It's all good. It's all good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. For me, and I think back in the day, probably when I was working with students previously, so I've got a few ex students on here before I knew all this, I would probably say these annoying things to them because I was saying them to myself. Yeah. So I inevitably was saying to my students, you just need to do this. You just need to get a system, dah, dah, dah. Whereas knowing what I know now, you telling me that about your, um, the Kings and Queens, partly I'd go off on a tangent about how I'm currently learning all the countries in Africa doing really well, but, um, I would also say. How can I sit with you while you write your promotion material? I know you're not doing that now, but you know what I mean. How can I sit with you while you do that? What would help?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: I had a coach, Vikki that said to me, Alex, the problem is you say you're going to do all these things, but self awareness without accountability is just whinging. It broke my heart because I agreed. And it's what I always thought about myself anyway. And, and, and that's why we ask people if you're coaching anyone with ADHD or you think might have, please get ADHD informed, just understand what the, what we're going through because it's just, it's so embarrassing sometimes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I've just remembered one more and then we're going to go on to what people can do for themselves. But the one more is help them remember what they have done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Because they won't have a clue. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I, I completely, you know, I genuinely tell people that I'm crap at finishing things that I never finished things. And it's like, I've published 50 odd articles. I've published a book. I've got to put, you know, I've, I've done my PhD. I've done all of these things. And I genuine, not so much now because I've coached on it and I'm much better at recognize and I have systems to help me see what I've done now. Um, but before I knew all this stuff, I would absolutely be fixated on the fact that I didn't do this, this, and this, and totally overlook the fact that I had done that, that, and that, which were actually really good and really, you know, really important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: So important. That's a really good one. Really good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, these things people ask for their, from their universities, what can people listening do for themselves? Because I'm aware that some of this is a little bit of a depressing narrative, it's a little bit of a you're probably going to struggle and it's probably not going to be a good environment for you. Um, and here at the PhD Life Coach, we always like to focus on what things can we think and do differently to help it. Not saying that the environment isn't structurally against you, but within that context, what can we do to make things more enjoyable, less painful?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: No, I think that's really good. Now, I wish I'd said something about the positivity right at the start that there are no, there is almost almost nothing we can't do. This narrative of, of don't ever say anything negative is a bit unfair because for example, it's literally illegal for me to be a commercial airline pilot because I have ADHD not allowed. So you can't say I can do what I want because I'm not allowed to. So there are, there are things we've got to but in general, in general, um, ADHD is really a sort of a question of ability. Well, what are you good at? And the evidence shows that if you avoid toxic positivity, that kind of, if you just got a planner, you'd be as good as me and then if you, if you eat turmeric, you'll cure your ADHD, all that bullshit. But instead of that, have a positive lens. So not dwelling and catastrophizing on the things you haven't done well, but thinking about the done list, exactly what you've just said, you're 50 odd papers, Vikki, that all the people you've helped, the things that you value. So it's starting to actually, you might need help to write down things you value because most of us, when we're asked what we like, we go, I do not know. What is the correct answer here? That's an issue, obviously. But really, yeah, having a positive lens about who you are and what you do, sense of humor, and someone to share the daft stuff with. Positive lens without moving into toxic positivity. Inspiration porn, we sometimes call it, is a really, really healthy approach. Body system works. If you've got ADHD traits and you find, oh, well, I have to get my mum over to help me tidy because I can't tidy. And then when you explore it, your mum's not doing anything. You just need someone there while you do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I do that all the time. All the time. So sometimes I'll let you into a little secret. This podcast gets... processed on a Sunday night, ready to go out at 5 a. m. Monday morning. I'm getting a lot better at doing it earlier, but I do that and I don't beat myself up for it. Sometimes it happens. And when I do, I've got a little sofa in my office there. I make Andy play computer games there while I'm processing, not recording. I record in advance, but when I'm processing, because being in a room with somebody else, not being on my own makes it a billion times easier to get on with, and I can't put my finger on why, but it absolutely works. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It's the body system, and it, we think it's, uh, oxytocin. That seems to be some evidence that it's because humans are a gregarious predator. That's what we are, and the gregarious nature of us means that we get validation and motivation, dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, from the existence of people in our sphere. And, and that, and, and then the problem with ADH ADHD is what you want to do. I want to, I want to edit this podcast a week in advance. And what your, your brain will allow you to do is based on the emotional reward of doing it. So if you know you want to do it, but your brain says, yeah, but I could leave it, so I'm not gonna get as much dopamine from doing it, the movement won't happen. But if there's someone there, it's more likely to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Do you know what I've learned with that? That's so interesting, because I never thought about it like that. And what's so interesting is what's really helped for me. And it's, I was about to put the caveat, it sounds ridiculous. I shouldn't put that caveat. It just helps me. Um, is enormous amounts of self praise. So the way I get myself... to do things if there are things that seem a bit boring or especially if there are things that I'm feeling some shame around because I should have done them before, should in inverted commas, um, then I do enormous amounts of self praise and I do it out loud. So I'll be like, look at you doing your emails. You're so organized. Let's carry on. And it sounds like toxic positivity, but it's not because it's not saying if you do this one thing, you'll be better. It's saying. Check you out, you know, you're doing this and we're cleaning and all those sorts of things. Look at you perfect housewife. We're getting this all sorted. Lovely, lovely. I'm so proud. I've done this. And then afterwards as well, it's something that my husband's very good at doing is the, I'm so glad we got that job done. I'm so glad the kitchen's clean now. Isn't it nice that we've done that? I'm so pleased we did that. And he does it almost to a kind of like you really notice how much he does it. Yeah. Um, and it helps so much.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It's so good. And can I add a really wanky addition that you can try doing, which we know works, but I find it very difficult, which is speak about yourself positively when no one's listening in the third person. . There's evidence that that helps too. . And, and that celebrating those little wins without, without. And this is tempting without then going, I wish I could always do it though, because we can't is really important to not the positive lens and then stop. It doesn't have to be forever. It's okay. . Things work sometimes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's a comment that actually comes up quite a lot in the PhD coaching I do with people with ADHD and without to be honest, is people often say they haven't done enough work today. And one of the things I really like to do is ask them to define what they mean by enough, because if enough means absolutely everything I planned and you planned it in an unrealistic way, then that's a probably challenging version of enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Anyway, one of the things we talk about is not planning your enough to be 100 percent of your best day, which is something I've seen, we've seen all PhD students, but especially people with ADHD do a lot. We have a day where we write 3000 words in one go without getting up and this was amazing or whatever. And then we beat ourselves up why we only wrote 200 words the following day. Not even at some unspecified day at the future, but like not recognizing that actually maybe yesterday was quite cognitively taxing and tiring and things. And we're like, no, if I could write 3000 yesterday, I can be at 18, 000 by the end of the week. Let's go. And I think that keeping that in your mind that we should have a kind of an in betweeny amount or at least recognize the, for those of you listening on the podcast I'm kind of waving my hands up and down like a bumpy graph. I sort of, some days you will do loads and other days you will do less and that's okay. That's a way of getting things done. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: That emotional acceptance is key. What, what, what you've just said about that, I need to get that done. That's my main tip for self. Look, what you can do for yourself is to not give yourself unwinnable tasks, goals. If your job is to tidy your house, you will fail every day. Because it could always be tidier and who, why, why would you set yourself up for failure every day? If you give yourself a small goal, such as empty half of the dishwasher. If you empty all of the dishwasher, you have tidied your house and you've smashed your goal. And, and this, and it's true in your PhD as well, and in your academic career as well, that however small you think you've made your goal, you've probably combined three small goals in one. And one of them is an emotional blockage. If you're wondering why you're procrastinating, it's that there's one small thing. It's usually, I don't know what to do or who to ask. And so the goal becomes to find that out, not to achieve it in the first place. That's, that is the number one really rule for, for, for success in academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I agree. One of the things we talk about in podcasting and coaching quite a bit is about being your own boss and essentially putting yourself into boss mode where you, your job is not to do any of the tasks, but to make it really easy for Vikki to do the tasks. If you see it, so you sort of lift yourself out of being the person who actually has to do it because most people with ADHD are able to tell somebody how they could organize themselves and stuff. It's, it, it doesn't seem, tell me if I'm wrong, it doesn't seem to be that we can't help others often, it's the, we then don't do it and myself and a lot of my clients, I found it really useful just to take that little bit of time and be like, okay, Vikki's feeling kind of confused right now, so let's just make a really specific list of, even if you're going to do a big clean. What are the 10 tasks you're going to do and exactly where the things are you need to do them? And what order are you going to do them in so that you can kind of go, okay. I'm going to follow this through. And that seems to help that kind of, I should do this, no I shouldn't, I should do that kind of feeling. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: That first task as well, in my experience, is always three tasks and we haven't realised. Yes. It happens every time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think that's something you practice as well. I see a lot of this sort of self support stuff, for me at least, to be a skill as well that I'm kind of learning what helps me, and sometimes I try things that I thought would help and they don't. I think buying new planners, um, and other times I try things and it's like, okay, that helps. And the other thing you mentioned about tips and hacks sort of stopping working. The other thing I've massively accepted recently is that I'm never going to come up with a system that works for me that I will just do forever. And so actually, if I can come up with an approach that helps me for the next month, wicked, let's do that. And as and when it's not working anymore, we can find another one, that's okay. It just maybe needs to not be spending two weeks designing your perfect Notion planner but accepting that you will change the way you like doing things and that's okay, I think can really help too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It really is. I have them on rotation. I have about 50 different things. I have them all. When they stop working, I don't know why they have. I'm really disappointed in myself. And, and I have to remind myself yet again, every tip and life hack and script for my own ADHD either works once for a reason, for a whole season, or rarely forever. And, and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure. Do you have any rules of thumb for those things though? Where, you know, there's different systems, there's different approaches that work at different times, but they always need to be this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Um, it's, it's retrospective, so I'm always surprised what works and what doesn't, because I think it's... So, one thing that always works for me is not having drawers. Okay. Because if I can't see it, there's a thing that babies under six months have called object impermanence, and they can't, if you hide the rattle or the keys from behind your back, they literally don't believe this exists. And psychologists all tell you that that doesn't happen in adults. I swear it does in me. I, out of sight, out of mind is a disease and it's a big part for a lot of ADHD. And so I don't have things in drawers. Everything is clear boxes or open. And it doesn't look as nice. I try and have pretty clear boxes and pretty things, just so it's a bit nicer. Um, that, that's fundamental. Otherwise it's gone. I'll just buy another one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: See, that's so fascinating. You talking about how things are different for different people. Yeah. I would be utterly overwhelmed. If I could see everything, in my head, that's a to do list. I can see all of it. So for me, I find it really useful to be able to put things away and have the one job that I need to do today on my desk. So we always, you know, if there's a letter that needs posting, it's out on the side. If there's, you know, that sort of thing. So we leave out the thing we need to do and everything else goes away so that I can see this is me and that envelope and I've got to put it in a postbox. That's the only thing I can see. That's the only thing I'm going to do. And that really helps.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It's interesting. So how do you remember? So if there's something you haven't used for a couple of months and you need it, how do you know where it is?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I've got better and better. So I have been gradually decluttering.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: You're a minimalist. That's what you are. Is that what you are? Is that how that works?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, that's so I've, I mean, my husband would laugh if he, you called me a minimalist. I'm definitely not a minimalist, but I probably own about 30 percent of what I owned in 2015, something like that. Um, and that's what's helped is, and I'm not quite there, this is a work in progress, but things work best where everything I own is in a specific place that makes sense and is labeled in some way. So bulbs go in that cupboard in that box up there, batteries go in that cupboard in that box up there. And at least then if things get messy, and things do get messy, you know, I can see four Diet Coke cans as I speak, um, I know where they have to go. Mostly Andy gets rid of them for me, which is also a wonderful thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Everything in its place is really important. Oh, I'll tell you one thing that works for me as well. Do not share. If it's organisational stuff you need on the daily, don't share. Because then the responsibility is out of your hands and therefore it's not yours. So that's really cool.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Andy puts everything away, but I have a magic headphone case now where my earbuds reappear in them. No. It reappears in the case every day. I have no idea how it happens. I do know it's because Andy puts them back for me whenever he finds them. He puts them back, it's wonderful. Um, but yeah, my, my go to previously was more storage. That if I could find the right storage solutions and the right labelling solutions, then everything would be fine. And the answer was less stuff. 100 percent less stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: All of these things we're giving are fun and probably useful for some people tips. The main thing I think, particularly in academia, is that it is about emotional acceptance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Have you ever heard that bullshit that you can't control what people do to you, but you can control your reaction? No, you can't. You can control your interpretation of how your emotions were afterwards, but you can't control them themselves. And it's that really, that emotional interpretation. Yes, I reacted poorly, darling, but it was because it was, it was, it was my emotional overreaction. You didn't do anything wrong is an interpretation. And that's all I can do. Because I am going to make those mistakes again and again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. So we talk about the self coaching model where you have the circumstance, the facts of the situation, the thought about them, the feelings you have, the actions, and then the results. And lots of people think that what that means is the circumstance has to be, you know, um, my wife says X and your thought is, oh, she probably doesn't mean anything bad by that. Duh duh duh. And so your feeling is calm and then duh duh duh. And there were some things where that's useful because sometimes our thoughts can really fuel if when we're going over and over them after the time we can really fuel negative feelings that make it difficult to take the actions we want. But one of the things we can do with that model is we can put, I snapped at my partner in the circumstance line, and we can then choose what we think about it, which is, I think, what you're talking about. And I think what a lot of people with ADHD do is they put in the thought line, um, I'm a terrible person. She probably hates me and is going to leave me and those sorts of things. Oh, absolutely. Whereas if we can put in the thought line, yeah, you know, I snapped and that wasn't my best moment ever. Kind of understand why I'll talk to her about it or whatever. You can kind of have that sort of. You can interpret your reaction. So we don't have to be perfect in the moment, but we can help so much in how we look back and judge our behaviours and things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Andy: It's all emotional, really. So if you look at the diagnostic criteria of ADHD, there's loads of them, but the only thing that all ADHD people have, really, is emotional dysregulation. That's what they sometimes call an inappropriate emotional response to stimulus. And it doesn't just mean overreaction. Like, the way I once got with my now ex wife about some potatoes she cooked, which wasn't my best moment. But it could also be the fact that I don't grieve properly is an under emotional and inappropriate, societally, or to me, inappropriate emotional response. And so if you have emotional dysregulation, it doesn't just come with ADHD, it can be really damaging in your career as well, and your PhD, because if your supervisor says, you know, this chapter's really great, but I think probably this bit needs changing, and you hear, everything's shit, you're a terrible person, I despise you, like I, I would, and then my reaction is negative. If I can't accept that and tolerate that within myself and then go back and say, oh hi, I had an emotional reaction there, you know, that, actually, I don't, I don't think it's because of this neurodevelopmental disorder, it makes it a lot easier for me to have that conversation with people because I'm always going to have it. I'm always going to have ADHD. It's incurable, unfortunately. It is treatable. And so that is exactly what you say. It's the interpretation of that emotion.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely, definitely. And that acceptance. It's just huge. You know, I, I think now back to I, I'm, I feel inside my head, almost irrecognizable to how I felt at some of the hardest parts of my academic career. And I don't think I forget things less now and I don't think I do ADHD things less now, but just not beating myself up about them, uh, just means that you, it's much less painful. It means, ironically, it means that you sort of sort them out a bit quicker. Like, you know, in your situation, the more you can not judge the fact that you had that explosive response, the easier it is to then go and talk to the supervisor and be like, yeah, not my finest hour. Sorry about that. Um. It just, so sometimes people think, you know, Oh, if I just accept this, then I'm going to be useless forever in, in my old thoughts, words, but actually often when you accept this just is how you, how you are. It's so much easier to accept scaffolding around yourself to like to the support networks around yourself, and to just not make it any more painful than it needs to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: Stress exacerbates ADHD symptoms, even if the stress is because of the ADHD symptoms. So it is, it literally reduces your ADHD symptoms, not to zero, sadly. Oh, I'd be delighted.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that the final thing with that is I've talked before in this podcast about the importance of having a team around you and how that can be a whole variety of different types of people. And so I'd really encourage people with ADHD to seek any professional support that they think would be useful to help them, but also don't underestimate the power of other types of team around you, having other people who have ADHD, who you can swap silly stories with having other people who remind you. I used to get really cross. My mom used to remind me of birthdays and stuff. And I used to take it as a judgment that she thought I was useless and a baby and I just still needed my mom's support and whatever. Now I love it. I'm so grateful. And it's part of my team that she will say have you checked your car's MOT? I feel like it was sort of this time of year last year. And I love it. And they're amazing. And when you, when you feel less shame, it's easier to have that around you because I now just say thank you and check where my MOT is rather than snapping at her for treating me like a baby. Um, so building that team around you of specialist and non specialist people, but who make you feel good and who love you the way you are, who don't tell you that you should be less or should be quieter or should be more focused or any of those things is, I think is probably one of the biggest things you can do to help yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It really is. That would be my advice to help students as well. If universities really wanted to help students, they would help neurodivergent staff first with meaningful measures because we're masking and we're there and it comes at a high cost and if we could feel open then it would help the students immeasurably by definition. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Massively. Now I'm very proud of us because those who are listening don't know but we said that we were going to finish recording on the hour. It is two minutes past the hour and for us that is amazing. I'm very proud. So I am going to compliment us for that and draw it to a close there. Alex, if people want to hear more from you, which I'm sure they do. And if they want to know why that man's face is crossed out behind you, if they're watching on YouTube.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: And there's a, there's a third person I've crossed out here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Tell people where they can find out more from you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: So we have a podcast called the ADHD adults, which you can find in all the places you find podcasts, Spotify. I have to read out of Spotify adverts, Vicky, it's mortifying. Perfect. And, uh, we do evidence based science, which is like, some people say, why is there like three minutes of evidence based science and 50 minutes of you two being arses? And Sam as well now is one of our, the three of us are co hosts, Mrs ADHD. And it's because we like messing about, but you can just listen to the first bit if you want the science and we choose a topic and talk about research and try and make it a bit more interesting. Uh, yeah, uh, we've, we've just taken a month off for ADHD awareness month, accidentally, which is hilarious and properly on brand coming back on November the 6th um, and if you need any help or support or resources and questionnaires, all the free things, if you have a look on the website, ADHDadult. uk, that's the home of our charity.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you sometimes have live shows? I don't know if you...  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: I do, yeah. I do, um, Seed Talks and things and coaching, but I don't... Yeah, if you go onto the Seed Talks website, you can have a look at that. I don't... God knows. I'm not very good at this, Vikki.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So keep an eye... I'll do his promo bit for him. Um, he does, uh, live shows in comedy clubs and things like that. So keep an eye out for those happening in the future and he does some one to one coaching as well, although I know you're very busy so, you may not have space for clients at the moment, but people can be aware that you do have those sorts of services and training as well. So if you think your university or staff would benefit from some ADHD specific training, you can put them in touch with Alex as well. Is that everything? I think that's most things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Alex: It is.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming, Alex. I really appreciate it. And it's fantastic to catch up. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 20 Nov 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-10-how-to-do-academia-with-adhd-with-guest-dr-alex-conner thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-9-how-to-network-with-guest-dr-jen-polk <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you hear the word networking and just think that this is the most awful thing ever, or that you're really bad at it, or that you shouldn't have to do it, or it's really hard, or it's not the right time? If so, you are going to love this episode because we're going to tell you all the reasons you're wrong. I have a guest with me, Dr Jen Polk, and we are going to be talking all things networking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to Episode nine of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach and I have another guest with me this week. I am super excited to welcome Jen Polk. And we are going to be talking about networking. So hi, Jen.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Hello! Happy to be here. Love this topic. It's a juicy one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It really is. And I just love how we came to be talking about this. I was planning to write a podcast about this myself because it's something that I've coached on a lot recently and I was, I'd sat down to do it and I was slightly procrastinating on Twitter as I do. And noticed you talking about networking and the importance of networking in the work that you do and. We just got talking from there. So it was, I just thought it was a wonderful example of networking that's actually led to us doing this. And I feel like you have so much to offer PhD students in terms of why networking is so important and how we can make it less painful. So maybe tell people a little bit. Yeah, no pressure at all. But maybe tell people a little bit about what you do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Thanks. Yeah. So I'm Jen, you know, call me Jen. Dr. Polk is also correct, but Jen is totally fine and my, my clients are underappreciated, let's say professors, postdocs and other PhDs who are so over compromising their values and priorities, chasing prestige and a paycheck. And I helped them get crystal clear on what they want and where they want it and who they want it with, et cetera, so that they can go and make that impact in the world that they are best placed to do. Uh, so that's a bit about my why. Thank you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. I love that. And obviously networking is such an important part of that. But in both of the work we do, we hear kind of arguments against it from people, reasons why they don't like it, reasons why they think they shouldn't have to do it, or reasons why they think they can't do it. And so what we decided we wanted to do today was to actually just work through a bunch of reasons that real clients have given us about why they find networking difficult and kind of help pick them apart a little bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Put a little skewer in each one of those, maybe.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Sure. We're going to do it with compassion. We get it. This isn't necessarily something that everyone, in fact, it's not something that everyone just walks into and goes, Oh, okay. I know how to do this then, and so when we're putting skewers in these reasons, we understand why they feel really true at the moment. We understand why this feels like an indisputable thing about networking. But at the same time, we're going to spend the next sort of half hour trying to encourage you to see maybe some other views on this and how you can make it a little bit easier. So I have nine at the moment that you and I came up with before. Um, as my listeners know. We might end up with more by the end, who knows, we'll make it up as we go along. But we've got nine to start with. And the first one is my favorite, which is that networking is slimy. It's people who are out to get something sort of being disingenuous and sucking up to the right people and not bothering with people they can't get something from. So I'd love to hear your perspective on this one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Totally. It's like, it's like people say to me, it's totally transactional. Like it's totally fake. And you know, when I, when I talk about this in the most recent workshop I did, I had the, you know, a stock image of a white man in a suit shaking hands with another white man in a suit, like nothing against those folks, but you know what I'm saying? Right? Like it, it doesn't feel authentic. Uh, it's not about community building and people. So let me just say right off the bat is that kind of networking is totally ineffective. So obviously we don't promote that kind of networking because it just doesn't work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think that's so important because not only does it mean you don't have to be like that, and networking doesn't have to be driven in those ways, but it also means it probably doesn't work that well, even if you are trying that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, like, like, forget that. Like, that's not what we're talking about, right? Like, eh, next. Right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So, to follow that up, you mentioned community building there, though. So, tell me a little bit more about why framing it like that helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, because that's really what we're talking about here, is building a community around yourself that will challenge you and champion you right so that you can learn from people, that you can then teach them you can be supportive of other people like this. It's a it's people, right? It's about people. It's not a transaction and it is a bit of a longer term. Investment, to use that term, um, but it's, it's like making friends. These friends just happen to be people who are professionals in a space that you want to get into. So here's a definition that I like to use for networking, right? So in contrast to this image of people often have of like, you know, white men in suits, like throwing business cards at each other. Actually, networking is any activity that puts you in meaningful conversation with people in a professional space that you're in or you want to enter. So it's any activity that puts you in meaningful engagement. So it can be, you know, one on one, you know, in person, but it can also be like your LinkedIn comment sections or sending emails or Twitter, right? For Vikki and I's example from earlier. So like just expand what you think of as networking. And the funny thing is when you do that, you'll realize, Oh, I do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And I love what you said there about remembering that this is about supporting others as well, because I think we often, especially at the beginning of our careers, think about networking as we're the ones that sort of need to get something.And so we're inherently a bit in debt, because we're kind of, you know, trying to put people out to help us out and things. And I love the idea that when you switch it to thinking about community building, that you're offering something too. You're supporting these people. You're shouting these people out. I mean, I'm seeing it already in my business that PhD students that I work with in my coaching programs, they do me little shout outs on Twitter. And so they're, you know, they're networking with me. I'm networking with them, but they're helping me in my business. It's not just that I help them with my coaching. They tell people about it and like, Oh yes, I recommend this. Why don't you do her workshop and those sorts of things. So I think, I love that idea that we're, we're giving as well as kind of getting something from these, these transactions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, absolutely. It's really valuable work to connect people with other people. Right. And that is something that, that you can offer.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, my second one is actually a little bit wide ranging because it's, I am X, therefore I can't network. So things we, I am, um, I'm introverted, therefore I can't network. I am very shy. I have social anxiety, so I can't network. I'm disabled so I can't go places and network. All of these sorts of things. And one things we talked about before this episode started, we want to make really clear to the listeners that we do understand that there are structural things in society that make environments more or less conducive to networking for different sections of society. And so any individual advice we give now is going to be in the context that academia needs to do better. Society needs to do better. We need to think about how we set up these spaces so that everybody feels included. But obviously as individual academics and individual PhD students, we do also need to think about how can we stop that preventing us from engaging in networking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, because you gotta like, you gotta go first. Right. And then you can help other people. You know what I'm trying to say?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, sure. And it's not, it's not even that people have to like, you know, get through the glass ceiling and sort of fight their way. But we at least want you guys to see that it's not something that's wrong with you. If you find it hard because you're introverted or because you have anxiety or any of these other things, that doesn't mean you can't do it and it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. But it does mean that we can perhaps reframe the way we're thinking about it so that we can find ways that work for us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: A big thing in my work, and this is something I want for all my clients, and you know, it's just how I do everything, is draw on your own strengths. Whatever you do, employ your own strengths. And if it is not a strength of yours to do a thing. Okay, you don't have to do it. So I go back to the definition of networking I gave like a couple minutes ago, is any activity, right? Where that puts you in meaningful conversation with other people and you get to decide what activities work for you. So for example, like me and Vikki. You know, in the last month, it was Twitter was a meaningful activity, and then we both got together on zoom, right? This is just not how other people are doing it. And it's okay. So it's whatever, you know, whoever you are, and whatever your strengths are lean into that, forget what other people are doing, because their advice might be good advice, but it doesn't mean that it's the right advice for you. You don't, let me put it in this way. Like you don't have to fit yourself into like little boxes created for people that aren't you. No, you get to show up in the world as yourself and invite other people to join you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And I think what so many people do is they kind of, they put networking in a box and say, that's not something I can do. And I think what we're encouraging here really is for people to kind of break that box apart and say, I don't do those bits, but I can do these bits and these ones really work for me. And one of the things I see, I mean, one of the things we talked about a little bit is how I'm probably at one end of the extroversion scale and you're at the other end of the introversion scale. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things I've noticed with both myself and fellow extroverts is being extroverted and talking to people a lot doesn't necessarily make lots of meaningful connections that last. It's something I've got better at over the years, but there certainly was a time when I would talk at people and think that we'd had a wonderful conversation and come away realizing that I had learned absolutely nothing and I probably wouldn't see that person again. So. There's space for everyone in, these sorts of activities.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, absolutely. And so shout out to any other introverts here, cause that is me. I spend like 99 percent of my time by myself, like physically by myself, but I am totally community minding, right? Like that's important to me. Uh, so if anyone is ever like, I can't network cause I'm introvert, I'm going to be the annoying person popping up being like, well, actually. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Well, you've mentioned Twitter,, so what are other things that have worked for you? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: So so me personally like I am not socially anxious and I'm not shy. I used to be shy when I was a kid and I still have moments of that. So, you know, I acknowledge right that that introversion is very true for me. But some of the others I don't I don't have a big challenge with, um, so what does work for me really well is online engagement because I can be physically in my own space at home with the temperature and how I like it as much water as I can drink in the bathroom right behind me anyways. And then I can be in control of those elements that are important to me and I really like social media. And so, like, Twitter, it's not that Twitter is like the ultimate place for academics to network because it increasingly is not, but it's that it was a strength of mine was that kind of text based engagement. And so I would, you know, leaned on that strength and did a lot of great networking on Twitter. You know, part of networking for me is putting content out into the world, is sharing my own thoughts, uh, out into the world in a little bit of a public way. So LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging, you know, back when, you know, we more, we did that a few years ago. Um, and then other people would come to me. So it wasn't always that I needed to then go out and like actively try and get in touch with other people. They would come to me, right? So I think that is a really nifty trick for folks who, you know, see, see themselves in what I'm describing, right? Is that you can actually put yourself out there in a way that invites other people to want to network with you. And that's really cool.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. I love that. And I love this idea of playing to your strengths, you know, um, one of the things I think that really works. I'm really good at kind of knowing, knowing what lots of different people from lots of different parts of sectors. So my friends are very much not just in academia. They're across a whole variety of different things. And I'm quite good at kind of going, Oh, you need to talk to so and so. I mean, you've already done that to me today as well. So I know that's a strength of yours, recommending a coach that I should speak to. But you know, that kind of seeing ways that people could work together that they maybe hadn't thought of before is something that I realized that I could do but not everybody does. And I also have a healthy amount of cheek, I think it's fair to say, and a healthy disregard for hierarchy. Um, and so I'm very happy to contact people that are much more senior than me and just be like, Hello, we should do this. I've had an idea. And so as I realized that that was a strength and not something that everybody felt comfortable doing, I've tried to lean into that too and to sort of be like, okay, actually, I can do this. These, these are things that are actually useful. This is something that you're not uniquely good at, but is a. is a strength of yours and I think that really helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Totally. I mean, there's no point in like trying to be somebody else when, you know, you're in a professional space, whatever that means cause then, like, what's the purpose here? Like, you know, the point is for you to have success on your own terms. So as much as possible, put yourself out there on your own terms. I love that. You know. Yeah, caveats, obviously, but, like, generally speaking, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and, I mean, one caveat I think I would add is... It's okay if you feel like that's not okay in your setting. So I know that there are people who come from particular cultures or have particular approaches where maybe they've had a lot of feedback that their way of doing it isn't the way that's expected in their setting and things. And so I think all of these things are within the context that that that might be challenging in some environments, but figuring out where that sort of intersection between what your group that you're in at the moment will accept and what your strengths are and where you feel good, finding the bit that overlaps in all of that, um, so that you can be yourself in a way that feels safe and okay within your working environment, within your profession, seems to me like a good way forward.Amazing. So number three, I love number three. Academics shouldn't have to network because their work should stand for itself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: I don't know if folks can see me because I'm making faces here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I'll have this on YouTube as well as on podcast. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see the face that Jen's pulling right now. If not, we kind of got hands on hips and a shaky head.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Shaking my head. I'm shaking my head. Right. I mean, what the heck, right? Like, we just know that's not true. Like, come on, people, right? Like, my work speaks for itself. Academia is a meritocracy, right? If I do good work, people will be drawn to me. Like, I know we like to believe that, but let's be serious about what is actually happening in academia. I mean, it's not that none of that is happening, but you gotta, you gotta advocate for yourself. You gotta put yourself out there, um, because it doesn't really happen like magic if you don't. I'm not blaming any individuals for this, but academic culture tells us that. And it is just not true,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: For sure. And, and it's almost inevitable that it's not true. There's unbelievable graphs, I'm sure you've seen them, of numbers of academic papers published each year. And the amount it's increased since, like, the 60s and 70s is just absolutely unbelievable so it's not even that, you know, if academia was a better place, then it could be a meritocracy and we'd have some way of judging it that meant you didn't have to share it like this, because there's just too much of it, You just can't keep track of a literature base anymore. And so, making sure that your work Is being seen is so important. And that's one of the things I've worked on with my clients, to be honest, is thinking about it, not as putting yourself out there, but thinking about it, putting your work out there. Because when people feel uncomfortable doing stuff to raise my profile, as it were. A way around that, like, do you think your work's important? Do you think people deserve to know about your research? Okay, let's do that. You don't have to be all like, hey, I won an award. I'm pleased to announce, like they do on LinkedIn all the time. You know, you don't have to do that stuff, but you can do, look at this cool thing I found out. This could help people. This could interest people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, I love that, right? I love that because, of course, you are the person that did the work, right? So you're in there, but it's not about, like, self promotion. I mean, yes, it is, but like, it's not, it's not because you're promoting your own self. It's because why are we here? We are here to make the world better. And the tools that we choose to do that with are, you know, higher, advanced degrees, higher education, you know, academic disciplines, publishing, whatever, whatever. Right. And so like if you put something out into the world, part of why you're doing that is so that we can make this better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: As you were talking, you made me think as well, something that I hadn't really thought about for a while, which is that when you put yourself out there, you're also showing other people that it's possible. So, you know, I'm not. a minority in the area that I was a sports scientist by training. We're actually relatively 50 50 gender split. I'm white. I was first generation to go to university, but beyond that, I don't have any particular characteristics that make me a minority. But what I did do was choose to promote up a teaching focus route in the end. So instead of getting to professor on research, I got to professor on a teaching focus contract. And that was something that's. It's relatively unusual in the UK. I think it's very unusual in the U S and quite a few other countries, and one of the reasons I kept sharing what I was doing and the things I was doing that were getting me promoted was so that people could see that you could specialize in teaching leadership and still make full professor, still get to like the highest qualifications and get to the highest promotions because a lot of people don't believe it's possible. And I think for everybody else who has, you know, characteristics that mean that maybe it's more unusual for people who look like you or people who are like you to reach those levels, I think putting yourself out there shows people that it can be done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: This is like such a fire, uh, reframe of self promotion as actually promotion of other people like you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I think all of these things can just be things that, where we can just knock the edges off some of this, academics shouldn't have to. No, okay, if you believe that. But do you believe that people like you should be able to see people who are a few years ahead of them doing well? Well, if you believe that, then you need to be doing that for the people that are a few years behind you, because a few years ago, you wanted to see someone like you. So where are you? Okay. Number four, I don't know anyone, so I can't network. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: I know. I know. Okay. So here, let me acknowledge that some of the folks listening might be international folks, maybe like you've just landed in a brand new country and a totally different continent. Right? And, and so I hear people when they say this, I don't know anybody. Other people when they say this to me, and I've heard it a lot, what they have in mind is that they only know academics. Like, I only know academics, right? I only know my, you know, my professors, you know, the other grad students. I don't know anybody else. And. Okay. Well, let's assume, let's assume that you don't know anybody. Yeah. Okay. Let's start with your word. Sure. Let's let's start there. Uh, the people that you do know that you have just met the day before in your department, other academics, these folks have international often networks of their own, so you don't have to know everybody firsthand. You can start with the people that you do know, and you can start with one person that you know, and ask them who else they know. The other thing is that your network is a lot bigger. So, so that was like, okay, I hear you. And here's the, but you're wrong. Your network is actually bigger than you think it is because it's anyone that you've ever interacted with, even if they don't currently remember who you are. So let me give, let me give practical examples of this and let me draw on my own personal experience, like my own life years ago. So the, some of the folks that I did informational interviews with, so informational interviews is a form of networking and the very first informational interviews that I did uh, after my PhD, there was a woman whose blog posts that I read online and I looked her up and she was in Toronto and had a humanities PhD just like me. Right. So I was like, we are not currently connected, but we got a couple of similar, you know, things. And I'm just going to send that email and hope for the best. Yes, we met, we talked. Another person that I did an informational interview with was somebody who, I read his bio on a company website. I saw a job ad in that company. I read the bios of the people who worked at that company and ding, ding, ding. This senior vice president, right? Bucket Sweat, had a PhD from my same department, you know, from years and years ago, but it was like, Oh, dang, right? Send an email. Hope for the best. We met for coffee and we bonded over the slog of dissertating, right? Like people are people are people. The third person, right? Is I was telling friends of mine. So friends that, you know, maybe weren't in academia had no connection. Someone I know from the local independent music scene in Toronto. This is totally unrelated to my academic work was like, actually, an old high school friend of mine works at York doing something like this. I let me let me figure out what the heck that's about. And. It wasn't like a usual informational interview because me and my friend and this guy and his wife all went for pizza and beer. Right. And that was awesome. So, you know, I give these like specific examples to say, like, actually, your network is bigger than you think. And it can be bigger than you think. And you can reach out to folks because you do have ways of connecting with them. That was a big, long speech.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, I love that. And just while we're on it, because you've mentioned informational interviews, and I know a lot of people were interested in that, what do you do in them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah. So I love, so informational interviews are like amazing and everybody should do more of them, including me. So informational interviews, they are a form of networking, but what's really cool about them, and I think this is, this reframe helps people, is that when you do an informational interview, you're the one asking the questions. So it might feel a little more comfy, right? Because you can sort of get prepared in advance and go with a list of questions and look people up. And then you're not the one on the hot seat. They are. Informational interviews are, are a form of networking, as I said, but they're about learning. They are a way for you to learn about jobs and career paths and companies and fields of work, etc. Uh, it, they are just an amazing resource.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And what I love about them, so I've done them myself and I've been on the receiving end of them as well. And what I love about them is people are really surprisingly willing to do them. There are some people who maybe don't have time and all of those things or say they don't have time. But I've always been really surprised by how willing people are to do it. And I think, to be honest, it's just a bit flattering. You know, when I've had people contact me about things, it is that sort of like, Oh, You want to be doing what I'm doing. That's quite cool. Of course. Come on in. I'll talk to you. and I think people are really willing to give their time in those sorts of ways, if you're very clear that you're not expecting anything from them, other than for you to pick their brain a bit and understand. If you use informational interviewing as a way to sneakily ask for a job or something, then it all starts getting a bit grubby. But if you make really clear upfront, I'm just really interested in what you do and want to know more about it, would it be okay? People love to tell their stories. They love to sort of, it's an opportunity for reflection really as well, isn't it? I've sometimes come out of informational interviews where I've done most of the talking because they've been asking me questions, but thinking I hadn't really thought about it like that until they asked me. So yeah, I think they can be a real win for, for lots of people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Absolutely,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: okay, right, next one. I've got nothing to contribute. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: I mean, we've already talked about that a little bit, right? The value of being a connector, right? So the more people that you talk with and, and, and remember that if you're talking to somebody whose work is tangentially related to your academic expertise, but, you know, isn't currently an academic, you might have a lot of really amazing, uh, academic know- how, um, to recommend them, right? So like that's a specific example, but also what Vikki just said, the people love talking about themselves and they also love giving advice. Like, it's fun for them, right? They enjoy their reflection piece. So that is something that you are, uh, facilitating, like that's an offer that you're making. So you totally have things to offer. And okay, I'll say one more thing is that there is value for those other folks in them getting to know you, even if you can't help them beyond the ways I just mentioned right now is that you're in their network and it's useful for them to know like emerging scholars or like, you know, emerging professionals, whatever it is, because they might be in a position to recommend you for things. And if that works out, that makes them look good, right? Like it's, it's just like, it's all good stuff. There's nothing to lose. You know, the worst that ever happens is like 20 minutes, you're never getting back. But like, that's it, right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, I agree. I think people underestimate how much just asking questions makes you a really, like, nice person to have a conversation with.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: And they think you're a genius, right? If you ask these questions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah. And I think, I love your point that people take for granted their knowledge. I think, especially if you're in a, so I was in a really multidisciplinary department. And so it was always. We were always hearing things that were very different, but I think especially if you work in a discipline that's quite a sort of mono discipline and you stay within that area, you do take for granted because everybody around you knows the stuff you know, so it's not interesting anymore. One of my favorite things to do when I do my PhD workshops is I always ask people at the beginning to tell me not what department they're in, I don't care what department they're in, but to tell me what they're researching. And the stuff that people come up with, it's just fascinating. I want to read all of them, seriously. They just are researching the most amazing things and they utterly take it for granted because they're in it all day, every day. And sometimes all it takes is me going, Oh my God, that sounds amazing. They're like, actually it is really important. And like, yeah, people, people think this is interesting. Okay. I've got nothing to gain from networking at the moment. I'm not looking for a job.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, right. Cause this is, so this is aimed at the folks are like, okay, networking is for job seekers and like, cool. I'm with you. I got it. But I'm not job seeking right now, or like, I just got a new job. It's not for me. Okay. So first off, like informational interviews is about learning, right? So as Vikki said, it's not like, hi, let's do an informational interview. And by the way, can you hire me? Like, no, no, no, I mean, if they might say, Hey, can I hire you? Like, okay, that's the dream situation. Um, so, so learning is great. Right. And learning when you're already have a job, like, that's amazing because then any kind of pressure that you might feel about getting a job is just not even there anymore. Right? So it can sometimes make this even easier to network when you already have a job because you're doing your future self a real solid, and if you're in a position where you can help other people. I Know that nobody has any time, but like, that's just so amazing. Right?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Okay, well, let's address that. I don't have time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, you know, I hear you and I would say that... Okay, so let me, let me say specifically for job seekers, right? So I switched gears a little bit. I hear this a lot from folks that are like, I'm spending all my time applying for jobs. I don't have time to network. And I acknowledge that networking is a bit of a longer term thing, like I said at the beginning. Um, it's it's networking doesn't directly usually it doesn't directly lead to a job in that way. But it just gives you so much rich, valuable information, insights, advice, perspectives that you just can't get, uh, you know, from reading the internet or certainly from reading job ads, which are like a specific genre of text anyways, right? Like there's just so much in there that you miss out. You miss out when you don't network. You miss out on learning. You miss out on, like, the enjoyment, right? Because, like, being in community with other people is often something that you don't get when you're a job seeker, when you're feeling really isolated. So, like, this is a way of not being, like, super isolated, and you also open yourself to opportunities for people to say, like, Oh, actually! You should apply for this job or you should have talked to that other person and it's just it's it's really I know it's like counterintuitive right for me but I'm often on the on the side of stop applying to so many jobs and start talking to more people because the applications that you do submit are going to be more on point. They're going to be more compelling. They're going to be more tailored because you will know what people care about in this industry because you will have just talked to a handful of them who will have told you so you can really address the concerns of hiring managers, etc.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It reminded me of it. So I have a course I've run twice this week actually called, what to do when you've got too much to do. And one of the things that we talk about in that is how the first step is accepting there are too many things. You don't have enough time to do them all. And that doesn't have to mean anything about you and your prospects and your abilities or any of those things. And actually most of the pain comes from the fact that we should, we tell ourselves we should be able to do all this stuff. And I think once you accept there isn't enough time and you can't do all the things. Then you get to ask yourself questions about what's valuable to you and what you want to put your time into. And that's where something like networking, I think, becomes something that becomes a higher priority to fit in because it's something that benefits future you, it's something that gives you energy in the moment. As well, that's something I'm really noticing at the moment. So I'm similar to you. I work on my own most of the time. And one of the things I've made a real effort with over the last couple of months is the networking, is getting to know more people and speaking with them. And as much as I've learned stuff from everybody, which has been amazing, and we've done cool things like this, but the thing I've noticed more than anything is the energy that you get from just connecting with people who are doing similar things to you. And I know part of that's my extroversion and all of that, but that sort of, that feeling that you're in it with other people is something that can sustain you way beyond that 30 minutes that you spent on Zoom with someone. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah. For me, like as an introvert. I'm sort of energized briefly and then I need a nap, but character strengths of mine include love of learning, curiosity, perspective taking, right? And all of those are strengths that I can use that I show up when I do informational interviews and networking. So using your strengths, like. That is happy making as a person, right? So there you go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely. And I think it reminds you of why you're doing things too. I think the nature of these sorts of conversations is that they're usually a little bit bigger picture. They're usually a bit more speculative. And sometimes I think, especially in those PhD years, you can get really niched down to that one tiny molecule that you care about, or that one tiny policy document that you're looking at or whatever it is. And I think networking is a way of kind of bringing yourself back up and connecting what you're doing back into other things. I remember as a scientist being really frustrated that I couldn't do more work than I was doing because there were so many questions I wanted to answer and going to conferences and meeting people gave me a real sense of being a tiny cog, but part of something that was exploring some really big and interesting questions and I think that can be really energizing. So whilst it takes time, it can give time in the, in the sense of giving you the energy to do the other things that you want to do. Okay. I don't know how is my eighth reason that I hear, I don't know what to do. One example, what did you, those emails, when you wrote to people asking for informational interviews, what did you say? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah. Okay. So hot tip, you know, use ChatGPT, like I will tell you, I'm going to give you a template right now live, but ChatGPT is a little wordy, so note that, but this is the kind of, this is the kind of scenario where ChatGPT or like, you know, other AI tools like that are your friend, right? If you're ever stuck on like, how do I write an email like this, use ChatGPT. Okay. So let me tell you let me tell you so you want to do an informational interview, right? So I specifically informational interview. Okay subject line Can I talk with you about your career or just informational interview, right? Like like let's not beat around the bush. Dear Peter My name is Jen I'm writing to ask, uh, if we can have a conversation so I can learn more about your career path. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We, we met a few years back, uh, at a dinner at blah, blah, blah, right? So you're making, you're sort of being clear from the beginning what you want. Second sentence. Who you are and what connection you have, like, I also have a PhD from your department or Marjorie recommended I connect with you, et cetera. Then you give them a sense of like, what specifically you want to ask them about. So you need to know for yourself, like, why do I want to talk to Peter right now? And not somebody else, not just because like, you were the 1st LinkedIn profile I came across like, that's not good enough, but like, why I noticed that, uh, you were the 1st author on this really cool study and my work intersects like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So like, why exactly them, you know, you have the same job title that I'm looking for in a different company, right? So I wanted to get some Intel in the industry in general. You might give them a sense, you know, in particular, I'm most interested in learning about. So they, they sort of have a frame in their mind for the conversation and gives them the opportunity to say, like, no, that's not me. You should talk to somebody else. Anyways. Right. So just makes them feel a bit more comfortable. Um, do you have time for a 20 minute conversation, phone, zoom? Like, you know, you can sort of set up some boundaries here over the next couple of weeks. Uh, you know, alternatively, I, I'd love a recommendation for somebody else you think would be a better fit. And then, okay, so what was that, like five sentences or something? The last thing is you sent, you press send, you go for a walk, right? You buy yourself a cookie, whatever it is. And then a week later, you know, you get to decide how much time you want past. Give it a few days. Peter doesn't get back to you. You write back, say, Hey, Peter, I just, you know, I'm following up on my email from last week. I'd love to chat with you, blah, blah, blah. You know, if you can recommend somebody else, this is a better fit. Please let me know. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And having that sort of step by step guidance, I think for people who, who are feeling shy about it or who are just worried they'll say the wrong thing. Um, or perhaps I know there are cultural differences in how those letters can be written and things as well. And so I think within certainly US, UK, mainland Europe, that sort of approach would be absolutely brilliant. I think hopefully that will help some of our international students as well, see how they can, how they can frame those sorts of messages. I want to make a point, just for, not just for women, but particularly for women and people who display more of those traits, notice there were no sentences in there saying, I know you're probably too busy and it's not a problem if you can't, and I'll really understand if you haven't got time for this and delete all of those. Say thank you, don't apologize, you can show that you're grateful without being kind of humble and subservient or begging or any of those sorts of things, because I know people can get super apologetic in these messages and it's, it's just not necessary.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, absolutely. And it's not abrupt. It's just like clear and direct, and you're not wasting anyone's time, which is great. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And then I have a couple of tips for when people are at live events. So often people find, you know, okay, I can, I can send some tweets. I can do those things. I can maybe send an information interview request. I could do that. But if I'm at a conference with a bunch of people and they know each other, because we always believe that everybody else knows each other, don't we? they all know each other and I don't. Firstly, question that thought. Um, but, yeah. Even if that feels really, really true for you, then, you know, what do I do in that setting? And one thing that I have always encouraged people is to look for people around the edges. So any room you're in where there's lots of people, there will be other people who are hovering around the sandwiches or who are sort of standing at one side reading something on the wall or any of those things. Start with them, you know. Be a lion, pick off the weak first. But you know, you don't have to go marching into the middle of the big group of 10 people who are all laughing because they've known each other for 20 years and go, hello, go around the edge, you know. I always find food and drink a great place to get talking to people because you can just sort of talk about what's there and those sorts of things, but you can start those kinds of casual conversations with people who look like they might be just sort of wanting to get involved, but not sure how to. One of the ways that helps me with that is either pretending to, or actually hosting things. So a brilliant way to network, especially as a PhD student, is to organize something. So arrange to get a speaker at your department or arrange a symposium where various different people from your institution talk, because when you're the host, it somehow gives you a badge that makes it okay to talk to people, you know, because if you're just an individual there, then it's a bit like, Oh, who am I to go up to people, but it's like, Oh, Gosh, I'm actually the host, aren't I? I really should talk to people. That's kind of my role. And so putting yourself in that position can really help. If you're not in that position, pretend you are. So ask yourself, how would I act if I was hosting this? I'd make sure people feel welcome. I'd make sure people have what they needed. I'd kind of, you know, go up to someone who looked like they were on their own and made sure they felt a bit connected. Let's do that anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Love that advice. Love that advice. Thanks for that Vikki. Let me add one more thing. Uh, and if you're nervous about what to say, of course, ask questions, right? Ask open ended questions. And then that was one thing. Second tip is work on your intro. Have a two sentence, three sentence intro. And maybe for some spice here, it's not your typical academic intro. It's something like, you know, how blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm the person who. Right. So, you know, for example, right, work on a spicy intro. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And where I'd add to that, I think is I think having that is brilliant. I Rarely start with that though. So I think there's something about an intro that makes people think they have to say it first because we call it an intro and that's where it would be in a paper. So we sort of think that you need to walk up to someone and say, Hi, I'm Vikki. I'm the person who whatever's. Where actually if you start talking about, Oh, what teabags have they got over there or whatever, would you mind? Oh, they never have very good teabags, do they? Or whatever. And you get to, Oh, sorry. Anyway, I'm Vikki. I da da da da. You sort of, you start on something mundane often, and then from there be like, Oh, we haven't introduced ourselves, have we? And then go from there. Then suddenly having a way to describe who you are and what you do becomes much easier to kind of just drop into conversation casually, I think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah. Awesome. Love it. Love it. And some of us are like naturally good at small talk, I guess you'd say, but if you're not like you can memorize just a couple of those scripts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No, definitely. Definitely. And that just leads into the ninth one, which is that networking is scary. The idea that, you know, I might say something stupid and somebody might not like me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, this is, this is for the folks. So shout out to anyone who's listening, right? So they're obviously like with us and they're taking notes and they're nodding, but they're still feeling, yeah, I'm still not going to do this, Jen. And like, hello, my clients, I get it. And this networking piece is one of the places, one of the big, giant places where my clients get stuck, right? And also it's the place where if they do move forward and I'll make sure they do right when they actually do that first or second informational interview, everything changes. It's like huge. Let me not promise that for you, but like I'm almost promising it. Like this makes such a huge difference for people. You know, say hello to somebody. If they don't hear you, if you're feeling awkward, okay, you go to the next table. Right. You say something silly. It's like, ah, you know, that didn't come out. Right. Let me rephrase that. You forget to ask something, right? Like sometimes you're nervous of like, I'm going to forget to ask or like they feel bad because I totally forgot like my most important question. Then they never do another one. Send an email. You know, it was so great. I really appreciated my main takeaway. There was one thing I realized I totally blanked on. Can I ask? You know, blah, blah, blah. So I got to come back for every objection here. What do you got Vikki?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Oh, definitely. Definitely. I think one, you know, as a mindset coach, one I would add in is decide in advance that you're going to be kind to yourself about this. Because I think a lot of the pain comes from how we criticize ourselves after we did it. So we say, Oh, you sounded really stupid when you said that, or, you know, you weren't even very clear about that, or that person was rolling their eyes. They clearly weren't interested. And it's like this sort of little critical voice. And I'm not someone who coaches on like pushing that voice away. Cause that voice is trying to protect you. They, they, they don't want you to like be in danger or to kind of make a Wally of yourself. And so they're like, maybe if we just don't do this, they're like the overprotective parent, like maybe, maybe if we just never, ever do this, then we'll be safe. So they're trying to look after you, but they're still not helping. And so one of the things you can do is you can decide in advance, however, this goes I'm going to be proud of myself that I tried. I'm going to tell myself that under the circumstances I did the things that I could do. I'm going to remind myself that no one remembers the details of what I said anyway. You know, this is a way bigger deal for me than it is for anybody else and all of those sorts of things. And if you can create an environment in which you're sure that no matter what happens when you network, you will be nice to yourself, it's suddenly so much easier because there might be situations where something negative happens. There might be situations where you say something stupid or when the other person says something not pleasant. You know, whether the other person says something inappropriate or there's a microaggression or whatever it might be. And those things might happen. But if we can afterwards be kind to ourselves, not make it mean that we shouldn't have tried, not make it mean that we didn't belong in that space, but instead be proud that we tried, even if that person didn't live up to our expectations, then it's much easier. Then we're safe to do anything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah. It's like deciding in advance that your actual goal here, where you actually want to get out of this is to be vulnerable and take the risk. You did that, big check Mark. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think then for building from there, the final thing is that networking is not just one thing, you're doing it or you're not, it's what's the tiniest step, if you're feeling scared of it, or you're feeling you haven't got much to offer or much to gain or whatever, what's the tiniest thing that you could do that starts nudging you in that direction? So that you can just sort of start to bite away at it in little tiny bits. Because some of us enjoy the leap right into the middle element and loads of people don't and that's okay. So rather than deciding we'll never network, can I speak to that one person? Yeah, I can speak to them. Could I send one tweet to that person, telling them I like what they do. Yeah, I can do that. Set up a podcast, bloody love podcasts as a way to approach people going, hello, do you want to me on my podcast? It's amazing because it gives you a reason. You know, it's like a public informational interview essentially, that other people just get to listen in. So. Anything like that, deciding that you're writing a blog post, you know, I know they're not the most fashionable thing, Twitter thread or whatever. Can I talk to you? I'm writing something about this. So making it for other people as well, I think is a way to make it less scary. Cause then you're sort of saying it's on behalf of this thing I'm writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, that's a great tip. Can I add one more little tip?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Of course. Absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Sometimes people like build up these whole big things in their mind, but all the things that this is going to mean they need to do in future. And then they don't do anything, but exactly to your point is take that little step and then remind yourself all that other shit is a problem for future Jen. Great. One thing at a time. Future Jen can handle it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's one for people who are excited about networking, as well as people who are scared about it. Because somebody like me, who never suffers from a lack of enthusiasm, sometimes we can freeze ourselves by being like, and I'm going to talk to this person and this person, and I'm going to do 20 informational interviews, and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. No, no, let's just do one. And then we can do another one after that if we want to, bit at a time, keep the enthusiasm, but we don't have to do it all at once. And we can, you know, it is the sort of thing that, as you say, it's, it's a long game and it's, it's essentially, it's just, it's life. I saw a thing on Twitter recently, and I can't remember who said it, that working class people don't network. And I just thought. What a ridiculous that a) it completely negates all the working class people that are all across academia, but people in working class jobs, they have huge networks of people in all sorts of different jobs. And yeah, I just thought it was a ludicrous thing to say I think for me networking, you know you put you put the context on it that that's in a professional setting. But it's not that different from getting to know the people in your local shops and in your local coffee shop and the people who live next door to you and the people that go to school with you and all that. It's not that different. You share a personal environment with them. You share a professional environment with them. We kind of network, build networks. I prefer thinking of it as building a network rather than networking. We do that within any setting. Let's just not make the work one feel weird unnecessarily. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Absolutely. And that's why your network is bigger than you think.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here today, Jen. Take a second, remind people where they can find you, how they can find out more if they want to know more about all of this stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Jen: Yeah, awesome. So, if you like my jam and you are a underappreciated, let's say, professor, postdoc, or other PhD, I'd love to help you figure out, where the best place for you is in the world so that you can get what you came for, right? and live your best life and all that other good stuff. From PhD to life. com is where you can connect with me. That's also my Twitter handle and I'm on LinkedIn as well. Jennifer Polk PhD. I love to connect. With folks on anywhere. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. I know that's going to have been super valuable for our audience. We have people who are new PhD students all the way through to senior professors and this is an issue across all of that, so thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 13 Nov 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-9-how-to-network-with-guest-dr-jen-polk thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-8-how-to-prepare-for-your-viva <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have you got your PhD viva coming up soon? Or is it something that you're already starting to dread even though it's a few years away? If so, this is the perfect episode for you. We're going to be thinking about all the stories about PhD vivas, how we can prepare for them, and how we can look after ourselves in that process. You get to decide how we do this and I'm going to help you figure out how. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode eight of season two of the PhD Life Coach and this week we are talking preparing your viva. Now this is a topic that's at the top of my mind at the moment because in my membership program at the University of Birmingham where students have access to two sessions a week of online group coaching, I've got several students who have either got their vivas imminently or who've got them coming up in the next month or two. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Been coaching on this a lot recently and really getting an insight into the thoughts and feelings that people experience in this period. I want to contextualize first of all that this does depend to some extent on what country you're doing your PhD in. There's very different structures for vivas or defences in different countries. In some countries, some parts of mainland Europe, for example, you've essentially passed your PhD before you go into your defence and it's more of a public display, you do a talk and answer some questions, but the idea is to share and celebrate. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I'm not saying that's not stressful, there may be other thoughts around that, but in the UK, the viva is the point at which your examiners really decide whether they're going to give you the PhD or not, and how many changes they're going to ask you to do in order to pass. You can, of course, get an outright fail. It's highly unusual to get that in your first viva. But what this means is it feels like a really high stakes assessment, and it's something that is different than people have done before. It's something that you've been working towards for three to four years, often even more if you're a part time student, for example, or who've taken leave of absences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so it can feel like this massive, massive thing. And if you're feeling that at the moment, that's really understandable. There is nothing wrong with you. I did a little shout out on my social media and also within my membership. So within my membership, we have a Slack channel where we can all talk to each other and there were so many thoughts that people were having about their PhD viva. They were worried they were going to get defensive when they were criticized. They were worried that maybe the process wouldn't be fair because different people have different examiners. They were concerned that they didn't know what they should be doing in this gap between handing in and doing the viva and that they might do the wrong things. They're worried they're not good enough, that they'll say something stupid. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They talked about a rollercoaster of emotions, going from sort of the elation of handing in their PhD, through to feeling really anxious about the viva itself, and also a sense of loss that they were finishing this period of their life. This thing they'd looked forward to finishing, suddenly feels like a gap in their life now it's not there anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then people have these perceptions of what the viva is going to be like as well. We all hear disaster stories of when it went on for eight hours and the person got major mods anyway, and all of these things. We hear all the big stories and we worry that it's going to be terrible. I've had clients talk about dread, that they actively are dreading their viva.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's also all these thoughts around whether the people around you have done enough, should your supervisor have supported you more, should your thesis be in a better place than it was by the time it got handed in because you didn't get the support that you needed, about whether you've even got the right examiners, whether you should have had more input into who those examiners were, whether your supervisors have picked the right people. There's so many thoughts and so many stories.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We have people who get really worried that they won't remember things, that, you know, they, they understand their work, but they don't necessarily trust that they'll be able to recall details and they believe they're going to really need to do that in the Viva. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we have people who worry about the emotions they'll experience. They worry now that they'll get really anxious in the viva. Maybe they're worried they'll panic in the viva. Maybe they're worried they just won't say anything because they'll go into like a freeze stress response. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All of these things are very, very normal, but as usual, they don't have to be inevitable, it doesn't have to feel like this. The problems don't come when we have these thoughts and feelings, the problems come when we unquestioningly accept them, take them as truth and believe we have to just fight or experience all these emotions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what we're gonna think about today is some alternative ways that you can think about this period of time so that you can decide what you need to spend it doing. Because depending on what you're feeling, and depending on what your thoughts are, and depending on your beliefs about your thesis, there are very different ways that you can spend this time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There is no right answer. You get to decide what works for you. But let's figure out how we can decide that in a way that's really got your best interests at heart rather than a sense that you "should" be doing something in particular. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As usual, I'm going to finish with some tips from me based on my experience as an examiner, a chair in PhD vivas, and as a supervisor of a bunch of PhD students who have got successfully through their vivas. So let's get started. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> First, I'd really recommend you figure out where you are at. And by you, I don't mean your thesis. I don't mean looking through and figuring out what you did well and what you did badly and how you're going to defend it in the Viva. I mean you. How are you at the moment? What are the feelings you're experiencing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What are the thoughts you're having? Let's try and identify those before we do anything else because what we need to prepare more than anything for the Viva is to prepare you. We've talked about thought downloads in these podcasts before. Take a moment to really write about how you're thinking about the viva at the moment. Just keep writing. Don't judge anything you're writing. Try and get really get into what thoughts you're having and what emotions you're experiencing and do it from a place of compassion. All of this is completely normal. You are not feeling anything that other people aren't feeling. Let's figure it out because different people do worry about different elements of this. It is all completely normal, but you'll find you've got particular things that you're worrying about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to also think about how you're feeling right now. Are you tired? You're probably tired. It's understandable to be tired. You've just done this massive push to get your thesis written. And there's a real comedown from that. You have this sort of elation of handing in, and then it's this sort of, and your body gets to relax for the first time in probably a long time, and that can feel really weird. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how are you feeling right now? Spend a little bit of time writing about that. And what I want you then to think about is not how do I prepare for this terrifying vibe, or what do I even need to do? Because then we spin off into these big stories. But instead I want you to ask yourself, what do you need right now? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, some of this will be, what do I need practically there in the defence? So, I need a printed copy of my thesis perhaps, that might be one thing that you think you actually need. You might need, in your mind, to refresh your memory of some of the key references, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you may have some things like that, where it's actual topic based needs that you identify. However, I really want you to focus more on you as a human being. What do you need? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And for a lot of you, What you need is some rest. And I know the immediate thought that's jumping into your head is I don't have time to rest, I've got to get ready for my viva. But trust me, the periods of your life where you don't have time to rest are the periods that you need rest more than ever.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing you might really want now is some clarity. You might want to really understand what you're going to be doing over this period of time. That's totally understandable. Whilst a PhD can feel really unstructured while you're doing it, at least you know usually what the next steps of your research are and what your next tasks are. This period of time between handing in and the defense can feel even more unstructured, than the beginnings of our PhDs feel. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so if you're feeling like you want some clarity, that's really understandable too. Write that down on your list. So you probably want some rest. You probably want some clarity. You probably are saying, and I'm now guessing the things that you're going to thought download, you probably also want to feel secure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You want to feel like you understand what's going to happen and that you're going to be okay. Some confidence that you're going to be okay. And then what we can do is, as we start to figure out what do I need right now, we can then start to think, okay, how can I meet those needs? What would help those things, and from there, we can really action plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you need rest, we can think about how much rest, what feels like good rest for you, because all rest is not created equal. Rest where you're blobbing on the sofa, scrolling on your phone and three hours later, just feel a bit groggy, is not the same as rest where you go for a short walk and then actually nap. You know what type of rest feels restful for you, and what type of rest makes you just feel worse than when you started. We can plan for what sort of rest will help us most.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we can think, what am I going to need to think in order to be willing to rest? Because we can action plan all we want, but if we don't look at the thoughts we have about it, then we ain't going to do the things that we intended to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what thoughts would you need to think in order to be able to follow your rest plan? You probably need to think that rest is important. You probably need to think that you have enough time to rest. You probably need to think that you deserve. to rest. And I want you to really ask yourself whether you believe those things, because if you don't, you're not going to rest with all the best intentions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we either need to work on building your belief in those thoughts, or you need to work on identifying thoughts that you do have, that you do already believe. Maybe you already believe that people generally deserve to rest before their viva. There are very few of you, I think, who would tell your friends that they didn't deserve to rest before their vivas, having just handed in their thesis, but somehow we tell it to ourselves. So find a thought that feels true for you, that enables you to actually get that rest that you want. One of my students also let me know that she'd been listening to one of my earlier podcasts, episode 11, I think it is, on how to rest over the Christmas holidays from last year, and was finding that really useful in this period of time before her viva. So if you're feeling like you need to rest, but you have a lot of thoughts about whether you deserve to rest, whether you've got time to rest, that would be a really good episode to check out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In terms of clarity, if you feel like you need clarity, what do you need to think in order to get that clarity? And I think this is a combination of thoughts. I think you need to think that it's possible to have some clarity. You need to believe that that is something that you can have. A lot of people see the viva as this big mysterious thing that I can never have clarity about until, because you never know what might happen when you go in there. That's kind of true, but you can get a bunch of clarity about it. So you need to believe that it's possible to be more clear on how it's going to go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You need to believe it's okay to ask questions. So to talk to people from your department who've had vivas recently, talk to people who've examined vivas in your department recently, examined them elsewhere, talking to your supervisor about previous experiences with their students, you need to believe that it's okay to ask those questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everyone does their viva for the first time. Everybody has been in the position where they didn't know and sometimes supervisors forget what things we don't know, you know, it's really easy once you've done it, however many times, you know, I got to the stage where I would forget some of the basic things that people doing this for the first time didn't understand. So let's nurture the belief that it's okay to ask for clarity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that I think is really important though for you to think is that you get to decide some of the clarity. There isn't a right way of preparing. If our result is that we have a clear plan for the period between now and the viva, and that's what we want to end up with. And the actions we need to take are to work out what we're going to do in that time. What thoughts help with that? One thought that helps. is I get to decide. Other people have done vivas before, but only I have done this viva before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Only I have had my PhD experience and having this viva experience and I know what I need in this period and I get to decide. And often, that's a really challenging thought. Because we believe there's a right answer out there somewhere, that if only we could find it, we'd know how to prepare.When in reality, like with so many things, you just get to pick. You get to pick and you know yourself as well as anybody, so there's no one better qualified to pick what you need right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing that you might have identified that you need is confidence, belief, that sense that you are going to be okay. Now, this is a really interesting one because people think that confidence comes from having done things before and confidence comes from knowing that you are going to pass the viva. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> , The trouble is, you haven't done this before, and we don't know if you're going to pass the viva. Now most people, when you hand in your thesis, it's very unusual for you to fail on a viva. It's very unusual for it to be anything other than some degree of modifications, and then here's your PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, you don't know. We don't know. We can't be sure. And the trouble is, people try and reassure us by saying, you know, you'll be okay. It's like, what if I'm not? I might not be. Something might go wrong. I might end up with some horrible examiner who's feeling really unreasonable, and they find something in my thesis that I didn't know about. It might happen. And so trying to get confidence from saying it's not going to can be a bit of a losing battle. What I would really encourage you instead is to build confidence from knowing that you will be okay, whatever happens. From knowing that in that viva, you are going to look after yourself and that after the viva, no matter what happens, you are going to be kind to yourself and you are going to put the support in place that you need to be okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I once, and I can't remember if I ever talked about this on the podcast before, I once took part in a competition called FameLab, where it's a science communication competition. I was on stage at the Bloomsbury Theatre and I forgot all my words. I hadn't anticipated it happening. I wasn't even that nervous about it, to be honest. But I completely forgot my words and just froze on stage in front of hundreds of people, and streaming live on the internet. It was a joy. I think I might have mentioned this before. But anyway, what made that okay wasn't that I stopped something awful happening, because something awful did happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was pretty embarrassing. But what made it okay was that I was really kind to myself afterwards. I didn't beat myself up about how I'd made a fool of myself. I didn't tell myself terrible things about myself. I didn't beat myself up about how much more rehearsal I should have done or any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just said, well, that sucked. How can I look after you? And I was nice to myself. I actually ended up making a video about the experience. You can find that on YouTube if you look. And you can do the same. Whatever happens in your viva, you can choose to be really nice about yourself and to remind yourself that you did your best here and that you worked really hard for this. And that whatever happens, you're going to keep being kind to yourself, you're not going to say terrible things to yourself, and you're going to sort out whatever you need to sort out after the viva, whether that's minor typos for your minor modifications, or whether it's a bigger piece of work that you still need to complete. We can decide in advance that we're going to be nice to ourselves throughout the whole process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So far, we've really been thinking about what do you need in this period between handing in and going to the viva. So what do you need over this preparation period? What I want you to also spend some time thinking is what do I need on the day? How do I want to feel? What do I need to set up in advance so that I can feel those things? And one thing I would really encourage you to do is to plan in advance what you're going to think on the day. And again, we've, we've talked about to think lists before, and they could sometimes be a bit of a weird concept for people because obviously action is useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We know that. We know we have to actually do things to get anything done. But pre planning what you're going to think on the day can be really, really helpful. Having a little sentence that resonates with you that you go back to when you feel anxious is really helpful. I will chuck some in for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know this work better than anybody else and I guarantee you that's true. Your examiners might know some of the background better than you do, or at least as well as you do. But your work, you know better than anybody else.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thought that I would recommend, it doesn't have to be perfect. Which is true. Often people have this feeling that if there's anything they don't know in the viva, then they're gonna get major modifications and it's gonna be horrendous and it's gonna take another year and blah, blah, blah. It's not true. You are allowed to have bits in the viva where you just don't know the answer. You are allowed to have bits in the viva where you say. Yeah, I can't actually remember why we did that. I mean, this would be logical, I guess, but I can't really remember. That's okay. You're allowed bits where you are not perfect. In fact, one of the roles of a viva is for them to be able to see that you know, your work has some flaws. You understand the flaws, and you understand how you could maybe mitigate them in the future or why they were kind of inevitable with the design that you used and therefore just what the implications of those flaws are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're not looking for a perfect piece of work. They're looking for a piece of work where you understand its strengths and why you did it that way and you understand its flaws and you can explain them and discuss them in the context of other work. So a thought, this doesn't have to be perfect, can be really useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is a conversation, not a defence, can be a helpful one too. And in an awful lot of viva experiences that I've overseen during my academic career, people have come out going, that was actually really nice, who knew? And it's like, hmm, tried to tell you that, you didn't believe me. But it's okay, because I didn't believe people before mine either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But reminding yourself this is a conversation. I get to have a conversation with two people who care about this field, about my work. That's pretty cool. Okay, so you get to think whatever you want in the run up to that viva, in that day of the viva, but let's decide it in advance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're really worried that you're going to get stressed, you can take two approaches. You can have one where you have thoughts that help you to be less stressed. So those kind of calming, it doesn't have to be perfect. This is just a conversation. I know my work better than anybody. You can have those calming thoughts that we've talked about, but I'd also recommend a thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's okay if I get stressed because I can just take a moment. Okay. Sometimes we get more stressed worrying that we're going to get stressed and it will be a big deal than we would actually if we just got stressed in the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So reminding yourself, if I get stressed in the viva, I can just take a second and breathe. I can also just ask for a couple of moments. That's okay too. You can in the viva say, can I just have a couple of seconds? I'm feeling a bit nervous. And your examiners will understand that. Vivas aren't about testing how you respond under pressure. This is not Celebrity SAS. Okay, they're not there to torture you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you say, can I just take a moment, then that will be okay. If you feel really uncomfortable with that, you can always ask to go to the toilet. That's a sneaky way to go and get yourself a moment without having to tell them that you need a moment. So if partway through you're feeling, you know, you can feel your heart rate going, you're getting a bit sweaty and you're a bit like, okay, and you're really uncomfortable to say, can I just take a moment, ask for a bathroom break because that's acceptable too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to decide what we want to be thinking and feeling in the run up to it, we get to decide what we want to be thinking and feeling on the day of, and we get to decide what we're going to say to ourselves after it. And I'd be really cautious around your interpretation of the words, I did my best. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because people often have this notion of what your best is, which would be answering every question eloquently and quickly and thoroughly and blah blah blah, having no critiques. That's not your best. Your best is whatever you do on the day. Because your best is what you're capable of doing in that moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So even if you get a bit stressed and even if afterwards you think, Oh, I should have mentioned that paper. Oh my God, I'm so annoyed. Whatever you did, that was your best. And you get to decide that after this, I am telling myself I did my best, no matter what happens in that viva. I'm telling myself I'm proud of myself, no matter what happens in that viva. Okay, you get to decide that now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we can think in this time, what do I need now? What do I need on the day? What do I need afterwards? And start to plan thoughts and actions that help with those things. I think this is also a really important moment to start talking about something that in my form of coaching we call the manual, which is our expectations of others. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's really easy, particularly when we're under stress ourselves, to have expectations about how other people should be behaving. So how much support our supervisors should be giving us, how our examiners should behave on the day, how our family and friends and partners should be supporting us in the run up to our viva. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no issue with having expectations of other people. We all have expectations of other people. We all have hopes as to how people will behave. In some situations, you may be able to request things you want from those people. So if sitting down and doing a mock viva with your supervisor would be useful, ask. If your partner bringing you hot drinks while you look through your thesis and make some notes would be useful and just make you feel looked after, ask. You can make requests of other people, but the reason we call it a manual is because ultimately, our manual, for other people, they don't have to follow it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Unfortunately, every individual in this world gets to decide what they're going to do. And that's driven by a whole bunch of things, and sometimes that can be really annoying. Because sometimes you might look at your supervisor and think, you should be supporting me differently right now. Or thinking to the examiner, you're being really mean and you shouldn't be. Or thinking to your family, you should understand how stressed I am and you don't. What we teach about the manual is the more you can accept that other people will behave the way they behave and that we get to choose how we respond to that, the easier it gets. Because there's nothing more painful than spending loads of time wishing somebody was anything other than they were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We talked about this a little bit in some of my episodes about getting on with your supervisor and having a good supervisory relationship. So if in the run up to your viva you're still struggling with that, those could be some useful episodes to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really think about what are your expectations for the people around you? What requests are you willing to make to them? But what are you also just going to accept? Because you can make requests, but people are not going to start being people they're not. If your supervisor is not the warm, fuzzy type, they're not suddenly going to start checking on you every day to make sure you're OK and patting you on the head and telling you you're brilliant. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you can accept that, we can think how else to meet those needs. Because that's essentially what we're doing with a manual, is we're expecting other people to meet our needs. And it's not that they shouldn't, maybe they could, maybe they should. But if they're not going to, how can we meet those needs ourselves? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If your supervisor's not the warm fuzzy type who will pat you on the head and tell you you're brilliant and you want to be patted on the head and told you're brilliant, who would? How could you pat yourself on the head and tell yourself you're brilliant?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So figure out why do I want these things from people? Why do I want my family to understand how stressful this is? Because I need validation that it's okay that I'm stressed? Cool, where can you get that from? You can get that from other people who've been through it. You can get that from yourself. Yourself is always a good source of these things. The less time we can spend wishing other people were different, the more time we can spend actually meeting our needs so that we're supported during this period. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another technique I want to introduce you to is conscious self talk. And I talked about this in one of my favorite episodes that, in my opinion, has not had enough attention. So I think you should all go and listen to it and it's about why Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind. And I encourage you to go and listen to the entire episode 'cause it's wonderful and I love it and I use it all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But in brief, what I talk about in that episode is that if you are hearing your brain saying to you lots of things that are perhaps not helping. You know, your brain saying, oh, I don't think you're good enough. You don't know how to prepare, you know, you should have done more by now and all of those sorts of things that we know don't help us. You get to assign them a Winnie the Pooh character, assign those voices a Winnie the Pooh character. And the reason we give it a character is because then we get to talk back to the character, but in a compassionate way. Because the thing with Winnie the Pooh, we love all of these characters, okay? They're all awesome. They're lovely, cute characters. They all have your best interests at heart. Owl just values cleverness and wants you to be amazing. Eeyore, he wants to be happier than he is, but he really struggles and he's a lovely little donkey, he just gets a bit down sometimes. And Winnie the Pooh just worries that you don't get enough rest and you don't give yourself more treats and so he tries to remind you that you do deserve that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so we don't get to just go, okay, I'll do what Winnie the Pooh says. Okay, you must be right. We get to talk back to them, but we get to do it in a compassionate way because we like these characters. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to say to Eeyore, I know it does feel like that sometimes, doesn't it? But actually, we've done some quite hard things. We actually, we finished our thesis when we didn't think we would. You know, you get to talk back and reassure Eeyore.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or if Winnie the Pooh is saying, Come on, you deserve to sit on the sofa and eat chocolate, then you can go, I know I do. I really do. But when we planned today, we decided that we were going to do two hours of preparation work first, and then we'd sit on the sofa. So I am going to sit with you, but not till later. So you get to respond back to these voices and reassure them that you're on this. You have a plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you really get to think about what you need right now and how you can meet those needs, either yourself or by making requests from the people around you. You get to decide what you need to think and feel at the moment, what you need to think and feel in the viva itself and on that day, and what you need to think and feel after the viva in order to be able to take all the actions that you want to take and achieve the results that you want to achieve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know that's a lot of thought work, and I know a lot of that isn't the kind of concrete advice of this is what you need to do to prepare. And that's because all of you are different. You don't need the same things. And it's really important that you channel into what you need, and you then make the plans as to how you can do that and that's why I've focused on that so far.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However. I know you all love a tip, so I'm also going to give you some tips. Things that I would really recommend. Schedule your rest, schedule your work time. I talk about this in the how to rest episode. So, decide in advance, at least a day in advance, usually a week in advance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you are going to do different things so that you aren't resting while thinking you should be working and working when you think you should be resting and actually not really achieving either. Okay, so try to schedule that stuff out so that you know when you're doing the different things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would highly recommend having a copy of your thesis that you will be taking into the viva with you, whatever format you decide to do your viva in, whether it's face to face or online and consider putting tabs down the side if it's a physical copy, so that you can really quickly flick to the right page. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's nothing worse than somebody saying, you know, oh, figure one of chapter two, um, I noticed that, blah, blah, blah, and you're thinking, which one's that? Get it so that you can just put tabs in and really quickly find them there in the moment. It can really help you not feel so flustered because you're not kind of doing flustered actions looking for the pages. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another tip is, and this is kind of getting back into thought work, bit is remember that your circumstances don't dictate your feelings. So some people get very worried about </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> whether their viva's online or whether it's in a room, and if they have the choice which they should choose or if it's been imposed on them, whether that's a good thing or not. Your circumstances do not create your feelings. The thoughts that you have about them do. So just decide, or just accept what you've been given, and think the thoughts that this is the best decision ever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if your viva is going to be online, or you decide you want it to be online, tell yourself all the reasons why that's the best thing you've ever done in your life. Why that's going to be so much better. If it's going to be in a room, tell yourself all the reasons why that's the best thing. The circumstances don't dictate it. Who your examiner is does not dictate how you feel. It's the thoughts you have about that person. You could have a super experienced examiner and your thoughts could be, Oh my goodness, they're so amazing. , This is terrifying and just feel terrified. Or you could have this super experienced examiner and tell yourself, they're really going to see the big picture and I'm so lucky to have two hours of their time where they get to experience my work and I can chat with them about it. I'm going to learn so much. And you could feel excited or prepared or those sorts of things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So remember, circumstance doesn't drive your feelings. The thoughts that you choose to nurture, not just the ones that pop up, but the ones you choose to nurture, dictate how you're going to feel. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another tip, identify the flaws in your thesis that you can see now and be able to explain why you made those decisions and how you mitigated the flaws and what you might do differently in the future. One of the things, when we can be calm about preparing for a viva and accept that it's okay that there are flaws in our work, then we can actually start to be able to talk about them like academics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's when we feel defensive about our work that we don't want people to find the flaws and what if they spot flaws and there shouldn't be any, that actually we end up not preparing for those questions. So spend a bit of time identifying what are the flaws. How could I have done this differently? Why didn't I? And what would I do differently next time? Okay, that's perfectly fine.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Find the lists of questions online. If you go online and search common viva questions, there's hundreds. Pick 10 and try and jot down a few notes for those. It's not a case of memorizing, but just sort of getting stuff into your mind of the sorts of things that people are likely to ask. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Things that always came up in the ones that I was involved with, was, you know, why did you pick this 10? topic. Why these methods? So the sort of why questions, um, what does your research contribute? What is unique about your work? Those sorts of things. , If you were going to do a postdoc in this topic, what would your next experiment be or your next study be? Those sorts of things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So. Google. Google is your friend. Search for some of these questions, pick a few, and try and plan a few answers to them. You don't have to memorize these. Especially if you're going to be online, please don't have post it notes of all the right answers to everything all around you. It will freak you out. But do pre think some of these questions and remember that there will always be some questions that come completely out of the blue.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another tip, people get really worried about remembering authors and dates of research that you've read. As long as you can show that you know the research, you don't have to know the details. I don't remember the dates of my own papers, for goodness sake. There may be some people that can suddenly remember all this, but this isn't a memory game. This is an understanding game. So as long as you can say there was some really interesting research done where they did blah blah blah blah. In my opinion at least, supervisors let me know whether you disagree with me or not, but in my opinion at least and certainly when I did investigations about this in my old university, the vast majority of staff don't care whether you can say, Oh, this is from 2011 or whatever. Focus on understanding rather than memorization. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final tip. Is remember, as with all things in life, you hear the stories of the dramatic ones. So you hear about the people who went through with no changes and, oh my goodness, could I do that? And you hear about the ones where it was a huge long viva and the person was awful and they asked questions that weren't even fair and so on so forth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't hear about the vast majority of vivas that are absolutely bog standard. They go through, they have a nice conversation, they have a few bits that are somewhat uncomfortable because the examiners ask something that they're not quite clear on. They tidy up, they move on to something else, they talk it through. It takes two to three hours, something like that, might vary a bit between disciplines. And then you come out with minor modifications. That's the vast majority, and you never hear those stories because they're just bog standard and boring. And so it can really create this impression that either you're going to soar and you're under pressure to get no changes, or you're going to crash and burn and it's going to be terrible, because they're the stories you hear. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final final tip... is really remind yourself that once this is done, it just doesn't matter anymore. I was an academic for 20 years. I've worked with hundreds, if not thousands of academics in various capacities, you know, collaborators, co teaching modules, committees, leadership, all sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have no idea how long they took to do their PhDs. I have no idea whether they got minor modifications or major modifications, whether the examiner said something mean to them or not. No idea. No idea. Because they got their PhDs and they did their thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you actually ask people, there's a huge variety, but it doesn't matter. And that's within academia, where people know what that means. Outside of academia, people haven't got a clue. Once you've got it, you've got it. So reminding yourself that the stuff that feels incredibly important now, won't be in a few years time. You'll have done this thing, and that's amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's not to underestimate how tough it is in the moment, but keeping that perspective. Do you know how long your supervisor took? I bet you don't. Keeping that perspective can really help. I think back through my cohort, so the people that graduated around the same time as me. And firstly, I can't really remember many people's PhD experiences, but I also know that it really didn't dictate their careers either. You know, there are people who I have vague recollections of flying through their vivas who are doing fine now, other people who had a real struggle, who are now absolutely amazing sector leaders in their area and so on. It really doesn't matter in the long run.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The important thing is it's another opportunity to learn to look after you while you do something challenging and important. So think about what you need and figure out how to meet those needs between now and then. And I look forward to hearing all of your success stories in due course. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 06 Nov 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-8-how-to-prepare-for-your-viva thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-7-how-to-plan-your-week-with-ex-client-and-phd-student-marie <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode, an ex-client Marie is telling us about the "perfect weekly meeting" that she developed during our time coaching together. She uses this to set the tone for her week and it's really changed how she feels and how she gets stuff done. It's so much more than a to-do list, and instead really gets to the core of how to start a week with intention. Hope you find it useful!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach. This is episode seven of season two, and I am super excited because not only do we have a guest with us today, we have a guest who was a client. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the first time that any of my clients have come on the podcast. But Marie, my guest today, was an amazing client and came up with some stuff that I hadn't really anticipated her doing and I thought it was so useful that I invited her to be with us here today. So hi, Marie. Thank you for agreeing to come on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Hi, and thank you for giving me the opportunity. It's been it's been quite the journey. I've really enjoyed listening to your podcast for the last year. And it was great to be able to receive some real life coaching from you this summer. So thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: No problem. It was fun. Can you just introduce yourself a little bit and maybe explain why you came forward for coaching in the first place?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah, sure. My name is Marie and I've just started my third year of my PhD and I'm working on art and religion in 18th century France. I initially reached out to you this summer for coaching because I'd set myself some really ambitious deadlines and targets and it was a case of getting some coaching and finding out what was preventing me getting some of the work done. I was conscious of not losing interest or letting my energy dip too much over the summer as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those are quite superficial reasons. Lots of different things actually came out when we started coaching, which was interesting, but that's initially why I reached out to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that often happens with coaching. People come for one particular problem that they've spotted, and then they find other things along the way. And that's completely normal. And from my perspective, your consult was a no brainer. So I always have half hours Zoom call completely free, where we just chat about what it is that you're hoping to get out of coaching. And some people assume they're going to be sales calls where I'm trying to persuade people to work with me. But for me, they're really a time where I get to get to know you a little bit, get to know what the issues are and to work out whether it is stuff that falls within my expertise and what I do as a coach. Because I coach everybody from PhD students through to full professors. And one of the things I have to be really mindful of with PhD students is that I'm not here to be a supervisor. So on that consult, one of the things that I try to be really clear with people on is the difference between a coach and what a coach will support you with and a supervisor and what a supervisor will help you with. And what I loved about our conversation was that you were very clear on that too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah, so for me, it felt like I had all the building blocks to produce a good PhD or at least enjoy the journey. I've got a good relationship with my supervisors and I have some great material and I'm really interested in the field and in my topic but it felt like I just needed a steer on how to focus so that I could really make some measurable progress on the PhD. So how can I be efficient and make the best use of these things to push me forward? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And that's exactly the stuff that's great to coach on is where you're almost getting in your own way that you're like, I should be able to do this. I've got all the things that I need, but for some reason, I'm either not getting on, or I'm worried that I won't be able to do enough quick enough and all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today I really wanted to focus on this tool that you developed, because one of the things that we started talking about was how you were deciding what you were going to do each week and how you were going to stick to that and know that you had stuck to it and all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah, so I think for context, I think it's important to note that I didn't go into the PhD straight from having done a master's. I'd had a big break between the master's degree and the PhD, about six or seven years in the end and in that time, I had really developed in my career predominantly in the museum sector and had worked in lots of big and diverse teams. So I think there was like a period of transition that was still happening. It was had been very used to working in dynamic and big teams with lots of weekly and monthly check ins and that thing to, to moving into the PhD, which was, let's face it, it's quite, isolating work, unless you're working on a big science project and you're in the lab every day. In the arts and humanities, it's often work that you're doing on a, solo basis in libraries or in your office. So I, I just felt that I needed something at the beginning of the week to make me feel energized and make me feel like I was focused about what I wanted to achieve for that week or that day. But doing that on your own is a really hard thing, whilst when I was working in various departments in my previous career, it was a very natural thing to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're in a room and somebody's leading that meeting, and everybody's contributing and I was lacking that. And so we hit on something during our coaching sessions where it was, okay, well, how could I recreate that feeling of being in a weekly meeting with dynamic and energizing colleagues who based on my experience, don't all think the same way and don't all agree on everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there's, often a voice that might come up with some problems. There's often a voice that's incredibly optimistic that's focusing on the positive things, and you've got the leader who's trying to chair all this. So I basically conceived this weekly meeting with myself. It was a fake scenario where I promised myself, on Monday mornings, I'd make myself a nice coffee and I would have, before opening emails or tackling any PhD work, I'd sit there for an hour and think about what this weekly meeting would look like. And we developed some prompt questions, which were very similar to the kinds of questions that would come up in my previous career. And I tweaked them to be more relatable to the PhD. And I just thought, well, let's try this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I did a couple of weeks of having these fake weekly meetings with myself. And I think the important point to remember, which comes up a lot in your podcast, Vikki, is about how, as PhD students, we're both the employees who are doing the hard graft of research, but we're also the bosses. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're the CEOs who are directing the research and who are identifying the tasks and the milestones and all the rest of it. So we're both these people. And so I had to embody both those people with my weekly meetings.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love it. And we'll go into the details in a second so that people can understand a little bit more about the prompt questions that you use but first I wanted to pick up on you talked about wanting it to be dynamic and energizing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think this is so important because people listening to this might be like, Well, I sit down on a Monday and decide what I'm doing for the week. There's no rocket science there, but I think what you were doing differently was this wasn't a period where you were just writing a to do list and deciding what you were doing each week, you were setting an energetic tone for the week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: It felt important because it gave me a sense of direction and forward momentum. I think for me, a PhD can feel a bit groundhog day, it's solitary and it can feel like the same thing every week. You're chipping away at this really big project. And so instead of letting the PhD direct my energy, how do I set the tone for how I want to do this. Right? Because we all need to do it. We need to do the PhD, but it's like, how do we want to do it is up to us, right? I have much more control over that in terms of, do I want to do it and it feels like toil and blood and sweat and tears? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, that's fine. If that's your vibe. Cool. For me, it was very, very much like I want it to be a joyful experience. I want it to be challenging, but also like energizing. And those are the kinds of feelings that I had in my career prior to doing a PhD, which allowed me to grow, I guess, and rise up to those challenges, but also enjoy the moments where things feel like they're flowing and you're competent and confident. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love it. And so a couple of things came out of that for me. So in a recent podcast episode, I taught people about the self coaching model and one of the things I think gets massively overlooked in academia is how much our emotions drive our actions. You won't find an academic who doesn't have a to do list in some form or other. That's all on the action line, what things I need to do. You will find very few academics who think, how do I need to feel in order to do these tasks this week, and to do them in a way that feels good. And so what I love is how you took it one step back up the self coaching model, as it were, to say, okay, I'm going to start my week working out what do I need to think this week so that I can feel the feelings that I want to feel, and therefore do the tasks that I want to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the other part that I love, and this is something that I encourage everybody listening to think about, is how you went back to past experiences to figure out how you wanted to feel. Because you went back to your previous jobs and thought about when was a time where I felt really good in my work and found it easy to get on with the things that I needed to do and then took yourself back from that. Okay, so what was I thinking? What was I feeling and how can I reenact that now? And that's something I'd really encourage everyone to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So even PhD students who've come straight through undergrad, masters into their PhD will have had times in their life, whether it's during their study, whether it's in part time jobs or it's in hobbies or whatever, where things felt good and felt easy. And I think seeing how we can translate that and recreate that into our PhD worlds is a really good way of self managing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah, I fabricated this scenario that actually was familiar to me, right? So my previous jobs, the weekly meeting with the team was a very familiar thing. And something I really looked forward to. Some people hated it, but for me, it was very much like, okay, great. We are all working towards a common goal. We are aware of everybody's commitments and projects, but we're also looking back to the previous week and thinking about the things that really went well for us. We're also anticipating the problems that might be popping up this week and next. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I suddenly, in our conversations, it was like, why don't I just apply that to the PhD? Isn't that exactly the same thing? You have to celebrate your successes, however big or small, but you have to also anticipate the problems that might crop up. So essentially I just opened up a Word document, called it Perfect Weekly Meeting, and I will do this on a Monday, in the morning, over coffee, and I save the documents each week. And it's been really nice to go back through the documents too and see what I wrote and reflect on those things to see how I progressed or the things that were memorable or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think about what went well for me the previous week. So that's a really an easy one, but it's something we take for granted and we often forget, right? So I actually open up my Outlook calendar. Lots of people have paper diaries, whatever works for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I go, Oh yeah, I forgot that I had that meeting last week and it actually went really well. Or I had coffee with a friend and we talked about our projects or I finally got around to reading that article. So it can be big or small, but that's the first thing, what went well for me last week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the second part of that question is what was I thinking that enabled that to happen? Instead of going, Oh, this great thing happened to me. And that's great. We're celebrating it. It's more like, well, I played a part in making that a successful thing or a positive thing, right? So what was I thinking that enabled that to happen? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So getting around to reading that article that I've been meaning to read for ages and I finally did it, it's like, what was I thinking? Well, I was thinking a lot of things around overcoming the procrastination, thinking about how helpful reading that particular article would be for unlocking a future idea, that thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: This is something that so gets overlooked because... If you Google like, weekly reflective questions or something like that, you will always find what went well last week. And I agree with you entirely. It's something that does get overlooked. We take things for granted. We focus on what we haven't done yet. So that is important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what you will rarely find is this second question that you ask, is how did I get that done? What was I thinking in order for that to happen? And that's really important, partly so that we can recreate thoughts that helped us to get things done that were difficult if, on reflection, they were useful. So you talked about an article that maybe you were putting off reading, and you read it. Now, if you looked back on what you were thinking to get that done, was, my supervisor's going to hate me if I don't read this, then you might learn from that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Actually, that got it done. But it didn't feel good. So how do I want to think in the future so I can get these things done without having to have punitive thoughts about what somebody else will think, or if you look back and you go, you know what, how I got it done was reminding myself that I'm actually interested in this paper, you know, is actually, you know, I've been putting off reading it, but actually I chose this topic and it's actually really interesting. And I reminded myself of that, at the time it was to read it. Then you can go, Oh, okay. And I can use that again this week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah. So what went well last week, what was I thinking that enabled this particular thing to happen? The next part is what didn't go so well last week. You know, why might that be? What were the blockers and how can I move past them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So again, you can do your list of bullet points of , oh, well I didn't submit this thing on time, or I lost my bus pass and that was a nightmare. Or I had a day where I completely procrastinated and didn't achieve anything. So what didn't go so well last week? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The list can can go on and on, but I think it's important to just focus on one thing when you look back in your diary and think, okay, well, let's explore that. You know, why might that be? So if I take one day last week where I probably only worked for about three hours and it felt hard and it was a struggle and it's like, okay, well, why might that be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And looking back, I had worked quite hard prior to that day. I actually felt really tired and my energy levels were really low and it felt like I had done quite a lot of meaty reading and writing and thinking. And so it was completely understandable that midweek, I hit a bit of a slump, right? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And remaining compassionate, I think is important for this particular part of the exercise. And thinking about my blockers, well, I mean, over time I have to say that what didn't go well, so well last week becomes smaller and smaller and less significant as I've gone on with this exercise, because essentially in real time, I'm already recognizing why things might be difficult or why I'm not completing that thing and I'm staying compassionate and choosing an alternative way of approaching that particular situation, whether it's reprioritizing my tasks or doing something completely different and allowing myself to have a break so that I can recoup and rest and come back with the right , clear mind and energy to tackle the next piece of work, reach out to a friend because actually I've been working for four days in the library on my own and I haven't actually spoken to another person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And actually I've realized connections are really important in my life. So so that, that section actually over time solves itself, which is really interesting. And so that section gets smaller and I moved past it much more quickly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what am I looking forward to this week and next week? what are my movements and my appointments? So this is a nice planning one, and I love planning. I'm an ex event planner, so this is a really lovely one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it is your to do list, but it's bigger picture stuff, right? It's looking at your diary and going. Yeah, okay. I've got three days where I haven't got lots of annoying appointments and errands and things to do. So actually these three days are going to be really nice to get lost in the reading, maybe tackle some writing, do some deep research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Or it's a, a case of looking at the week and seeing that you have far too much concentrated appointments on one particular day. And so you have to make a decision there and say either I honor all of these appointments and various things I need to do and research doesn't get done that day has to be moved to a different day or are some of these appointments absolutely essential for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Right. And can I move or cancel them? So this is a really nice one so that you don't let the week overwhelm you. You're in control. You're setting the tone for the week and you are in control of what's happening. I appreciate that some things are out of your control, right? You might have school drop offs and school pick ups and stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And those things have to be honoured. Great. But around that, you know, you set the tone for what you can achieve and what works for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: What I love with that is you can iterate between questions. So if you've been regularly answering the question, what didn't go so well last week and why was that from that compassionate place that you mentioned, then if you can start spotting patterns, like actually when I've had a big day of meetings, I sometimes feel a bit fatigued the next day.. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So sometimes we have a tendency that if we've had a big day of meetings where we haven't done any research in inverted commas, then the next day, right. I really have to do all my writing because I didn't do anything yesterday. And now I really, really have to. But then you can start to plan for that and start saying, okay. This is how I'm going to feel tomorrow, probably, or on that day, so what do I do with that? How do I make sure that I meet my needs? How do I make sure that it feels like something that I want to do, that I'm capable of doing, and I feel supported, rather than being like, well, I'm just going to have to do it, and then beating yourself up when you don't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because one of the worst positions to be in is to decide to do something when you know you're going to be tired or when you suspect you're going to be tired, then not doing it, and then you've neither rested nor done the thing because all you're doing is beating yourself up.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's also a helpful way of just going, Oh yeah, like family are coming down this weekend. And so that means that I have to be okay with the fact that research isn't going to happen whilst I'm hosting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But even within that, because when we're looking ahead like this and knowing ourselves and being honest about ourselves and being compassionate to ourselves and our needs. We get to think like that, don't we, we get to think, okay, this isn't an all or nothing situation. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This isn't either I have the perfect research day, or I don't because my cousins here, and often when we decide on the fly, so we realize on the Wednesday that oh gosh I've got somebody coming to stay tonight and I'm not going to get any work done, we often do make those all or nothing, oh well I won't be able to do anything then, and just that's it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas if we can think about it a little bit further ahead and actually think about it with our, Best supervisor brain on where we're being really good boss to ourselves. We can say, okay, yeah, your cousin's coming that day, but she's actually not coming until one. So, and you will need some time to get the house ready and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But actually we probably could do a couple of hours first thing, just to keep the ball moving, just to get that thing off to your supervisor so it can be on their desk instead of yours. And when we're thinking about it this little bit further in advance, you've got the brain space to think like that and to think, is there any way I can do all, or do I actually just want to take the full day off? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But enjoy that and luxuriate in the fact that I'm having a whole day off. And if I hear myself saying, you know, Oh, I'm not doing any research today, maybe I should be able to be like, no, but we decided this is the plan. Not doing work today is the plan. We picked this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah. This whole exercise has completely changed my way of approaching the PhD instead of being reactive all the time to what like needs to happen and the next thing and the emails and the writing and feeling quite fragmented and scattered about everything it's actually, I'm creating a moment of stillness on a Monday morning, and I'm directing the tone for the week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next one is a really powerful one for me because I think it's I can be a little bit of a blind optimist but is there anything I'm worried about this week? You know, what can I do to make that less of a worry and what do I need from me this week? You know, it might be basic needs, like I need some exercise or I need to make sure that, you know, the fridge is fully stocked. So this one is the vulnerable bit, right, the bit where you're at your most vulnerable and being quite as honest, emotionally honest as you can really but it's like I'm worried about, you know, the fact that I've got a supervision at the end of the week and I have submitted what I thought was suitable work, but I'm obviously anxious about how that conversation might go and so, you know, this is where you can let all those unhelpful narratives play out. But it's good getting done on paper because I think then they're out there and they're not creating a lot of internal conflict.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The essential part of the question, I guess, is, you know, what can I do to make that less of a worry? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's the, this is the cognitive behavior part, right? Which is where, okay, well, let's be logical about this. It's totally normal to be nervous about your supervision. This isn't unfamiliar to you. You have a supervision every month, but it's always that time when you're checking in with people who are much further ahead in their career than you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Their job is to highlight things that need work. And so it's an uncertain thing. It's an unknown and the unknown makes us feel slightly unsafe and unsteady, right? But what can I do to make that less of a worry? Well, already that narrative is making the idea of having a supervision less of a worry for me, but it's also, well, what can I do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think for me what's useful is like, I can a meditate so I can quiet my mind and create moments stillness, but I could also you know, remind myself of all the work I have done and remind myself of the tough research questions I'm developing and grappling with and those things allow me to elevate how I feel rather than bring myself down. It's about being more compassionate and positive about where we're at with things. Whilst being honest, right? Don't use this as an opportunity to start like beating yourself up about things that you haven't done or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: There is so much I love in everything that you just said. And I think the first thing I wanted to really highlight was how, when you were talking about identifying what you're worried about, you really took what we call a compassion first approach, which is sometimes when people identify what they're worried about in advance, they immediately jumped to wanting to fix it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They immediately jumped to wanting to argue with their brain about why it's not actually something that they should be worried about and reassure themselves of all these things. And that's, you know, those things can be useful cognitive practices and we get to those, but it's really important to start with compassion and to start with validating yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is true with anybody. So I'm just starting developing some supervisor training, which I'm super excited about. And one of the things that I'm going to be talking with supervisors about is starting from validating what the student is saying because supervisors who are trying to be nice, which is most supervisors, often say things like, Oh no, no, you don't need to worry about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's going to be fine. Don't worry about that. Which whilst it's really well intended, sometimes gives that message that you're wrong to be worried. And therefore that's quite easy to internalize and be like, Oh my God, if I shouldn't be worried, then maybe I'm just not good at this. Cause if I was good at it, I wouldn't be worried because they say I shouldn't be worried. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas, whether you're talking to yourself or whether you're a supervisor talking to your student, if you can start from, I get it. I, yeah, I understand. It sounds like you've got a lot of thoughts going on about this. It's understandable. It's something you haven't done before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's something that's been difficult for you before. It's okay that you're worried . We maybe don't have to worry as much as we are, but it's okay that that's where you're at at the moment. And if we can start from there, start from validating it, then you're not immediately telling yourself that you're wrong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you're instead asking, okay, I can see you're worried. It's okay that you're worried. So what do you need right now? What's gonna help that? And sometimes what you do need is a little untangling of some of the thoughts, because sometimes the reason we're nervous is because we've told ourselves that our supervisor hates us, or we've told ourselves that they're gonna think I'm an idiot and they're gonna kick me out because I haven't done this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other times, it's just a bit of love and care. Just like, this is gonna be something that's stressful for you, so we're gonna be really nice to you this week. We're gonna make sure that you feel prepared for it and all of those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: And then just breaking it down into much more of like a to do list. It's, you know, what one meaty task do I need to accomplish this week? And what one mundane task do I need to accomplish? So one meaty and one mundane task to accomplish this week. So it could be the meaty task is often a writing task of some kind. Some people find writing easy. I definitely don't. So that takes a lot of, you know, hard intellectual work. And then the mundane task might be, you know, updating your spreadsheets.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So yeah, and then the last one, because remembering that team members are important to me, or they have been very important to me in my previous jobs, this part Allows me to connect with people in the week if I need to, right, so it's which team members do I need to call on and who do I need to set up a call with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, are there colleagues whose conversation and company I really enjoy or is it a case of actually I really need another check in with my supervisors because I just want to get some clarity on something. Or friends it can be like non PhD related people right I mean they exist too, remember. Actually, there's, you know, a really close friend of mine who I just haven't seen for weeks on end because I've been in this writing hole, and I really enjoy going shopping with them so actually could I find a way to spend an hour in the shopping center with them and have a coffee. And so that, that meets my need for connection, which I think is important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: The other part of what you said that I loved was this notion of a team, because often people doing a PhD feel really isolated, and even when we have really good relationships with our supervisors, we don't necessarily conceptualize that as a team. And I love the idea that every PhD student has a team around them, and that comprise, you know, it's their supervisors, yes, it might be other students that are doing a similar program to them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It might be friends and family, because like you say, it's important to have team outside of academia, it might be if your university provides coaching it might be somebody like me it might be people who are at the library or the archives or the lab technicians or whoever it is. I love this idea of thinking, not, not even just thinking, what am I going to do with them this week, but just actually saying, you know, I have a team, even if I'm not going to check in with any of them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: I am going to sound like a mad woman about identifying people who might not look like team members, but who are in fact team members who are helping you push forward with the PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  So I, since beginning this exercise, I realized that in my local library, the library manager, a man named Darius. Very, very, very lovely charismatic individual who's always there on a Monday and who over time sees me working in the library and over time has become, we've chatted to one another, you know, touch base on a Monday, hello, hi, how's it going, how was your weekend? And he doesn't realize this, but he's become my like fake boss, I guess, in a weird way. It's like, he's the person I show up to on a Monday, check in with. He always asks me how my weekend's been what I'm working on this week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> He knows I'm doing a PhD and so Darius has become a part of my team, right? He's somebody that I check in with and who's interested in what I'm working on. And he's also a really kind person and has made me realize, like, this is what an ideal boss would be like. So yeah, the team, it's interesting to identify who these team members might be, right, because they're found in the unlikeliest places. So yeah, Darius, the library manager in my local library.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Shout out Darius I love that. Anyway, why don't you give us a recap of the questions that you, you go through on your weekly meeting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Yeah, so I start with what went well last week and what was I thinking that enabled that to happen. Then I move on to what didn't go so well last week and why might that be and what were my blockers and how can I move past them? Then I look forward to what's happening this week. What are my movements and my appointments? Then I move on to, is there anything I'm worried about? And what do I need from me to make that less of a worry? Have I got one meaty task that I need to accomplish today? Yes, always. So what's that task? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then think about a mundane task that I need to accomplish. So this is helpful in the sense that if I don't crack on with the meaty task and I need a bit of a rest, then the mundane task comes in at that point. And it's at least helps me to feel like I'm still working on something to do with a PhD rather than stopping completely. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then I think about which team members do I need to call on? Who do I need a call with? So that's just to make sure that there's some connection with others in built into the week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I do also want to mention, the questions that Marie uses aren't necessarily the questions that you should use. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You will work out what works for you, but I remember initially you had one that was something to do with, why am I doing this? I was wondering whether you wanted to say a little bit about why that was important then and how it got iterated out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: I think it's something that will come back in actually, but initially it was Why am I doing this? You know, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? And it can be as simple as I'm doing a PhD on this particular thing. The next bit is why am I doing it? Right? Why am I doing it? Because it's something I want to do because I'm funded to do it, because I feel like it's important. And you craft that answer as you go through the weeks and they become more or less philosophical or much more superficial, whatever's happening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It just, it's quite a repetitive exercise to remind yourself of like, why am I here? What am I actually doing? That got iterated out because I did quite a lot of that over the summer and the answer felt very concrete and embedded. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  And it felt like I wasn't coming up with new answers to that question each week. Right. So I took it out of the document. But as my project is developing, and as I'm working on other avenues of research, and the research question becomes a little bit more complicated, or it goes into a different direction or takes on a different quality, I think then I will reintroduce that question back in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, and I think that's a really important one, especially for those of you who would be starting out doing this stuff is, thinking about why you're doing it, because quite often we can get caught up in the, Oh my God, I'm not good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I need to do this. I haven't done this. I don't know. We forget that not that long ago, doing a PhD was our dream. This was what you were working so hard to get to. And we forget some of that stuff. And so really going back to why did I decide to do this but also why is what I'm doing important? And for some people, it might be honoring the artists of the past in the research you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In other people's, it might be about end users who are going to use the particular thing you're developing or whatever. So remembering some of those whys can be really important. And I love the fact that you iterate it out at the point where it felt really concrete for you. I would encourage people not to iterate it out just because it feels repetitive, because sometimes the repetition is what keeps it at the front of our head. I think you did it for long enough that it stayed at the front of your head without needing to do that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing you can do from here, we can iterate out into a monthly review that's maybe a little more extensive than this meeting. And that's something I've been doing some work on recently. And so that may be something that then gets shunted to a monthly check in instead of an every week check in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also wanted to finish with a confession. One of the other reasons, Marie knows this, one of the other reasons why I wanted Marie to come on and do this, is that I've always thought that these Monday morning, I hadn't really seen it conceptualized exactly the way Marie has done it, but this Monday morning setting of tasks and intentions, all those things was a really good idea and something that I would benefit from. It is also something that I have really struggled to stick to over the time, whereas it was something that you decided you were going to do and did, which I often find miraculous when people just decide they're going to do something and do it. I'm going to explain how I'm managing it in my life in a second, but for you, what do you think it was that made it something for you that you decided you were going to do and you just did? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: That's a really good question. I think it was reminding myself that when I start and finish something, it feels good. And monday mornings can be hard for all of us. And I think if I intentionally complete this first bit of the day, you know, go through the questions methodically. And sometimes I'm like still waking up and I'm you know, it's early and I'm thinking, Oh, do I really want to get in my feelings and think about why I'm doing this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or, you know, really, but it's like, actually when I complete that often, you know, I say I set aside an hour, really it takes me 20 minutes no more. I've, you know, it's like one piece of work completed and it just sets the tone for the next thing, right? It just feels like, well, already I've achieved something for the day and I remind myself of that feeling.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So the things I'm seeing there, you're reminding yourself why it's important. After you've done it, you're reinforcing to yourself how much better you feel because of doing it and you keep it relatively simple. So I know one of the things that has tripped me up in the past is just making these things too complicated, having too many questions, and then I do it once enthusiastically and then I never do it again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I also want to say to other listeners, if you're thinking, you know, yeah, that's a nice idea, but I can't see how I'll stick to it. It's okay to put scaffolding around yourself as well. So what I've started doing, inspired by this stuff that you've done, is I've started going to see my sister on a Monday morning. And I tell her about what I did last week, what's going on in the business and what I'm planning for the next week and so it's very similar. We don't have quite as structured questions as you have, but it's a similar check in moment. So far, touch wood, it's really worked. And knowing that somebody else is involved really helps me. And there was a time when I would've beaten myself up about that, that I need, you know, I'm a baby who needs to be supervised or I don't do things whereas now I'm like, no, I just know myself. And I know that actually for me, I don't need so much a moment of stillness as a moment of enthusiasm. So I'm somebody who vibes off that bouncing with somebody else thing. And I have somebody in place that is willing to do that with me. And so at the moment, that's how I'm doing it and it's really working. So I'd really encourage anybody listening to think about how can you make something like this work for you and who you actually are, not who you wish you were, just who you are right now. So that you can benefit from this, but in a way that's bespoke for you too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: It's really interesting that you said that Vikki because I actually, over time, expanded the weekly meeting model by bringing in a couple of colleagues on Friday afternoon. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So as we wrap up the week we jump on a Zoom chat that's only half an hour long. So it's really short and sweet, but it's like we well, it gives me that sense of connection for a start. But the second thing is we review our week with each other. We focus on three things, which is what went well for us this week, what didn't go so well, and what problems are we facing, that we can basically communicate and articulate to one another, because several brains are better than one, right? So we might say, okay, well in five minutes, why don't you try and articulate what that paper might be about? And that will help them to kind move more quickly about getting that down on paper. So we, yeah, so weirdly, I expanded this in a very informal way, but we do like a Friday, we call it Friday Reflections. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. And I love that it also gets into the disciplinary stuff. It's not just a reflecting on how your self management went, but it's actually, this is the academic issue that I'm having right now and getting into that. I love it. And I want everyone listening to realize how much you've just iterated this over time, cause I think it would be really easy to go away from this episode going, Oh, I'm going to have a Monday meeting. I'm going to have a Friday meeting. I have other people involved. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And I just love the way you introduced it based on something you'd done a bit before and you changed it over time and now you're layering in some more stuff that you're also finding useful and you're supporting other people. And I think that's such a good way to embed this practice. So yeah, thank you for sharing that element as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Marie: Oh, my pleasure. It's been great. Thank you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much, Marie. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing this with everybody. Thank you everyone so much for listening. Do let us know what you think and I will see you next week.  </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 30 Oct 2023 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-7-how-to-plan-your-week-with-ex-client-and-phd-student-marie thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-6-how-to-coach-yourself-and-why-you-should <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're a regular listener, you're going to have heard me talk about self coaching, about exploring the thoughts that we have and the impact that they have on our emotions and our actions and the things that we achieve.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's something we've touched on in tons of different subjects, but I thought it would be really useful to have a single episode where I actually take you through the principles of self coaching, why we do it, how we do it, and how you can start incorporating it into your lives and the benefits that you might see when you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If this is your first episode, you've picked the perfect one to start. This is like the foundation course that underpins everything else we do. So listen to this one first and then go back and find the topics that resonate with you at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode six of season two of the PhD Life Coach. A lot of people find coaching for the first time when they're experiencing some sort of big event in their life. For me, it was the pandemic. I had had quite a stressful few years running up until the pandemic at work, but everything else was largely okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Things were, their "normal for me" form of chaos, but generally ticking over okay. And I built my own coping strategies really for that stress, which mostly consisted of having lots of fun things to do. Lots of networks of friends, activities that I was involved with that took my mind off work and gave me that sense of community. However, at the time I was living on my own and not in a relationship and then the pandemic happened and all of a sudden, all of my coping strategies weren't there anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  I couldn't go paddle boarding. I couldn't go to my circus classes. I couldn't see my friends. I couldn't come home and visit family. And I think we sometimes forget how long it was until the government introduced bubbles. So for somebody living on my own, I went 13 weeks without touching another living soul. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I didn't have Marley at the time, no one else was in my house, we weren't allowed bubbles, and it was a whole thing. And at the same time, I was head of education for my department at the University of Birmingham, and it was my responsibility to oversee our transition from face to face, normal inverted commas, higher education teaching, through to a online version that we could run during this really uncertain period. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's across four different undergraduate programs, a foundation program, and all of our postgrad taught programs as well. It was quite a time and I rapidly realized that I was going to need more support than I was able to do for myself. That was where I found Kristen Carder's ADHD coaching program, Focused, which I hugely recommend for anybody who wants ADHD focused group coaching and it was there that I discovered self coaching.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This notion that we can use systematic tools and practices to support ourselves to do the things that we want to do. And this led to everything that's changed in my life, really. So I did this program. I moved on to a different coaching program when I thought I'd learned everything I could from that one. This was from the life coach school who actually developed the self coaching model in the format that I'm going to be teaching it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> From there, I certified as a coach. And it was after that, that I decided to actually leave academia and set up the business that I run today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So self coaching for me has been enormously influential in terms of my own life and the way I manage myself, but also, ultimately in changing my career to doing what I'm doing today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, a lot of my clients come to me and to self coaching when they reach a trigger point where they say, enough is enough, I need to do something about this. Either something specific has happened. They've taken a leave of absence and now they're coming back to study, or they've been told they're making insufficient progress. Or they simply look at their lives and say, I don't want it to be like this anymore. I loved doing my PhD. I loved my academic career. And I haven't felt like that for a long time. And I've suddenly realized that maybe it doesn't have to be like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that is often when people start to engage either with actual coaching, where you work with somebody else like me, or with self coaching and self help materials so that you can try and change this stuff independently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I'm going to be helping you with today is really understanding what we mean by self coaching, what it can be useful for, and importantly, how to do it, and how to get more support if you would like to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now I studied in the sport and exercise sciences department, I was surrounded by psychologists. And so this notion of self regulation, of being able to regulate your thoughts and emotions shouldn't really have been that new to me. And it wasn't. I certainly knew it was something that other people did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There were tools that people were using with elite athletes, with vulnerable communities, that I always thought, well, yeah, that sounds brilliant. I can't do that. There's no gap for me between engaging my brain and opening my mouth. In fact, my mom would tell you often my mouth opens before I engage my brain. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes it reminds me a little bit of Marley. So Marley my Labrador is reactive. He's a poppet, but he's reactive to other dogs. And people always say, if you need to train him, you need to get him to a place where he can see another dog, but not react to it. And it's in that moment that you start to regulate his emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You start giving him treats, encouraging him to be calm and all those things. My response is always, there is no moment. If he can see them, he will bark. Even if they're 200 meters away, if he can see them, he will bark. And it often felt a little way like that with my thoughts and emotions. So, my sort of go to emotions were overwhelm, definitely, and probably an unhealthy dose of frustration. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I never really saw them coming, and I certainly didn't really believe that they were something that I could regulate in any particular meaningful way. In fact, the main thing that generally saved me from being in more of a pickle than I was, was my resolutely quite perky nature. So I would get overwhelmed. I would get frustrated, but like a beach ball, I would often pop back up to being relatively perky quite quickly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it felt like it was more luck than judgment really, that I wasn't struggling more than I was, but I would hear people talking about all this self regulation and basically just write it off as not something I could do. Nice for other people, not something I could do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's where, when I got into coaching and got taught about the self coaching model, that it actually became much clearer because suddenly I could see the influence my thoughts were having on my emotions and I could see the way my emotions were leading to my actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And understanding both of those things helped me really understand myself at a much deeper level than I'd ever been able to before. I used to spend an awful lot of time in the action line, as we call it, and I'll explain what I mean by that as the show goes on. But I would spend a lot of time deciding what I needed to do differently in life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was the queen of new resolutions, of new habits, deciding everything is going to be different and then not living up to the plans because I hadn't really thought about what would I actually need to think and feel in order to actually do those actions. I just kind of came up with, well. I should exercise three times a week. I should plan my food. I should do this. I should do that. And starting to learn about the self coaching model, I had so many wow moments where I'd be like, Oh, that's why this hasn't worked. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's why I do that. And it really helped me to see how all of these things interconnect. And that's why I want to share it with you today.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as I say, I was taught the self coaching model initially by Kristen Carder and then by the life coach school. I do adapt some bits of it and I know Kristen does too. There's a few absolutes that the Life Coach School say about this model that I don't subscribe to and I'll explain those to you as we go through, and I do recognize that versions of this have been developed by other people at lots of times over the past.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What the self coaching model suggests is that everything can be divided into five different things. They're circumstances. So these are the truthful facts of the situation, and they could be proven in a court of law. I am talking to Zoom right now to record this podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is a circumstance. Life Coach School claim that all circumstances are neutral until somebody thinks about them. I have some challenges around that in practicalities when we're actually talking about the very difficult circumstances that some of my clients find themselves in. And so I tend not to talk about them as neutral, but I do talk about them as factual, that everybody would agree I am talking to Zoom. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So these are the factual circumstances. Then we have underneath the circumstance line, we have the thoughts line. And this is the story that we tell in our head, the cognitive thoughts that we have about that circumstance. So if my circumstances, I'm talking on my podcast, my thought could be, this is going to be really useful for my clients. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that is a thought that I have. So let's go with that one. So it's the story that I have about it. Now, if you were doing a podcast and it was something that you're not experienced in and perhaps you feel nervous talking to people, your thought might be, everyone's going to think this is rubbish, for example. That just shows how you can have the same circumstance of recording a podcast and have completely different reactions to it, completely different thoughts about it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so facts in the circumstance line, thoughts, your story in the thoughts line. Underneath the thoughts line is the feelings line, and this is the emotion you experience in your body, and it is driven by the thoughts that you're having. Now, again, this is another point where I diverge from the original teaching of this model. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the original teaching of this model, thoughts are the only source of your emotions, and if you can sort out your thoughts, it will sort out your feelings. I don't believe that. I know enough about psychophysiology to understand that sometimes some of our emotions are driven biologically, whether that's through biochemical mental health problems or whether it's through hormonal fluctuations and those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also am informed enough about traumatic backgrounds and things like that to understand that sometimes our emotions precede cognitive thought. They happen faster than cognitive thought. And so I don't fully subscribe to the idea that feelings come solely from our thoughts. However, our feelings can be exacerbated, can be created more by our thoughts, and actually that is one part that we have control over. A lot of the other stuff is much harder, some of it maybe able to be dealt with through counseling and other techniques, but the way we think about things and the feelings that we generate through those conscious thoughts is something that we can explore and really look at the impact of. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we've got circumstances, the facts of the situation. We've got thoughts, the cognitive story we tell in our head. And then we've got feelings, which is the emotion we experience. And in the model, we try and represent our feelings with a single word emotion. So if I'm thinking "my listeners are going to find this really useful", my feeling might be purposeful, or it might even be excited. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I'm excited that you guys are going to listen to this. Somebody else who's telling themselves that everyone's going to hate it might feel shame, for example. They might feel dread at the idea of doing it. The emotion relates back to that thought.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> After feelings comes actions. And this was something that I'd really not thought about very much before. And I think a lot of people who work in the kind of more cognitive end of the world, like academia, often don't. And that is, that our feelings drive our actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Any actions we take are driven by some sort of emotion that we're experiencing. Again, I do believe that some people do things entirely by habit. As an ADHDer, that feels like absolute magic. I have to put thought and feelings into every single action that I take, but I know that for a lot of people, you just, you can tick through routines, but the majority of the time, the actions that we're taking are driven by feelings, and sometimes those feelings might be motivated, they might be purposeful, things like that, but sometimes they're driven by emotions like sadness might lead to us avoiding other people, worry might lead to us procrastinating or going over things in our heads, shame might involve us avoiding any situation where somebody would find out about this, for example, so our actions are driven by the feelings that we're experiencing, which in turn are driven by the thoughts that we're having. And then the final line of this five line model, Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, is Results. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that is our outcomes, what we achieve. And by achieve I mean that in the broadest possible sense. So that could be achievements in the sense of publishing a paper. It could be achievements in the sense of, the washing gets done , clean laundry is the result. So those results come from the actions that we take.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now what I want you to notice in that model, we've sort of talked about how thoughts create feelings, how feelings create actions, how actions create results. The one we didn't say is that circumstances create thoughts, because that's the one where it's not true. Our circumstances do not create the thoughts we have about them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Different people would have different thoughts in response to the same circumstances. And with training and support, we can learn to choose which thoughts we spend more time thinking about in different circumstances. Now, again, a point where I diverge. I think that circumstances can make it more or less difficult to think particular thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, if you are on holiday on a tropical island, it is much easier to be thinking the thought, I'm having such a lovely time, than if you're in the midst of a highly stressful, highly busy job. So there are circumstances that make it much more likely that if left to their own devices, spontaneous thoughts will pop up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I don't believe these things are completely disconnected. However, they are not directly causal. Because you're in this circumstance, it doesn't mean you have to think that thought. Maybe it's more likely that you will, but it isn't inevitable. And we have so much control over which ones we choose to focus on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I'm going to do in the rest of this episode is share with you how you can go about understanding that a little bit more and how you can go about using this to help you understand your mind better. Because that's what this is all about. It isn't about just feeling good all the time. The purpose of self coaching is not to feel positive all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are many circumstances in which we don't want to feel positive. We look at the world as it is today, and we may not want to feel positive about that. We may want to feel angry about that, because angry leads to actions where we actually change things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we might not want to feel is defeated. for example. Because when we feel defeated, we don't take action. So this isn't about generating solely positive emotions. This is about understanding where the emotions and actions that you're having at the moment come from, what power you have over that, and in time, starting to think about how do I want to be in these circumstances, how do I want to think? How do I want to feel? What do I want to do? And what outcomes do I want to create? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So before I show you exactly how to make one, what are the key things that a self coaching model can help with? For me, it's separating circumstances from thoughts. Often people think that it is the fact that their article has been rejected that's made them feel sad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is not that specific circumstance that has made you feel sad, it's the thoughts that you're having about that circumstance. So, somebody might think, oh thank goodness I got rejected from them because I'd rather publish somewhere else and they'd feel happy receiving that rejection letter. Somebody else might think, oh well I always thought they'd say no and feel calm about receiving that rejection letter. Others might think, this means I'll never publish ever again, and they'll feel devastated about it. It is not the circumstance directly that creates the emotion that we feel, it's the thought that we filter it through that creates that emotion. So that's the first thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what's empowering about that is that we have some control over our thoughts. It's not always easy. We have a lot of habitual thoughts, but we do have some power over that. Whereas when we think our emotions are caused solely by our circumstances, that makes us really helpless. There's nothing we can do about that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Unless we're in a position where we can really change our circumstances, suddenly there's not a lot we can do about the fact that we're feeling terrible and not doing the things we want to do. If we can see that the thoughts we're having are optional, then so much more can change even when we're not in a position to change our circumstances. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is the model helps us separate our thoughts from our feelings. Now, often as academics, we can get really caught up in our heads. We can really get stuck in our thoughts and our thoughts as truth and not be able to separate them from emotions. So as an example, when I work with clients, I often find that if I say, what emotion are you experiencing right now? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They'll say, I feel like no one likes me or I feel like I'll never finish this PhD. And I have to remind them that that's a thought, that's not an emotion. And we have to get back to what's the actual emotion you're feeling. And it's really common to find that quite hard to identify. One thing that can help, and I'll link it in the show notes, is looking at an emotion wheel. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is like a big circle, which has got lots of different types of emotions, there's like the big segments, and then narrows down to more specific emotions within those. And sometimes looking at that can really help you identify more specifically the emotion you're experiencing. And that's important because if we can't identify the emotion we're experiencing, it's really hard to understand what's going on in our body and what we actually need. Are we feeling shame or are we feeling sad? If we can pick that apart, we may be able to manage ourselves differently in order to move on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing self coaching model teaches us is how important feelings are for actions. How many times have you said to yourself, I just need to get on and write this. I just need to practice my presentation. And. We don't think about what are the emotions that are making it difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we know that we're feeling embarrassed, then no wonder it's hard to get on and practice our presentation. If we're feeling worried, no wonder it's difficult to write your article. If we can understand how our feelings drive our actions, then we're in a much better place to change our actions from a place of real understanding. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then finally, as I've said, the self coaching model helps us see where we have power. It helps us see how we are not solely the victim of our circumstances, and that there are things that we can do to make things feel a lot less painful. Now, for some people, that may include changing your circumstance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It may be that withdrawing from your program or changing your job is the right thing to do. But what the self coaching model helps us figure out is how can we do that from a place of empowerment and from positive emotions, not just to make ourselves feel better. Because the worry always is that if we change our circumstances in order to make ourselves feel better, then we get to the new circumstance and we still feel the same way, we don't know what to do anymore. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's that whole thing of everywhere I go, there I am. We can change our circumstances, but the self coaching model helps us figure out how to change our circumstances in a way that's just fun and interesting and an exciting adventure rather than a last ditch attempt to stop us feeling sad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how can you actually do this? One of the things I would suggest is trying this when you're not in the midst of a big emotion. So not trying it when you're feeling hugely overwhelmed or hugely worried or any of those things. But when you're feeling like you're not quite right, when you're sort of not getting on with the things you want to be getting on with, feeling a bit meh, you're not quite sure why, that's a great time to try this out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what you start with is a thought download. Basically, all this involves, I'd encourage you to always do it on paper, grab paper and a pen, and you write for about five minutes about what is happening at the moment. What's happening in your life, in your mind, in your body, what you're doing and all of these things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you really dump it all out on a piece of paper. And that's because when things are in our heads, they get really tangled up and they're really hard to see in any sort of objective way. When I start a coaching session, I often start with a verbal thought download. I ask them, tell me what's going on at the moment and they tell me and I'm then sort of looking at those thoughts and helping them tease them apart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well, how you do it for yourself is to put them on paper and then tease them out from there. It's really important to keep writing for the full five minutes as well though, because sometimes the most insight comes when you think you've run out of things to say and you carry on exploring it a little bit further. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you have time for nothing else, even just doing a thought download can help you feel like your brain's a little lighter, it's a little out there. In fact, there is some evidence in the literature that this kind of expressive writing can help you feel better in and of itself. However, the next step that you take in self coaching is you start to go through what you've written and do some specific steps. Now, when you become experienced at this, you're essentially, you build a self coaching model based out of your thought download, but I'm going to take you through some steps that you can start out with when you're doing this for the first few times.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first one is we're going to try and separate circumstances from thoughts. So you look through what you wrote and say, what's the actual factual truth here? My supervisor sent me comments. The comments said X. And X has to be a direct quote of what they said. Okay? We separate out those bits that are actually factually true. I can go look, here's the email where my supervisor sent me comments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Here's the comments that they made. That's the circumstances. Now we get to look and think, what thoughts are you having about this? The thoughts are, I must be terrible at writing. My supervisor thinks I'm an idiot. I'll never get this finished now. There's no point even trying. All of those sorts of things. Notice all of those thoughts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we're doing this, I want you to notice from a point of compassion. I want you to notice, not with judgement, not with why on earth are you thinking that, but just, oh look, they sent me comments and I'm thinking these thoughts. You can even say to yourself, I get it. I understand why you're having those thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But they are thoughts. They're just thoughts. And we can see those thoughts without making them our truth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you can start going through and just look to see what emotions you can see mentioned in your thought dialogue. Do you talk about any at all or do you just stay very much in your head? Start picking out the things that you're talking about happening in your body. Are you worried? Are you scared? Are you angry? Are you frustrated? Are you overwhelmed? Look for those sorts of words. So we're just getting a picture of what's going on here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And once you've picked out those things, we can start to construct a model. And when we're constructing a model, we put those factual circumstances on the C line. So we write a C, we say, got comments from my supervisor. They said X, and then we write T for thoughts, and next to that we write one thought that feels like the most powerful thought at the moment. One that stood out to you as, oh goodness, yes, I'm really thinking that. And you write that down. Now a thought, we don't want it to be a question, we want it to be an actual thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So often people will say to me, my thought is, am I good enough? If that's the sort of thought you're seeing, I want you to write, I might not be good enough. Because really, that's the worry here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The worry isn't, am I good enough? The worry is that part of your brain worries that you're not. So, the circumstance is you received comments from your supervisor, the thought is, I might not be good enough, for example. And now I want you to drop into your body, write an F underneath the T, and you say, right, when I think the thought, I might not be good enough, how do I feel? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And maybe you feel disappointed, for example, we write that on the feeling line. Again, there's no right answers here. You get to pick and you can look at your emotion wheel to pick one here, but you get to pick. And so we've got three lines of our model, got comments from supervisor. I think I might not be good enough, feeling, disappointment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then we get to ask ourselves, what actions do I take when I'm disappointed? Now, what's really important here is that , you're not going to put actions you take to make the disappointment go away. It's actions you take when you're in the midst of disappointment. So, remind yourself of all the things that you've done wrong in the past, might be one action you take when you're feeling disappointed. Avoiding work might be an action. Watching Netflix, eating chocolate, these kind of avoidant activities. Scrolling Instagram is one that I go to with a lot of these negative emotions. And in the action line, you can write down as many things as you want. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can write down things that you do do. You can write down things that happen in your head. So you ruminate on it, you go over and over it in your brain, for example and you can also write down things you don't do. So for example, when I'm disappointed, I don't get purposefully on with my work, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so you can chuck as much as you want in that action line. And then what I want you to do is think about your result line. So we look at the actions. If I keep taking these actions, what is the outcome going to be? What is the result going to be? And one way that often helps is in self coaching models, we often notice that result is related to the thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in the thought, in this case, it was, I might not be good enough. My view is if we feel disappointed and we take lots of avoidant action because we feel disappointed, our result might be we don't support ourselves to be good at doing our PhD. Okay. Finding a result can be tricky. So don't worry if an obvious result doesn't jump out to you, especially an obvious result that doesn't connect back up to the thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It can take some skill and experience to learn how to do that. But that's okay because you're still getting as far as understanding what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and therefore what you're doing. Now the immediate thing here is people go, okay, how do I change my thought? If I can see my thought is causing these feelings and these feelings are making me do things that aren't helpful, how do I change my thought? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're not going there yet. Don't focus on changing your thought immediately. We start from compassion. It's totally understandable that this is a habitual thought. You've probably thought this for a long time. You've probably had other people tell you it's true. You probably see this in the circumstances around you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we start by not judging our thoughts. It's okay that you're thinking these things. I guarantee whatever you've written in that model, I have probably coached people on in the past. It's okay. There's nothing wrong with you. But we also get to reflect that you are choosing that thought. Subconsciously or consciously, you're choosing that thought and we don't have to. So what we get to do now is we get to slowly tease it apart. We get to think, is there any way this isn't true? Is there any evidence that maybe I could be good enough. In what ways might I be good enough? What do we actually mean by good enough here? Is it good enough to finish my PhD or good enough to do this thing I'm doing right now?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we sort of really gently pick holes in it. Because often the first thoughts that jump into our mind are like big dramatic thoughts and often when we then look into them, we're like, well, you know, I did do my masters and I did finish that and I have thought this way before and then been good enough and my supervisor did pick me and we start to pick these little thoughts apart and notice ways they're not quite true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, we're not looking to disprove it completely. This is a thought you've held for a long time, probably. It feels really true to you, but we can pick little holes in it. The other thing we can do is not ask ourselves to believe I am good enough, because that can feel a really long way from where we are now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what we can do instead is to ask ourselves, is there anything else that I already believe? For example, in this situation, I already believe that other people get negative comments on their manuscripts. I do believe that. I believe that's true. I believe that some people have published an article after getting negative comments on their manuscript. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I believe that my supervisor was probably trying to help. I do. Okay. I might also believe that this is all a sign that I'm not good enough, but I do believe those other things too. And that's the wonderful thing with the human brain is we can believe a whole bunch of things at once, which often contradict each other. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yeah, in time, maybe we want to try and resolve some of those contradictions. But in the short term, why don't we just spend time thinking one thought we already believe, instead of a different thought we already believe? Because if we're thinking other people get negative comments and still get published, then our feeling might be hope. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For example, and when we feel hopeful, we might start going through the comments and seeing which ones we can change. We might start reading ways to deal with the problem that's been identified in the paper. We might start taking actions that help us to move towards a finished article. So we're never trying to think of some hippy dippy, positive thinking, everything's perfect manifestation thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're just picking a different thought that you already think is true. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  We're not getting rid of the other one, we're just spending more time on this one that leads to emotions that help us to do the things we want to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might want to write down these other thoughts that you think are true and spend time on why you think they're true, why there's evidence that you think they're true, so that you can sort of build the strength of them. This sort of self coaching isn't something you do once and everything's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's something that becomes a practice. I'm someone who does it intermittently. I do it when I feel I need it and when it's useful. Other people build it into a routine that they actually do regularly in their lives. The key thing though, is try it once. Have a go, see what you find. Let me know how you get on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can message me through my website. You can contact me on Twitter or Instagram. I'm at the PhD life coach. You can find me there. And if you want more support on this, sign up for my free online group coaching. I have a free online community where you get emails from time to time, and you get access to a monthly free group coaching session. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's available to everybody all over the world. You can watch other people getting coached. You can be coached yourself and I can support you through developing some of your own self coaching models so you can really enhance your own practice so that you have a tool that you can use to support yourself whenever you need it. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 23 Oct 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-6-how-to-coach-yourself-and-why-you-should thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-5-how-to-shorten-your-work <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Every single one of us will have written to a word count at some point in our academic careers. Often as undergraduates, the struggle is to write enough words to hit the word count, but as we get further through our academic careers, the challenge increasingly becomes to stay under the word count. So if you've ever struggled to shorten your work to meet the requirements of your submission to your degree program or to a journal, then this is the episode for you. Keep listening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode five of series two of the PhD life coach. your work might not feel like the sort of thing that I usually coach on. Usually we talk about mindset issues rather than the technical how to's of doing a PhD. The reason I'm talking about it though is because it's something that causes an enormous amount of stress amongst lots of the PhD students and academics that I work with, but also because... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it is a mindset issue. There are technicalities, there's ways of learning to write more concisely and to edit and shorten your own work. And there's a ton of books, there's a ton of websites, there's a ton of resources you can find to learn how to do that. Yet all these really clever people, you guys, still struggle to shorten your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's because I don't think it's as simple as just not knowing how to shorten it. So you have a whole series of limiting beliefs that make it really hard to even start doing it. So in this episode, what I'm going to do is try and identify some of the limiting beliefs that I see in my clients and help you figure out ways to shorten your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And because I know you all love a concrete tip, I am going to finish up with a few techniques that you can use once you've got over some of the beliefs that you might be held back by at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Now often, at this point in the podcast, I tell you about how this is something I'm also struggling with, that I'm still working on, you know, I'm right there in the trenches with you working on it. And for lots of the things we talk about, that's true. Shortening work? I love shortening work. Give me an essay, tell me to chop a thousand words out of it, and I will gladly do it. That is not an invitation, by the way. Please don't send me your work to shorten. It used to be one of my party tricks when I was working with undergraduate students and they'd tell me that there was no way they could shorten their assignment. And so I said, you know, you willing to bet? Let's put the first paragraph up on the screen and I'll go through it and show you how I would shorten it without losing any content. So this is not even taking out irrelevant content. This is shortening it without losing any of the message at all. And I would go, right, we could twist this around, turn that around, chop that out. So you've got repetition here. Do, do, do, do, do. And we'd always be able to chop a hundred words out of that first paragraph. And the students just used to stare at me like it was magic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  So today. I'm not coaching from the perspective of, I, you know, I'm struggling with this too. Let's learn together. I'm coaching this one from the perspective of, I am good at this. Let's go. You can be good at this too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason I'm able to do it isn't because of some inbuilt ability that I have, it's because I have a bunch of beliefs that at the moment I suspect a lot of you don't have. So, let's identify what beliefs you do have at the moment. I'm going to tell you some that might work for you a little bit better and then we'll get on to the technicalities towards the end. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first thought that I see lots of academics having is my work is complex, so it needs to be this long. This belief that if an idea is complex, it's going to take you lots of words to explain it, really holds us back from shortening it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It makes it hard to even believe that it's worth trying to shorten it. In some ways, it makes us not want to shorten it because in shortening it, we're losing complexity or so we think. So why would we want to, we've worked so hard to have all this nuance and like detailed understanding of our subject. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we we're gonna lose complexity and lose nuance by shortening it. We usually don't want to do that. And so this belief really holds us back. Even if it's true, and we'll come to that in a second, but even if it's true, spending time thinking that if I shorten this I will lose complexity and nuance is going to make it incredibly difficult to shorten it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yet, often, we still need to. When we're undergraduates, PhD students, we often don't have control over our word counts. And even as academics, when we're applying to journals, there are certain journals we usually want to publish in and they just have word limits. And the more that we are consciously trying to shorten our work to meet somebody else's target, while also telling ourselves that it's going to make our work worse, it just gets harder and harder. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, one of the things that I believe is that it doesn't take more words to explain more complex ideas. I believe that complex ideas can be explained in relatively efficient ways if you're really selective about which bits of it you need to explain, and if you are really efficient in the sentence structures you use to describe that complexity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember all the way back to being a PhD student and my supervisor at the time always reminding me that the Watson and Crick paper where they describe the structure of DNA for the first time in Nature is a single side article. It is very short. And he always used to say, if they can explain that in one page of A4, you can explain this much shorter than you are at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I know that if they were publishing that today, it wouldn't just be a one page paper. Partly it was just a product of its time. But you can extrapolate the point to something that's relevant to you. If you want to publish in that journal with that word count, everybody else who's published in that journal has managed to reduce their words to 5, 000 words or whatever it is. If they can, with their complex ideas, then there's no reason that you can't either. And the longer you keep believing that it will make your work worse to shorten it, the longer it's going to take to do this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you have quite a fixed belief like that, one way that you can work on it, rather than just swapping it for a different belief that you don't necessarily think is true, one way to work on it is to get curious about it. Because this idea that it needs to be as long as it is, In order to keep the complexity, is quite an all or nothing perspective. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's quite, there is a fixed amount of complexity that I need to have in this paper. This is how many words it takes to convey. And if I shorten it, then I won't be able to convey the complexity. Instead, if we look at it with curiosity and say, I wonder how much of this complexity I could retain if I work to shorten this paper then suddenly it becomes a little puzzle. Ooh, I can keep that idea and actually just say it a bit more efficiently. Actually, that bit doesn't sort of, that bit's not crucial anyway. I can shorten that. It becomes a bit more of a game where you're trying to retain as much of the nuanced story as you can while just seeing whether it's possible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you don't have to believe that your paper will be better if it's shorter. I think it will be. Almost always, papers would be better if they were shorter. But you don't have to believe that. You don't have to ever believe that. But if you can just wonder. I wonder if it's possible to shorten this bit. I wonder if it's possible to say this a different way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then we sort of awaken our more open brain, our more creative brain, and start to explore ways that we make it possible. Because as I've said in previous episodes, our brain likes nothing more than being right. So if you believe there is no way you can shorten this without reducing the complexity, there won't be, because your brain will try to prove you right. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It will stop looking for solutions, because it thinks you're right, that there's no way you can do this. Open up the, I wonder if it's possible, just explore a bit, just play with it. As a technique, just play with it and see whether you can shorten it. I bet you can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thought that I believe is connected to that is this is how academics write in my discipline. I have a running joke with one of my very best friends and colleagues from my old department who comes from a psychology background. I trained through sport and exercise sciences. And we always laugh about how much more long winded psychology papers are than sports science papers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A lot of sports science journals and at the biological end of things, your word count is going to be 3, 000 words in a lot of papers. And some of that... It's quantitative. I accept all those of you who do qualitative research. Sometimes you do need longer to write about it because you've got crates and all that jazz. I understand. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But even in simple quantitative papers, the difference between a psychology article and a sports science article is hilarious. In length, and we used to laugh about this a lot and whilst understanding disciplinary differences is really important, they can become limiting as well when you allow yourself to believe that psychology papers are always long, or whatever discipline you work in where you believe that they are always long and they always have to be long. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You really limit your ability to look and see if you can do it another way, because you could write a paper that's the same length as other papers in your discipline, but actually contains even more complexity. Don't allow the disciplinary norms to become an excuse for sloppy, long-winded writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can instead believe that it's possible for anyone of any discipline to write in a way that's more concise. We can believe that our discipline would benefit from more concise writing, and when we're on the reading end of it, suddenly we believe that's true so much more. So don't allow your disciplinary beliefs to get in the way here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We talked a little bit about beliefs about the end product that hold you up. That it needs to be longer in order to be appropriate for your discipline, in order to be sufficiently complex. There's also beliefs about the process that hold you back. And one belief that I see a lot is that if you cut out words, that was time wasted. That if you end up not using a chunk that you wrote, then you wasted your time writing it in the first place. And again, this can really hold us back, because then every time you delete a bit, you're like mourning the loss of those words, mourning the time that it spent you to write them. Whereas when I delete words, It's a little win. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like, oh, I can take that bit out. Oh, there's another bit I can take out too. Cool.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Two things I do to address that. One's a belief, one's a technique. The belief, I believe that the best way to write is to write too much and then pull it down to what you need. And the analogy I always used to give my students is making a good pasta sauce. So if any of you can make a good pasta sauce from scratch, you'll know you start out, you do your onions and your flavors and all that stuff. You put your tomatoes in, whatever you're using, and you always end up making too much. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's the same as with soup or any of these kind of liquidy meals. You make a volume that is more than you need, and then you slowly simmer it over time because then the water evaporates out, and you're left with all the really good juicy flavours. It tastes so much better if you take the time to simmer off all the water that doesn't taste of anything, and just end up with a much more concentrated soup. If you just made the amount of sauce you needed and ate that, It just wouldn't be so flavourful, it would be a lot more watery.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The same is true with writing. If you've got to write 3, 000 words, and you write 3, 000 words, it's probably going to be watery and not so flavourful. If you write 4, 500 words, and then cut out the 1, 500 words that actually aren't adding to the flavour and are just making it watery, then you end up with a really juicy and flavourful article. Losing words is part of the process, it is not time wasted.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another underpinning belief that helps you to believe that, sort of reinforces that belief, is believing that writing is thinking. So for all of you who think that writing is a way of taking your thinking and putting it on the page for somebody else to look at, please, please, please reconsider. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Writing itself is a process of thinking. It's not just about communicating it to somebody else. First job is communicating it to yourself, and the first time you ever communicate it to yourself, it's gonna be messy. Bits aren't gonna make sense. It's gonna come out in the wrong order. That's okay. That's why we're writing it down, because it's really hard to get that clarity in your head and when you expect to get clarity in your head, and then you start writing and it comes out well, that's when we procrastinate starting writing, when we beat ourselves up because our writing isn't good enough, and where we then think, but this should be, this is the right length now, this should be what I'm able to submit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you can really try to internalize the belief that writing, is thinking, then suddenly that time isn't wasted. The time spent writing the kind of fluffy, long winded version is just one step of the thinking and writing process. And taking it back out again is another part of that process. Suddenly becomes so much less painful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One little technique I would encourage if you're not fully convinced, but you want to try it, is I always have a second document called stuff I've chopped out. So I rarely delete things. I do if it's just little wordings, but mostly I have a separate document. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if there's a paragraph I don't think I need, I chop it and pop it in there. And it's so much less painful than deleting it because I can tell my little worried brain that it's okay. If you decide you need it later, it's there. I have hardly ever gone back to that folder, but I do it for everything I write. I move it over there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's the same thing if you're involved in writing fiction. It's the same thing, you might write whole scenes that you never end up using in your final novel, but they help you get to know the characters more.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing that's a process thing is that I don't have time to do this. And that might be true this time. It might be true that you haven't allowed time in your writing process for this chopping element of it, for this editing element. And there's two things we can do about that. So usually we start beating ourselves up, or we start saying, I simply can't do this because I don't have the time. Anytime you find yourself saying you don't have time to do something, the best thing to do is see what do I have time to do? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So maybe you don't have time this time to do a full edit to get yourself down. And maybe therefore you don't want to write too far past the word limit because you've only left yourself a little bit of time for editing. But say you have 20 minutes. How much could you chop in 20 minutes if you went about it in an open minded and systematic way? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I bet you could chop more than you think. Often when we tell ourselves we don't have time, what happens is we don't use the time we have available. We sort of write it off. I haven't got time to do it all, so I'll do nothing. It's true with a lot of different behaviours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Any of you ever look to your kitchen and gone, Oh my God, it's a tip in here. I don't have time to clean it. I'll leave it compared to, Oh my God, it's a tip in here. I'm going to take three minutes just to get that stuff out of the sink. So at least the sink is empty and often that's all it takes three minutes for it just to look that little bit better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the same is true with writing. Few minutes, you can chop some bits out here and there, suddenly it's feeling a lot more streamlined. So don't underestimate the time you do have available to do this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The long term plan here though, is to always plan to have time to chop it. And this goes back to accepting that that's part of the process. If you accept that a heavy chop is part of writing, then you structure that into your plan. So you have a full draft a week before the deadline, whatever it might be. You just accept that's part of what you need to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of you might've noticed if you're on my YouTube channel, cause these podcasts go out on YouTube as well, but I've cut my hair. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I didn't tell myself that, Oh my goodness. I'd grow my hair down to here. It's going to be wasted growth. If I chop it off, I know, well at least I like to think it looks better like this. It certainly looks healthier when I chop those broken ends off. I allow time every however long it is to go and chop my hair off because I know it will be in better shape if I make time for that to happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Same's true with your writing. Plan time to edit your writing to chop off those split ends and those broken bits so that you can have a shorter and in better condition piece of writing. And if you usually listen to this on the podcast and you want to see my hair, come over to the YouTube channel. We put all of these episodes up there every week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's some shorts up there too. There are also some interactive videos that can really help you start your day or get you moving when you're feeling a little bit stuck. So come over, subscribe, check those out, and make sure you leave some comments on the videos as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another process thing that people believe is that it's going to be boring to shorten it. I've done the fun bit. I've done the getting my ideas down. The editing is just boring and tedious. And again, it doesn't have to be. You are the person that is having the thoughts that are making it boring. There is nothing boring about editing, per se. It's the thoughts that you have, that this is pointless, that this is going to be painful, that this, you know, I shouldn't have to do this, etc, etc. It's all those thoughts that make it feel boring.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I set myself a challenge, and I'll give you a specific example of that towards the end, but I set myself a challenge when I'm editing, so that I can see the progress I'm making towards a goal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can you make it feel more light hearted, more engaging, like a fun thing to do. Alternatively, if that belief that it's boring feels really entrenched, one line that I find really useful and I know my clients use a lot is, I'm willing to do boring things. Because sometimes, you know, academia can't be fun and games all the time. We can make it a lot more fun than it feels at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But sometimes we have to accept there are some bits of it that are just boring. And often what makes those boring bits painful is all the thought processes that tell us it shouldn't be boring. So in this case, so those of you who are familiar with the self coaching model, where we have circumstances, the true facts of the situation, the thoughts, the story we have about it, the feelings, our emotions, actions, which are the things we do, and then the results, which are the outcomes of those actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often we think of boring as being a feeling, something that happens because of our thoughts, and that influences our actions. One thing you can choose to do though, is to put, it is boring, in the circumstance line. Let's accept that's a fact. I mean, I don't accept it. I think there's things you can do to change that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But let's say in this case, you firmly believe, you are absolutely adamant this is boring. Well, let's stop fighting that and just put it in the circumstance line. You can now choose what you think about the fact that this is boring. Because if you think it's boring, and therefore I don't want to have to do it, I shouldn't have to do it, I'll do it later, and all of those thoughts, you're gonna feel unmotivated, you're gonna feel distracted, and all these other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whereas if you can think, this thing's boring. But it's a core part of the process, so I'm going to crack on. I'm able to do boring things. I'm willing to tolerate being bored for a period of time in order for this to be done. Then suddenly, your feelings are purposeful. Your feelings are willing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Things like that. And you're much more likely to get on with it. Because I tell you now, you might think editing is boring, but the one thing that is more boring than editing... It's spending all your time beating yourself up about the fact that you aren't hitting word counts and that you can't publish your work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's much more boring, I promise you now. So we get to decide what we think about the fact that a task's boring and choose how we're going to do it instead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final thought that I think holds everybody back that struggles with this is a belief about yourself. So we've had beliefs about the writing and the discipline itself. We've had beliefs about the process of editing. I think there's also a belief about ourselves that make this difference, which is I'm not good at being concise. I'm not good at editing my work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we can sometimes really have these fixed perspectives on ourselves, that there's something that we are not good at, as though it's something that, you know, I burst out of my mother's womb able to edit work. It's not true. Any of you who've listened to these podcasts know that I am not the most naturally concise person in the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can talk around the houses to get to my point. I have learned to edit it, because I know that in written work at least, a focused and concise argument is much more effective. I have learnt this through experience, I have learnt this through conscious effort, through being shown specific techniques. This is not something that I am specifically good at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you can believe about yourself that you have the potential to get better at editing, suddenly you're in a mindset where this is something you could learn. And so you start to look into ways that you could do it more effectively.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So really question whether you have a fixed mindset on this, whether you just believe you're not good at it, and look for little openings that you think where you could convince yourself that maybe this is something you could learn. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'd always recommend starting with something that you used to believe about yourself, but that you no longer believe. Because we all have things where we overcome our beliefs about ourselves. We used to believe that we weren't somebody who could get into graduate school and you all got into graduate school. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So think of something where you have shown in the past that it's possible to believe you're not good at it and then to get better at it anyway, and use that as evidence that maybe you could get better at editing too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you're sitting there thinking there's nothing, there's just nothing at all that I've ever believed about myself and changed, I'm not sure I believe you, but okay, let's go with it. In that case, believe whether editing could be one thing where you could start to challenge your fixed belief about yourself. Maybe this could be the one thing where you could make a little bit of progress. This is the thing that in a year's time you're going to use as an example of your ability to grow and develop and to get better at something that you used to think was a fixed attribute. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, to finish off, I want to give you some really practical tips, things that I have found useful over the years. And most of these I have found searching on the internet, been recommended them by. Friends, friends who've read books and then told me what's in those books and all of those. So many apologies for any of these that I've like stolen that should be attributed to anybody. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't know any of the references behind any of these, but they're really useful techniques. So have a start with these and then think about what ones might work for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first one is making a reverse plan. I love this, I used to make all of my students do this. So once you've written a first draft of something, what you do is you put that to one side where you can see it, and then you get a piece of paper or another document, and you look, paragraph one, what's the point of paragraph one? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You write down what that is. Paragraph two, what's the point of paragraph two? You write down what that is. And you go all the way through, so that you reverse engineer your draft, back into a plan. So many of you will have written a paragraph plan out before you wrote your first draft so that you kind of roughly know what's in what section. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the reverse of that. You take it back to that. There are many benefits to doing this. The first is, ask yourself, was that difficult? Because if a paragraph that you read you find hard to sum up in a single sentence of what the point of that paragraph is, then it's probably a bit of a waffly paragraph. Have you got two ideas in there? Is there no idea in there? Is it not clear what the point is? So even the process of doing this, if you find it difficult, tells you something about your writing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second benefit is you've now got a really streamlined version of your old article. And so now it's much easier to see, hang on, I talk about that stuff in this paragraph, but I also talk about it in this paragraph down here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't need both of those paragraphs. Can they be merged? How can I manage that? So you can check for repetition and repetition is a brilliant thing to identify because that way you can shorten your work without losing any content at all. You might be thinking, there's no repetition in my article. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There always is. Always, always, always. I could go through published articles and show you where the repetition is. So always look and use this sort of technique to look for places where you've repeated your point, and not in a good reinforcing way, just in a, I didn't check enough and I repeated it way. And look at those places as to where you can shorten. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often repetition happens when you haven't talked about things in the right order. So you kind of have to remind people of things in order to get back into it. And that's another benefit of this is you can see what order you've taken people through this piece of writing and you can decide actually. If I did this in this order, then I could explain it just once because we would cover all the bits in one time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you get to reorder your work doing this as well. So really useful technique. This can also help if you then take that plan. This feels long winded, but go with me. If you take that plan and write it again, so get rid of your first draft, take your plan and rewrite it, often you will find that the second time you rewrite it from your brain, not looking at that one, in a more concise way, because you won't remember every detail. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You won't remember the exact way you said it last time. Even doing that just for a paragraph is a really good exercise for those of you who have the limiting belief that there's no other way to write this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I guarantee if you put it to one side, you sit in a room with an empty notebook and you try to rewrite that paragraph, you will write it in a different way. Often when we're staring at our own work, literally no other way to do this. But if you try and do it from memory, you can't remember that way. So you do it a different way and it can really open up, actually, there's a few different ways that I could write this, and some of them are shorter and clearer than others. So that can be a little game to play with yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second technique that you can use uses a model of the structure of an article that I often used to teach when I was in academia, which is that most articles are shaped like an hourglass, so they're kind of wide at the beginning. So you're talking about the broad context of your work and they sort of come in and get more narrow, like the top part of an hourglass, as you get down to the end of your introduction, which typically will end with a, therefore the present study did blah, blah, blah, blah. Then you have a narrow bit, which is where you're talking specifically about what you did and what you found. So your methods and results. And then the discussion usually gradually opens you back out again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first paragraph of your discussion is usually the current study found, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you slowly contextualize it back into the literature and the meaning of this for the world and all those things. I accept there'll be interdisciplinary differences in this. It's not quite the same if you're writing a literature review or any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you're writing an empirical study, often it will be that hourglass shape. Now, what's that got to do with shortening anything? A place to always look for shortening is the very top and the very bottom. Often, we have waffle at the beginning that contextualizes something way more than it needs to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in my old field in the sports sciences, the classic example of this was a whole paragraph explaining why lack of physical activity was bad for health. Whole paragraph, like the first seven lines, always redoing that. And it's like, you are writing for the Journal of Sports Sciences, anybody reading this knows. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have that as a sentence at the beginning and then rapidly get into what is specific about your piece of work. Which specific bit of that are you getting into? So shorten that wide bit of the hourglass. That is a great place to look where you can be more efficient.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, towards the bottom of your conclusion. Don't just chop off your conclusion. But often that sort of last or last two paragraphs get a bit waffly again. How can you make those bits more specific? Because those are the bits that are more distal from what you did. How can you shorten those elements to make those more concise so that the words that you use, are much more specifically focused on the stuff you did, you found, and how it relates to the literature. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One technique that I was introduced to is the challenge that in any article, remove one paragraph from the article, on the basis that it's irrelevant. In each paragraph, remove one sentence, and in each sentence, remove one word. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This can create quite a fun little, Oh, how can I do this in this paragraph? Which sentence could I lose? Okay, in this sentence, which word could I lose? It kind of gamifies it a little bit, and is almost always possible in my experience. It sounds like it's quite a lot, but often when you do that reverse planning exercise that I mentioned, you find a whole paragraph that you don't need, because actually you've got two paragraphs that just broadly build on the same thing, and actually by making them more concise it can become a single paragraph. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is often very doable. There's often repetitious sentences or ways that you could structure it, that would cut out a whole sentence and most sentences can have a word taken out of them, so that can be a really fun challenge to set yourself as you are going through your work. There's also about a million resources online. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you Google how to shorten your work and suddenly see this as, Oh, I wonder what techniques there are out there rather than, Oh, this is boring. I don't want to, then people have given really specific lists of check for all the times you say that, and can you remove them check for the times you say this, they give you specific inefficient forms of sentences that lots of people use that you can check your work for. So then it becomes this kind of little searching game. Oh, do I do that? Oh God, yes, I do. I do that here, here and here. Okay. We can take those out. And each time you go through it, you're checking for something specific and slightly different and then over time you end up chopping out quite a lot of words. So take a little minute to just Google some of those. And just believe that it's possible they might help you. That some of them might help you. That you might discover a way that you write that actually you could routinely tweak to make your work more concise. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One little warning there, though. Be cautious that you don't go so far with it that you make it hard to read. Sometimes, instead of really querying whether a concept is necessary, whether an explanation is necessary, people just shorten their sentences so much that they feel a bit note form. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Try not to do that. Be cautious that you're not just snipping words out, you're actually checking the readability of the work. And on a related point, be cautious of using abbreviations as a way of shortening your work. Now, there's a lot of abbreviations that are well established in a field. So in my field, if you say SBP or whatever, people know you're talking about blood pressure, it's fine. It's intuitive. Yes, you have to define it at the beginning, but anybody reading it doesn't have to translate it back into the words in order for your work to make sense. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They just know what that means on the whole. If you start inventing abbreviations for things that you just say too many times, then you're putting the cognitive load onto your reader and they will stop reading. So just be really cautious. Use the abbreviations that are well established in your field. Avoid inventing new ones just to make your work appear more concise at first.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  My final tip is to practice. It sounds really obvious, but grab a published paper and work out how you could write it shorter. Actually retype some of the paragraphs and write them shorter. I guarantee you can. Most academics are not particularly skilled at editing their work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The thing with practicing on somebody else's is there's so much less emotion involved. We're not connecting to this. We're not sort of remembering how much work we put into writing this and then feeling sad about the fact we're deleting it. It's someone else's work. We can easily chop it. And if you realize that you can chop published work, then you're never going to fall for the, Oh, well, I have to have this many words. No, you don't. Literally, I can see it right there. I can even make that shorter. So practice on other people's, take out some of that emotion, build the skills and then start to practice on your own work too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am practicing what I preach as well with this one. So, as I mentioned, when I do podcasts, I do this off the cuff just from some notes because I like it to feel conversational and relaxed and all those things. I don't know about you, but I hate podcasts where somebody is clearly reading out. Just, I can't listen to it drives me mad. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I'm also aware that that means my transcripts are actually quite long winded. If you want my transcripts, they're on my website, www.thephdlifecoach. Com, you can check them out there, but they are very much, pretty much verbatim transcripts. A piece of work that I'm doing at the moment is to shorten those transcripts into snappy, short chapters that might form something that might be of interest to you guys in the future.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, if you want to make sure that you're going to be one of the first people to find out about that, make sure you're on my mailing list. So, if you go to my website, www.thephdlifecoach. com, click on the Work With Me section, you'll see a link to join my free online community. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> From there, you'll get emails from me from time to time, not super regularly, but with tips and suggestions, insider information, things that are coming along soon. And you also get access to my once a month free online group coaching. So I have people dial in from all over the world for this. It runs on a Wednesday about once a month. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get all the details on the mailing list and I do one to one coaching in front of everybody else. So you can come along, see other people getting coached, get coached yourself. Last time I had people from the U S. from India, from korea, from the UK. It was amazing. I think somebody from Australia came to one of them stayed up super late. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So make sure you're on your mailing list, if you are either interested in the free group coaching, or if you're interested to find out what I'm going to be doing with my shortened little articles based on the podcast. Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 16 Oct 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-5-how-to-shorten-your-work thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-4-nine-things-i-learned-from-organising-our-wedding-that-you-can-apply-to-your-phd <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> When was the last time you learned something outside of your academic work that you then used within your academic work? I think it's time for another one of those tenuous links between two things that are seemingly unrelated, but actually are connected much more than you think. So in this episode, I'm going to be talking about nine things I learned planning my wedding that might be useful in your PhD too. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to episode four of the second series of the PhD Life Coach. You wouldn't necessarily think that planning a wedding and completing your PhD are very similar to each other, but actually there's a whole bunch they have in common. You're on a fixed time schedule. You've got an outcome in your head, roughly, of what you want this thing to look like, but with no particular direction to get there. You need some complex project planning. You definitely need some emotional regulation along the way and there are about a billion decisions to be made. </span> <br/> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  I did my PhD very young. I did it straight out of my undergrad. I didn't do a master's. So, I started my PhD when I was 21, finished when I had just turned 24. Wedding wise, I've gone to the other extreme, getting married at 45. So, you know, there's time for everything. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  Even with that time difference, one of the things they had in common was that neither of them had I spent my life dreaming about. So I was first generation in my family to go to university. All my sisters went, but not my parents generation. And so PhDs weren't really on my agenda. I didn't know what they were and I didn't really know what working in academia would mean or what it would be like. And if you want to hear more about that story, I have an episode, all about how I did my PhD in less than two and a half years and why, you know, more about my story, really. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So do check that one out if you want to. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Wedding was almost the other way around. While I'd always kind of wanted to get married, I never dreamt of my wedding day. You know, I didn't have a Pinterest board all set up ready with everything I dreamed of. I really didn't, I hadn't thought about that day particularly at all. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So very much the same as when I started my PhD. I didn't really have massive amounts of thoughts about it. The only difference was that I had been to a ton of weddings, whereas I didn't really know anyone who had done a PhD.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> However, when I was just reflecting on the process of organizing the wedding, I realized that there was a whole load of things that the two had in common. And so I decided to do my top nine tips for you today. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The first one, any of you who have planned weddings before will have heard, but it's the same is true for your PhD as well, and that is everybody will have an opinion on what you should do, and there is no right way. There is no right way to do a wedding. There is no right way to do a PhD.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I hear a lot of my clients talk about how different people in their department tell them that a PhD has to be like this or it has to be like that and then they talk to somebody from somewhere else and they give them different advice and everyone's got an opinion on how much data you need. How many chapters you need, what format it should be in, how long it should take, whether you should teach at the same time or not, whether you should just focus on your research. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Everybody has an opinion. And it's the same with weddings. I was super lucky. My friends and family have been an absolute dream through the process of me organizing my wedding. Everyone's been super supportive and nobody has like, tried to push me into things that we didn't want to do. Andy and I were able to make all of our own decisions and we've been really, really lucky like that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But I did get massively sucked into all the podcasts about wedding planning and all the sort of horror stories on Buzzfeed of unreasonable relatives and indeed unreasonable brides and I know how lucky we were not to have that from our families. So if you're finding that you're getting lots of opinions about how you should do your PhD, what you should include or not include, remember there is no fixed right way. And you get to decide. So you will simply need to justify to your examiners why you did it this way, why it meets the basic requirements for a PhD there's a whole bunch of different ways you can do that. Same as with a wedding. Usually there'll be components that need to be there in order for it to hit the actual criteria required, but beyond that, you get to pick what it looks like. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> My second tip is kind of connected to that, to be honest. Which is, have a think about whether there are any assumptions that you're making in your PhD at the moment, that if you got rid of them, would make everything so much easier. So are you assuming... how many chapters you need to have without actually checking? Are you assuming that you have to have an intervention study in your PhD? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Are you assuming how much literature you're meant to read, how big the scope of your PhD needs to be? Is there anything where you've just taken for granted that it has to be like that, where you could sit back and go, hang on? Does it actually? Let me give you an example. So we were planning the timeline of our wedding. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And on the day we wanted to get married, the only ceremony availability was at 4pm. Now, neither of us are late night people anymore. We didn't want a massive late party or anything like that. And we wanted to spend as much of the day together as possible. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And the more we talked, the more we were like, if we don't get married till four, we're not going to see each other for most of the day and with the guests, by the time you've done the ceremony and then gone and had photos taken and then you have dinner, you've really not got that long with your guests. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And it's not often that all of our friends and family are going to be together like that. And it just wasn't sitting right, but we couldn't think of a way around it. We talked about first looks where you see each other before the ceremony, and we'd already decided we wanted to do that, but that would still mean seeing each other at like three. And it still didn't really fix the seeing our guests issue. And we thought about it and we're both scientists. So we were both like, right. What is the thing that's preventing us fixing this problem? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And we realized that the thing that was preventing us fixing this problem was the idea that people shouldn't see me before the ceremony. So everyone thinks of that big moment where the door's open and the bride appears and everyone goes, oh, isn't she beautiful? And I just didn't care about that. And suddenly... Realizing that, realizing we didn't have to do that, it wasn't a law, opened up so many different opportunities. And so what we did in the end was we did do a first look, but we did a first look at 12. Then we had our family come for a light lunch, then all our guests arrived. And then our ceremony was at four. So we got to greet people one by one as they arrived at the venue and actually spend time with them before the ceremony had even happened. And it was amazing because it meant we got so much more time with our guests. So much more time together. And it also made the ceremony so much less nerve wracking because we didn't have that.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> "Oh my goodness. Everyone's looking at me" moment at the end of the aisle. Now I did only have my veil and my bouquet for that. So there was still a little bit of a, "Oh, you haven't seen this before" moment, but everything else people had seen, and it just changed the whole day. And I highly recommend it. If you're planning weddings as well, I highly, highly recommend. So have a think in your PhD. Is there an assumption that you're making that if you go, you know what, I actually don't have to do that. What could change for you? Try and question all of those assumptions. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tip three, when you're planning your PhD or your wedding, make sure you have a plan B and that you like your plan B. We got married in a watermill and the idea was to have the ceremony outside. There's like a beautiful pergola thing by the lake, get married outside. The drinks reception would be outside. We'd eat indoors. And then the rest of the reception would be outside as well. So we weren't having a disco or anything like that. And this is July, in the UK, and as we know, that doesn't necessarily guarantee you sunshine. And our plan B was that if we can't do that, then we'll have the ceremony indoors, and we'll have the reception indoors too. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But the closer we got to the day, and the worse the weather forecast was looking, the more we realised we didn't like our plan B. The ceremony indoors would be fine, but the space available to do the things we wanted to do indoors was really not what we wanted. It would have been fine if we were having a disco like normal people do at weddings. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But we had garden games, we had a circus workshop, all this sort of stuff. And it really didn't... work very well indoors. Now, as luck would have it, it rained on the morning of the wedding. It stopped about 15 minutes before our first look and was dry and lovely for the rest of the day. So we were super lucky and we were able to have the wedding of our dreams. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But we had taken a massive risk without realizing, and that is we didn't really like our plan B. There was one. We had some umbrellas that our next door neighbor kindly lent us. But other than that, we didn't really like our plan B. Now when it comes to research, you never know when something might go wrong. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You don't get access to the archive that you wanted to get access to. You can't make the assay work that you wanted to do. You can't get access to the participants that you wanted to interview. There's a whole load of ways where your research can go wrong. I really, really encourage you to talk early about what Plan B would be, and make sure that Plan B is interesting. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Make sure it's a project that if you end up doing it, it's not the end of the world. Really avoid, as we did, putting all your eggs in one basket, and just keeping your fingers crossed that it works. It came off for us. We were super lucky. it might not come off for a research project. So make a plan B and make sure that you like it as well. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tip four is make sure that you know who will support you with which bits. Now with a wedding there's a whole bunch of things that need doing, you know, you're picking what you're going to wear, you're picking your flowers, you're picking activities, um, You're organizing invitations, you're organizing who's coming, guest list, table plans, all this jazz. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Loads and loads of stuff. And you will have some people who are your ride or die there all the time. Love it. My little sis, absolute ledge, spent hours and hours on pretty much every element of the wedding, but other people dipped in and out. of the elements that they enjoyed and felt they could contribute to. Everyone was super supportive, but in very different ways.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> One of the things that we learned rapidly was to know who to talk to about which things. Everybody was super excited about the wedding, but there were only certain people who cared what color our invitations were, who cared exactly which vases we were going to buy for the flowers. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, we could have spent time really wishing that everybody cared what font we were going to use on the save the date emails, but they didn't. And they didn't need to because we just needed appropriate bits of support are the bits where we needed people. And the same is true with your PhD. There's a whole variety of people that can support you with your PhD. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Your supervisors are the obvious ones, but don't underestimate how many other people there are. Obviously there are coaches like me. I have a free group coaching program that you can sign up for on my website. I'll put the link in the show notes for you. There's a monthly free group coaching. You get emails and all that jazz. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You'll have technicians, you'll have librarians, you'll have people in your graduate schools, at your universities, you'll have your friends, your colleagues in the department, other members of staff in the department. There's a whole variety of different people who are there to support you and they will support you in different ways and for different things and that's okay. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> A lot of my clients want their supervisor to be a one stop shop for everything. And whilst that would be nice in some ways, it's often just not possible. Either personality wise, that's not their vibe, it's not how they are, or they don't have the skills to cover everything. Especially those of you doing more interdisciplinary research. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Your supervisor won't be able to give you advice on every element of it. And even if you stay within a single discipline, you will soon become more of an expert in that specific area than your supervisor is. So really think, who are your people that will give you the kind of positive motivation, cheer you on, tell you you're amazing stuff? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Who are the people that will give you the technical advice about why that machine is broken and how you can fix it? Who are the people that will help you proofread your manuscript at the last minute? Different people contribute different things and figuring out how to build that team around you so that every element is supported, but in kind of like a network of people, then so much the better. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  Tip five, prioritize what is important to you. You might say with a PhD, well, priority is finishing a PhD. But depending on what you want to do after your PhD, or what you might want to do, will really influence what you're going to prioritise during your PhD. Or it should. So this relates a little bit back to that idea of everyone having different opinions. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Some people will tell you, you must get teaching experience while you're doing your PhD. And if you want to go into an academic job, that's probably really good advice. If you don't want to go into an academic job, though, and you dream of going off and working for a pharmaceutical company or you know, another job where you won't be doing teaching or training at all, you don't have to. You can curate your PhD experience, to prioritize the things that are important to you. And I've talked about this in a couple of podcasts before. The one that I did with Jamie Pei we talked about it a little bit, so check that one out. And I think I also talked about it a little bit in the one that I did with Holly Prescott too. Double check and have a look at those. So really spend a little bit of time thinking, what are my priorities to get out of this? Do I want to learn lots of different techniques? Do I want to travel? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Do I want to learn to teach? Do I need to make money alongside this? Do I want to really hone my writing skills? Is a publication record going to be really important? Is public communication really important? And hone your PhD to fix that. So for me, we decided that we didn't want to disco. We were still trying to be COVID cautious, we weren't that fussed. We didn't want a late night. And what we wanted more than anything was everybody at our wedding to sort of interact and enjoy themselves. And one of the things I've seen at weddings with dance floors before is there's a certain contingent that are on the dance floor. And there's a certain contingent that that's not their vibe. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And they don't want to, they don't want to be dancing and they get a bit separated. And if it's what you want Happy days, as I say. Each to their own, but we didn't want that. We wanted more everyone doing stuff together. So we had more games and puzzles and things to do and that sort of thing. And that's because music wasn't a priority. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Similarly, we wanted our ceremony to look nice, but, we weren't going to go and spend three grand on some, like, huge flower installation. The grounds of the place we were in were beautiful, and we didn't see the need to have lots of expensive flowers, so we had bouquets and little table thingies. but beyond that, we didn't spend lots of money on flowers. We did spend a reasonable amount of money on the venue and food. It was a venue that had family significance for us and we like food and wanted everybody to feel really well catered for. So that was where we put our money. And you get to prioritize what are the key parts of doing a PhD for you and make sure that you put those in first. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because just like with a wedding, there isn't time to do all of them. There isn't enough of you to go around to everything. So prioritize what is important for you. As part of that, this is a little extra tip, as part of that, figure out what your pass fail issues are. So one of PhD students as they come through to submission is, are the corrections you're doing a pass fail issue or not? Often students in that last month, two weeks, week, day before submitting get really caught up in some real tiny things because they're just feeling very anxious about saying that their PhD is finished. And so I would regularly say to people, is this a pass fail issue? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Is tidying up that sentence, changing that, adding that reference going to be the difference between passing that PhD or not? Because if not... Let's just hand it in. It's done now. It's good enough. And the same was true with our wedding. We needed to decide what were our pass fail issues. And our pass fail issue was maximum time together. Maximum time as a couple, maximum time with our guests. So everything else was designed around that. If I'd had no flowers, it would have been absolutely fine. Find your pass fail issues and make sure you are really honing in on making sure they're done and that you're not stressing about the color of a ribbon that you don't even care about or whatever the PhD equivalent to that is. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span>  Tip six is social media is both a help and a hindrance, whether you're doing a PhD or whether you're planning a wedding. So with a wedding, there's so much all over. My Instagram is still showing me all this wedding stuff all the time. And it's so easy to be like, Oh, I need to have one of those. And I need to have those flowers. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And I need to have that dress. And I'm gonna go. And it just gets overwhelming. At the same time, there were several things that were super useful about being on social media. You know, being able to show pictures to my hairdresser going just something like that. It's fine. That's all good. Um, being taught how to do the kissing dip. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You know, where he like leans over and kisses you and you flop back in a graceful, elegant style. Those of you who know me in real life, I'm not so good at the graceful and elegant. And Andy is quite clumsy. And we found an amazing wedding planner called Georgie. Again, if you're getting married, I'll link her in the show notes. That's not very connected. , She does videos on how to do that dip. And we practiced in our lounge. Dog thought we were mad. And then we did it the halfway back up the aisle on the way out and it was lovely. So good. So there are things that it's super useful for and the same is true for you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So you will probably be following Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts that are about the PhD experience and seeing that other people are experiencing the same sorts of things as you. Super important. If you're not following me everywhere, please get on it. I'm still Dr Vikki Burns on Twitter, but if you search Dr Vikki Wright, you'll find that too, and I'm the PhD life coach on Instagram and on LinkedIn. I might appear on all these new Twitter replacements at some point, but I haven't yet. But find the ones that share the funny memes, find the ones that share different PhD students experience or that answer your questions and those sorts of things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Find the ones that make you feel like your experience is normal and that it's okay to find it hard, and find the ones that encourage you to celebrate your successes. Be careful, though, of extrapolating other people's experiences into yours. One of the things that we got feedback on a few years ago with post grad training was that we were almost over emphasizing how hard the PhD was going to be. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We were so keen to tell everybody about all the support services that there are available at the university. And at my old university, Birmingham, there are some amazing support services, now including my yearly coaching program.. But the students were a bit like, Oh my goodness, how bad is it going to be at induction? </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because they got a bit caught up in all of these stories. And the same can happen on social media. You see other people talking about how stressful it is, how pressured it is, how important it is to publish and all of these things. And it can make you go, I wasn't stressed, but I am now. So just... Be mindful what you're using your social media for and really stop and reflect on the emotional effect that it's having on you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Does it make you feel heard and reassured and newly motivated? Or is it adding to your stress? And then you can start to curate. So I started to delete out the accounts that were going on like really big, glamorous flowers and, all about the bands and the discos, cause we weren't doing any of that stuff. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I deleted all of those out. And I just found maybe four or five accounts where I actually really liked the style of the weddings that they were doing, and you can do the same with your PhD, find the four, five, six accounts that actually make you feel good when they pop up on your feed and follow them. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And you may find they change as your PhD goes through. Filter your feeds, block people that make you unhappy, follow people that make you feel better and that make you want to get on with the things you've got to do. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tip seven, things will go wrong on the day and that's okay. People said this to me about the wedding and me being the kind of, slightly perfectionist high achiever person. I was like, nothing's gonna go wrong. I've got a manual. In fact, in my official wedding photos, I have a photo of my mum showing the photographer this huge pile of paperwork that was the manual I'd made to take the piss out of me. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So thanks for that one, mum. But I was like, no, you won't. I'm gonna plan and plan and plan and plan and plan. And nothing is gonna go wrong unless it rains. Nothing is going to go wrong. But then as time got closer towards the wedding, I started having stress dreams about all the things that were going to go wrong, that we went to the wrong place, and that nobody turned up, and yeah, all, it was the whole thing.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And you will find the same with your viva. As you're getting closer and closer, people will say no, things will go wrong, and you'll be okay. There will be questions you won't know the answer to, and you'll be going, no, no, if I just work a bit harder and I prep a bit more, nothing will go wrong. Nothing will go wrong. It will. There will be questions that you don't answer as well as you could. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And that's okay. It's not a pass fail issue. Your examiners are looking for the edges of your knowledge. If they find them, that's okay. You've just got to demonstrate that you did the work and justify the work and be able to explain it to them. You haven't got to be able to answer every single thing perfectly. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, the more you plan, the less chance there is that these things will go, but you can't exhaust yourself to try and cover every possible eventuality and make yourself panic in the run up to it. In reality for us, the rain held off, no one got COVID, so that was good. And the one thing that did go wrong... </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It's frankly hilarious. So we had planned that we were going to come into dinner, and we haven't actually picked music to come into dinner because we didn't want to do one of those big prances in that you see on the internet, so they were going to announce Mr. and Mrs. Wright, we were going to come in to dinner, to general applause and merriment sit down. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And then before we had our dinner, we wanted to do this thing that I, again, picked up on social media, where the bride and groom run around to each table and have a photo taken with each table so that you know you've got every single guest in your photos at some point. If anyone's getting married, really, so good. Anyway, I had chosen. A fun song. I'll tell you what it was in a second. I had chosen a fun song to do for that. And so the idea was, we come in, everyone cheers, we announce what we're going to do, music starts, we've got the length of that song to get round all the tables and have the photos taken. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Yeah, we had to give our phone to the venue, who were amazing, by the way, and they were in charge of doing the right songs at the right time. And they'd done a wonderful job all the way through the ceremony and the drinks reception and all of that. They slightly misunderstood, which means they started playing our music for our entrance, rather than after we'd explained the running around the tables for the photos. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Which means that my new husband and I entered our dining room to all our friends and family to let's get ready to rumble by PJ and Duncan. Which was not exactly what it was meant to be like, but it was hilarious. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So things will go wrong, you will laugh about them, or there will be moments of embarrassment. But it'll all be okay, because it doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful, and to be the start of a whole new phase.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Tip eight is enjoy the process. I had friends in the past who told me that they couldn't wait for their wedding to be over so that they didn't have to do the planning anymore. Whilst I understand that it can be stressful, particularly if you're on a tight budget, and there's a lot of decisions to be made, which can be a bit overwhelming, one of the things we decided really early on was that we were going to enjoy the process of everything we did to prepare for our wedding. And apart from the odd time where I had a wobble about what we're going to do if it rains, I think we actually managed that. You know, I made the invitations with my stepmum and my sister. I took other sisters when I did my dress, we took my mum for my fitting. My husband helped make decisions about most of the different things, helped with timelines, sent half the invitations, and we saw it as an entire process that we wanted to do together and enjoy together. And it was wonderful.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And I see so many people who are doing PhDs who just want to get it over and I ask them why they want to get it over and they say because they want an academic career and they want, and it's like, but this is what your academic career is going to be like. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> There's going to be bumps, there's going to be research that's annoying, there's going to be forcing yourself to write stuff when you don't feel like it, there's going to be too much to do. This is what it's like. This was your dream not that long ago when you were doing your undergrad and you were doing your master's and you were thinking about doing a PhD, you were dying to be where you are now, and so often people want to rush that past.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So I'd really encourage you to learn from The experience of planning a wedding and that idea of enjoying all of the process and try and enjoy the entire process of your PhD because every stage that you're at is special in its own way and is all part of this amazing experience of getting your doctorate. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> My final tip is that your PhD is only the beginning, just as your wedding is only the beginning of your marriage. There's so much pressure on both of them to be the perfect day, the perfect ceremony, through to having the perfect viva where examiners think you're amazing and it all goes wonderfully. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And... It's an enormous amount of pressure on a single day, a single event. And with a PhD, you've got this additional thing that people tell you, you've got to be making a unique contribution. And so people get caught up in, this has to be like my career's contribution. Your PhD is not your career's contribution. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Your PhD is somewhere between a job and a training program. You are learning, you're producing stuff that's useful, but it's not going to be the best thing you ever do necessarily, whether or not you stay in academia.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Getting your PhD is the beginning of whatever you choose to do next. Now that's not to say, I know a lot of you do them at different times in your life. Some people do it straight out of their undergrad, masters. Other people come back to PhDs later on. So when I say it's only the beginning, it's... Not the be all and end all. It's not the one thing that makes you valid as a researcher. It's not the one thing that will dictate everything you do in your life next. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So, enjoy this process through to getting a PhD, but also remember that there is a huge life post PhD where you can expand research findings if you want to do that. You can apply it into different sectors if you want to do that. Where you can just remember it as something fun that you did and you enjoyed it while it lasted, and now you're doing something completely different. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Whatever it is, your PhD or your wedding is only the beginning of the next phase of your life. I really hope you guys enjoyed that. I loved telling you about my wedding. It's kind of a cheap excuse just to tell you about that. And I didn't even tell you about the very best part of my wedding, so I'm going to throw in a bonus tip. Tenth tip, who knew? Bonus tip, don't be afraid to think outside the box. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Don't be afraid to do something that sounds slightly bonkers. As long as you think it will fit for what you're trying to achieve. Our version of that is the best thing we did on the entire day, other than getting married, which was the best bit. So we wanted, we love doing escape rooms. We do escape rooms with my stepdaughters quite a lot. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And so we wanted some sort of escape room type component at the wedding. And, so we were thinking about how it would work, what puzzles would involve and all of those things. I was like, but there needs to be a story. There's always a theme. What's the story? And then we came up with it. We put our cake in a cage. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Padlocked it shut and then gave the guests clues to how to unlock the padlock. They had to go off and find things around the venue and collaborate between tables and find little tokens. Anyway, it was a whole thing. Everybody loved it. No one could believe that we did it. You have no idea how excited everybody got from the littlest children through to the most grown up people at the wedding. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It was absolutely amazing. And if we'd been too, oh no, we need to do it the proper way, then we wouldn't have done it and we wouldn't have had this amazing experience.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Have you got any out of the box ideas that you could do that would make your PhD just that little bit more special? It could be things you do as part of your research, it could be things you do alongside your research. So this for me was a little after my PhD, but when I was a postdoc, I did a media fellowship scheme where I went and worked at the Irish Times to learn how to be a science journalist, and it helped my scientific public communication writing unbelievably. If I'd got too caught up in, oh no, I probably don't have time for that. I didn't have time for it. It was a month away. Who has time for that? I didn't have time for it. Am I glad I did it? Yes. Did anything fall apart? No, absolutely not. So if there is anything like locking your cake in a cage, going and doing a work experience fellowship, time in industry. I think there's a scheme where scientists can go into parliament. Not so familiar with the stuff on the arts and social sciences, but there'll definitely be things where there are partnerships with museums and local organizations and things. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Put in something special, because those are the bits that you're going to remember. No one is going to remember what color my bouquet was, or whether the menu cards stuck together properly. We got there in the end, but that was a whole thing. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> What they're going to remember is that we locked our cake in a cage and they had to get it out. I've never seen people more desperate to get cake in all my life.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The same is true for you putting these additional little cool things into your PhD experience. No one's going to remember whether you had the perfect Zotero all planned out and organized and ready to go, but you are going to remember that amazing time you spent traveling or working in industry or whatever it is. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Make time, make space for the fun and cool bits that are the ones that you all really remember. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for indulging me talking about my wedding. Have an amazing week.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach. </span> <span> com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.g and have a wonderful week. </span> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 09 Oct 2023 04:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-4-nine-things-i-learned-from-organising-our-wedding-that-you-can-apply-to-your-phd thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-3-how-to-manage-your-supervisor-or-boss <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Our professional relationships with the people who supervise or manage us can have huge implications for how much we achieve and how much we enjoy our academic work. Yet often we can be quite passive about it - "they are how they are" and we just have to cope with it. In this episode, I'll share some straightforward ways that you can "manage" the people above you to make it more efficient and more fun for everyone involved.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> If you wish your relationship with your supervisor could be just a little bit easier, a little bit more supportive, then this is the perfect episode for you. We are going to think about how you can manage your supervisor in ways that are entirely under your control. And if you're an academic rather than a PhD student, all of these tips can apply to your head of research group, your head of school, vice chancellor, or whoever too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This is series two, episode three, and we are going to be thinking about managing your supervisor or boss. Now, often when I do these, I'm thinking about my perspective as a coach. But really in this episode, I'm going to be drawing a lot of my experience of being a supervisor. I supervised a bunch of PhD students through to successful completion. Did I do everything right? Probably not. Did I learn an enormous amount from it? Absolutely yes, and they are all wonderful people and off doing wonderful things now. And one of the things when I reflect back on that time that really strikes me is how well some of them developed the skills of managing me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This might not be something that you've thought about before. And that's why I wanted to do an episode on it today. Often when we think about our bosses, whether they're our supervisors, head of school, whoever, we think of it as something outside of our control. They are who they are, and they behave the way they behave and maybe we spend a lot of time thinking about how they should maybe behave differently, but we often don't spend a lot of time thinking about how can I behave differently in relation to them in order to make this relationship more effective.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, I've done two episodes before about supervisory relationships, so do make sure you check that out. One about how to get the best out of your supervisory relationship, and the second about what to do if you find yourself with a toxic supervisor, and how to know that's the case. So, as usual, the caveat is that all the recommendations today are within the basis of a broadly healthy supervisory relationship, not where things are sort of close to irretrievably broken down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before I get on with the tips though, I really want to think for a second about why we focus on managing our supervisors rather than asking them to be different because we can make requests, right? We can ask for more feedback. We can ask for quicker feedback. We can ask for more regular meetings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a bunch of requests we can make and your supervisors may be willing to accommodate those. They may have not realized it would be useful for you. They may have intended to do it, but not got round to it and so they're happy to oblige. But sometimes what we want from our bosses is a little more tenuous than that. I have a lot of my clients talk about, I just want a bit more reassurance from them. I just want a little bit more positive feedback. They don't seem that interested in me. And it's quite a hard conversation to say to your supervisor, Can you be a bit more interested in me please? Could you give me a bit more positive feedback? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And whilst that's not to say that you shouldn't ask, if we expect other people to change in order to make us feel differently, then we're always in slightly dangerous territory. What is a lot more achievable is to think about what you can do in order to make this environment feel better and to be able to achieve the goals that you want to achieve within that environment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I'm going to be giving you a few different examples of things that you can do to manage your supervisor or boss, and I'll tell you some stories along the way of where students used to do this for me. So for those of you who don't know me well, I was an academic for 20 odd years in Sport Sciences and I was probably known for being enthusiastic but a little disorganized, over committed. Somebody who usually delivered in terms of getting stuff done, I was a safe pair of hands to deliver projects, deliver teaching, deliver tasks, all that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  Had really good ideas about what could happen in research, what could happen in the department, but I often lost track of where I was up to with things and like routine procedures weren't my bag. And my best students were the ones... in fact most... I'm not even going to say that. I was just going to say my best students... Without a doubt, all of my students were amazing. Loved them all. They all had different strengths and all of them learned to manage me one way or another.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I remember getting an email from one of them, we were going to go to a ethics meeting together. So we were doing some clinical type trials and we had to go to an NHS ethics meeting where we actually physically traveled to it and sat in a room and answer questions and everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And afterwards, we were going to go through a draft of a chapter that she had submitted to me for comments a few weeks before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And... The day before she sent me an email, that I will always remember. Because it said something to the effect of, Dear Vikki, Really looking forward to seeing you for the ethics meeting tomorrow. I'll see you at two in the car park as we arranged. I've reattached the ethics papers to this email. They've said the meeting will last about an hour. So hopefully we'll be back in your office to go through the comments on my methods chapter by then. Looking forward to it. See you later. That is not a direct quote. I'm not reading the email, but words to that effect. And what I loved about this email was it made my life so easy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In one place, she reminded me where we were going, where I was meeting her, what time I was meeting her. She reattached the papers that I needed, and she reminded me what we were doing afterwards, and she importantly reminded me that I had said I was going to have comments for her. What that meant was that if I had forgotten any of those parts, then she had reminded me, but she had reminded me in a really kind and friendly way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She didn't message me going, I know you usually forget things, Vikki so just to remind you. She made it seem like it was just a, I'll see you here. Here's the stuff to do. It was very breezy. It was very non confrontational.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now you might ask. Why should you have to? Why shouldn't your supervisor, your boss, who's inevitably paid more than you , why shouldn't they have to keep track of this stuff? Why should I have to make it easy for them? And it's a fair question. I don't dispute that I probably shouldn't have needed all those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the fact was, she wasn't my only PhD student. Supervising PhD students wasn't my only task. It wasn't my only research project. It wasn't my only teaching. I had administrative duties. I had a hundred different things. And I did sometimes forget what time I was meeting people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I did sometimes realize that I was having a meeting with somebody to do comments and I hadn't done the comments. I did. Should I have been more on top of that? Yes. Did I spend a lot of time beating myself up for that before I found coaching? Yeah, absolutely I did. But... When a student makes your life easy like that, suddenly I could be a really good supervisor to her. Because she made it easy for me to be a good supervisor for her.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Imagine how different it would have been, if she had taken the line, well, Vikki should remember this stuff. It annoys me that she doesn't, but Vikki should remember this stuff. Then she wouldn't have sent me that reminder. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She wouldn't have been sure whether I was going to turn up at the right time. So she probably would have had a bit of anxiety waiting to see whether I was there at the right time. She'd probably have had a little bit of anxiety waiting to see whether I had the right papers for the meeting. Maybe she would have had to share her papers with me if I didn't have them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe she'd have come to the meeting afterwards and I wouldn't have done her comments and we'd have had to rearrange another meeting for a week later. And just think how annoying that would have been for her. Was it my fault? Yes! Absolutely. Was it still really annoying? Yes. Did it hold her up? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Yes. Now, it's possible, of course, that I was fine! I was on top of it all, I knew where I was meant to be, I'd done all the right things. That is also true. But the fact is what she did took very little effort and ensured that it was super easy to support her. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what I would really encourage you to think about whenever you contact your supervisor or have a meeting with your supervisor is ask yourself, how can I make it easy for them?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One example is always making sure if you're asking them about anything, make sure you reattach the thing you're asking. Don't make them go fishing through their emails to go and find the thing you're talking about because they might not be able to find it and they might find the wrong thing and it becomes a whole effort. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just reattach the thing. Even better, get in the habit with your supervisor of using some sort of cloud storage system where you can all access the same thing and then you just remind them where it is. Remind them which version it is that they're meant to be looking at and so on. So really think, how can I make it easy for this person to do this task.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a bunch of specific things you can do to make it easy. You can make meetings easy by keeping records. You can make meetings easy by being really clear what the meeting is for at the point you book it and the day before the meeting. So the supervisor can come prepared because they know exactly what you want to do in that meeting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can keep track of actions. Again, your supervisors should keep track of their own actions. Not all your supervisors will. I'm sorry, I know they should, but they won't. So if you can keep track, not only of the tasks that you're going to do, but also the tasks that your supervisors said you're going to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even sending summary notes after a meeting saying, Great to meet! This is what we decided. This is what you said you'd do by these dates. This is what I said I'd do by these dates. Let me know if that's all good. Then you make it easy for them. Your supervisors are probably rushing from the meeting with you into a teaching session, then off into some other committee, then off into something else. Making it easy for them makes everything less painful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can even personalize this to your specific supervisor. So think about your supervisor or head of department now. I worked under five or six different heads of school. They all had different strengths and they all had different weaknesses. And what I learned when I was managing them was that understanding their weaknesses really, really helped me to make it easy for them. Have a think, what does your supervisor find hard? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of you will still have them on a bit of a pedestal where you're like, Oh, they don't find anything, anything difficult. They do. They do. Maybe they find it difficult to give positive feedback. Maybe they find it difficult to narrow down projects because they just want to study everything and think they can include it. Maybe they find it difficult to write more concisely. Maybe they find it difficult to find time to meet with you because they're often traveling.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everybody has weaknesses. Everybody has things that are their less preferred stuff. If you can keep an eye out for the stuff that your supervisor or your boss finds more difficult, and find ways to overcome that, ways to make that a bit easier, then... you can help them so much more effectively.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've had students whose supervisors travel a lot make sure that before their supervisor goes on an aeroplane to go to a conference make sure that's when you give them a draft because they know that this particular supervisor likes reading documents on planes and it's your best chance to get them sat still for long enough to get on with it, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way that you can make things easy for your supervisor is making sure you're really clear on what you need. Often students will just send a draft and say, please could I have some comments on this draft? And I can do that, but the stage that that draft is at should really affect what feedback I give you. But if I don't know what stage you think it's at... you're going to get something much more generic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you can send a draft with comments saying, this is an early draft, please don't spend time on spelling, punctuation, and grammar, because I will straighten all that out later. I really want you mainly to look at whether the argument makes sense, whether there's sufficient evidence, and whether it's in the right order. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you could give comments on those things, that would really help me out. What that does is it focuses them on the stuff you need. It means they don't waste time on the other stuff. It also helps prevent misunderstandings.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've read things in the past where referencing's all over the place, spelling grammar's all over the place, and I'm a bit like, oh goodness, if they think this is good, we've got a problem. They didn't think it was good. They just hadn't told me that they thought it was a rough draft. So I'm stressing out thinking, Oh my goodness, maybe they're not very good at this after all. By the time they got round to polishing it, absolutely fine. No problems whatsoever. They were perfectly capable of doing good spelling and grammar. They just hadn't at that stage. So be really specific with what you need.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div>  You can even go as far as asking for more positive feedback. So I wouldn't just say, please give me more positive feedback, but I would say in this draft, please do point out any of the bits that I need to change, but it would also be really useful for the sections you don't want to change to hear why you think they're effective. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What you think I did well so that I can apply that to later bits of writing. Supervisors who receive those sorts of comments will almost always be really happy to do that because you've made their life easier. You've given them a specific focus for their feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next thing I want to talk about is trying not to guess what is in your supervisor's heads and trying not to change what is in your supervisor's heads. I talked about this a bit in last week's episode about receiving negative feedback. Often we try and predict what the supervisor or boss is thinking about us and we start worrying about that and then we start acting a bit weird because we're trying to manipulate how they're feeling about us. We can try and anticipate what would be helpful, but what we want to try and avoid is micromanaging their emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you want to hear more about that, do tune into last week's episode because in the second half of it, I talk about that in a lot more detail. But it's a really important part of managing your relationship with your supervisor is accepting that they have emotions and thoughts and some of those thoughts and emotions are going to be about you. And that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So here we're managing ourselves in relation to our supervisors. We're managing our own thoughts and emotions rather than trying to change the thoughts and emotions of our supervisors.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, there are two emotions that I think it's really useful if our supervisors are experiencing, and whilst we can't generate those emotions, only the supervisors can generate those emotions, we can put our supervisors in circumstances that make it more likely they will think thoughts and generate these emotions for themselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is true whether we're talking about your PhD supervisor all the way through to your vice chancellor when you're a Head of school. So this is everyone at every level. The two things that I think you should be trying to promote in your seniors is something around secure or informed. That sort of an emotion and something around excitement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let's start with secure and informed. Whatever the role of the person above you is, they will be split. As long as they're working in academia, they will be split in lots of different ways. So it might be your supervisor and the usual academic jobs that they have to do, all the way through to if we're talking about your head of school or your vice chancellor, they will have leadership responsibilities that you're not even aware of, externally facing roles outside of the university with the local community, with industry, with government, and so on. There will be a whole load of stuff in their lives that you're not aware of on any level.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can give them the best possibility of feeling secure and informed about us and what we're doing, it's one less thing for them to worry about, and they can then trust that we have it in hand. Now what might that look like? It might mean giving the person regular updates at a level that is appropriate to that person. So there's a whole bunch of stuff in project management called stakeholder management, where you really think about, who the different stakeholders in your project are and what information do they need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And maybe I'll do a podcast about that at some point, because there's a whole lot of other stuff there, but your seniors need to know that you've got things in hand. They need to know that they don't need to worry about the basics of basic progression, basic rules being followed, basic processes being done, all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you can make sure that at an amount that you feel is appropriate, and maybe you discuss it with your supervisor to check how often it should be, you let them know where you're at, what you're doing and what's in hand. This shouldn't be big, long essays, telling them every detail of everything, but it should be this week I focussed on this. I've got this, that draft's coming to you next week. I've recruited this many people, or I've done this many samples. Just updates as to where you're at. We're not talking big wins here. We're not talking like amazing news. Your article got published. We're talking, I've read these articles, these ones I've done notes on, those ones are still to go. I've drafted these sections, this is in hand. And what you're doing here is you're making it easy for them to feel confident because they can see what you've done, where you're at, and that you're monitoring what you've done and where you're at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The crucial thing here, you're not putting a rose tinted glow on this. So you're not telling them what you think you want them to hear. You must never lie in these things, because then you start to lose their trust as soon as they realize that that's happening. What they want to see here is, you know, I recruited this many participants. This is lower than I'd intended. Therefore I'm going to do this, this, and this. Or it could be, I've read these bits of the archive, but actually there was loads more there than I thought there was going to be so it's going to take me an extra couple of weeks to do these remaining parts. We might need to adjust our publication strategy based on how long that's going to take .  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in this informing that you're giving them, you are telling them where things are behind the original schedule, where things might need to change, where things haven't gone as anticipated but you're showing them that you are on top of where you're at, as in you know where you're at, and you know what you need to do next.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason it's important for them to know what you're doing is you want them to feel invested. I didn't even mention invested. Love invested. Let's go with that too. You want them to feel invested. You want them to feel like what you're doing is important to them too. Now with your supervisor, that hopefully is reasonably included. You should hopefully be doing research that's relevant to them anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But sometimes students do find themselves in a situation where the research they're doing is perhaps something their supervisor's losing interest in or maybe your supervisor inherited you from somebody else because your original supervisor left and it's a bit tangential. Anything you can do to help them feel invested in what you're doing is also really important.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, Generating that feeling is their responsibility, but we can make it easier. We can remind them why we're doing what we're doing. We can remind them how it's connected to the things that they're doing. This might be in terms of your project progress as a PhD student, but as a more senior member of staff, this means keeping your heads of school up to date on the stuff that you're getting done. You know, I was head of education, for example. I was head of postgraduate studies, all of those sorts of jobs, making sure that maybe once a month you send your head of school a message saying, this is what we've been focused on this month. This is where we've got to, this is what I'd need to discuss with you at some point, this stuff's in hand, don't worry about it, just means that they are invested in what you're doing. They can see that you're making a difference. They can see where they fit with that and they feel secure. and content that you've got it under control. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final emotion that I want you to try and generate, and it's connected to that idea of invested, is excitement. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In the current higher education sector, there's a distinct lack of excitement, a lot of the times, and what there's a massive lack of is excitement where you get to just geek out on your actual research. And this is true every possible level. Most academics want to spend more time thinking about their subjects, whether they're research oriented, teaching oriented, we love our subjects. That's why we do what we do. One of the best ways you can use that to bond with and strengthen the relationship with your superiors is by sharing what you're doing with them. My supervisors, when I was a PhD student, were never happier than when I popped around the door with a graph to show them so they could see what had happened in the data. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Share the exciting thing you've found. Share the weird and curious thing you've found. Share the thing that's not working, but in a curious, can we figure out why, kind of way. Let's be two intellectuals sitting together to figure out why this assay isn't working or why we can't interpret this text. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Create situations where they're likely to feel excited about the actual research that you're doing, so that they don't just see you as a student to get through or a project to be managed, but as someone who is working with them on something that they really care about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And trust me, the more senior the person you're working with, the less time they have for it, but the more they need it. I spend a lot of time with a lot of senior people at universities. And pretty much without exception, the bit they miss... is just talking about their subject. Often they love their leadership roles. Often they're doing lots of really interesting things that feel important and they've run off their feet with stuff to do. But just to have an opportunity to have a PhD student go, look at this cool thing I figured out. I've just seen this for the first time. They want to hear that stuff. This isn't just good for them. The more they see you as somebody who is working on something exciting, who give them that moment of being an academic, a proper academic again, the more they're going to reach out, the more they want to spend time with you, the more they want to be engaged and involved in your projects. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is why you should take every opportunity you can to present your data. Go to every seminar, ask questions. Anytime they're looking for volunteers to present your data, present it, and have conversations with people about it. Manage the people around you by putting them in environments where they might find you interesting and engaging. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't get to tell them how to react, but we get to behave in ways that make it so much more likely that people will then engage with us in ways that feel really good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If this all feels like a really long way from where you are at the moment, that's okay. I gave you about 20 different ideas there of things you can do. You don't have to do all of them. And many of them might be things that you go, Oh, I don't think that would work with my supervisor. That's okay. Don't do those ones, or don't do those ones immediately, but have a think. Based on what you know about them, based on their strengths, their weaknesses, their interests, their needs, what can you do to make it a little bit easier for them, a little bit more focused for them? To make it more likely that they feel secure and informed and to make it more likely that they feel excited about your research.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that's useful. Let me know what you decide to do with your supervisors and let me know how it goes, how it changes the relationship. Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Oct 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-3-how-to-manage-your-supervisor-or-boss thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-2-how-to-handle-negative-feedback <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When did you last get some negative feedback? As PhD students and academics, we get negative feedback quite often, either comments on drafts of papers, rejections from journals, applying for jobs, all sorts of things. We get bits of negative feedback and it can really hurt. So what do we do when we experience negative feedback? What do we do with the fact it hurts and how could we perhaps do something different in the future? That's what we're going to be talking about in today's podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode two of season two of the PhD life coach and today we're going to be thinking about responding to negative feedback. I remember the first time that I got reviewers comments back. So I was a PhD student my second year, something like that, and I'd submitted a paper for publication, been super excited about it and we got the reviewer's comments back and they were harsh. I think it is fair to say they are, they were harsh. Harsh in the sense of being quite critical about some of the decisions we'd made, but also just. being wrong with some things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was devastated. I was so upset. They'd rejected our paper and it was just awful. And I made it mean so many things. I spiralled off into I'm never going to get published, everything I'm doing is pointless, all of this stuff. And thankfully, I had wonderful supervisors, and I talked to my wonderful supervisors, and they took two very different approaches, both of which I'm going to sort of hedge whether I recommend or not, but I'm going to share them with you because I think they were super useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first one was one of my supervisors said that if they're wrong, we need to tell them they're wrong. So not the bits where they were disagreeing with us, but stuff where they'd actually just factually missed where we got it. He helped me write a letter back to the editor explaining why the reviewers had been wrong and we actually got it re reviewed. So we immediately jumped onto the offensive and was like, okay, let's go. Again, that's not always the way to cope, but it's a really strong memory that I have of managing negative feedback right at the beginning of my academic career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other memory I have, with a second paper from my PhD, was my supervisors being similarly outraged by the comments from the reviewers and the other supervisor sat me down and said we're going to write the letter that we wish we could write and we went through responding point by point basically telling them why they were idiots. Put in this way, it was bad enough that when we were then editing it into something that we could actually send, I had to do find and replace to make sure that we hadn't left any swear words in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was ridiculous. I am not necessarily arguing for either of these. Can I tell this story? I don't even know if I can tell the stories I'm going to tell today. But we'll see. Let's go. I'm not saying this is the way to handle it. Was it mature? No. Did it make me laugh a lot? Yes. Did it make me feel better? Yes. Did that paper ultimately get published? Absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not going to give you techniques like that today, but what I am going to help you do is think through why negative feedback is so painful and give you, as usual, some tools and techniques that you can use right now if you're either experiencing or anticipating negative feedback.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because that's really important, isn't it? This isn't just about how we respond when we do get negative feedback. It's the fact that the anticipation of negative feedback can also make it really hard to submit stuff in the first place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have so many clients say to me, I'm too scared to send this to my supervisors because I know they're going to give me a lot of comments and I don't want to hear it, or I haven't got time to deal with it right now. Or they say, I need to send this to my supervisor, but I'm worried they're going to think I'm an idiot and I just can't deal with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if we can learn how to manage negative feedback, not only does it make it better when we got it, it also makes it easier to actually submit things in the first place. Because if we know we can manage negative feedback, there's much less barrier to submitting anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that a fear of negative feedback can do, is it can make it really hard to assert your viewpoint, to assert your opinion. People sometimes hold back in being really explicit about what they mean in an article, particularly where you're making an argument, because they're worried that people will tell them that they're wrong. And again, if we can learn to handle critique of our work, handle critique of ourselves, then it's easier to actually put across our perspective in the first place, because it's a less terrifying thing to be thinking about. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the bits of advice we see all the time when it comes to handling negative feedback is don't take it personally. And while well intentioned, everybody who's ever told you don't take it personally, they're really well intentioned, they're caring about your mental health, but I don't think that actually helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't think it's useful advice. And that's for a bunch of reasons. Partly, everyone takes it personally. There will be, as I said, you know, my supervisors, super senior, especially one of them, super, super senior in his career at the point he was supervising me. Did he take it personally? Yes! He took it as an absolute personal affront to his academic prowess. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Did he then make that mean that he was rubbish and all of those things? No, he didn't, but he took it personally. It offended him, it absolutely offended him. Anyone who tells you that it's just like water off a duck's back, I never let it bother me, they're lying. It bothers them. Okay? And the good thing with knowing that is that it means if it bothers you, there's nothing wrong with you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As usual, you ain't gotta fix yourself. You're just a human being who doesn't like hearing that the thing they worked really hard on has got some criticisms of it. So everyone takes feedback personally at some point, and that's okay. It means that you are normal. You don't have to beat yourself up for that. Usually it means you care about the thing they're critiquing. Usually it means that you care about somebody else's opinion. None of these are bad things. It only becomes bad when it becomes debilitating, when it stops you submitting, it stops you asserting your opinion. Or it means that you dwell on it for weeks and weeks after you've received negative feedback and it holds you back from responding to the comments. So don't worry if you take it personally. It's all good. I've got you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason don't take it personally is unhelpful advice is because it just isn't as easy as that. It's like, oh, okay, I'll not take it personally then. Okay. As if, who's ever been told don't take it personally and then not taking it personally. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You need actual things to think about, actual tools, beyond "just don't get upset", that will help you actually manage it. And that's what we're going to be doing today. Some proper things that you can actually use.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> First thing I want you to do is for us to really think about what types of situations you get feedback. And for me, you can categorize them in two different ways. You can categorize them as personal critiques and task or project critiques.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes you'll receive feedback on an article and that's very much task feedback, project feedback. Sometimes you'll receive feedback on yourself. I had to do, I did this leadership training thing at my old university and I had to do 360 degree feedback where they asked some of your peers, some people above you and some people who worked under you to answer a bunch of questions about what you're like as a person and what it's like to work with you and what your strengths and weaknesses are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Oh my goodness. Terrifying, terrifying, lovely in many ways, gut wrenching in others. I had to learn to manage a lot of feedback at that stage. And that was more personal feedback. That was about me. That wasn't about a particular piece of work. It was critiques of my approach and my management and my leadership and those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we can kind of divide into personal and tasks or projects. We can also divide into the kind of reasons for giving the feedback. And for me, these fall into two categories as well. You can give feedback for growth. So with my 360 feedback, it was very much about growth. They weren't giving me a job or not giving me a job. They got me. Was a professor there. ,But it was about how could I be a more effective leader? How could I get feedback that would help me to do my job more effectively? Okay, so that's like growth feedback. And similarly, you can have growth feedback on an article. So when your supervisor gives you comments, your co authors give you comments, those are growth feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They are intended to help you improve the thing. If you get a revise and resubmit or a minor modifications, either for your thesis or for an article, that's growth feedback. It's feedback intended to help you improve the thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also get what I'm calling consequence feedback. So this is where they're telling you why you've got a particular outcome. So on the personal side, that might be feedback as to why you did or didn't get a job, why you did or didn't get a scholarship or something like that and in the task thing, it might be feedback on why they've rejected your paper, why you didn't get your grant, those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. And it's really important for you to figure out when you're thinking about feedback, which of these things it is. Is it about you or is it about the task and don't get those things muddled up with each other. We'll talk more about that later. And is the feedback intended to help you improve this particular thing or is it intended to help you learn from a past experience. So it's explaining why you didn't get it so you could learn from that in future.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Being clear on which of these it is makes it much easier to plan how you're going to use this feedback going forwards, because that's the point of feedback. We take it, we work out what we want to use and how we want to use it, and we move forward from there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing I want you to do is write down everything that you are making this mean. Because actually, having somebody say, this part of your writing could be more clear. You've missed out an argument here. It gets a bit muddled there. Those things are not necessarily positive or negative until we make it mean something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what I see with my clients and with myself is the problems come when we make a piece of feedback mean far more than it actually does So first I want you to ask, what am I making this feedback mean about me? Am I making it mean that this means I'll never get my PhD done? This means I'll never publish? This means no one will ever want this article? This means that I'm a terrible writer? This means I will probably be an embarrassment to my family, lose my job, and have to move to the woods. What are you making it mean about you? It's so common to have this kind of catastrophizing where we make it mean far more than this one individual piece of feedback ever intended.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other question, especially if you're somebody who, like one of my supervisors, got mad about this stuff. What are you making it mean about them? By them, I mean the people giving you feedback. Are you making it mean that they think you're an idiot? Are you making it mean that they're a terrible person? Are you making it mean that they're an idiot who knows nothing at all? Be cautious what you're making it mean about them too, because it doesn't necessarily mean any of those things either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Same as it doesn't mean anything about us as an individual, negative feedback doesn't have to mean anything negative about the person that gave it. They may have given it with great intentions, they may have given it with not much thought at all. That's often the case. They may have given it because they're not a particularly nice person? Who knows? But we have to be careful what we're assuming it means about them, that they've given this negative feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because if we don't stop and think about what we're making it mean, we can very rapidly whip it up into this story of how it means terrible things for our future, it means they're an awful person, and suddenly we're in this like maelstrom of emotions, most of which isn't actually grounded in anything that actually exists. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just this story we've created by spiralling off in as many different directions as our brain allows. So really pin down what you're making it mean. And try and pin it down non judgmentally. It's not, we don't want to look at this and go, Oh my God, I'm such an idiot. Why am I making it mean all this? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're making it mean all this because it hit a nerve. It kind of, you know, it touched you. Maybe it reminds you of a voice you heard a lot in your past, or something like that. There's a whole bunch of reasons why your brain makes up these stories, usually grounded in trying to protect you in some way. So don't worry if you're making it mean a whole bunch of things. Totally normal. But notice, just notice. Accept that these are all stories. It doesn't have to mean any of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then, as usual, you get to decide what you want to make this feedback mean. What does it mean about you? Maybe it means there's a little bit more you need to learn. Maybe it means that you're really good at this aspect of writing, but you need to work on that aspect. What does it mean about them? As I say, try and avoid making it mean too much about them at all, but be aware that there are a whole bunch of things that you might not have taken into account. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The person who gave you this feedback might have been in a terrible mood when they did it. They might have done it in five minutes because they completely forgot they were meant to do it and did it at the very last minute. Maybe they did it from the intention of, I'm going to tell them all the negative things so that they can change those because the bits I don't comment on are brilliant and I'll just leave those, but I'm not actually going to write that because I haven't got time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes there's cultural differences. I remember getting really upset because, and this shows my perfectionism, so bear with me. I remember getting really upset because an American reviewer of something I'd written had described my work as "quite" good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was mortified. I mean, for me, in English English, quite good means, eh, it's alright. I mean, it's not good, but it's quite good. Whereas in a lot of cases in American English, quite is a sort of increaser. It's like, ooh, it's really quite good, as in quite good is better than good. They meant it as a compliment. I did not take it as a compliment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there can be cultural differences. Sometimes different cultures are more direct than others. Sometimes we beat around the bush. Sometimes we say it like point blank and it doesn't necessarily mean that it was intended to be rude or it was intended to be passive or any of those things and we can criticize it both ways around if we're not used to it but just be aware that we can decide what this feedback means for us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> From there, when we're deciding what we want to make it mean, this is never about denying an emotional response to it. If you've got feedback that is consequence type feedback, so it's feedback as to why you didn't get a scholarship or why your paper's been rejected, for example, it's totally normal and totally okay to be disappointed, to be sad, perhaps even to be embarrassed, a whole bunch of different emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we talk about what are we making it mean and what do we want to make it mean, we're not just going to choose completely positive thoughts. "Oh, this is a learning opportunity". No, it's rubbish. Because they rejected my paper and I wanted them to publish it. It's okay to think that's rubbish and it's okay to be really sad about that and disappointed because you worked really hard and it's not going to go in the journal that you meant it to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I would really encourage you though is while you're experiencing these negative emotions, - totally normal, totally human - is choose to be as specific as you can be. So be sad about the fact that your journal article got rejected, that you were hoping to publish it in that particular journal, and they've said no. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just be sad about that. That's okay. Let's be disappointed, because your supervisor gave you way more changes to do on an chapter that you thought was nearly finished. Let's be disappointed that that specific article isn't as far along as you thought it was and that there's more to be done. So we experience the emotions, but we keep our brains specific. We keep our brains in the room.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead of spiraling into all these other reasons to be sad or that catastrophizing that I talked about a second ago, we keep our emotions to this specific thing. And then we can experience them. Because pushing down emotions never helped anybody. Experience them. But you'll find that if you can just keep it as disappointed for this thing, sad about this thing, they dissipate so much faster than if you keep pushing fuel on the fire of telling it why else it's disappointing and why else it's sad. So trying to keep it focused as much as you can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things with allowing yourself to experience these specific emotions about this specific thing is sometimes it's useful to give yourself the space to do that. So one of the things I used to do, I used to read my comments, then I put them away. And I'd leave. I'd go for a walk, I'd go and see my friends, I'd go and get a snack, whatever it was, um, and I wouldn't come back to try and work on my comments, at least till later in the day, if not till tomorrow or the day after. Give yourself the time and space to experience the emotions that are specifically to do with that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The only exception I'm going to give you to that is where there is a quick win involved. So I once spent months writing a grant, for a large Research Council, I'm going to say. I'm not going to say which one, and I got three reviews back. Two of them were absolutely gleaming. Loved it. And one gave me a 3 out of 10. and there were inaccuracies in the report. I was furious. Absolutely furious. Spoke to the organization to say, look, this review scuppered my grant, the other two would have put it through and there's, there's things that are just blatantly not true about the qualifications of the people involved and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they said really sorry, but there's nothing we can do about it, but it just is what it is. And it was one of those situations where I absolutely was going to give myself space to be angry and things like that. But I also knew that there was a grant deadline for a different organization, a charitable organization this time that was in about three days time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this was back in the days where you could write grants fast. You know, this was before the days of research offices having to sign things off and all of that. So we're talking a different time here, but I knew vaguely in the back of my head that there was this other deadline because I decided not to go for it when I was going for the first one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that popped into my head. So I didn't give myself space to be angry. I didn't give myself space to be upset. I didn't go off and rant or any of those things. I just went, okay, fine. And spent two days completely rewriting my grant to fit it into the categories for this other grant for a charity. Had to cut it back because it was for less money, still a substantial amount and submitted it within 48 hours. I channeled all my crossness into getting it in somewhere else. And about four months later, I found out that I got a six figure grant from that organization that I had written in two days, basically fuelled by my crossness with the review process at the Research Council. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, in some situations... You might want to give yourself space to experience the emotions. Other times you might want to channel it specifically into something productive. It's up to you which you pick, but be aware of the emotions you're experiencing and allow yourself the grace to spend some time with those emotions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you give yourself a bit of space and then dive into the comments and actually read what the criticism is, make sure that you avoid all or nothing thinking. So it's really easy to really notice the negative comments, ignore anything positive, ignore anything that hasn't got comments on it at all, so they're kind of blank pages, and then to make it mean that the whole thing's terrible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you sort of really emphasize the negative feedback, ignore the rest, and add it up to mean that it's been ravaged by your reviewer or whatever. Take a minute to spend a bit of time with the nuance, to see, oh they like these bits, they left those bits blank, they complimented those bits, these bits are minor, this bit's negative, where they think there's bigger things to change, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Take a little bit of time to see all the nuance in the comments. Try not to lump it into one big, this is a good review or a bad review, because that misses so much useful information. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you're doing that, I also want you to remember, you don't have to take every single comment they make. And this is true whether it's your supervisor or whether it's a reviewer of an article. You get to look at these comments and you get to decide what's useful. You get to decide what you want to do with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Getting comments from any of these people isn't a sort of simple instruction list where you just have to go through and do all the things they say and respond to everything they want. You get to pick. And remembering that you've got that autonomy is a really important part of staying motivated to respond to these questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there's a whole bunch of reasons that you could use to make those decisions. You might disagree with some of their comments. And if you disagree with their comments, you can choose to ignore them, and explain why you're ignoring them. You could choose to explore a bit more where this disagreement came from. Have they misunderstood something, or is it an actual disagreement? You can also decide to deprioritise something. Especially so I get a lot of people who are right up against deadlines to hand things in. And this is a point where you get to prioritize. You get to say, yeah, I probably could make that paragraph clearer, but I don't have time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing I want you to be cautious of around feedback is thinking too much about what emotions you have induced in the person who is giving you feedback. So often I hear people say things like, I think they're disappointed in me, I think they're cross with me, I think they're frustrated that I'm not doing this faster and really getting up in the heads of the reviewers or supervisors.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We've all been there. We all want to kind of micromanage, for want of a better phrase, how people respond to us. We want people to like us. We want people to think we're good at what we do. And when we get evidence that we think means that they don't, it can be really easy to get upset about that and in turn to try and change it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're worried that your supervisor is disappointed in you, then sometimes the response that is, Oh, how can I make them proud? How can I do everything they say? How can I get this all done? And how can I get it done faster? And sort of really put yourself under tons and tons of pressure to stop your supervisor being disappointed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or, if you feel like they're angry or frustrated, maybe you tiptoe around them. You don't tell them that maybe you disagree with one or two of their statements because you don't want to make them more cross. And the problem here is we end up acting weird because we're trying to change or not elicit again somebody else's emotions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And a fact I want you to really, really absorb and reflect on is we never get to control somebody else's emotions. Everybody is responsible for their own emotions. They're responsible for the thoughts that they have and the emotions that they experience. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's not to say they're to blame for them. That's not overlooking things that make our thoughts and feelings hard for us to manage ourselves sometimes. Particularly if you've got mental health problems or any of those things. So it's not to say that people are to blame for their thoughts and feelings, but they're responsible for their own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when we start to want to change something about the way our supervisor's thinking about us, for example, then there's so many problems. Because we don't actually know what they're thinking about us, we don't know why they're thinking about it, and we don't actually know what we could do to change that anyway, because the way they're feeling is down to the thoughts that they're having. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What can be a much better approach here is to focus on who do I want to be in response to these reviewers comments. I want to be somebody who methodically works them through, figures out which ones I want to take on board, which ones I want to ignore, and then gets them done. I want to be somebody who remembers that my supervisor's only giving me feedback because they want to improve my research. I want to be somebody who can stay calm and who can retain their confidence even if they get negative feedback. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can focus here, we can focus on how we want to think, how we want to feel in these circumstances, and therefore what actions we want to take, that's the bit we have control over. We don't have control over whether our supervisor is cross, stressed, disappointed, frustrated, any of those things. We get to be the person we want to be in light of the circumstance of receiving this feedback, and then we get to move forwards from there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's what I want you to do, that's why I want you to move forwards, because really, we want to be seeking this sort of negative feedback. I see so many people avoiding getting negative feedback and procrastinating sending stuff off, whether that's to journals or to your supervisor or whoever, procrastinating applying for jobs even, because they're worried about the negative feedback.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can trust that we are somebody who can receive negative feedback, we can give ourselves space to experience whatever emotions we're experiencing that are specific to this situation, that we trust we'll be kind to ourselves during that process and not tell ourselves we need to get over it or whatever. And we can be somebody who then methodically works through that feedback to work out what's useful and what's not and to act on what's useful and to leave what's not.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can trust all of those things about ourselves. We can put ourselves in a ton of positions to receive feedback. We can submit to other journals. We can submit to conferences. We can apply for jobs that we're not fully sure we qualify for. But because we know we can trust ourselves to respond to negative feedback, we can put ourselves in all those learning and exciting opportunities.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It opens up so many possibilities when you know that it doesn't matter if you get negative feedback because it will help you get better and it will allow you to apply for more and more exciting opportunities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to finish though with what to do if you experience inappropriate feedback. So, I touched on it at the beginning. We got feedback for a couple of different things, so the article and the grant, that were inappropriate in the sense of being inaccurate. There was no opinion, they were just wrong.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In those cases of accuracy, you can go back and check with the person, explain the situation. Maybe it wasn't clear. Maybe they missed that bit. Maybe they read it fast. So you can go back and query those where it's a case of accuracy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we can also get inappropriate feedback in the sense of it just being really mean, it being written in a way that is unprofessional. So this is going way beyond things where maybe somebody's a bit harsher than you expected, or a bit more direct, or a bit more thorough in their criticism, but where people are writing you know, you're an idiot, or whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Something that's actually personal, something that's actually insulting, and that you don't think is appropriate. And you have a series of choices there. And this depends, I have PhD listeners, I have academic listeners, all sorts of people listening to this podcast. So it depends a little bit on who you are and what stage you're at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But remember, you can always... If you feel comfortable, talk to the person who gave that feedback, and say, look, I really valued all of this, but I found these comments difficult to take. They made me feel like X. I'm not sure that's what you intended, but I want you to know. So you can address it directly with the person, particularly if you have an already strong relationship with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you don't feel comfortable doing that, there is always somebody else you can talk to. If you're a PhD student, it might be a second supervisor, a mentor, your director of postgraduate studies or whatever they're called in your department. If you're a member of staff, again, you might have a mentor, a head of research group, etc, etc. If you think that the feedback that you're getting is unprofessional or inappropriate, please do talk to somebody else and seek their advice about how it can be addressed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They may be willing to have a conversation with the person with you. This may be a pattern of behavior. This may be something that is then best dealt with by your head of school, for example, your head of department. So if the feedback makes you feel uncomfortable, beyond the uncomfortableness of just hearing something you don't want to hear. Something that just doesn't feel right to you. Please do reach out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Most times, feedback that feels overly harsh is a combination of somebody doing it in a hurry without really thinking through the consequences of what they're writing. But sometimes... there are people who are making comments that are just not okay and those people we do need to speak to and address this with them. So reach out for help if you feel like you're getting that sort of feedback.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope you found today useful. Let me know what sorts of negative feedback you've received and how you've managed them and how you could manage them differently in the future based on the stuff that we have talked about today. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you found this useful, please do have a look at my website. I've got a bunch of workshops for PhD students that can also be adapted for members of staff. Let me know if your university would be interested in putting one of those. I do also have some spaces for one-to-one clients too, so reach out either on my social media or through my website, because I would love to help you work through any of these issues. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Take care. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 25 Sep 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/2-2-how-to-handle-negative-feedback thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/my-post <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Welcome to Season 2 of the PhD Life Coach! In this first episode, I talk about feeling behind! It's easy to spend a lot of time telling yourself that you're behind your own plan or you're behind other people. Neither feel good and neither help us make more progress.  </div> <div> I'll talk through why these sort of thoughts hold us back and give some ideas about what to do instead. None of this needs us to be a super human - the tips are simple and achieveable, and help us move towards our goals with less pain.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Are you already feeling like you're starting this academic year behind? I know I am. And this is going to be the perfect episode to help you feel so much better and to get yourself onto your new track.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to season two of the PhD life coach. You will have noticed I have been away for the summer. There haven't been any new episodes since July. That was because I took a decent chunk of time off. Partly because I was getting married, and I wanted a honeymoon, and I wanted a family holiday. Partly because I haven't had a summer off since I was about 15, and frankly, that was pretty exciting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I am back, newly rejuvenated, ready to go for this academic year, and this is your very first episode. However, I did tell you a little lie there. I said that I was ready to go, and today, I'm feeling really ready to go. But I've spent the last couple of weeks really feeling like I was already starting the year behind.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you ever get that sensation where it feels like you're not as prepared as you wanted to be? You'd anticipated being really organized by now. It's already September. How is it already the middle of September? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's kind of getting away from you. Happens at the beginning of the academic year, happens at the beginning of the calendar year. It can happen in so many different ways and it's a really horrible feeling, that feeling that you are having to run just to stay in the same place. We start to blame ourselves for us not being in a better position than we are at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We start feeling like we're never going to get “back on top” or to “get back on track” and all of those things that we say to ourselves. And I spent time saying these things to myself over the last couple of weeks. I was all set. I was coming home from my big break away on a Wednesday. Thursday, Friday, I was going to get myself all organized. Monday was going to be a proper work week.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then I got COVID. On the Thursday that I was planning to get all organized. And my brain has been telling me that I've been on the back foot ever since that I've been behind on the thing. And so I've really seen in real time, the consequences of telling yourself you're behind and I have practiced some of the things that I talk with you guys about to try and get myself back to the mindset, that I feel much more in today, I have to say.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, what we're going to do is we're going to start thinking about why is there even a problem with telling ourselves we're behind? Because some people think that that will motivate them to work harder, to get on with it. We're going to talk about why it's a problem and, as usual, going to give you some specific tools that you can use when you find yourself in these situations. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To remind you why the thoughts we have are so important, I want to go back to the self coaching model. So if you're new to this podcast, new to coaching, you might not come across this before I will take you through it. If you remember this from last season, fabulous. I'm going to use the example of this thought that we're behind to demonstrate how the self coaching model works. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the self coaching model really helps us to understand what we're thinking and what the consequences of those thoughts are. It can be used to change. It can be used to help us develop further, but the biggest use for it is understanding. So self coaching model is made up of five parts.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The circumstance, these are the neutral facts. Neutral fact is I'm recording this on the 15th of September. Neutral fact is I arrived home from holiday on like the 27th of August or something like that. Those are my neutral circumstances.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the thought that I've been having is “I'm already behind”. Okay. So the second part of the model is our thoughts. It's that cognitive story we tell in our heads. So my circumstance, it's the beginning of the academic year. My circumstances, it's the beginning of the academic year. My thought is I'm already behind.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third part of the model is the emotion. And this is the emotion that you experience when you think that thought. So when I think the thought “I'm already behind”, I feel overwhelmed. I feel disappointed. I feel some element of shame, like it should be different. I feel a bit of panic, and I feel a bit defeated, like I've already lost. Now, in the self coaching model,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> we usually go at it one emotion at a time, explore each bit separately, and I'll explain in another podcast why that's the case. But for now, let's just say that this thought, I'm already behind, is causing me a whole bunch of negative emotions. And what I've really seen this week, and what the self coaching model tells us, is that those emotions lead to particular actions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now when we're feeling overwhelmed, panicked, defeated, what do you do? What do you find yourself doing? Not to make yourself better. So this isn't like strategies that you use to get yourself out of those moods, but when you're in those emotions, you're feeling defeated, you're feeling shame, you're feeling disappointed, what actions do you take? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's almost always going to be actions that don't particularly help us. So what I've seen in myself is massive procrastination. So time spent scrolling on social media, instead of figuring out exactly what I need to do and what I need to get on with. It's actions that happen inside my head, like telling myself I'm never going to get back on track. I'm never going to build the things that I want to build. I'm never going to get done the things I want to do. Why did I even do this? That kind of spiraling.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the actions we see can be physical actions, like procrastination, they can be spiraling. For me, it comes out sometimes in over-planning. So instead of finding myself doing the tasks I want to do, I get really caught up in, I need to plan out everything I'm going to do for the next year and that often doesn't help either.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the result is, we stay behind. Because of these actions, the consequence is that we stay behind. So look at that model all the way through. We've got circumstance, it's the beginning of the academic year. We're telling ourselves we're already behind, that's our thought. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Our feelings are overwhelmed, panicked, defeated, stressed, all of those things. Our actions are we procrastinate, we worry, we catastrophize, we sometimes plan too far ahead or take frantic action. And the result is we get further behind.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is why these thoughts are so dangerous. Even if they feel like they're true, even if it feels like we're behind, if you compared what I've done now compared to what I had planned to do by now, I am “behind”. That's a fact, but it's this thought that that's a problem and that this is a negative thing is causing a ton of emotions, which is not making it easy to get on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, what do we do? As usual, we ask ourselves a series of questions. And you can ask yourself whether it's true that you're behind and all those sorts of things. But I'm going to ask you, behind what? Because this is really important and it varies between different people. What exactly are you behind?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are you behind the plan you'd made three months ago? Are you behind other people? Is that the problem? Is that who you're feeling behind? By what metric are you behind? Objective tasks not done? A general sense of not being on top of things? What do we even mean by behind?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm behind a vague plan that I had to be on top of things at the beginning of this academic year. But actually, when you pin down what I haven't done that I thought I would have done by now, it's kind of hard to pin down. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes it's easier. I remember starting academic years as a lecturer, believing that I'd have my Canvas all sorted and my lectures all planned out and everything scheduled and sort of organized, ready to go. I never did. And in that case, I was behind a plan that was never realistic anyway, but I would still beat myself up for that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So ask yourself what exactly are you behind. Sometimes we're comparing ourselves to something that isn't even a fair comparison. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing I want you to do is to remind yourself there is no track to get back on. So we often tell ourselves, I just need to get back on track. I have this with the students I coach all the time. PhD students who've planned out a six month plan and for whatever reason haven't been able to follow it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes that's because they haven't stuck to the things that they genuinely thought they'd be able to do. Sometimes the plan was unrealistic. Sometimes unexpected things happened during the year. So like me getting COVID, for example, my students get COVID. They have things happen, their families, experiments don't work, whatever it is. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Stuff happens, and then they put a lot of cognitive effort into thinking, how do I get back on track? They look at that old plan and spend loads of time thinking, how can I get back to where I thought I'd be by now? My second tip here, that track doesn't exist anymore. This isn't Back to the Future. I asked my students if they've watched Back to the Future, and I was positively surprised by how many of them have. If you haven't, make sure you've watched Back to the Future.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But in that, they sort of have key events where time splits off in a different way, and part of the kind of storyline is trying to get back to the normal timeline. And it's not possible to get back to a normal timeline. If you had planned out a series of tasks that you wanted to get done by certain times, and then you had three weeks where you were ill, you're not getting back to that plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At some stage you might be able to submit at the same timeline, but it's not the same plan. And time spent feeling like you are somehow off another plan, that in an alternate universe you would have been on, just makes us feel guilty. It just makes us feel disappointed, all of these things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are on your track. This is the only timeline that exists, as far as our human consciousness knows. Who knows? All you quantum physicists might tell me something different. But as far as we can tell, this is our only track. The one we're on now is our track. Today is the track.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can start from here, forget the imaginary old plans, start from here, what can I do today to move myself forward? What are the specific things that would help me right now, not to get back on track, but to move forward from where I am? Suddenly, we're in a much more compassionate, much more growth focused place. We're not trying to catch up. We're trying to move forward from right here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we're trying to do that, there's a few things that I want you to bear in mind. The first is acceptance. It's okay to be disappointed that you're not where you thought you'd be by now. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with negative emotions. We don't have to avoid them. We can just be disappointed for a while. That's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But part of this process is also accepting we're disappointed, but this is where we are and we can move forward from here. So it's that acceptance that this is our place. We can have negative emotions about that, but we move forward together from here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another tip is to avoid that planning procrastination. And I fell in this hole. Okay. And this is something I really want to emphasize because it came up in some of my coaching sessions this week. A lot of people think that once they start doing this sort of thoughtwork, they start getting coaching, that they are going to be good at this all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're going to manage their minds all the time. They're going to be able to do whatever they want to do. They're going to be able to always have positive thoughts, always regulate their emotions and all this good stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not true. We're all human beings. I'm a coach. I do this stuff all the time. I coach people on all this stuff, year in, year out. Yet I have spent a chunk of time this week, I have to say, in what I call planning procrastination. This is where you're so freaked out by all the things you have to do and the fact you haven't done them and you're behind and all those stories that what you tell yourself you need is a clear plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I need a new plan. I need to work out, okay, if I'm not getting on that plan, how am I getting on this? What is my new plan? And then you end up getting all ahead of yourself, all kind of working out, I'm going to do this today, that tomorrow. And all of a sudden, four hours have gone past. You haven't done any of the things. You've just planned. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like back in the day, when we were at school making revision timetables, not sticking to them and then having to make them all over again. Planning can be a form of procrastination. I love planning. It's really important, but don't do planning when you're in the midst of overwhelm, when you're in the midst of telling yourself you're behind. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We do planning when we're feeling organized and on it and we're ready to go. Don't use planning as a way to make yourself feel organized. Instead, pick a task, do the task. Because when we're feeling like we're overwhelmed, we're telling ourselves we're behind, what we really need to see is progress. And in many ways it doesn't matter which of the many tasks you've got to do, you do. You just need to make some progress.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I even, I'm going to tell you a secret, I even fell into some planning procrastination this morning. I spent more time than I intended trying to plan out a social media strategy. You're going to see a lot more of me on Instagram and things like that soon, hopefully, and I was planning it all out and I was only going to spend an hour and a half on it and I got sucked into YouTube and all these How To guides from all these influencers and I spent way more time on it than I thought I should have done and I had planned to do because it felt like I was getting organized, but then I noticed, and that's the key. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't stop doing all these things, but we do notice when we're doing them and we understand what we're doing. And I noticed what I was doing and it was like. Vikki, come on. This isn't moving you forward right now. You can plan this stuff. This feels good. This is exciting. But what you actually need to do is get something done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the thing you need to get done is record your podcast. And that is exactly what I'm doing now. So you guys are now listening to this as a product of me having coached myself out of getting distracted by planning procrastination and moving myself into actually achieving one of the things I need to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, notice when you do that. Do you start making lists of all the papers you need to read, instead of reading a paper? Do you start making notes of all the things you need to write, instead of writing? Just pick a thing. At this point, momentum is more important than strategy. Getting something done is more important than planning out everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One cautionary note. Don't fall into the trap of doing all the unimportant things because they feel easy. Don't fall into the trap of deciding now is the perfect time to do that health and safety training and to colour code your whatevers. You don't need to do that. Pick one chunky thing that you're worried about and just start it. Because we are where we are and that's how we move forwards.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final point, and it's going to sound like a weird one, is work slower. One of the things we know is that when we're telling ourselves we're behind and we feel panicky, we start rushing. We start feeling like we have to plan everything, we have to do everything, we need to do this, we need to do that, and when our brain's in that kind of frantic mode, it's really hard to settle down and actually just get one thing done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, what you often end up doing is pinging between, “Oh, I need to do this, but actually I need to do that.” And you sort of boing around between the lots of different things you need doing. And for many of us, that causes a freeze response. I spent more time than I care to tell you on just staring at social media this week, not doing it, not planning, not actually interacting. Just staring at reels, because I'd allowed my brain to ping around into too many different places. I was telling myself I needed to work fast and because of that I got overwhelmed and didn't do any of it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What has worked for me this week is telling myself I need to work slower. I just need to pick one thing. I just need to pick this podcast, plan what I'm going to say, turn on my camera and record it. I can work slow. I can take my time over that. I'm just going to do some small things. I used this technique earlier in the week as well. I'd had one morning where I'd really annoyed myself because I hadn't got focused on anything. I felt like I was wasting time. I was feeling guilty about it. And I thought, you know what? I can work through my expenses a little bit. And so I got myself onto a very basic task, but one that is getting quite urgent now, and I gave myself permission to work through it slowly. To just gradually go through one receipt at a time and figure it out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I actually got a surprising amount done and it actually brought my brain into a place where I was saying things like, “Oh yeah, I can, I can work through this. This is achievable.” So give yourself permission to work slowly if you're telling yourself you need to catch up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my thoughts for you this week. If you are feeling behind, it's a really common feeling. You are not alone. Many of the students and staff in my community are feeling like that at the moment. There's something about the beginning of the new year that makes you believe you're going to be this, like, incredible version of yourself this year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are going to be incredible. But we are going to do it one step at a time, starting from exactly where we are now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope that's useful. It's lovely to be back. Let me know what you think of the episode. Tell me ways that you feel behind. And tell me things that you want podcasts on in the future.We've got one coming up about responding to negative feedback, which was a request from one of my coachees. So let me know what things you want to hear about, and I will try and help you out. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 18 Sep 2023 04:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/my-post thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/41-seven-things-i-ve-learned-this-year-that-might-help-you-too <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this final episode of the 2022/23 academic year, I reflect on seven things that I have learned since starting this podcast. Whether it's managing perfectionism, staying consistent or building community, there's loads that you can apply to your own journey. After this, I'll be taking a short break and returning at the beginning of September. There's 41 episodes up for you now so perhaps revisit some of the ones you've missed, or that you've found particularly useful and I'll see you next year!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 41 of the PhD Life Coach. If you are listening to this on the Monday that it comes out, it is my wedding day! I am one week out from that. I'm recording this a week in advance. Those of you watching on YouTube can see all the various bits of stationery fun and wet weather white umbrellas and all sorts of stuff that I'm surrounded by but I wanted to record one last podcast for the 2022/23 academic year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can't quite believe the wedding has come round. It felt like it was ages and ages in advance, and all of a sudden it's next week and it's all really exciting. I've also mentioned in previous episodes that I've decided that I'm taking some time off over the summer. We have our wedding and then later our honeymoon and family holidays and things like that and I've decided that one of the joys of working for yourself is that I'm going to be a good boss to myself and give myself time to rest, recuperate, and spend time with my soon-to-be husband who's a teacher and gets the summers off.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this will be the last podcast of this season. I will start back up again at the beginning of September and today’s episode, in honour of all of that is going to reflect on the seven things that I have learned since starting this podcast back in October, 2022.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At that stage, I had newly quit my job as a Professor at the University of Birmingham, was at the really, really baby stages of starting my business, and I decided that a podcast would be a really useful way to share my thoughts with people, give me a focus to build some resources for free that anyone in the world can use, and that might, get me some clients, who knows.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I decided it would go out. I decided it would go out weekly. And I was really nervous about that because I'm somebody who has always told myself that I struggle to be consistent. And I was worried that it'd be one of those things where I started, did a few weeks, and then ran out of enthusiasm and got distracted by something else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And here we are. Episode 41. There has been an episode every single week, and that is the first lesson that I've learned is that even when you're somebody who feels like they've never stuck to anything and struggle to do things regularly… I've always got stuff done, but I've struggled to do that kind of regular show up, week in, week out, do something over and over again, and…you can do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it made me really reflect on why was it, why is this the thing that I've stuck to? Because there's other things I haven't stuck to. Those of you who are on my newsletter mailing list know that that is intermittent at best. You still get my monthly free coaching every month. I've done that consistently, but the actual newsletter, not so consistent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The plan to write a book in live action, send you guys chapters as I went along. Yeah, I'm going to return to that, but it's kind of stalled. But the podcast I have stuck to and I've been consistent and I think the thing that's made a difference is a constellation of different qualities.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it is public so people know, I've got that kind of accountability. People know that it comes out on a Monday and I look at my stats, you know. I I get little graphs from my podcast provider and the most downloads are on the day it comes out, so I know it's important to be regular and stick it out. So I've got that accountability and there's a reason why it's important that it comes out that day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's also meaningful to me. I can clearly see why this is of use for people, where it fits into my business, how it helps people to get to know me and get to know what I do and make people more likely to want my coaching and to want my workshops. It's also meaningful to me because, there's a lot of crap that goes on in the coaching industry, and there's a lot of people that are selling extremely high-end products, often to people who can't afford them and one of the things that I really wanted to make sure I did was provide value for people who are giving me no money.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are PhD students all around the world who are poorly paid or not paid at all for what they do. They're incredibly able, highly qualified people, and they don't necessarily have money to spend on coaching. And so I wanted there to be some high quality outputs that would help people that will never give me money for coaching. And so producing this podcast had real meaning for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm also increasingly finding it's got value for you guys. I love it when I get messages from people listening saying that they found things useful or just random people on Twitter saying, “you know, oh, you really should listen to the PhD Life Coach podcast. It's been so helpful” and promoting it to others.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So many of my clients, the people that hire me individually to support them with coaching packages do so because they've listened to this podcast and they say, you get it. I can tell that you get it. And so I think that combination of kind of public accountability, personal meaning, and recognized value for others has meant that I've stuck to this. And I think that's really useful for us all to reflect on, when in future there are other things that we want to stick to. How can we create more of those things so that we're more likely to stay doing what we're doing? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing I've learned is that I was right. Let me explain what I mean by that. Some people told me that when I was planning a podcast, I needed to either make it for PhD students or make it for academics, that I shouldn't try and make it for both audiences because there's that whole thing that if you make it for everyone, then you make it for no one.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I've always been very clear that it's for people in academia, it's for people who have either an academic background or who are currently working in universities. But I was absolutely adamant that I was absolutely adamant that PhD students all the way through to senior professors, needed the same stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I have been proved absolutely right. I have PhD students messaging me saying, I, you know, this is exactly what I need to hear. They're sending episodes to their friends. And then I have senior professors contacting me for coaching, saying, “I've never heard people describe it like this before. I thought it was just me.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> PhD students through to senior professors have almost the same issues. And as I've said in some episodes that could sound really depressing, but in actual fact it just shows that you don't need to get to being a senior professor in order to be happy. Cause a lot of them aren't happy either. A lot of them don't feel valued, they don't feel able, they still feel like imposters because they're still their 21 year old selves inside their brains, even if their bodies are starting to get older like mine.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That just means that we can grab control of wherever we are and support ourselves and remind ourselves how brilliant we were doing and support ourselves gently to improve. So not just accepting exactly where we are and not trying to make any progress, but not trying to beat ourselves up to get there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this realization is incredibly important in supervisory relationships. The PhD students I coach often believe that their supervisors absolutely have it together. And so if they haven't replied to emails, it's because they don't like you. Or if they've given harsh feedback, it's because your writing is rubbish and they don't recognize that the reasons could be they're drowning in emails and they spent about 10 minutes on your article and just banged out the important stuff because they're exhausted and have far too much to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> On the flip side, supervisors believe some of their PhD students aren't pulling their weight or just don't understand that they need to be independent, but they don't get it that their PhD students are having exactly the same concerns that they are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The more we recognize that we're all in this weird world of academia together and that we all have a lot of the same thoughts and emotions, the easier it is to support ourselves and the easier it is to support other people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's why next year I'm going to be developing some more supervisor focused courses and some senior management focused coaching for people that have line management responsibilities over others. So Heads of School, Heads of College, that sort of level. So if you are interested in that, do drop me a message.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that really leads on to my third lesson, which is that just because you have power over something, it doesn't mean it's your fault. We talk a lot about personal responsibility in mindset coaching because we look at how it's our thoughts that create our feelings and therefore our actions and results. And a lot of people interpret that as meaning that it's our fault that things feel difficult. If we are burnt out, it's our fault. If we are stressed, it's our fault. And those are just not the same thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I knew this coming into doing the podcast from all my coach training and from my time in academia, but the more I've done it, the more important it is become to me to separate the structural from the personal. That this isn't just about developing yourself to be more resilient and to be able to thrive in challenging environments. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is about challenging some of the structures themselves. Being able to use mindset coaching to decide when you are just not going to do something or when you are not going to make it mean anything about you and your abilities. That if there's too much to do, there probably is, and that's okay. That's not a failing of you. That's not something that you should exhaust yourself over. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can start to challenge these structures and we can start to not make it worse for ourselves. And so there's going to be a lot more of that stuff. Thinking about structural influences over things like imposter syndrome and why they impact certain sectors of society more than others. More about structural inequalities and those sorts of things, in my podcasts next year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fourth one, and this is really important for me to learn and I think it will be important for a lot of you too, is that something doesn't have to be perfect to have value. I am thankfully somebody who quite likes talking and who doesn't worry too much about my ability to chat, but I do worry about whether things are good enough and whether they're useful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I rapidly realized that I could spend way too much time making this podcast. You know, it's important. It's a key part of my strategy. It has intrinsic value in itself, but I don't want to spend two days a week on my podcast. I have too many people to coach and too much other stuff to do, and so I decided from the beginning that good enough was going to have to be good enough. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I come up with my title, I plan out some bullet points like that and then I talk, and if I mess it up, I stop and I pause for a minute and then I say it again. And then after I've recorded it, I do it. I edit it using Descript, which I highly recommend if any of you make podcasts and that's what gets posted.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've had a lovely friend of mine try to be really helpful and offer to help me improve the sound quality and things, and that is something I'll do in the future. I'm sure I have a pretty good mic, but I record through Zoom, so it's not perfect, I know that. But I decided the key thing was that I produced a podcast every week and that it's audible enough and it's clear enough and it's high enough quality to be useful for people. And that's good enough.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it perfect? No. Do I want to improve things in the future? Yes. Will I continue keeping it slightly ad hoc? Slightly chatty, just me - not making it up as I go along as such, but talking off the cuff. Yeah. Because I also think that sometimes not perfect is nicer to listen to. I can't cope with those podcasts where it's read out from a script because my brain switches off. It's just, I get bored.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think for all of you, you know, I do workshops on how to write when you're struggling, and one of the biggest things that hold people back is the belief that it's not worth doing if you don't do it perfectly. And this podcast experience has really emphasized to me how much that's not true. Good enough is really good enough, as long as it means it's out there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fifth lesson I've learned is the importance of being excited about where you are. So when I started this podcast, I got excited by literally every download. So I use Buzzsprout to host my podcast, and you can see your statistics and you can see them pop up, and every time one got downloaded, I was super excited. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the first time I had a hundred downloads in a month, I was like, this is amazing. I'm so excited. Now I get more than 300 downloads a week. I'm consistently in sort of 1600 ish downloads a month. And I'm excited about that too. But I have to remind myself when I'm like, Ooh, maybe I could be more than that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe I could hit 5,000 a month, da da da. But I used to be excited by a hundred download weeks. And it's the same with money. It's very easy to start looking at your income and start going, well, okay, I've got this much, but I'd love have that much. I've hit some of my goals for this year. I haven't met all of my goals for this year, but when I remember how excited I was to get my first clients and to get that first bit of money into the business account and things, I have to remind myself to be super excited about where I am now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I am, and I see this at every stage of the academic career, PhD students within a month of starting who are terrified of writing up when two months ago you were partying because you got offered a PhD position. This was your dream. Same with members of staff, same with people who've just been promoted. Where we are now is usually past us’s dream in some way, and we have to be excited by that because if we are constantly striving that we won't be happy till we get to the next bit, it's no fun along the way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that is a real resolution for me next year, is that as my business grows and it is, that I really appreciate every step along the way rather than waiting till I hit my next big goals.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lesson six is, it's really hard to listen to my own advice. I do some good stuff on this podcast. I teach some really useful coaching strategies and there are times when my clients go, “oh yes, since I've listened to your podcast, I've been doing this, this, and this every week, and it's really helping.” And I'm like, I should do this. Because there’s a lot of what I talk about that I implement, but not all of it. It's not easy to always implement. You know, I think sometimes when people look at coaches or people even just ahead of them in academia, they think they've got it all together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I do the exact same things you guys do. In fact, even this, this podcast I am finishing off now, it's quarter to nine, I'm meant to be in the dog field for nine o'clock, which we book for Marley because he barks at other dogs. And I were meant to finish this by 8:00 AM I messed about on Instagram and I don't even know why I was procrastinating because I'm not stressed about making this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think I was just enjoying luxuriating in the fact that today's a day where I'm only working about half the day and started that a little early. So we're all human, we all do this stuff. Where I have made enormous progress is not beating myself up so much. So I'm much better at going, okay, well we can still go and get it recorded, can't we? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And getting it done, rather than saying I've sacked off the day. And through the course of doing this podcast, now I look back, I can absolutely see incremental change in how I support myself and how I look after myself through all of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I will be revisiting the podcast we did back in December, I think it was, um, with Professor Jenn Cumming, where we looked at strength based review of the year. We did that for the calendar year because so many people set New Year's resolutions, but I'd really recommend those of you who are coming to the end of an academic year now, that you look back at that episode, pull out the questions that she asks and run through a strength based review of the year yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Being able to see that even when at the time it feels like you're not necessarily making tons of progress, seeing that incremental change is really, really important and really motivating to keep yourself moving forward. So that's lesson six.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final lesson is one that I knew, I think, at the beginning of the year, but that has been driven home to me so much this year, and that is the value of knowing that it's not just you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So much of the pain in academia comes from thinking about the fact that because you find this difficult, it means you don't deserve to be here. Because you sometimes get behind, it means you're not good enough to be on top of your job. Because you sometimes procrastinate, it means you are lazy and unmotivated and those things are just not true.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The value of having a podcast where somebody is saying to you things that you didn't realize other people thought as well, has just really been made clear to me so many times in messages from you guys. And I see it in my coaching membership program as well. So in the membership where I see students twice a week, every week, it’s commissioned by the University of Birmingham, it's open to other universities, if you want to get in touch.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those students, the thing they emphasize more than anything is how much better they feel knowing that it's not just them knowing that other people find it hard, that it's normal to find it hard, and that they can get through it too. One of the students recently commented that not only did it make her feel better, that other people struggled too, she saw those people who had struggled get through their PhDs, and that made her realize that she could get there too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That it was okay that she was struggling because everybody who's ever got a PhD had periods where they were struggling, and that's okay. I recently saw on Twitter a tweet by Matthew Cobb, who I think was writing a biography of Francis Crick. Anyway, he's been delving into Francis Crick, the scientist's, um, lab notes and he posted an extract where he talked about crystals that had dried out, um, errors that he'd made, misunderstandings that he'd done, deciding to risk it, and all this sort of stuff. And it just showed we're all in this together.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And by creating environments, communities where it's okay to share how we feel, whether that's on a podcast or in a workshop or in a membership, we can support each other and empathize with our struggles and share ways to make it less painful, and that is what I'm going to continue to do next year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm super excited. I have a new program of workshops that I'll tell you all about. I have openings for individual clients. I am recruiting new universities to my membership program. There's going to be so much happening next year. I hope you all have a wonderful summer. I hope you've planned your summers. Go back and look at my two episodes about planning your summers if you haven't, and I hope you've planned for some rest and some fun and some productivity and all of that good stuff. I certainly have, and next time I see you, I will be a married lady. How exciting. Thank you so much for listening all year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have a wonderful summer, and I will see you next year. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 24 Jul 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/41-seven-things-i-ve-learned-this-year-that-might-help-you-too thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/40-on-being-unreasonable-in-academia-with-guest-kirsty-sedgman <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode, I welcome Kirsty Sedgman, academic and author of On Being Unreasonable. We talk about Kirsty's fascinating route into her current academic role and what encouraged her to write a book about unreasonableness. We also discuss the tricky subject of what is considered "reasonable" within academia and how we can push boundaries to create our own meaningful paths.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode, <a href="https://kirstysedgman.com/" target="_blank"> Kirsty Sedgman </a> talks about her book On Being Unreasonable: Breaking the rules and making things better. She also briefly discusses her earlier works Locating the Audience and The Reasonable Audience.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She mentions several other scholars, including <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10286630902806080" target="_blank"> Eleanora Belfiore’s work on cultural policy practice </a> , <a href="https://www.touretteshero.com/safe/about/" target="_blank"> Jess Thom co-director of Touretteshero </a> , <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/ellie-mackin-roberts" target="_blank"> Ellie Mackin Roberts </a> and her <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@elliemackinroberts?lang=en" target="_blank"> TikTok </a> work, <a href="https://salamanderstreet.com/" target="_blank"> Salamander Street Press </a> , and <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/about/howard-zinn/" target="_blank"> Howard Zinn and his work on civil disobedience. </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also find out more about working with me at www.thephdlifecoach.com and find a transcript at www.thephdlifecoach.com/podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Vikki: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 40 of the PhD Life Coach and we have another guest with us this week. I am super excited to introduce Kirsty Sedgman, the author of On Being Unreasonable, which we're going to be talking about in this episode. So welcome Kirsty. Thank you so much for coming.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Thank you for having me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: No problem at all. So we first found each other on Twitter when we were talking about all things mindset and I came across your book and I mostly thought I'd read it just because it looked really interesting. But the more I read and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much it applies to academia. So thank you so much for coming today. So maybe let's start, why don't you tell people who you are and what you do?  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Of course. Well, I am a lecturer in the theatre department at the University of Bristol. My specialism is audiences. So I do study theatre audiences and live performance, but my interest goes beyond that to think about audiences in every aspect of social life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I guess the elevator pitch, the kinds of things that I do is whether it's watching something like a Brecht play or a political phenomenon like Brexit, I am endlessly fascinated by how we can watch the same event unfolding, but come to such radically different conclusions about what it means. So I really study value construction in action, but I do it by studying language use in action as a discourse specialist. How we reach for words to describe experiences that so often we consider to be indescribable and how we make sense of the world through the things that we watch and read and hear. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Amazing. And how did you get into doing this? We had a little chat beforehand and you took a slightly circuitous route. So maybe tell us a bit about that.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah, so I was meant to do my PhD at Birmingham. But that was the year they were changing the AHRC's funding model, so there was no funding available that year and at the same time, we were moving to Wales and for my proposal, I was googling audiences and I came across Professor Martin Barker at Aberystwyth, which is just down the road from where we were moving. So I asked him if we could have a chat, and it turned out that he was pretty much the world leading expert in audience studies, working in predominantly in film and television, studying mass media audiences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we had a lovely, very long chat. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was doing a PhD at Aber into National Theatre Wales, which was just forming at that time. So I studied audience’s responses using Martin's methods, but dragging them into live performance. And then I finished my PhD in, I graduated in July, 2014. I had my first baby Monty in August, 2014. And somewhere in the middle of those two dates, I was made redundant for my zero-hours teaching position.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I stranded in mid Wales with a brand new baby, no job and the traditional advice suggested that unless I very quickly found probably another zero hours teaching post, or if I was lucky, a 10 month position somewhere in a university, my academic dreams were dead. But I couldn't uproot my family and move them across the country for tiny bits of teaching that just wasn't a possibility for us and Aber was already a two hour round trip. The nearest, the second nearest university, I guess, was Bangor, which would probably be a five hour round trip from where we were living, so that didn't seem on the cards either.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So instead I did maternity leave, I wrote the PhD up into a book and then I launched a research consultancy doing the same kind of audience research, but in industry predominantly for arts organizations who were trying to prove the impact and the benefits of their kind of participatory artwork. So I did that for a couple of years. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: And so with that, sorry, before you tell the rest of the story, I find that fascinating because you say so many people will have thought and have told you that your academic career is over at that stage and things. Did you believe that? Did you think okay, not going to be able to do university stuff, I'm going to do this? Or did you see this as something else that you could do that might be part of a, a different academic journey? </i>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Well, this was quite a while ago. 2014, now. Nearly 10 years. Oh my goodness. And the market then was very bad. But it's nowhere near as bad as it is now. So I need to acknowledge here, of course, that we are in a particular time and place where higher education as a sector has disintegrated. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But back then we were still told the same things. We were told how difficult it would be. We were told that we'd probably need to travel around the country for multiple part-time or zero hours jobs before we landed the promised lectureship. And even then, that absolutely was not a given. But I think there's always a kind of necessary arrogance to people who have to get through to the end of the PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You have to convince yourself that, “yes, I know it's going to be hard, but my work is good. I believe it deserves to be out there”. So I realized very quickly after having Monty, I guess that totally disabused me of those lingering notions that, “okay, but if you are good enough and if you work hard enough, there probably will be a job”, because I immediately realized, we're all good.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was going to interviews with dozens of other candidates, talking to them about their work and going, oh my goodness. We are all doing amazing, such different things. It's actually very difficult to see these people as a competitor because I'm working on audiences, that person over there is working on robots in theatre. This person is working on sound and voice. The research is so different.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It really does depend on what each department happens to be looking for. You really do realize at that point, how many of us there really are out there scrambling for so few jobs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So yes and no. I did believe at first, if I just did these things right, then I'm was more likely to be successful. But I think it was that cold shock to the system emerging from the PhD with a new baby in the middle of nowhere. Impossible even to travel for conferences, that made me see the situation in a whole new light. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: And how did you realize there was scope for the research consultancy? Because often when I coach students who come from an arts and humanities background, part of their struggle is that part of them believes that what they're doing is only interesting and only a value within that really narrow academic context. So how did you see that that was a possibility for you?  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: It was a complete accident. I was, I remember it really clearly. I was sitting in an armchair breastfeeding Monty with one hand on my laptop with the other. And I was thinking I need to do some kind of research that has nothing to do with National Theatre Whales, some kind of audience theatre based research so that I can get this book out and then I can start thinking about journal articles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But in the meantime, I need to publish some kind of shorter form versions of my research, but I think I need to work on something a little bit fresh. And then as I was sitting there scrolling through Facebook and advert popped up for a performance by Midland Creative Projects and Bloodaxe, which was in Coventry. Just a few days of performances, taking a poetry anthology published by Bloodaxe and turning it into a performance with actors on stage performing a range of poems. And that just happened to be the exact thing that I'd studied for my undergraduate dissertation with Bloodaxe books and Midlands creative projects. So I thought I'll just email them and see if they want a bit of free audience research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can go to Coventry, I can take Tom, my husband and the baby because I was still obviously breastfeeding. So they were great. And I went and did just a few questionnaires and I got some really interesting data and I wrote them up a little report all for free. I didn't even realize that consultancy research was a thing until the producer of that show emailed me going, “oh, I hear that there's some people in Wales who want some arts impact consultancy evaluation work. Would you be interested? Shall I put you in touch?”  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I went and met with them, and honestly, I had hesitations because impact is a very complicated thing, both for us as academics, but also within the arts. There's a real… it's a double bind where just like us as academics, arts organizations too need to prove the transformative outcomes of their arts Council funding. They need to prove success in really limited ways in what Eleanora Belfiore calls a bullshit model of arts advocacy. So I had some concerns about being complicit in that system. And then I went and talked to them and I thought, “actually, no, this is exactly what I've been doing.” Trying to talk to people, trying to get a sense of those rich, complex value systems in action as people reach for and arrive at value judgments. I can still do my research.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> All I then need to do is take those metrics of success, snip 'em out of the much more rich and deep and complex data, and do a little report and give it to the Arts Council. But I can also feedback that much richer kind of information to the project teams themselves in a way that might actually help them to think more deeply about the invitation that they're offering to participants and their working processes and what works for some people and what doesn't for others. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that was kind of my brand. It was an accident, but I started doing that and I pitched myself to organizations in that way. I can do the bullshit advocacy work that the Arts Council requires, taking those metrics of aesthetic experience that absolutely can't be measured, but we can pretend so that we can get the data that the Arts Council needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that you need to then secure future funding. But I can also give you this much more detailed depth of knowledge about human encounters with art.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: I love that because I think, you know, you talked about impact to universities and then there's impact in this sort of sense, but it's true across so many different things. You know, I've been involved in assessing impact of training programs and how do we actually see whether they lead to sustain change in people's perspectives and their behaviours and so on afterwards and things like that. And then a charity I'm involved with looks at the impact of their political advocacy and how can they measure, when they do particular things, how do they measure whether that actually changes the public's perceptions or MP's perceptions or whatever it is. So I think it's such a wide ranging area and as you say, this balance between the kind of measuring the stuff that's easy to measure but doesn't tell you a lot versus getting deeper into it. So how did you go then from there? What happened after that? How did you end up where you are now?  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Well, I did manage to get a couple of articles out over that couple of years when I was in the No Man's land and I had the book under contract already. So I just had to transform that from the PhD thesis into a monograph that people might actually want to read. And that was Locating the Audience, which is all about how people found value in National Theatre Wales. And they're actually, I tackle the impact question and I argue that we tend to think about impact in those bullshit advocacy terms as if it's an end point, as if it's something fixed and finite that, because that's the only way that we can measure it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But actually, of course we know that value is a process. Impact is a process, and those values that we get out of… whether it's the value of our research or the value of an artistic event, they continue to evolve as we continually think about them. And those impacts make their way further into the world. So I was publishing things like that and doing my Arts impact evaluation, and suddenly I started getting interviews for actual lectureships. And I remember taking Monty again.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Hang on, sorry. Backtrack around the country. Backtrack. Sorry. You ended up getting interviews, getting interviews for academic jobs, but that meant you started applying for them. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah. Oh yeah.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: So backtrack a sec. How did, so you were applying throughout this? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: I was applying and in the first year or so. Very few bites. But then as the arts impact evaluation work started to take hold, and as I started to work with a broader range of organizations, despite the fact that I hadn't been teaching in an academic post or connected to a university in any sense whatsoever, I didn't even have an academic email address. I was applying for lectureships and suddenly I was getting interviews. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was taking Monty usually with Tom, dragging them all around the country. And I set myself a rule that I couldn't be taking part-time positions. They had to be permanent. Full-time lectureships, but that we could move anywhere that would take me. And I remember that there was one interview after about a year and a half of this where I was sitting having a chat with the fellow candidates and one of them was grilling me and going, “okay, but you must have a temporary position as an academic institution. Okay, well you must be an honorary person at an academic institution?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> “No, no, I, I am not connected in any way with the university.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> “Well, you must be teaching, you must be doing some guesting.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> “No, I'm not doing any kind of academic work. I'm doing research consultancy.” And at one point they stopped and went, “well, why are you allowed to be here?” This is not what we're meant to be doing. And they didn't mean it nastily. In fact, they told me that they had desperately wanted to have a baby, them and their partner. But they had been told, you can't do that until you get a permanent job. And I think there was a sense that, well, but you haven't done any of the things that we're told we have to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How are you still an attractive candidates? And it turned out that the reason was because I was researching and I was building industry contacts and I was working in an impact sector and those are things that universities valued over and above the kind of set regimen of you cannot stop teaching or you'll be out of the game. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There was a real sense that, “oh, you can pick up teaching again later. I'm sure those skills won't have gone rusty.” In the meantime, you have been able to do these things because you weren't sucked into having to devote all of your time to zero hours teaching for very low pay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: And so when did you then land your job? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Well, after a couple of years and many, many, many applications and about, I think probably about 20 to maybe 30 interviews for various lectureship posts at various universities, I decided that I was also going to apply for a postdoc. So I saw an email come in about British Academy postdocs. I didn't know they existed. I had no idea what I was reading, but it sounded great. I thought it was a kind of apply for this postdoc through a university. And if you get it by the university, then they will give you a postdoc. No, obviously, it was one of those emails that was, we're inviting you to apply for a postdoc through the British Academy. Didn't realize that at the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I whipped up on the spot, a postdoc idea at Bristol and with my lovely, amazing colleague, Catherine Hindson’s help, and it went through the works. It made it through the internal process and then I got through the first round. Felt like a miracle, but then the British Academy that year had not been actually allocated their government money. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So they sent us an email going, we have ranked you all, we've made a decision about who to offer postdocs too, but we can't tell you. We can't tell you where you've come in that ranking. We can't tell you if you've got it. We're waiting to find out what kind of funding we might have, if anything. And I thought, “oh, well that's that then.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then a job came up at Bristol, at Exeter and at Birmingham. So I applied for all three of them and I got interviews for all three of them. The first of those was Bristol. So I went there and I did the initial presentation, which normally I found very difficult because of nerves. Actually, that one went really well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then it was 10 minutes before the interview was due to start, and the email pinged into my inbox telling me I'd got the British Academy funding. And Catherine came down the stairs going, “it's time for your interview now.” “Catherine, I'm got money. I'm doing a postdoc. What do I do?” She went, “ok. Are you ready for your interview now?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> “No.” “Ok. Pull yourself together. Go in the room, do the interview.” So somehow the first question, I fell apart, but I just managed to scrape myself up off the floor, pull it together, deliver the interview. I was looking at Catherine going, should I, um, I'm not going to tell them. Should I tell? No. Okay. You are not telling them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I won't tell them. Didn't tell them. Turned out, Catherine didn't tell them until after they'd done all the interviews and they'd made the decision and the chair had said, right, so we're offering Kirsty the job. And then she said, well, you'll be very delighted to hear that she's got a postdoc. Also, they worked it out and said I could do three years of postdoc and then I could start the lectureship thereafter, which was really a dream. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Amazing. And how long ago was that now? That was in 2016. And so how did this… so you mentioned your other book, and we will link to that in the show notes for people that are interested in the more kind of academic side of the writing as well. But where did the idea for On Being Unreasonable come from? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: It was a project that I accidentally started all the way back in 2014 when I had Monty. And suddenly I found myself a professional theatre goer, unable to actually go to the theatre, at least without the ability to detach my breasts and leave them behind. And I started to think about how, for me, that was a temporary exclusion from theatre. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But for people like Jess Thom, the amazing Tourette's hero activist and performer who did a show backstage at Biscuit Land. I think it was actually that same year that I had little Monty and I could bring him into the theatre for the first time. Because as somebody with Tourette's, with physical and verbal ticks that have been in the past deemed to be a disturbing distraction in the theatre, Jess Thom decided that all of her performances were going to be relaxed, which means that you can come and go if you need to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The lights are up, you can bring babie. Noises and disturbances are welcome as a normal part of being human. And it was the most amazing experience. And I just started to think about this relaxed performance, extra live movement and how it's emerging at the same time as the upsurge of a term ‘theatre etiquette’, which was in newspapers, it felt at least, once a week used as a kind of catchable phrase for the critics and other audiences to bemoan the state of audience in today, increased bad behavior in the theatre, the idea that audiences need to be retrained into silent reverence.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I thought this is really fascinating that these two things were emerging around the same time. There seems to be some kind of anxiety here. And then I put it away in the flurry of the consultancy and the job, and then I didn't think about it again until I had Sully in 2017. I hope that's right. He’ll be really mad if it’s not. Yes. 2017 and I thought, I'll just write an article about this, about theatre etiquette and the idea that there is a reasonable way to behave in the theatre and where those norms of silent reference came from in the first place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'll just write a small article that will be fun, A nice little side project. And then the small article became my second academic book, the Reasonable Audience about theatre etiquette and behaviour policing. And I thought, well, at least now I'm done. That came out in 2018. I can now stop thinking and obsessing about reasonableness because I've said what I needed to say, but then lockdown happened. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We all got locked up in our houses and suddenly I saw that word reasonable everywhere. And before I knew it, I had pitched this idea to an agent who actually had approached me a few years before and we'd been in touch and we kept talking about various ideas and nothing had come of it. And I mentioned that I really am furious and infuriated by the fact we keep using this word reasonable and unreasonable, but we don't interrogate what we mean and the complexities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And he said, write a book about it. And then it snowballed and Faber bought the book. And then I had to write it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Nothing like a bit of pressure. Love. Wow. Yeah. How exciting. One of the things that struck me with the book is just the whole range of different settings that you apply this idea of reasonableness to. Before we get on - I promise listeners, we are going to talk about academia and how this applies to that in a second - just give people a flavour of the, kind of, the range of different things you've talked about within the context of theatres and within the context of Covid and the lockdowns and things. But give people an idea of the range of different things you talk about in the book.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Of course. Well it absolutely emerged from my research into theatre audiences and how we negotiate reasonable behaviour, within the theatre auditorium, but the book is not about that at all. That was just the starting point for investigating one big question, which is what does it mean to feel like we are a reasonable person with the right to tell other people how they should behave? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And when is that really a pro-social urge to make public space better and cleaner and more equitable for everybody, but also who gets excluded when we cling too tightly onto behavioural norms that might be built for a particular time and place. They might be obsolete or out of touch.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So some of the specific things that I explore in the book is everything from breastfeeding in public, which is my starting point for the book, and it's the opening to the intro and how we draw that line between appropriate and inappropriate, and particularly who feels that they have the right to decide those things, often on our behalf. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To whether it's okay for women to apply makeup on trains, which to some people is absolutely fine, and to others, is completely unacceptable, to reclining seats on an airplane, which is one of those debates that reemerges over and over again. Is that okay or not? And if not, why did they recline in the first place? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then from those more kind of micro aspects of social interaction to the big defining questions of our age, like everything from civil behaviour in our neighbourhoods and the acceptable levels of noise and disruption and mess, and how certain people seek to stamp all of those out and where that came from in the first place to acts of civil protest. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because that was one of the things, of course during lockdown, and that uneasy year from 2020 onwards, we saw protesters fighting for essentially civil rights being branded unreasonable. And I talk about how I was in Bristol when the Colston statue came down. I was there at the Kill the Bill protest, watching a police car being set on fire. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I wrestle with the ethics of protest and how protestors always seem to get branded unreasonable and where we should draw that line and again, who should get to decide that to civil debate? And my big question of, if I am a believer that words have power, which of course I am because I've made studying words my entire life's work, then why often does talking about things fail to solve those big social problems and bridge those increasing societal divides.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Absolutely. And I think that really shows the breadth of it. I, I was really fascinated how it jumped between all those different things, connecting them together and also the side of how you showed how it's also embedded into our structures as well. So I really enjoyed the parts about - enjoyed, is that the word? - I found fascinating. The parts about the law and the notion of a, a, what a reasonable person would do, using that for legal judgments and where that's come from. So yeah, for anyone listening, you haven't read it, I will be linking to it in the show notes. Go and get it. I found it absolutely fascinating.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So let's tie this in then. So, you've talked about your own academic journey and the sort of decisions that you've had to make along the way. How do you tie that to this notion of what's reasonable and unreasonable within the kind of context of, I guess, academic career planning? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: The reason that I started studying reasonableness rather than say one of its synonyms, like acceptable or appropriate, is because when I started to dig, I realized how deeply that word is embedded in our moral philosophical norm. So as you said in our legal judgments, how we judge other people and how we judge ourselves. And I really feel that I have been judged by other people, but also that I have judged myself according to those inbuilt standards of reasonableness throughout my whole academic journey because, I have struggled to pull apart those voices in my head that are saying, well, this I think is what you want to do now. This is what you'd like to work on. This is how you'd like to organize your career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've been struggling to peel that apart from the voice that tells me what I should do. Because those normative models - this is what I explain at length in On Being Unreasonable - that those normative ideals about the kind of life we should live and the kind of career we should pursue are so embedded. They're in the air that we breathe and the water that we drink. It's really hard to think outside of those structures of thought.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: And so where do you see that? So if you are looking at newly graduated PhD students, as you were when you were in Wales, and thinking about what to do next, what are the sort of “reasonable” things that you see people assuming that they have to do? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: The things that I was specifically told, not by Martin himself, but you know, you go to endless workshops and seminars for early careers and the things that we were told, I think it's pretty old advice. It is publish a couple of articles, ideally by the time you finish the PhD. And I didn't do that because I'd got the book under contract. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But that's the other thing I told to do, get the book under contract and I really struggled to see what could be an article and what could be a book until I defined what the book would be. And then I peeled off a couple of articles. So I did that in the wrong order. But roughly speaking, I did it according to that plan. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Published those things. They should be coming out by the time you're finishing the PhD or within a year. And then you need to get back into university. Find a university that will take you and cling on, no matter the cost to you, to your mental health, and to your physical and financial wellbeing. And do that for as long as you need because this is the price that we have to pay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I really felt the panic of not doing that and feeling actually that I was unable… In fact, I said earlier that I told myself I could only apply for permanent jobs. I broke that rule once because I was in such a panic. Monty was a few months old. I hadn't started the consultancy yet, and I was just thinking, that's it. It's all over. And then a job came up. It was a 10 month teaching fellowship, so I emailed them and said, I do have a baby. I probably can't return to work in the timeframe that you want, but I could probably start a couple of months later, which would've been actually far too soon, I think. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I felt such panic and desperation that I put it out there, and I got a very carefully worded email coming back that said, of course we will not discriminate against you, but we really don't want to be put in that position. The implication was, please don't apply, and I definitely at that point, had bought into the sense that it probably was a losing game now because other people were following the rules and I wasn't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there was a sense that, well, if I have to do it, probably you need to also. But it turned out that the things that I didn't do, not having to get sucked into those teaching roles where you have to give 150%, meant that I had enough time around being the sole child carer to be able to advance the publishing, to be able to forge those industry connections and to actually work on a wide range of extremely exciting research projects that I could then spin into a narrative of academic success, albeit adjacent to, rather than inside academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: And I love that, that connects really... So my regular listeners will know, a couple of weeks ago I had an interview with Holly Prescott, who's a PGR careers advisor, and she was talking about academic adjacent careers. So I love that we've now had somebody on who's actually been doing that and has used that as routes back into academia as well. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> What I think is fascinating though, when you talk about these messages of what's reasonable and things at the beginning of people's careers and that route that you need to take to get into academic career. So I see parallels further through careers as well. So in my academic career, I often feel… I about to say I feel guilty. Do I feel guilty? I was extraordinarily lucky in the way my career worked out. I stayed in the same place the whole time. I got offered a postdoc out the back of my PhD. I got offered a lectureship out the back of that and just. Stayed put. So in some ways you'd think I didn't have these sorts of things and I certainly didn't have the insecurity and the moving around and those sorts of things. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> But what I did have was an absolutely massive love for teaching and for teaching innovation and student support. And I reached a point in my career where people were saying to me, you have to spend less time doing that stuff, Vikki, and focus on getting your grant, focus on getting your publications, because that's how you're going to get promoted. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> All this stuff is lovely. We want our students to be looked after. It's important, but it's not your route to progression. And like you, I found that uncomfortable and I was a bit like, well, but, but why? Because I'm good at this student stuff and that's really important. And thankfully, the right people were in the right places at the right time, said, no, there is a future in that. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So this was in like, I don’t know, 2005 or something like that. There is a future in that and ultimately I switched over to being a teaching focused academic and promoted up a teaching leadership role and ironically went all the way to full professor on it. But certainly at the time it was something that I was absolutely told that that route was not a route that would get me promoted. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> So I think it's really interesting how, in lots of different ways this narrative that there's one way to do it is not true and not helpful. You know, I, I spent a lot of time trying to convince, okay, yeah, I can do less of that. I can do less of that stuff. Yep, that's fine. I can write my grant. I can write my grant. And really beating myself up for the fact that I didn't really want to, and that, that that wasn't where my strengths lay.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Absolutely. There are three things that institutions actually care about, and those are publications profile. And prestige. And there are ways to get those three things that don't require you to have to eat the crumbs that academia will throw at you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I have since, I've been on a number of panels about alternative routes back into academia. I've spoken to people who couldn't get any kind of academic job so they went and got a job in the theatre industry until they were in a really quite exciting position, in a really exciting company. And then they were hired back into an academic profession as a professor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because actually that was seen to be a massive draw, that kind of high profile, you’ll work with somebody who actually has these industry experiences and a PhD. And that's not to say that now the rules have changed. So instead of the old rules, you need to follow these new rules and then you will succeed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Absolutely not. I do think that it's a way to reclaim some of the power that academia is actively stealing from us and delighting in having stole from us because it's created a massive potential workforce that they know that they can call upon at any moment and pay peanuts, and we'll still have to say thank you. But as well as reclaiming that power to be able to do the work that is still meaningful for us and perhaps adjacent to academia and still using all of those tools, I just want to be really clear that I'm not saying that if you then do that, you'll absolutely be able to pig piggy hop. Is that right? Piggy hop piggyback. Jump back into the academic profession.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I'm saying is, we're often told that it absolutely won't happen, and I'm a case study of how it absolutely can, but I'm not saying that it absolutely will because my, if anyone decides to quote this in future, I'd love you to call it the Sedgman Theory of Academic Jobs, because my theory is the academia for post PhD life, it's like a slot machine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can pour your money and your time and your energy into the slot machine, and there's never going to be a guarantee that you'll get that big payout. The likelihood that you will get that payout gets higher the longer that you can hang on and keep feeding in those coins. But of course the ability to feed in those coins requires the privilege to be able to hang on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you can do absolutely everything right, you can follow all of those rules and then do more besides, and you still might not get a job. That pay might not come before you run out of coins.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: So what advice do you give?  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: I think for me, what I wanted, what I wished that I'd had when I was sitting there in Wales with a tiny baby alone being told that my lifelong dream was over, what I wish I'd known is that there are so many things that we can do because universities want us to do so many things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They want us, sure, they want us to write the academic publications, but I've seen people be hired without even the book under contract. They want us to bring in funding and grants, but I was able to show that I could do that through a consultancy route. So I was able to say, well, I've brought in, to myself, to my own business, this much money, and I can continue to do that through your consultancy services if you'd hired me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I didn't have to necessarily get the postdoc. In fact, they offered me the lectureship before they realized I got any grant funding whatsoever. But also they want us to do now, universities, they want us to do all of these other things. They want us to bring prestige to the institution. So my backup plan was I thought, okay, well if I can write academic stuff, I could probably do some journalism at some point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that obviously is also part of that arrogance that I talked about, because journalism is not easy and it's not an easy career to break into, but there are things that you can do if you're at home alone with a baby. You can send out pitches relentlessly. That is a power that we have. Twitter, albeit possibly, and it's last gasp now, I hope not, but things like social media have given us the ability to build our own platforms. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, these are not easy things to do, but if we can do them, If we can find a way like my friend Ellie Mackin Roberts to become a TikTok star and speak to tens of thousands of followers about her research in this public engagement way. Those are things that universities value too. And again, that's not to say that we then need to go off and have to do even more stuff in order to probably still not get that big slot machine payout, but it means that we don't have to be trapped within their rules because their rules are broken. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have a friend who is right in that situation. She's got the academic book out there. She's got so many articles, she's very well known and well respected in our field. She did a prestigious postdoc for four years. That was the gravy train. And now she has spent the past two years applying for job after job after job and all we've managed to do is throw the measly crumbs of zero hours teaching at her as a sector.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's appalling. The rules are broken. But I joke with her that, oh, you just need to do one more thing. That's the narrative. Just if you just, if you just get a book, now you've got a book. If you just article now you've done that. If you just do edited collection and chapters, people inviting you to know done that too. Public engagement. Yep. She's done a radio program. You can do everything right. And that payoff still might not come, and that might be the most depressing thing I've ever said, but I'm hoping that knowledge at least, can liberate us from feeling that then we have to do all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There are other things that we can do. So the advice that I wish I'd been told is just pick the work that is meaningful for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: I love that because it's a little bit like, I don't spend lots of time in arcades, but you can use the slot machine thing. Sometimes you just have to accept, this is the money that I'm going to spend in my arcade and I'm going to enjoy it.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And if I get a payout happy days, that's fabulous. But if not, I've put my, you know, I've put this money into having bit of a giggle in the arcade. And I think sometimes if we can plan our careers a little bit more like that of, okay, this may or may not lead to an academic role in the end, but in the meantime I'm going to do something that sustains me, that feels meaningful to me. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Where it's stuff where I feel like I'm bringing my strengths and talents to it, then at least we are not just sort of either writing it off entirely and going, “it's all broken. I can't possibly”, or going, “okay, I'm a little puppy and I'll try and tick all your boxes”.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> We can go in the middle and go, okay, it's broken. I'm good at this stuff. I'm going to do this stuff. Might lead there, might lead somewhere else. That's interesting too. Yeah. Either way I can make it right for me.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah. And one of the things that I'm most passionate about is I do a lot of informal mentoring for PhDs and early career people. And I have so many conversations where people say, I know that I have to write an academic book from my PhD and I have to publish it with one of the big academic publishers who will sell it for 80 pounds. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the people I want to read it won't buy it, but I know I have to do that. And I say, you do not have to do that. What if, instead of publishing that book with an academic publisher, what if you found a way to get it to the people you actually want to read it? What if that's the thing that you prioritize and there are agents out there who will help you turn your very specific academic work into more broadly relevant writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That comes with a trade off. My book is stuffed with footnotes, so it's not like it's a completely unresearched or referenced piece of work, but it is written for that big broad audience. I couldn't nerd out into the minutia of theatre and theatre audiences there because it had to speak to all of these other subjects. so you could do that if you want to, but if you really want to nerd out, but you still want to get it out to a broader range of people, there are smaller publishers that are for trades. Like in my discipline, Salamander Street Press is a trade publisher that is set up just to publish books to normal people. Paperbacks sold at reasonable prices about theatre and live performance. And then even academic publishers now are seeing the need to add a trade arm. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I get the Bookseller magazine, which I would absolutely recommend for anyone interested in learning more about how publishing as an industry works. And they're calling it trade adjacent places like Manchester University Press has just hired an editor to properly launch a trade arm. So those are academic books, but very carefully packaged for non-academic readers as well because they're speaking to those broader things. So there are ways that you can still talk about the specific topic that you are interested in and go into detail and depth. Perhaps writing it in a way that isn't just accessible for academics in your discipline, those valuable interdisciplinary conversations that academic books can give us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you want your book to be read by a broader range of people, whether it's the public, whatever that means, or people in the industry themselves, there are ways that you can do that. And suddenly when I tell some people that, they go, oh, am I allowed to do that? I think sometimes we just need permission to break those rules.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Well, we just need to hear from people who know about these other ways of doing things. Because one of the things I see a lot with the PhD students that I coach is they get all their advice often from people who have taken the very traditional route through. And so those people are saying, oh, you do this and you do this and then that happens because that's what happened to them. And they don't necessarily see all the people that that didn't happen for.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And often I'm afraid they assume that the reason it happened that way for them was because they were really good rather than because they were in the right place at the right time or they conformed to a particular part of society or whatever it might be, and so PhD students are getting that really limited view.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So I think one of my biggest things would be, you know, you talked about Twitter and things like that, is getting out there as, whether you're a PhD student or an academic who's just, who's in a job but is, you know, perhaps precarious or not sure where they're going next, is getting out and getting on Twitter and talking to different people because there are so many people that have done different routes to all of these things that other people might consider unreasonable or whatever, you know. I have people asking about my route because they're still universities. Birmingham was actually quite progressive in terms of the teaching focused promotion routes and things. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> We had those before a lot of universities did, but there's still lots of universities where people are like, the promotion criteria just doesn't even make sense, because it's taken the research promotion criteria, deleted the word research and put in the word teaching and other than that is exactly the same. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So even just hearing from, you know, I've had a pretty traditional career in many ways, but on that teaching side, even just hearing from something like that, people are like, oh, I can do it like that. And so I think that kind of talking broadly and seeing the different possible reasonable journeys that you can take is, is so important. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah. And of course the vast swirling vortex of anxiety that is the REF makes all of this a lot more complicated. Because there are big questions about whether if you write a more accessible book, whether it's a full on trade book like my On Being Unreasonable, or if you maybe write something for that is definitely academic, but it's not published by an academic press and therefore isn't peer reviewed in that same way, if it will be REF-able. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's not easy to answer because actually it really depends. If you're sitting in front of an interview panel, each person is going to have a very different view. But I know a lot of people who've gone down the kind of public scholar route. A lot of them have written books that haven't been peer reviewed because they're out there with the big trade publishers and yet they are still making their way into REF because they're based on original research and therefore can go into the research category and/or because a lot of these people are pitching them as impact case studies, which actually bring in, I think the figure I heard was about 300,000 pounds for a four star impact case study, something like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: It's huge. And we are just starting to see what the next REF will look like and how that will be configured. Cause even within the REF people have either inaccurate or out of date ideas about what they need to be doing. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So one of the things that REF did was actually say producing fewer publications, but higher quality ones, is better than a massive shopping list of 30 articles. But there are still, I'm constantly working with academics who still believe that actually the quantity, the length of their publication list is crucial. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And that's not even coming from REF that's coming from somewhere else in academia. And so even sort of making sense of these competing pressures, I think is, is a challenge in itself.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah. And if your monograph is absolutely academic in nature and you want to talk to your fellow academics using that particular register, which is technical language that we've developed to be able to communicate a complex ideas to people who already have that higher starting point of knowledge, great. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do that. But if you are only thinking that I'll write an academic book, because it's what I need to do, maybe just reconsider if something else might be more meaningful for you. Perhaps you might want to write a trade book instead, turn your PhD into a public facing book. Strip out a lot of the scholarship from it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Carefully seed it in there amidst a more narrative kind of storytelling register and then write a couple of academic articles, which will be weighted the same for two 8,000 word articles, 16,000 words. If you do two of those, there'll be weighted the same as an academic monograph that often would be 80 to a hundred thousand words might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there might be ways that are better for you and for your research and for the people you want to reach with your research that could still look extremely attractive to a hiring or a promotions committee. Because the kinds of conversations that I'm having about my trade book, it's quite hilarious given that On Being Unreasonable is all about the starting point is that we have very different ideas about what is reasonable, so how can we figure out what's right. When you talk to one person, their common sense, obvious ideas about what's clearly the right way to do things is actually going to be quite different from the person next to them. But everyone believes their own value judgments are definitely the reasonable ones.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's really ironic then that the conversations I've had about this book and whether or not it's REF-able are so wildly divergent from person to person to person. Someone says, obviously you can't REF it, and another one goes, well, why couldn't you REF it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Someone goes, oh, do you know what? Probably won't make a great impact case study because the outputs and outcomes are so diffuse and nebulous and other goes, no, you absolutely could turn that into a brilliant four star impact case study, so there is no consensus about what is the right way to do things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: So you get to decide the right way.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Exactly. And that's the only empowering thing that I have left in this bin fire that is academia. I just cling onto we do have some power at least to decide our own narratives and paths, but we have to be able to decouple that very loud voice in our head that goes, no, there is only one right way to do things from being able to decide actually, well what do I want to do? That's the thing that I found hardest. I asked myself constantly, do I just feel like I should do this or do I want to do it? Do I only want to do it because I feel like I should do it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: I love the notion of decoupling there because one of the things my clients often say is, oh, I just need to stop thinking those thoughts because I know they don't help me and I want to think this instead. And we often talk about how it's really hard to stop thinking habitual thoughts, especially when you're working in a sector that historically and currently is reinforcing these all around you. But this notion of decoupling that just because you think it's true, that there might be a right way to do it, there are other things that you think are true too, that there could be other ways. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And we haven't got to stop thinking that there's a right way yet. We just need to spend less time beating ourselves with that stick. And over time you'll probably stop believing it quite so strongly. But I love that, I think that picture of just decoupling from it. That can exist. I'm going to have that narrative because people have put that narrative in my head in the sector for years. That's fine. But I also believe this other stuff too. Yeah. And I can make this work. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: And you can't, you have no control over who you'll be in front of when you're at interviews or putting your CV in front of promotional panels. You might get somebody who looks at your trade work or maybe public engagement, journalistic writing, if that's where you want to go and then they might say, this person isn't a real academic, not for us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or you might get someone who goes, wow, what an asset to the university this person will be with a name like that. Reaching all those people, I can see how they could leap in and get started making the best impact case study we've ever seen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Yeah. Absolutely. And that's where, you know, when people don't get jobs. Yes. Reflecting on our own performance and whether there's things that we can enhance and things, but remembering that the sort of amount of variation that comes depending on who's on your panel. And often it says a lot more about that particular combination of you and your particular things with them and their particular things, and whether that was a match in that particular circumstance, rather than… I see a lot of people making it mean something about them that if they didn't accept me, that means I'm not good enough. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> That means I'm not cut out for this. So I'm going to take you slightly different direction. So one of the things in my last couple of episodes of the podcast has been about preparing for the academic summer and you know, is this time where in theory at least we have more flexibility than we usually do and that means that we get to make a bunch of decisions. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And one of the things, in fact that brought me to you originally was this idea that people have different assumptions about what you have to do in an academic summer. What's expected of you, what you should do, and all of those. And I just wondered if you had any thoughts about how this idea of being reasonable or unreasonable can come down to that sort of micro level of planning as well? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah. Well one of the things that I should probably say here is that I'm currently staring down the barrel myself of six weeks summer holiday. And when I started doing PhD teaching, I remember that we tended to be all wrapped up and finished and free to work on our own stuff around the end of May. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The academic semester this year is just refusing to die, and partly that's because of the marking and assessment boycott, but also because there has been this teaching and admin creep into the summer. Which means that for me and for so many other working parents, the end of teaching is now colliding and threatening even to overlap with the start of the school summer holidays. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what is reasonable for me now is actually a lot less than I might previously have hoped in terms of even time to be able to work. And that's one of the things on being unreasonable, explores, of course, the inequity ease. When we decide that only one way of living together, of being together or working or of organizing our own lives is reasonable, what we're doing then is failing to consider that other people have alternative needs that might make that reasonable way of working absolutely impossible. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And personally, I have definitely hit the point of burnout, which is something that people have been warning me about forever. I just feel like I'm not even sure I can do any academic work or any work whatsoever this summer. The thought of trying to barricade myself in a room again, while my children who are extremely anxious and I think actually have separation anxiety post covid are hammering at the door, literally crying for me, they're eight and five now. We should be past this, but we're not.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are things that people don't necessarily see unless we talk about them. And that's not to say that, of course childcare is the only pressure or disadvantage that people are facing. Other forms of caring responsibility of always get in the way and need to be taken seriously too. But I just don't know what I can actually reasonably do this summer that will be productive at all. Maybe what I need to do is to stop and recover, but then I feel this tremendous sense of anxiety even saying that out loud. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But perhaps that's the only reasonable thing. Obviously I'm really fortunate to be in this position that I can think about maybe taking a break, but also it feels like the REF is coming up fast now and I haven't managed to write really anything academic for a couple of years, since lockdown, since everything fell apart. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not sure if I have any useful advice other than we have to be kind to ourselves, but also we have to accept that that kindness is not always a possibility because I know that some people have to work through burnout just to survive.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Yeah, and I think you say you have nothing useful to add - I think sharing stories like that is useful in and of itself, even without sort of specific advice as to what you could do about it. I think knowing that other people feel like that is super important for people to hear. You know, the group coaching that I do, one of the things that they like my coaching, but the thing they like more than anything is hearing that other people have challenges that are similar to theirs. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So I think even in and of itself that it's useful for people to see somebody who is living the dream in all metric senses, it's still really challenging and still a whole bunch of decisions to be made. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> I think the one point I would challenge is that people can't be kind to themselves. I think one thing I would really encourage anybody listening to this is to remember that kind can be a whole bunch of different things. Kind doesn't have to mean. Turning off absolutely everything and sitting in a bubble bath with your candles and meditating for 48 hours kind can be just telling yourself that what you're doing is enough. That if I can give two hours today, then that's bloody brilliant and I'm so proud of myself for giving those two hours. And look at me being a rocking academic mom doing this. This is wicked.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Rather than spending those two hours telling yourself that you are being a terrible mother because you should be out there. And then when you are with them telling yourself you are a terrible academic because you should be in there writing. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> So for me, kindness can look like looking at the things that we say to ourselves. And if we do decide that we have to work through things that are difficult, how can we do that in a way that makes us feel supported and valued? And. And all of those things.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: That's great advice. You should be a coach. [laughing] </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: [laughing] I’ll consider that now. We couldn't possibly have an episode where we're thinking about the balance between reasonable and unreasonable in the current climate without talking about the strikes and the marking boycotts and things like that. So how does your work sort of inform and reflect on what's going on there? </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Well, one of the things that I do in my academic role, I work in as an impact coordinator for the school. It's my admin role and so I get to talk to a lot of people in my university and of course I know a lot of people who are not in my university, and there is just a general sense by a lot of people of why should we bother? Why should we jump through these hoops and do the things that you tell us that we need to do when structurally, as a sector, you seem not to care too much about your staff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for me, I am having those very same feelings and questions and it's part of that moral exhaustion, I think, that is making it hard to think about what the next steps might be, what my summer might look like. I just, I, I don’t know how to make myself care if I feel I'm working in a workplace that doesn't care about me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But the answer for me, again, it's to return to that question of what is meaningful for me. I feel now more than ever, this is why I wrote the book. I'm not on this podcast and I didn't publish a trade book as some kind of awful grift or self-aggrandizement. I really hoped that writing this book might offer readers a way to think more carefully about the world and the question of how we relate to each other as humans and what we want public space to be like, and how we can figure that out in a world where increasingly it feels like we're so divided we can't even talk to each other. That felt meaningful for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Absolutely. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: And I don't know now that that project, which has taken been about a decade in the making, it now feels like it's come to an end, and I'm trying to figure out what I should do next, and all I keep thinking is I just have to figure out a way that the next project feels as meaningful as that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's probably going to be a small academic article about something niche, but at its core, I have to feel that it's important because arts and humanities research, I so believe no matter who you're talking to, no matter who you're writing for, we're doing it because we believe it matters. So figure out the what matters to us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Absolutely. I absolutely think that it starts some really important conversations that people have. So when I was an academic, obviously we had, there were strikes and there was marking boycotts then. It wasn't on the same scale that it is now. And it was something that I don't think we had very nuanced discussions about at all. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> You know, I look back and I didn't strike when there were strikes. My department was not a very politically active department for want of a better phrase. Only a couple of people did strike, and I think I avoided thinking about it, if you see what I mean. And I hid behind the, “I want to do what's best for my students”, but kept that in quite a short term, what's best for my students. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And it would be, I don't know. It would be self-aggrandizing to say if I went back it would be different next time because who knows what I would be brave enough to do. I think the people that are out there taking pay cuts and so on because they're participating in this stuff are showing a level of resoluteness that I just think is really impressive. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Who knows what I would do if I went back there, but certainly seeing all of this happen and reading your book absolutely makes me reflect more on where that line sits between what's best for people in this short term bit at the moment, because we all feel terrible for these students that haven't got their results and things, but what's reasonable in the long term in terms of standing up for and protecting the sector. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Yeah. And I do write in the book in chapter five, which is called What? No, not Whatever Happened to Public Reason. That's chapter six. It's called, uh, where We're Going. We Don't Need Rhodes. Like Rhodes the statue. Rhodes Must Fall Campaign. I write about strikes as part of civil disobedience and there I draw on the acres and decades of careful scholarship that is explaining why civil disobedience and the withdrawal of labour has to be seen as a fundamental part of democracy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's part of the only power that we have as workers to be able to fight the encroachment of inequities. And of course, I've then been really interested to read the discourse that's swirling around the various strikes this past year, and how quickly the media, the centrist media, which I call out at length in the book, which probably wasn't the best decision given that I now in retrospect wanted them to review it favourably. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I do call them out for that very canny rhetorical manoeuvre that happens every time any kind of protest or strike occurs, which is to paint the protestors as unreasonable. And what happens then, of course, is that is just a way to put off making any kind of change. And that's what we're seeing in the university strikes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The narrative is the bosses care about students and therefore are mitigating the impact of the strikes on students, while lecturers are trying to disrupt students education versus our narrative, which is I am currently MABing, my 50% ongoing deductions for the rest of time have started and I'm not sure what's going to happen to my mortgage in this period. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And our narrative, of course, is while we're doing this and we're making this sacrifice because we care about students and because when I started doing this kind of university teaching a long time ago now, I used to have more time. Not enough time necessarily, but more time to be able to talk to students who are in distress or who needed more academic support to help them to work through their ideas. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this past year I've had literally a line outside my door all day, students just coming and going, do you have five minutes? But I've already got two students waiting in the corridors. I'm foregoing my lunch breaks to try to squeeze enough people in. There are still people at the end of the day who I can't give that necessary help to. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it is producing an intense moral distress in myself and in my colleagues and friends. And we're doing this, I certainly am doing this, for the students, but that narrative, by and large, is not made clear in this instant swerve into their being unreasonable language.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes what gets overlooked in that reasonable-unreasonable decision is the difference between what is accepted to be reasonable at the moment versus what is seemed to be reasonable in the long run. You know, people keep referring back to things like the suffragettes and how they were hated, and in their time they were seen as incredibly disruptive and, you know, the public were really, really anti it. And now in some way, when the kids learn about them in schools, they're held up as these like brave heroes. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> And it's like, you weren't saying that at the time. Um, and it, I think that's a really hard thing to balance when you are in the midst of it now.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Kirsty: Absolutely. And I rely on those, again, decades of brilliant scholarship by people who study histories of protest to show that at the time these protest movements are emerging, whether it's the Civil Rights Movement or the Suffragettes, or Stonewall, or the 504 occupation for disability rights. At the time, whatever actions protestors take to fight for a better, more equitable world, whatever they do, those methods are denounced as unreasonable in their time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But afterwards, if it's shown that their cause was morally just, and that they truly were fighting against deeply immoral, morally unreasonable injustice, then suddenly all of those concerns about even really violent protest actions like the blowing up of hospitals or third class packed train carriages, suddenly those actions are seen to be just justifiable because they're the only way that they brought about change. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yet, every single time that narrative resets itself, and we're seeing that now. One of the things that has really sickened me is the response to the cricketer who's carried that Just Stop Oil protestor bodily off the pitch. And the unreasonable narrative absolutely is in place. He is a hero and the protestor is the villain in that narrative. I use Howard Zinn's foundational 1970s work on civil disobedience to explain that this narrative is topsy-turvy. We need to flip it on its head.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Yeah. Absolutely. I could talk to you all morning about this stuff. Thank you so much for coming in today. If people… I'm sure everyone is going to want to read your book after this discussion, so, remind everyone what it's called and any places you want them to find it other than the big obvious place that they might find it. </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Kirsty: Of course, it's On Being Unreasonable: Breaking the rules and making things better, and it's out now with Faber and can be found in all good bookshops and also some bad ones.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week for what will be my last episode before taking a bit of a break over the summer because I have decided that that is reasonable. </i> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 17 Jul 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/40-on-being-unreasonable-in-academia-with-guest-kirsty-sedgman thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/39-how-to-prepare-for-your-academic-summer-structure-and-freedom <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is the second of a two part series about thriving in our academic summer. This time we consider the balance between structure and freedom and how to plan a summer that meets all of our needs.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode I talk about another episodes of my podcast:  </div> <div> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking" target="_blank"> How to use role-based time-blocking </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 39 of the PhD Life Coach. This is going to be the second part of my little mini series about preparing for an academic summer. Have you ever had those summers where you’ve listed out all the things that you want to get done, but you also want to rest. But you also want to spend time with your family. You also want to do some fun things, but you need to do this task for uni and that task and this task for your career and that task for this, that and the other.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whether you're a PhD student or an academic, sometimes that can just feel really overwhelming. Often we get to the end of the summer kind of going, whoa, where did that go? Term starting up again. Classes are starting up again. Whether you're taking them as a PhD student or teaching them as an academic is all starting up again and suddenly we're a bit like, where did July and August go? I have no idea. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Last week we thought a bit about accepting a little bit about some of the things that maybe we wish were different in an academic summer these days. Maybe we wish we could have more support during that time. Maybe we wish we had less administrative work to do and things. And we talked about that balance between accepting some things where fighting them just causes more challenges, where that feeling that it's unfair really makes everything feel worse. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But also where we choose to resist things too, that we don't have to just blindly do what's “reasonable”, what people tell us is the must-dos over the summer. We don't have to, we get to pick what's right for us. So if you haven't listened to that episode, do go back and listen to that one as well. They, these don't necessarily go in any particular order, so you can stay with me here for this one now, but make sure you go back and listen to that one too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I also mentioned there the word “reasonable” and that gives you a little bit of a hint as to what's happening in my podcast next week. We have a guest episode from a very cool academic and author who has been writing about how what is “reasonable” isn't necessarily as agreed on as people think. And that perhaps the best thing we can do is to decide for ourselves what we want to be reasonable and what we want to do with our summers and with our careers. So make sure you tune in next week. I did the interview yesterday, it is super good. She's amazing. Her name's Kirsty Sedgman and you're going to hear all about it next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But this week is thinking about that balance between structure and freedom. So there's a lot of us that long for that summer where things feel a little bit more free. We haven't got as many requirements. Those of us who have got kids at home could bring different sorts of structure and different sorts of requirements, but there's at least not that sense of really firmly timetabled time that we often get during the main academic year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> On the other hand, some of us miss that structure. So in this episode, what we're really going to be thinking about is how can we plan now to create the best possible summer that we can have within the constraints that we have? Because we're not going to deny the fact that having kids at home changes, and we're not going to deny the fact that living on your own or not living on your own changes it. That having more support, less support, all of these things, it changes it. But within those constraints, how can we construct to someone that feels good for us?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm actually going to be touching on a few things that have come out of client calls as well. So as most of you know, I have individual clients as well as my university workshops and membership programs. And in those one-to-one sessions, we're really starting to think about planning for the summer. And that's particularly because I've decided that I'm shutting down quite a bit over the summer and so I'm not taking any client calls during the summer period. And so we are really spending some time thinking about what do they want those summers to look like.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am going to be sharing with you some tips that have come out of one-to-one client sessions, not from me, but from the clients. Because that's one of the things I love most about coaching, is I don't sit there and say, “why don't you do it like this? Why don't you do it like that?” I help you come to things that were going to work for you. And there's been a couple of things that have come out from a couple of different clients that I think are going to be really, really useful for all of you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first question I want you to ask yourself is, “what do I need from this summer?” Often what we do at this time of year is plan what things do I want to do? We make our to-do list for the summer. Usually it's unrealistic. And instead, I want you to think about what would it benefit me to do this summer? What do I need and not just need in order to be productive or need in order to tick things off that we want to tick off, but what do I need as a human? What do I need as a researcher? What do I need as a teacher, as a professional, as a parent, whatever it is. Okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason we're going to think about that is because all of that can then inform how we structure our summer. So some of you have heard me talk before about being your own best supervisor and this idea of lifting yourself out of yourself to sort of look at you as a person that you care about, that you want to look after, and to really think about how can I make this a good summer for Vikki? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can I, as Vikki’s supervisor, Vikki’s internal supervisor, make this a good summer for Vikki? What does she really need? I. And sometimes that might be rest. Sometimes it might be social contact. Sometimes it might be some fun physical activity. Sometimes it might be some clearing out of systems and tidying up and just sort of decluttering so things feel better. Some of it might be to really make progress on that one thing that has been holding us up and that we don't, that we really want to get done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we decide in advance what those things are, we can then go through a bit of a process. We can think, is this realistic? Can I give myself all of these things? You guys might differ. I have a massive tendency to decide in this summer, I need to do all these personal goals, which are really exciting, and I need to rest and I need to have some unstructured time, and I need to do all the to-dos that I've ever had on my to-do list, and I'm completely unrealistic. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if I don't get that clear up front and I just notionally have, oh, I need to do this, this, this, this, and this, am I, then I don't really notice that it's unrealistic. So one of the good things about trying to get it out upfront, what do I actually need from this summer, is we get to then look at it and go, yeah, I can't do all of those things. So which ones are we going to prioritize? How much of each of these things do I need to do?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it true that I need eight weeks of total rest where I'm not working at all? Or actually, is that just coming from feeling pretty exhausted at the moment and actually a couple of weeks would be perfect. So we get to kind of decide in advance which of these priorities are the biggest priorities and where they conflict how we are going to resolve that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other reason it's useful is because often we get to the end of the holiday and go, whoa, where did that go? I didn't do any of the things that I intended when in reality we did do a bunch of the things that we intended, we just didn't do all of them. And at the end of the holiday, we have a tendency to focus on the ones that we didn't do. Or maybe you didn't even get clear about what you wanted from the summer, but you finished the summer with a vague sense that it wasn't what you wanted.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By deciding in advance what you need from the summer and what you want from the summer and trying to structure that in, it's so much easier at the end to go, yeah, I got what I needed from that summer.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Options I want you to think about, do you need total physical rest? Are you physically exhausted? How much of that do you need? What does your body need? Do you need change rather than rest? I used to massively benefit from going off and doing completely different things. So when I was still an academic, I worked for an adventure race company and would go off and help run adventure races in the countryside, and it definitely wasn’t a rest. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There were times I was getting four or five hours sleep posts sat on the side of a hill all day waiting for competitors to come past because I was marshaling, I was organizing all this paperwork. I was doing so much, it wasn't a rest, but it was absolutely a change and that was what I needed. I needed time where I was occupied and busy and having fun, but I wasn't thinking about work and that was what I really needed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes I combined it up with needing the physical rest time too, when I got back, for example. But I knew that for me, a change was really rejuvenating for me, especially where it was something fun where I was getting to be a version of myself that I really liked.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thing that I've heard people talk about in terms of what they need from the summer is they need to fall back in love with their subject. This can be giving yourself space to read about it. It can be going to conferences, talking to collaborators. Giving yourself that room to fall back in love with the stuff that you are researching. And this is particularly apparent with academics where we can get really caught up in leadership and teaching and all these other things, and it becomes just one more thing on the to-do list. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But even as a PhD student where it feels like we should be immersed in our research every day. Sometimes we forget the why we are doing it bit. We get caught up in responding to those comments from our supervisors and collecting that data and doing that ethics application and we forget why we were so excited to do this PhD in the first place, why we picked this topic. So maybe what you need from your summer is time reminding yourself of all of that, reminding yourself why this is important. If you do research that has knock-on effects on people out in the community, whatever it is, reminding yourself of that, for example. Reminding yourself why you find this fascinating. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Perhaps what you need is time spent sorting your systems. You actually need to say, you know what? I don't need to be writing things for publication right now, what I need is for my life to feel less chaotic. I need to declutter my house a bit. I need to tidy my desk. I need to sort out the files on my computer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I need not to have 20,000 unopened emails in my inbox and you get to think are those the things that I need? Or do I need to move along one big project that is really going to make a difference in what I'm able to focus on in the future, and I need focus time where I can do those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay, so we get to think, and these aren't either/ors. It's not that you need to pick one of these. You maybe can't pick all of them, I'm going to say. Or if you do, you need to be realistic about how much of each of these you get. But you get to pick. And when we do it from what do I need, what am I lacking at the moment, what do I miss? Then it suddenly becomes much easier to see what we need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One question you might want to ask yourself is, what can I do this summer that will make next year feel easier? And sometimes we tell ourselves that that's getting everything sorted. That means having a perfect virtual learning environment set up if you teach, and all those sorts of things. Having the perfect referencing system, if you're a PhD student, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But sometimes it can be as simple as, I just need to start next year not hating my job and not exhausted. It literally doesn't matter about anything else. Everything else I can figure out. If I can start next academic year, not feeling like my entire professional life is a bonfire, then that's a win. You get to pick. So spend a little bit of time asking yourself those questions and deciding what do you need, what will make next year easier?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then what we get to do is we get to make a plan. And some people don't like to plan their summers because they tell themselves what I love is the lack of a plan. But what you get to do is you get to plan your lack of a plan. So if you are somebody who really likes freedom, let's plan in advance that in this section of the holidays, from these times, you are going to give yourself freedom to do whatever feels good for you at the time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you remember that that is what you decided. So if you then don't use that time in the perfectly optimal way that you wish you had, you don't beat yourself up for wasting time. You weren't wasting time. You decided you wanted that freedom, and that was what you chose to do, and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Equally, if we are planning a structure, we're going to plan a structure from a place that feels compassionate and feels like it's got our own best interest and heart at heart. One of my habits that I got myself out of was making completely unrealistic structures for myself, often from the point of view, I have to do all the things. There's not time, they don't fit, so I'm going to wedge them in anyway. And also from the perspective that I never quite believed I'd stick to it. So it didn't feel that important to make it realistic anyway, because I didn't believe I'd stick to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you are planning this structure, really try and think about how much structure feels good to me. How much do I want structure? How much do I want freedom? Do I want to have structure that I don't need to do anything before 10:00 AM and I can be as unstructured as I want before that time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Pick a time that works for you. 10 AM's kind of mid-morning for me… but then I'll be structured between 10 and two. Or perhaps you say, you know what? While the kids are at home, those weeks completely unstructured. If I get anything done, happy days, but you know, whatever, but I'm going to have a couple of structured hours first thing in the morning when I've got some childcare and I can crack on with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you get to plan in what structure and what freedom you want, and it doesn't have to be the same all the way through. And in fact, one of the tips that I would give you when you're thinking about this is think about how you can divide your summer into zones. Often we treat the period, the entire six week school holiday or the entire period from when the university kind of stops doing all its stuff through to the beginning of the next academic year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We treat it as one big summer, and it can sometimes mean that we kind of forget what we did. It zooms past really fast. We lose track of where we are. All of these things. I would really strongly recommend that you zone it out. That you go these two weeks, it's going to be super fluid. I'll do whatever I want. My purpose is to rest, feel rejuvenated. Maybe I'll do a little bit of work, but only the fun stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These two weeks is going to be about systems, system structures, getting myself organized. I'm not going to beat myself up for not writing my academic articles because I am in my admin row, because I am in admin mode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you haven't listened to my episode about role-based time blocking, go back and listen to that. That was thinking about planning your week, but you can absolutely use that to plan your summer in a kind of more macro way. So really thinking through how you can zone it out and have different focuses at different times. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Within that, a way you can really emphasize that zoning, is thinking about how you can make it structurally different. So maybe in the two weeks where it's really about systems, you are going to go into the office and you are going to be in like admin mode. You're going to be sorting it all out, you're going to be filing, you're going to be tidying, all of this stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But then maybe in the bit where it's about head down writing. I mean, retreats always sound lovely to everyone, but it's not always feasible. But how can you make it feel a bit like a retreat? If you are working from home, how can you make it feel a little bit like this was a special week where I got to focus? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you want to work in your garden space, if you have space for that, maybe you want to decide that for that week. You're going to go to the library and write so that it feels different from the other weeks. Let's try and zone it out. Let's have some weeks where we work mornings really intensively on hardcore intellectual stuff, but we then give ourselves the rest of the afternoon off. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe we make it so that some weeks we work late. Maybe we re-imagine that time that we really enjoyed working late into the evenings, but we give ourselves the mornings off. Think about how you can zone it because it helps us to remind us what our priorities are. So if in this week my priorities are admin, I'm doing it first thing in the morning, I'm doing it in the office. That reinforces to me that it's admin time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I used to do things, this can make me sound very strange, but go with it. I'd take my shoes off when I was in like organizing mode because I'd go in in somewhat scruffier work clothes. I mean, I was a sports science lecturer, I was never that smart, but I'd go in somewhat scruffier clothes. I'd take my shoes off in the office and I was in sorting mode and that kind of differentiated that time for me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I'm in writing mode, maybe I'll get in something like comfy, but nice looking and go to a coffee shop with just my computer. So I don't really want to get on with admin things because I'm on just a little laptop and it's annoying. And then I'm in like, look at me being cool girl in a coffee shop with some makeup on. Who knew? Typing away on my laptop and making it a thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, really thinking about how you can use your environment. How can you use what you're wearing? How can you use the time of day that you're working to really divide it out? It helps us focus on our priorities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing it helps with is it helps make the different steps of the summer, um, feel more distinct from each other. And one of the things we know is that if things feel more distinct from each other, it’s more likely to feel like a longer time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have you ever had that feeling like as you get older, that the years get shorter? Often it's because we are doing the same things. We are living in the same house, we're doing the same job, and the years when things are the same, fly by in a way that when we spend some time doing this, some time doing that, some time doing that, they feel like more has happened and therefore they feel like a longer time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can create that for yourself over that summer period so that when you look back, you're like, “oh, I had my writing vibe then, and my relaxing time then, and my admin time then.” So think about how you can zone your summer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next tip I want to give you comes out from another client meeting and I asked her permission to share this one because I love it and I am going to be trying this on myself in the times in the holidays where I'm not away. And this is the notion of a weekly meeting with ourselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This particular client, like many of my clients had had another career before she came in to do her PhD and there was various things she was struggling with in her PhD. But one of the things we realized as we were talking was that she had a whole bunch of skills from her previous career that she currently wasn't using with herself in her own PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of those things was a weekly meeting. And when I asked her, well, what would you do with a weekly meeting with your staff because she had experience of line management, and she had some really, really clear ideas about what she would do with that time. She would use it to remind the team what the key priorities were and why we were doing this, and to kind of inspire and motivate a little bit. To get any reports in as to what had happened the previous weeks, whether there'd been any issues, whether there was anything outstanding that needed sorting. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> She had this wonderful idea about picking one big thing on one small thing for the week. So what's one little mundane thing that needs to happen this week? What's our big meaty topic for this week? And when she was thinking about this as something she would organize for her staff, super clear. So many ideas. They were absolutely brilliant.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I was like, I was writing these down as she was talking. And then we discussed how could you do that for yourself? And she came to this idea of having a few set questions that on a Monday morning she would ask herself that were modelled on how she would look after her staff, but use it to look after herself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I absolutely love this. I'm going to try and implement it myself. One way that I'm going to slightly modify it is I know that I sometimes struggle with sticking to things like that if it's only a commitment to myself and in those sorts of situations you can coach yourself on it and coach yourself around, why don't you stick to things when it's just yourself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I will be doing that work too. It's an ongoing process. But you can also go, okay, well in what situations does it work for me? And for me it works having somebody else involved. So one of the things I'm going to experiment with is bringing in a family member who's not actually connected to the business in any meaningful way at the moment, and have those weekly meetings with them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where we sort of go through, okay, what did I do last week? What am I doing this week? What are my priorities? Why am I doing this? Why is it important? But actually building in some structure by having somebody else involved as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My client, in contrast, actually, when she had those questions, felt really quite comfortable to just take herself through those and really believe that she would do that so if she's not going to build those structure in, I am.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what you get to do is you get to look at all this stuff and think, okay, how could that work for me? Maybe a weekly meeting doesn't work for you, but maybe you need that quick check-in in the morning. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those of you who might be familiar with like Lean methodology and like Sprints and things, that's something you can apply here. So I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but a Sprint is a packaged piece of work that's usually like two weeks or something like that. That's your focus for that time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then every morning the team have a little huddle where they have a quick check-in for five minutes. So maybe you are thinking, you know, well, I'm not sure about this whole weekly meeting thing, but I could have a five minute huddle with myself in the morning. What's the key thing today? What barriers do I need to overcome? What do I want to remind myself? Something like that. So you can think about how these techniques that are used to manage teams we can use to manage ourselves during this summer period.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final thought for you today is I always used to start summers with these amazing intentions. I truly believe that this would be the summer where I didn't procrastinate, I stayed on track. I got all these things done, whatever those things were, and I would start next year in a better shape than I have done before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I love that optimistic me. I love the fact that to some extent that kept me trying. It kept me sort of having another go at trying to get the summer that I wanted, but it was also a hugely unrealistic me and it was a very unaccepting me because it was a version of me that said, unless you do this exactly as you intend, then you've mucked it up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. So it was always, don't muck it up this time. We're going to do it. We're going to do all the things. We're going to get this done. So my final point for you is set your intentions now. Set your plans now, but also set that you are not going to stick to this perfectly. Things are going to happen. You are going to be more tired than you realized, or something's going to take longer than you thought, or something new is going to come along. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or you are going to have to reprioritize because your childcare falls through or whatever it is. Something is going to mean that you don't stick to this plan perfectly. And there are two things I want you to do with that knowledge. I want you to accept it. And to understand that that doesn't mean that you've mucked it up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you didn't try hard enough, you lack discipline and you lack willpower. It just means you're a human being having a summer. Okay? It's totally, totally okay. Totally understandable. And I want you to remind yourself that… no, there's two more things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I said two, there's going to be three say We're going to be compassionate, we're going to accept it. All that stuff. That's one. Two is we're going to remember the law of partial success. I don’t think it's a law. I've made that up as well. But that thing of partial success that we've talked about in past episodes, where just because you don't stick to something perfectly doesn't mean it's a fail, and it doesn't mean you just go, “oh, well next summer”.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to pick at any stage of this summer. How can I get make the remainder of today a success? How can I make the remainder of this week a success? The remainder of this holiday, if you don't stick to the plan perfectly, okay, how can we continue to do that? How can we get ourselves back - not onto the original track? People often talk about trying to get back on track - How can we get ourselves onto our new track where we accept that we are where we are? And now we move forward from here with that kind of intention and deliberateness that we want to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then the third thing, the one I'd forgotten what I was going to say. The third thing is that wherever we spend our summer, however we end up spending our time, it was worth spending the time planning it was worth spending the time nudging ourselves back towards partial successes and we will finish this summer being super proud of ourselves, okay?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't make that pride contingent on doing this perfectly. You are a PhD student or an academic who has had a long and hard year. For some of you, it's been incredibly long and hard year, especially if you've been involved in all the strikes and the marking boycotts and all of these things. You've had a really tough time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whatever you end up doing this summer, let's be super proud of ourselves. Let's trust that we did for ourselves what we needed. And start the next academic year with that same compassion and forgiveness. So we make a plan to make it the best summer that we can, the summer that we need, the summer that rejuvenates us and gives us the bits that our mind, and body, and soul needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We do our best to show up for those things by using our best coaching to get ourselves there, by making it realistic in the first place, by reminding ourselves why we're doing it and at the end and as we go along, we have compassion for the fact that we are not perfect, but we still did our best throughout this summer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that's useful for you. It's reminded me of things that I want to get sorted over the summer and plans that I want to make, so I have found it useful for myself too. Next week we've got that guest episode with Kirsty Sedgman. Make sure you tune in for that. And the one after that is going to be my last podcast for the summer because I have decided that one of the things that I need to do for myself is to take a pause on the podcast until the new academic year, so that I can rejuvenate my plans, rejuvenate myself, and spend time with my family and my new husband, because I'm getting married in, when you listen to this, it'll be in two weeks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's two more episodes left. Then we'll have a pause of about six, seven weeks and we'll start back up at the beginning of September. So thank you for listening and see you next week.  </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 10 Jul 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/39-how-to-prepare-for-your-academic-summer-structure-and-freedom thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/38-how-to-prepare-for-your-academic-summer-acceptance-and-resistance <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The summer period can be particularly stressful for academics, whether it's because you miss the structure of "normal" term or because you don't feel like you even GET a summer any more. This is the first in a short series of episodes considering how we can make the summer ours again and enjoy this part of the academic year. Today we're talking about the benefits of combining some "acceptance" with some "resistance" so that this doesn't feel more painful than it needs to!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode I talk about some other episodes of my podcast, including:  </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/11-how-to-rest-over-the-holiday-period" target="_blank"> How to rest during the holiday period </a> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/be-your-own-best-supervisor" target="_blank"> How to be your own best supervisor </a> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/5-how-accepting-where-you-are-is-the-first-step-to-getting-to-where-you-want-to-be" target="_blank"> How accepting where you are is the first step to getting where you want to be </a> </div> <div> - <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/23-how-to-make-decisions-that-you-love" target="_blank"> How to make decisions you love </a> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 38 of the PhD Life Coach. Now, I tweeted recently about the academic summer coming up and how it made me feel, and I got tons of replies to it. Lots of people have a lot of thoughts about academic summers, whether you are a PhD student, whether you are a teaching academic, research oriented, academic, whatever it is, this notion of what an academic summer even is and what we end up doing through that time period really stirred up some opinions.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I decided that I would do some podcast episodes about it. At first I was planning this as a single podcast, this one, but the more I planned it, the more I realized there is way more to say about academic summers than that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So this is going to be at least a two-parter, possibly a three parter, we shall see. So what do you mean by the academic summers? Well, certainly in the Northern Hemisphere, our academic years run September through to June, July. Those of you listening in the Southern Hemisphere, this may run out a slightly different way for you, but we're thinking about this upcoming longer holiday where there is much less teaching usually unless you're teaching summer schools and things like that, much less teaching, much less structure. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of my favorite family memories was that my nanna, whenever it came round to the summer, she would always be like, “Ooh, you must be looking forward to your long holiday, Vikki, must be so nice to get all that time off” and I'm sure you've had similar comments from people who don't understand all the things there are to do during an academic summer. But the fact is that even if it's not time off, the time does change for us, the priorities change, the way it works change.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The challenges that I've had with academic summers have really changed as my career progressed, and I think some of that is a passing of time and a changing of how academia is. But I think some of it is that as you get different roles and responsibilities, different things become difficult.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when I was a PhD student and early postdoc, even into my early lecturing years, the thing that I found most challenging was this long, unstructured stretch of time. So really I went from having regular meetings, journal clubs, seminars, all this stuff, through till kind of early July and then things didn't start properly again until mid-September.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so all the way through that period, I lacked a lot of the scaffolding that I usually had. And you may find those to yourself, particularly if you're in the earlier stages of your academic career, still doing your PhD and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A lot of the things that kept me on track just simply weren't there anymore. And in many ways my brain revelled in it. It was like, “I've got so much time, I'm not going to be taken up with this and that I'm going to be able to get so much done.” I had all these really optimistic plans as to what I would get written, but actually it was really easy to become lethargic and to sort of drift and to procrastinate because you felt like you had lots of time, and so you kind of could. And then suddenly the summer's going through and you are looking at your to-do list and going, “oh God, I haven't done half of this.” And you start having to chuck things off your to-do list, and then you start beating yourself up about that and realizing that actually you're not going to have done all the things you intended to do before the new academic year started after all.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As I progressed further through, it became less of the challenge of a long, unstructured summer and more of a challenge that the current academic year would leach further and further and further into my summer, because you find yourself in involved in exam boards and module and program review and appeals and all these things that sort of eat into the beginning of the academic summer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then you also found that next academic year started impacting on the summer too, because you were being asked for next year's timetables and next year's assessments and getting next year's virtual learning environments up and all these different tasks that actually sometimes it can feel like there is no bit of the summer where you're not in either last academic year or this academic year in terms of all your sort of admin and teaching duties.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is especially true for any of you who teach summer schools, who get involved in outreach activities through the summer and these sorts of things as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So as I progressed through, it became almost the opposite problem that my summers were somewhat more structured than they used to be, but I never got those clear periods of time where I could really crack on with all of those things that I said I was going to do during the summer, that I had every intention of trying to do during the summer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This really reached a head for me in 2020, as I know it did for lots of people. I was Head of Education of my School, so I was overseeing all the post-grad programs, all the undergraduate programs in my discipline through that time and, Like for a lot of people, it just never really stopped that year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There was so much to do closing down the 19/20 academic year, and then we were immediately getting ready for the next year. We were trying to do admissions when we didn't have A level results. We were trying to plan for a virtual welcome week, virtual inductions, all of this stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't think I took more than four days off that summer. It's the closest to burnout I've ever been, and it really made me say, no, this can't be like this anymore. This is not sustainable. And to really start to question some of the things that I was telling myself that I had to do and that were non-negotiable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was so bad it put back on the table so many things that I had been telling myself were just “must dos”. And so that's what this session is really going to be about is thinking, what things do we need to choose to accept in order to remove some of the kind of pain and frustration around what we think the summer should be and what is not, and what things are we going to choose to resist because maybe they're not as necessary, as compulsory as we're telling ourselves they are.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I learned more than anything is it doesn't have to feel as bad as that. You know, really that's the overarching message of everything I do is that things are tough in the sector. There's nothing wrong with you if you're finding it hard, but we can make decisions about what we focus on and what we tell ourselves that mean that it doesn't have to feel this difficult. That we can reclaim bits of what we want it to be and take ownership over how we feel and how we think during these times. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Before I do though, I want to refer you back to one of my old episodes, because before Christmas I wrote an episode called How to Rest during the Holiday Period. It might surprise you. It might not surprise you to know that it is my least listened to episode. I check all my stats every now and again, how to be your own best supervisor, my first ever episode remains the top one. Highly recommend it. How to Rest Over the holiday period is the least listened to episode of all 37 that I've released so far.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a really good episode. I highly recommend that you go back and listen to it but think about it in the context of the summer. So whenever I say Christmas, the winter break, translate that to the summer. In that episode, we talk about the importance of making decisions in advance about what you're going to do. We talk about the when am I going to work? What work am I going to do? Where am I going to work? Who am I doing work? Or who am I going to prioritize? Why am I choosing to work and exactly how I'm going to do it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we talk each of those through and how important it is to decide those things in advance so that when you are doing them, you can be in the moment getting the benefit from them rather than telling yourself that you should be doing something else. Because the worst thing about a holiday is if you're not working but you feel like you should be or you are working and you feel like you shouldn't be because then we get the worst of both worlds. We don't get to enjoy the time with our friends and family. We don't get to be productive in the times at work.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you haven't listen to that one. It's episode 11. Go back and find it. Just delete out Christmas. Insert summer and think about it for your summer break. For this one though, we are sticking with this idea of acceptance versus resistance, and we'll start with acceptance. Why not?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Where I see an awful lot of pain coming from in myself and in clients that I work with, other people that I speak to is in people who are not accepting what summer is and what summer is now for academics. I see so much pain coming from people saying that it should be different to this. We shouldn't have to do as much for last academic year. We shouldn't have to be preparing as early for next academic year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is a really classic example of how thoughts can be true but not helpful. I think all of us would agree. I can't imagine people not agreeing that it has got a bit crazy how the two years now smush together and how little time we get in the middle for rest, recuperation and work that's for our own sort of careers and benefit and that side of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, just because it's true doesn't mean that spending lots of time thinking it helps. If we spend loads of time thinking, “I should have time to write my research. I shouldn't have to do this. This is such a pointless waste of time. Management's taken over, academia shouldn't be like this.” If we spend loads of time thinking those thoughts, we end up feeling frustrated. We end up feeling sad, disappointed that we don't get the summers that we think we should have. We end up inducing all these emotions that don't help us get done, the things we need to get done,don't make us have a summer that we enjoy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's not like, because we think all that stuff, we go and write loads of papers and ignore it all. We'll talk more about that in the resistance section in a second, but when we are not accepting the world as it is and we're kind of fighting against it in our heads, but not externally, we just end up making ourselves feel guilty and disappointed and cross. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so my first step that I would really recommend - and as I say, don't worry, I'm not saying just like do as you’re told, we're going to get to the resistance bit - the first step that I would say is, let's accept that some is less structured. If you're a PhD student, even if you think that seminars should carry on and meetings should carry on, and all that structure should carry on, Let's accept for that for a lot of us, it doesn't. If you're an academic, even if you think that you shouldn't be doing teaching relating activities all the way through to the beginning of August and they're starting up again halfway through August. Even if you think that that shouldn't be like that, it is in most universities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can believe that it shouldn't be like that, but spend time thinking different thoughts. So I'm not going to try and coach you out of the thought that it shouldn't be like that. I think we can, we can keep that thought. I mean, you can try to coach yourself out if you want to, reconcile why it's okay the way it is. But sometimes we can just choose to be like, yeah, I believe that it shouldn't be like this, but I also believe that keep banging on about that inside my own head doesn't help me in any way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because then what we get to do instead is we get to say, okay, what if that's the circumstance here? That's the facts. This is how it is. Then we get to look at that with curiosity and go, okay, so how can I make this summer closer to what I want it to be? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can I do less of that and more of this? How can I enjoy the bits of this that I do get to do? How can I prioritize the things that I want to prioritize? Because we are doing it from a place of acceptance that this is how it is. I am going to be getting emails about the structure of teaching and learning outcomes and whatever else, all the way through the summer that I think I should be spending on research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. That's how it is. Then we get to plan for that. If you're a PhD student who thinks you should get more support during the summer, you are probably right. I mean, your supervisors are exhausted. That's partly why you're not, but you're probably right that in an ideal world, you would get more support during the summer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if we start from a place of “okay, but I don't”, then we get to go, okay, how can I solve for that? I value that it doesn't happen. I accept that. So how can I start to structure some of those things myself? How can I put solutions in place that help for me to strive and thrive and enjoy my academic summer? So we get to think about this acceptance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other element that a lack of acceptance does is I still hear academics, particularly people who've got permanent teaching jobs, saying, “I'll get that done in the summer. I'll get that done in the summer. Things will calm down after that. I'll get it done then.”  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Part of accepting that our summers have changed is accepting you are probably not going to get all those things done. I have left academia with a whole bunch of papers that I never wrote and I'm not going to now. I think some of them have been on my summer to do list for probably 10 years, maybe longer. And every summer it was, “no. This year it's going to be top. This year I'll get it done. This year I'll get it done.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And there is so much freedom in saying, you know what, I'm probably never going to write that project up. Because then you get to take it off your to-do list so you don't feel so guilty about it. You get to decide, actually, I'll write up a quick and dirty blog about it just so that people know roughly what I did and what I found, won't bother with peer review or anything, let's just get something out there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to make those decisions rather than keep having this delusional to-do list of all these things that you're going to do over the summer that stems from not accepting that the long empty summer is not the long empty summer anymore.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We get to make more realistic plans that are compassionate to us, that take into account the environments that we're working in, whether it's a PhD student or as a senior academic. We get to make decisions based on what's real and what's best for us within that context.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the element to which I think acceptance can be really, really helpful here. I'd also recommend that you check out episode five of my podcast where I talk about how accepting where you are is the first step of getting where you want to be. That goes into this in a lot more detail, and particularly is good for any of you who are struggling with the “I should have done this already” thoughts. Really pervasive thought, you know, I should have done this before. It doesn't help us move forwards because it makes us feel guilty. When we feel guilty, we're much more likely to procrastinate and things like that. So check out that episode too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second part of this though, is about resistance. And this is about the idea that accepting things as they are doesn't mean just blindly accepting them and kind of kowing down to what we need to do. Is kowing a bad word? I dunno. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That acceptance doesn't have to mean that we just tolerate everything that our universities throw at us and just do as we are told and give up our hopes and give up what it should be and just, you know, go along with it. That's not what we mean here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> By acceptance, what we mean is accepting the bits we can't change, but also thinking about the bits that we can either change or resist. One of the questions we can ask ourselves when we're deciding, you know, what could I resist, what could I decide that I'm not doing or that I'm not spending much time on, is really starting to make a list of things that you think you must do this summer. And I want you to list out all the things that you think you want to do, all the things that you think you have to do for your job role, all the things that you think other people expect you to do, and really get that massive list out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I would really try to work through it and try and identify whether these are things you want to do, that you need to do, that other people say you should do, that you just feel obliged to do and so on. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we're going to query all of those. Because the truth is there is no universally accepted rule about what you should do during an academic year, during an academic summer.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm just starting reading this book “On being unreasonable, breaking the rules and making things better” by Kirsty Sedgman, not very far through yet. I'm going t talk to you about it more when I've read more of it, but one of the things she talks about right at the very beginning is how we all think that our beliefs are about what's reasonable, are entirely sensible, entirely common sense, and that in actual fact, everybody has different views on what's reasonable. It's not as common sense as we think it is.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you think about an academic summer, all academics, all PhD students have different perspectives over what are the must-dos over the period of the summer, between the two academic years. And if we can start to really look at our own assumptions of what we think we have to do, through the lens of the fact that other people have completely different perspectives to you on this, then suddenly we can start to query them a little bit and we can start to say, “well, do I have to do that? Maybe I don't have to do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Does everybody do that?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, the more I would talk to junior staff when I was a more senior member of staff and they'd say, “oh, I have to do this and I have to do that”, and I'd be like, “I don't do any of those things, or, oh yeah, I did that, but I spent like half an hour on it”. And they were like, you know, I've spent days on that. I thought it was super important. It's like, “oh no, half the staff don't fill it in anyway.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to realize that some of these things that you make assumptions are necessary, are either not necessary or can be banged out really quickly with very little thought because they're not that important anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've got to acknowledge here that this can vary hugely between your level of precarity. It's much harder if you are a temporary member of staff to say, oh, I'm just going to get this done badly. Similarly, it can sometimes be harder for people, from minority groups to kind of resist things without it being interpreted as a sort of stronger form of resistance. Somehow we allow white, middle aged men to go, “oh no, I don't even do that. I don’t how to do it” and forgive them for it in a way that other groups don't necessarily get forgiven. So take all this within the context that I accept that it's not necessarily as easy as it sounds, but we get to decide which things are we just not going to do or which things are we going to do quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it true that you have to review every lecture before next year? No, absolutely not. You can decide you're not going to review any of them, you can decide. One of my colleagues used to have a rolling process where she would review a certain proportion of them every year. So every three to four years, the whole curriculum would get refreshed but she didn't refresh every lecture every year.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Is it true that next semester will be easier if you've got everything up on your virtual learning environment in advance? Possibly, but will next semester be easier if you've had a decent break this summer and you've got done that piece of research or that piece of teaching scholarship that you really wanted to get done and that's important for your career? Yeah, probably that too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we get to decide which things we're just going to choose not to do. And remember, get rid of all the all or nothing thinking here. We don't even don't have to think, oh, I'm just not going to do that. We can think I'm going to do that quickly. So, I'm going to roll over my virtual learning environment from next year, get a couple of bits on it. That's enough. I don't have to spend two weeks perfecting it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We get to resist some of the things that we are being encouraged to do. If you're filling in 14 different forms, it's all got the same information in it. Cut and paste, do it quickly. Don't, I've said, think I've said in a previous episode, don't bother to change the fonts if they look scruffy, just get it done. Hand it in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can also choose to resist the pressure that tells you you have to write up every data set you've got, or the pressure that tells you that you should be publishing X amount per year. You can resist that pressure too. You can decide, you know what, given the management's responsibilities I've got, given the teaching responsibilities I've got, there's one bit of writing I'm going to work on, and I'm going to resist the pressure to be working on more than that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can decide which elements of this you are going to resist, and the more of this we can decide in advance, the more of this we can go, you know what, I'm not going to do those things, the easier summer becomes. Because the fact is you're probably not going to do all the things that you are currently saying you must do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> At some point, urgency and acceptance and everything else makes you take them off your to-do list and go, yeah, no, that's not going to happen, isn't it? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How much nicer the summer will be if you decided at the beginning, we are not going to do those things, and that's okay. The only way I got through the pandemic summer was by accepting that that was just what my summer was, and resisting the thoughts that I should be doing something different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of the things that over the years really helped me with the resistance stuff, the deciding that it was okay not to do some of the things that I thought I had to do was seeing that, when I handed on roles, so admin roles and things like that, when I handed them onto somebody else., they didn't do all the things I was doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They did some things that I wasn't doing. They didn't do other things that I was doing, and the world didn't fall apart, you know, and I saw people get made… thankfully, my department only voluntary redundancies, but I saw people take redundancy and they were absolutely busy with everything that they thought had to be done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And after they left, some of that stuff didn't get done and it survived. I've seen people unfortunately off on long-term sick and the things they used to do don't get done and the department ticks along. I've left. There was loads of things I thought I had to do that don't get done now and the department's fine. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It ticks along without us. An awful lot of what we tell ourselves is absolutely crucial, is non-negotiable, must be done, and we drive ourselves crazy trying to do it, if we weren't there, it wouldn't get done and the department would carry on. It would be okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's not to make us feel, I don't want you to take that as meaning that we're utterly unimportant. We get to make our decisions and we get to make our impact. And I have no doubt that I made a big impact while I was in the school for the 20 however many years it was that I was there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have no doubt that I did really important things, and I'm proud that I did them. But I also recognize that there was a bunch of stuff that I probably needn't have done. I could have done less. I certainly could have done less in those summers and they would've been just fine. So I really encourage you to start now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're at the end of June. We're sort of heading into conference season. We're heading into that summer period. Start now listing out the things that you think you have to do this summer and start deciding which bits of this are you going to accept that this is just what they're paying you for. And which of this are you going to resist? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Which are you going to choose not to do? Which are you going to choose to do a quick and dirty job of and get out the way as quickly as possible? Because ultimately you get to pick and if you are in a position where they're not paying you over the summer, so you are a nine month contracts, which I know are common in the us less so in the uk or if you are a precarious member of staff so you don't have summer contracts, really, really think hard. About what the must dos and what the must dos are and really pick apart which bits you can actively choose not to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How do you decide? That's always the question I get and this… I'm going to refer another episode. There's an episode called How to Make Decisions You Love. I would check that one out because a big part of that is deciding what would be my reasons for doing this. And you get to look at your reasons and decide which ones you like best.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So my reasons for doing my principal fellowship application was because I felt that I deserved the recognition. I felt that it would be important for my career progression going forwards. I wanted to because I felt like I would learn a lot from doing it, and so I decided to do it. Other things you might decide that your reason for doing it is because you've been told to. Your reason for doing it is because everybody else says you should, and you get to pick apart whether there are other reasons, because having been told to or everyone else doing it doesn't mean you have to do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it certainly doesn't mean you have to spend that much time on it. Another way to decide is to ask other people how long they spend on things because I think particularly junior members of staff and people who haven't got permanent positions make assumptions about how long other people spend on things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so sometimes if you've all been given something you've got to do, you know, you've got to do module review or whatever it is, ask some senior members of staff how much time they spend on it. Because I'm pretty sure, in fact, I know I used to review the, I used to review the reviews. If everyone had to hand them into me and I check them out, there is a massive range of quality and there were people that spent far too much time on it. It's not that I'm saying do a shoddy job. There were people that spent far too much time, too much detail, unnecessary levels of statistics, unnecessarily detailed narratives.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We just needed the key points, and so talking to other people about how they choose what they do over their summers, how do they resist things, how do they not feel guilty or manage their guilt about the things that they're not doing, can also really help you to decide which things are going to be your focus and which things are not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In next week's episode, we're going to think more about how you can structure your summer to support you through that. So this will be, again, whether you're a PhD student all the way through to senior academic, how can you divide your summer into sections and what are the benefits of doing that and how you can prioritize different elements of yourself during that summer. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you haven't listened to the podcast about how to do role-based time blocking, that would be another one to have a listen to because we are going to look at a kind of macro version of that over the summer so that we can really create some distinct phases and give ourselves all the benefits that that brings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I hope you found today useful. We're going to be thinking about summers for at least another week. Let's start planning them now so that we can get closer to having the summers that we want. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 03 Jul 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/38-how-to-prepare-for-your-academic-summer-acceptance-and-resistance thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/37-what-is-an-academic-adjacent-career-and-why-might-you-want-one <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When PhD students (and even academics) think about their career options, it often gets divided into "academic" or "non-academic" careers. In this episode, my guest  Holly Prescott, a careers consultant for PGRs, talks about academic adjacent careers. She explains what they involve, why people should consider them and we discuss some of the issues that sometimes hold people back from discovering, and moving into, these interest careers.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this episode, Holly talks about:  </div> <div> - her theatre company <a href="https://www.ottisdotter.co.uk/" target="_blank"> Ottisdotter </a> and their latest production <a href="https://space.org.uk/event/lady-inger/" target="_blank"> Lady Inger </a> </div> <div> - her blog, <a href="https://phd-careers.co.uk/" target="_blank"> PostGradual </a> and an article on <a href="https://phd-careers.co.uk/2023/04/17/academic-adjacent-careers-what-are-they-and-how-do-i-find-them/" target="_blank"> academic adjacent careers </a> </div> <div> and the podcast <a href="https://sarahmclusky.com/research-adjacent-podcast" target="_blank"> Research Adjacent </a> with Sarah McLusky. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 37 of the PhD Life Coach. This week is another one of my exciting episodes where we have a guest in to talk. And this week it's Holly Prescott, who is a PGR Careers Advisor from the University of Birmingham, and an independent consultant who works on all things researcher careers. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So welcome, Holly. Thank you so much for coming.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Thank you so much, Vikki. I'm very glad to be chatting with you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Super exciting. So Holly and I have worked together several times in the past running sessions for postgraduate students about different topics to do with careers, and this week we are going to be thinking about academic adjacent careers. Before I ask Holly to explain to you what that even means, first of all, tell us a little bit about what you actually do at the University of Birmingham and elsewhere and maybe stuff you do when you are not thinking about PGR careers.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Yeah, sure. I did a PhD myself at the University of Birmingham between 2008 and 2011 and my old kind of research area, if you like, was a combination of literature and cultural geography. So I did a lot of work in urban fiction, London writing, city writing and things like that. And I think it was in my second year of my PhD, I started to realize that I didn't think straight up academia was what I wanted to do, but I did very much get the strong sense that whatever I did want to do was going to involve being student facing, was going to involve using teaching, presentation, public speaking skills and things like that. So from an early stage, I started to explore what else was out there that would let me do those things most of the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I tried bits of part-time jobs across the university and started to feel my way and learn things that way. When I finished my PhD, I worked for a couple of years in post-graduate student recruitment where I represented the university at post-graduate study exhibitions across the UK and Europe and it was from there that I then decided to do a career guidance qualification and moved over into working in careers in 2015, which is where I've been ever since.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I do now at the University of Birmingham is I look after one-to-one, group and events, career guidance for post-graduate researchers across all subject areas. So that includes one-to-one guidance consultations, it involves workshops and tutorials on a range of career related topics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It involves putting events together with alumni and speakers to come back and tell us what they've been doing since they've finished their PhD. And then a whole host of other strategic and management things that I do behind the scenes that the students don't see as well. I also consult for other organizations and institutions running a range of workshops and talks for postdoc and postgrad researchers as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And outside of that? I mean, that sounds like a pretty busy schedule, but in the downtime that I hope you have? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: In the downtime, yeah. So I mentioned that I have a bit of a background in literature, and one way that I keep that alive is that back in 2013 with one of my oldest friends, we started a small theatre company based in London called Ottisdotter. And we specialize in bringing the obscure to light, so we focus on productions of obscure, maybe kind of, lesser performed works of European playwrights. And our latest production, Lady Inger, which is an early Henry Ibsen play is showing at the Space Theatre between the 27th of June and the 8th of July on the Isle of Dogs in London. So most of my spare time is taken up with being involved in that. I’ve also been involved in the company at the Crescent Theatre I Birmingham. So, I guess when I don't have my careers hat on, I'm probably being stagey somewhere.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I love that. Those of you watching on YouTube… So if you listen to this on the podcast, we do also put this on YouTube. Those of you watching on YouTube will see the silly grin on my face. I've worked with Holly for ages and I had no idea you do that. I love, I love the answers I get to the questions because people always do such interesting things. That's awesome.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: I realized when I saw your face, I thought, oh, I've not told Vikki this before.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I don’t know how we’ve never had this conversation, but that's awesome. Love it, love it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: You’re seeing a whole new side of me already this interview, Vikki. But this is what I, we might come on to this, but this is what I have consistently found so interesting and so stimulating about continuing to work in a university environment, in that so many of my colleagues and the people that I'm working with every day have such rich and varied interests and activities. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For example, in the office where I sit, there's myself with the theatre things, there's a colleague who sits right next to me who's just got a novel deal, just signed a deal for two novels. There's another colleague, who has a background in film, and makes film video essays and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Pretty much everybody's got the secret second life and we tend to have our fingers in lots of pies. I think if you've come from an academic background, you do tend to, you are the kind of person that gets deeply interested and passionate about things. And I think often that leads to people in that environment just having a really, like I say, rich and varied background  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Love it. You started to touch on how you came across the idea of academic adjacent career. But maybe we should just go back a step. What do you actually even mean by academic adjacent careers?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Good point. But before I explain the meaning of the phrase, I just want to stop for a second to acknowledge something that does annoy me a little bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Let's do it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Which is when we're talking about researcher careers and career options after a PhD, I do notice that often the discourse falls in into defining career options by their positionality according to academia. A way that I've described it before is it's as if once we have been touched by academia, we have to define everything else in terms of its position, alongside, close to, in or away from academia. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I acknowledge it's not a perfect way of talking about career options and, and possibilities, but I do like the term academic adjacent far more than I like terms like non-academic careers or careers outside of academia because I certainly don't feel like I, and a lot of my colleagues in professional services in HE, have left academia at all. I think if you look at what we do day to day, a lot of our work from the outside looks like what academics do; it just has some slight differences.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So to explain then, academic adjacent careers is a term that I have seen become more popular, certainly over the past sort of six or seven years. And it works on the principle that the word adjacent at its root means something that runs alongside or next to a thing or that supports a thing, which is why I think academic adjacent is a really nice phrase to use to describe career options that run alongside academic research, that work closely with academic research or that support academic research in some way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The best way I could describe what an academic adjacent career is, is to get someone to think about who makes your PhD possible. Or who makes your postdoc possible? Outside of your academic supervisors, advisors, and PIs?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Do you reflect on, for example, when you were looking at doing a PhD, who supported you at the start? It might have been, you might have gone to open days, you might have attended events. You might have had contact with administrators or a funder or other places like that. They're all functions that support research, that work adjacent to research.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you are doing your PhD or your postdoc, who else makes that experience for you? Think about the teams you come into contact with in library services, student support, disability support services. EDI. Graduate schools, career support, academic skills, and researcher development research support. Those again, are all examples of academic adjacent work. And then thinking about moving on from your research and who helps you with that, professional development careers, things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's the best way I can describe academic adjacent careers are lines of work that happen and occur close to, alongside of, or supporting academic research and researchers. And a way that you can map them and discover what they are is by digging into your own PhD or postdoc experience and thinking who are the people, who are the teams, what are the support functions, that helped you achieve that out beyond your, kind of your academic teams, if that makes sense.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think, you know, different universities, those functions that you mentioned might have different names, but they're pretty universal experiences that most universities to a greater or lesser extent will have all of those sorts of things. And the other ones that popped up in my mind might be a bit more discipline specific, but things like lab technicians, lab managers, clinical trials managers, all those sorts of people. The people that run the ethics process, if you do human studies. And then people like the archivists and the librarians and so on. I think there's all of those sorts of things isn't there as well that are kind of intrinsic to the actual research process, but that are different from being an academic per se. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Yeah, absolutely. And you make a good point there, Vikki, in that not all academic adjacent careers are based in universities. Thinking about the external organizations, facilities, um, and bodies that support your work as a researcher,  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: I mean, at Birmingham we have museums within the university, don't we? We have Barber Institute, Lapworth museum. There's all people that run those and things that absolutely would, I would consider academic adjacent at least.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Um, yeah. Anywhere where you might go on a research trip for a research visit counts. As do, um, organizations who advocate for particular academic subjects and research in particular areas. For example, professional bodies, learned societies, places like the Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society of Biology, are again rich in types of roles and careers that support scientists, support people who do science and support, people who do research in particular areas as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And you mentioned briefly people having contact with funders at the beginning of their studies. But that's a whole other thing, isn't it? Is the, you know, the Economic and Social Research Council and all the other research councils, depending on what discipline you are in, they have, they have staff, they have people, you know, I've, back in the day when I was writing grants, you'd have huge long conversations with people there about what they're looking for in that particular grant call and how you can make sure your work fits. And, you know, providing that sort of, really quite technical scientific advice about whether what you are proposing fits within the, the interest that they're having in that particular call. And I think PhD students don't necessarily, some of the things that you mentioned, they will come into contact with a lot, but might not think about, but then I think there's also some bits that they might not actually be involved with, depending on what stage their supervisor's at with getting funding and all those sorts of things. So how do PhD students, beyond looking around their area, how do they find out about these things?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Hmm. The first thing I would say there is that if you are, if you are in a university already, then you are in the perfect place to discover academic adjacent careers. One of the ways that I know a lot of people find out about these things is by accident, by doing them. And I want to especially here, give a shout to self-funded PhDs or part funded PhDs. And you know, you have to find other income streams, which is why I often see a lot of PGRs I work with have built whole CVs through doing part-time roles in various parts of the university. They might have done some academic skills tutoring. They might have been a post-graduate ambassador and help with open days. Then might have done things like international student support and things like that. So it's through doing, that I feel a lot of people discover these academic adjacent career roots and that was certainly how I felt my way towards mine. I had several part-time roles during my PhD in various university functions, and that certainly helped me to see, “oh, look, there are all these other people who keep the university going apart from the professors.” And here I am discovering who some of those people are in the work that they do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that's one way, just by getting involved and, and doing some bits of things. There's the mapping your own PhD or postdoc experience out, like I've already mentioned and thinking about who you've come into contact with so far that's supported you in your research. I think that's a really good way of uncovering these kinds of roles and these kinds of career roots. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think another way is looking what PhD graduates from your subject area have actually gone on to. You could use something like LinkedIn for that. For example, I did this with someone recently for history. We looked at where history PhD graduates had gone and we found so many of them working for organizations like the British Academy, who support and advocate for humanities research. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Quite a few of them working as a research facilitators, or research support managers helping academics to bid for funding, helping them to actually articulate their idea in an effective way, that's going to convince people to invest in it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And yeah, when we uncovered lots of these kinds of academic adjacent places that history PhDs were in. So do what you can to find out where the people before you have gone, because it may not be where you think they've gone. It may not just be into academia, teaching and industry. The likelihood is that they've actually gone into a much richer, broader range of destinations and you think they have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The last thing I will do, um, in answer to that is a shout out for a podcast by Sarah McCluskey called Research Adjacent podcast, where Sarah interviews different people in different academic adjacent roles. So if you are really interested in finding out more, I highly recommend that podcast. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And I will link that in the show notes. It sounds like it would be searchable in all the places you get podcasts, but I will put a link in for people to find that as well. So maybe this goes without saying to some extent, but what advantages do you see in these sorts of careers? Why might people want do them? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Hmm. I think it depends on the individual. It depends on what you want. But one of the main tools that I use with researchers in thinking about where they want to go next is to ask the question - if you were going to turn your PhD or your postdoc into your ideal job, what aspects of it would you want to keep? Which aspects of it would you want to lose and ideally not do again? And which aspects would you want to add to it that you don't have much chance to do now?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the interesting part here is thinking about what comes in your keep column. So this is thinking about what aspects of academia have you really enjoyed and do you really want to keep on doing? And that may be things like teaching, presenting, helping students. It may be something like, I want to still be on the cutting edge of research. I still want to be involved in new discoveries and things like that. It could be I still want to be working with academics. It could be, I still want to be writing, I still want to be doing X. But all of the things I mentioned there, there are academic adjacent roles that will let you keep doing these things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I don't think people believe that. We're going to come to sort of what prevents people from going for these and what thoughts they have about them. And bring a bit of a coaching perspective to that in a minute. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But as you talk, I could hear voices of students that I coach, that I've coached on recently on these sorts of things, saying, you know, I don't see what I can do because I love doing research, but I want someone to tell me what to do because I don't enjoy the coming up with ideas and the having to drive it forwards and stuff, I just love making it happen. And others saying, you know, I want to keep doing research but I hate teaching and I just can't imagine ever, you know, I want to be able to think and read and do stuff, but I hate teaching and I, you know, I'd never have an academic career, so I don't really see what's out there for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there's definitely students that, I mean, you get them all the time, but I'm seeing them in my memberships where they desperately want jobs that are part of what they're doing, but not all lots of them are seeing their supervisors and going, “I know what I want, but I definitely don't want that” you know, seeing the life that academics have. For others, it's the dream, but for lots of people it's like, “yeah, I don't want that.”, and really not believing that those options are out there.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: But then what I would say, and this is the one that blows people's minds sometimes, is to say that there are roles where if you still want to be involved in contributing to scholarship, you still want to publish and you still want to go to conferences and you still want to contribute to a particular area, but you don't want the pressure of that to, you don't want the pressure of having to do that to keep your job, there are options you can do where that's the case.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again, I I need to be cautious about using myself as an example, but I still publish. I publish more now probably than I did when I was doing my PhD. I had a book chapter come out earlier this year. I've got two conference talks currently under review for two different conferences. I just do that, I just publish and speak on a different area from what I did my PhD on, right? So if I want to still be involved in the scholarship behind my discipline of Careers, I can be, but I do that on my own terms. Which is something that to some people it's like, “oh my word. That's the dream.”  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what I would say there is yes, that does mean that I have changed career. I was a literature cultural geography person and now I'm a careers person. But number one, the thing that you are interested in now is not going to be the only thing you are ever interested in. And number two, if you are a researcher, you have a transferable mindset. You have a certain way of approaching work in general. You have a researcher brain that gives you a rigorous approach that means the way you do your work is evidence based, and that means that you approach problems in a particular way. You can apply that researcher brain to so many other areas as well. So don't limit yourself in thinking that you'll only be an expert in what you are an expert in now. There are lots of these academic adjacent areas where you can really, you know, go to town with applying your researcher brain to them to still contribute to a scholarship and still contribute to a discipline. It's just a slightly different one from the discipline that gave you your entry into academia in the first place. Does that make sense? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, massively. And I think that will be, like you say, mind blowing for a lot of people. And I think it'll be super inspiring for loads as well, because I think that's not necessarily made clear to people and people. I've seen lots of people taking this really all or nothing thing that if I want to teach and or research, I need to be an academic and if I don't, I need to go and do something else. And I think the fact that there are these places where you can do bits of it and other bits is fascinating.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think that question that you asked, what do you want to keep lose and add, I think is such an interesting way of framing it as well because I think it really emphasizes that it's not an all or nothing situation that you, you can do that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It really made me reflect on my own career because I really feel like now actually I've kept pretty much all the bits that I loved about being an academic. Now that I'm out of traditional academia. I think I would still just about consider myself academic adjacent because I work with students and academics all the time and yeah, just thinking through as you were talking, what things I wanted to keep that kind of student contact, that supporting people to excel and all those sorts of things and the stuff I wanted to lose is absolutely how it's gone for me. So I think those are really, really powerful questions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Um, one caveat I would add to the publishing away from academia, depending on whether you're an academic adjacent person who still works for a university versus an academic adjacent person who works outside of a university. The thing that is driving me cuckoo at the moment is that as an independent contractor, I don't have access to journal articles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyone who wants to give me an honorary professorship at their university, I'm get in touch. Because I can do interesting consultant things for you and you can give me access to your journals cause it's driving me mad. So there are sometimes frameworks that you take for granted. I've seen people on Twitter talking about if you want to do human research as somebody not affiliated to a university, how do you go through ethics processes and make sure that you're following the right procedures and stuff? So there are some complications to some of these things, especially as I say, if you are outside of the university structure, but I think it's so important for people to be aware that there are these, these sort of, these different options. So, so fruitful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: And, and just going back. There what you said about the keep lose add and that reflecting on your journey, and then also going back to what you said earlier about talking to people who don't believe there are the options out there for them to keep some things but lose some things. What I would add there is perhaps relax the expectation of being able to keep everything you want to keep and lose everything you want to lose all in one go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: I think the other key to the keep lose add model is to emphasize that it is an in your career is an incremental process of gradually keeping more of what you want to keep losing, shedding the things you want to shed, and then incrementally adding in the things you want to add. You're not going to solve all of your keep/lose/adds with your first job after your PhD or your first job after your postdoc. I think that's important to say but what I would also say is that I feel like in these academic adjacent areas, People seem to move around, move sideways. There seems to be much more flexibility in where people go and moving roles and changing roles than in an academic career structure, I would say. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> VikkI; Yeah, no, definitely. And I think that's so important to sort of emphasize that because you know, I mean, thinking about my career, it wasn't a “I was an academic and then I left and now I do this and it's all the bits I love.” Even through my academic journey was a process of building more of the things I loved and less - so I switched from being a research active academic after about 10, 15 years maybe something like that, and became teaching focused and teaching leadership focused after that. So even within academia, I was going through some of those processes of keep, lose and add and then sort of, this is not even the final combination, but a culmination of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think the other thing that, my question at the beginning about what you do outside of your work is also really crucial because we have to remember that we are part of lives. We are not just part of careers. You know this, this podcast and the work that I do is called the PhD Life Coach for a reason. It's partly because I'm a life coach for people with PhDs, but it's also because I believe we want have the best PhD life, not just sort of success and productivity. And I think one thing I really see with your career is that, you know, you've shifted your disciplinary interest, like you say, your writing and publishing and presenting about careers now instead of about urban fiction. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you have this amazing hobby where you scratch the itch of the urban fiction interest. So it's not even that you've lost. Maybe you've lost the writing academically about that stuff, element of it, but you still seem to have an outlet for that side of what you love even though you're now writing professionally about something different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Absolutely. And I still think that does keep true to my Keep/Lose/Adds because the losing the kind of the specific academic research and writing in my field was something that I wasn't that keen to keep because I found it quite isolating. And I tell this story and it, I, I tell it because it is a, you know, a bit amusing, but it, it says a lot, about in my PhD. The further I got into it, the more I would pick up bits of teaching and really focus on teaching and spend loads and loads of time doing my teaching and preparing for my teaching to the detriment of my research, which I would start putting off. And I would put it off more and more, and I would put off, you know, going to the British Library to find something. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I would put off writing a chapter and I, and instead I would fill that time with teaching, teaching, teaching. And it's like, why are you doing this, Holly? You don't need the teaching to get the PhD. Why are you doing this? But the fact I was doing that was telling me something. It was because that was where I found my energy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I found my energy in planning the teaching, delivering the teaching, and it zapped my energy in organizing the research trips and having to sit by myself and look at books all day. So what was initially a story of me being a naughty PhD student and of what is apparently a weakness is actually also a story of finding a strength. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so think about that. I would encourage people to think about that as well. What do they keep being drawn to? Throw in the balance of what you do if people are nagging you, saying “no, don't spend so much time on that. You need to do these other things as well.” Think, well why am I spending so much time on that? Maybe that's actually telling me something about what I enjoy and what comes naturally to me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And there'll be people listening who are doing what I'm doing and nodding along because that was exactly what I was like as a PhD student through academia, which is what then led me into becoming teaching focused in due course. I got to the stage where I was procrastinating writing grants because I'm really good at writing grants and I didn't want to get them because then I would have to do the research. And it was at that moment that I was like, you need to stop doing research. This is ridiculous. Yeah. But there'll be other people who were the other way around who are absolutely, they know they probably “should” get some teaching experience before they start applying for academic jobs, but they just keep procrastinating cause it feels uncomfortable, they don't want to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to point out for people that when you're looking at what you get drawn to, I think it's a really, really good idea. I think be careful as to why you are getting drawn to and away from things because I think sometimes it's driven by fear of something, just feeling, you know, that you are unsure of yourself and those sorts of things whereas when you then actually do it, maybe you actually enjoy it and you build your confidence slowly and so on. So sometimes, sometimes we stay within comfort zones, don't we? But then doing a bit more, uh, helps us. Other times those comfort zones. Let's expand the comfort zone and be really, really amazing at those things that, that come naturally to us and we enjoy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: And also think about where your energy is with your research at the moment, because I do see a lot of PGRs who - I had a really interesting appointment the other day actually with someone who said I want to explore what else I can do apart from working in the lab. But then they were also saying, but I am going to apply for lab jobs as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I thought, oh, that's interesting. If you don't want a lab job, why are you going to apply for them? But it actually came out that this in our conversation, that this person was actually just feeling really kind of tired and burnt out at this point in their PhD, but they had the self-awareness to know that might not last forever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they said, you know what? I just think my relationship with lab work at the moment might be impacted by how I'm feeling about my research in general. Whereas give me a year and I might be raring to go in the lab again, so I don't want to rule it out as an option. But if that energy doesn't come back, then I do want to know what I also could do, which shows brilliant self-awareness that they knew that, so, so yeah, I agree with you, Vikki. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And if you do find yourself continually procrastinating and drawn away from things, also reflect on how is that related to what's going on with you right now, and what's going on with your work right now and where you're at emotionally with that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Definitely and picking some of those thoughts that underpin it is so important because like using your lab work example, I could absolutely see a situation where somebody, really, really unhappy in their lab work thinking, “oh, I just don't wanna do this anymore.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But really it's driven by the fact they don't like their supervisor, they don't like the people in the lab. They don't like the particular bits of kit they're using because they're not learning new things and da da. But actually in a supportive lab where they get to learn some new techniques perhaps in a slightly different way and stuff, suddenly it's super exciting again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But then equally there could be somebody if you hadn't done the digging that I know you always do in these sessions to really understand them. If you hadn't done that, it could have been the situation where actually they're only applying for lab stuff because they're terrified they can't do anything else. They hate it, but they think that's where they'll get some stability and those sorts of things. And what they really want is stability. And then that's a completely different scenario than somebody who's saying, I might actually come back to love it if I could fix these other things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So let's sort of follow that on a little bit more when we're, because we're thinking about the kind of the thoughts people have about these jobs. What reservations do you see PhD students having about saying that they want to do these jobs or starting to pursue these jobs? So once they discover they're a thing, what reservations do some students have?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: I think they have reservations linked to. How academia views these jobs. And then reservations links to how they personally feel about them. So the first group of reservations may be where people present things like, you know, it, it's very possible that they've heard their academic supervisors talking about the administrative bloats of higher education, that they've heard people talking about kind of, you know, neoliberal higher education. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And they may worry about how professional services roles and things sit with that. They may have even heard academic colleagues say certain things about, you know, say, be condescending about about people in academic related or academic adjacent roles, and so there, there may be reservations around that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And linked to that, there may be reservations that either they've heard people say or they feel themselves like moving into an academic adjacent career is somehow selling out, is somehow failing, is somehow becoming kind of, oh, you, “you almost made it, but not quite”, or that it's a kind of sloppy seconds. Is that a phrase that makes sense to people apart from me?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: It makes sense to me. The notion that it's sort of second best. That plan A is always academia. And this is plan B in some way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: That it's a consolation prize if you don't get an academic job. I think a lot of people either see those ideas reinforced within their academic community, or play those ideas in their own minds, because they still feel the expectation is there that you do get an academic job. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And how do you help people? Cause I can think about it. Maybe we'll talk in a second about how I would approach that from my sort of coaching perspective, but from a careers consultant perspective, how do you manage that with them, how do you help them explore that?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Mainly by diversifying where their information is coming from. So perhaps to explore a little bit, first of all, about where these reservations are coming from. And often it will come out that they said, someone in my lab said, or a postdoc said x?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It will often be people in their academic community who are saying these things or floating these ideas around. And it's thinking about, well, you know, who are those people? What perspective is that information coming from and what would help them to get a more balanced view? And usually that is talking to people who do the academic adjacent jobs, because they are doing it every day. They know the experience of it. And that helps to diversify where somebody's information is coming from. So that would usually be how I would address that, I think.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Mm, no, definitely I think hearing from other viewpoints is so important because even within academia there's not, as in, within academics I should say, there's not a homogenous view on these things. You know, there's an awful lot of academics who have enormous respect for all the people that support research and support the students around the university. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So even if you just talk to other academics, you'd get different perspectives as well compared to just listening to one person who says that it would be, you know, it would be plan B or whatever.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing I ask people is when they've got a thought that is causing emotions that they're not enjoying and actions that aren't helping them. So a thought like I would be failing if I took a job like that is I encourage them to work through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> - Is that thought true? Do I actually believe it or is it a thought I've inherited from somewhere else?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> - Are there other thoughts that I also think are true? So I could really enjoy this job, for example. So that might be another thought.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> - And then the third one, what if it's true and that's okay. So maybe for some students coming through, academia is plan A, maybe that is the career that they want best, but they didn't get a job. And what if that's okay. That you don't have to say that, oh, I never wanted academia. For some people that will be true. For other people, academia may have been the plan A at the beginning, but isn't by the time you finish your PhD. For others, they were never considering it in the first place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think sort of exploring thoughts like that, figuring out do I actually think this is true? What else do I think is true? And what if it's true? And that's actually okay. Can really help to kind of figure out the thoughts that you're having.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to offer you another one that I've heard students say, and I've experienced this when I was a relatively junior academic hearing people say it about, about supervisors in my department, but I've heard it since as a coach. Um, my supervisor will be disappointed if I don't go into academia. What advice do you - I'll tell you how I cope with it, but how did, what advice do you give people when they say things? Well, firstly, do you hear them say things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: Less often than I would think, but I have heard it, and I feel like it's important to acknowledge where that might come from. And I do think that we need to acknowledge the fact that the PhD supervisors and PIs, they invest a lot of time and resource in a PhD student. The relationship isn't like it is between an academic and a taught student. It's a different relationship. They invest a lot and someone might invest a lot in developing that person. And, um, you know, helping them grow in, into being a researcher. So the fact that this, this idea of being a disappointment could actually come from a, you know, a place of the supervisor really, you know, doing their job and giving you a lot and investing in you and then, you know, if you feel like, well, if I then turn around and say, I don't want to continue with this, are they going to feel like their investment is wasted.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to stick my neck out here and say some might, some might feel like that, and I think we've got acknowledge that that feeling and that that feeling may be out there, you know. Others won't. Others may feel that they were developing a person rather than researcher. And whatever that person goes on to do, they're still going to be a bright, intelligent, successful person who has a rewarding career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What would I do with somebody who came with that? Probably first of all, ask if they've got any evidence for it and go from there. And then either if they haven't, maybe explore with them where that's coming from in them. Is the disappointment is actually their own disappointment that they're projecting. Or if they do have evidence for it, they have had comments or picked up hunches or things like that from what people have said and done, probably go into that a little bit. See how they felt about it, and then see what the student's view is. What does a disappointment mean? Like what does disappointment mean for them? Because what's a disappointment for them might not be what's a disappointment to their supervisor and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: And I think, you know, acknowledging that it might be true, again, it's that whole, it might be true and that's okay situation. So one of the things we do a lot in coaching is talk about how we are not responsible for other people's thoughts and feelings. We get to behave in a way that we believe is moral and ethical and right, and in everyone's best interest and whatever. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But other people get to react to that and they get to have their own thoughts and feelings about it. And as much as we'd love to make everybody happy with all our decisions, it's not possible. And more pain comes from trying to make everybody's thoughts and feelings what you think they should be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So far more pain, in my opinion, comes from staying to do something because you don't want to disappoint your supervisor. You're probably more likely to end up disappointing yourself in the long term because of attempting to sort of micromanage your supervisor's thoughts about something. So yeah, there'll be situations where you are wrong and your supervisor's not actually even disappointed, but when they are disappointed, sometimes we have to go, okay, that's, that's your decision. You get to have those thoughts. But I'm happy with the decision that I've made. I'm happy that I'm going to be taking the skills that you've helped me develop and using them in a useful context and I'm okay with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because I think we also probably need to acknowledge that there can be some weird power dynamics going on towards the end of PhDs as well, particularly people where they're working in laboratory environments where the PhD students have got particular skills or there are ongoing grants and those sorts of scenarios. Where there's a little bit of competing priorities that the PhD student needs to do what's best for them in their career and the supervisors usually want that too. But often I see supervisors trying to persuade people to stay on for a while, to finish off projects, write up papers, and all those things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And sometimes that can be an amazing opportunity. You know, I'm talking to someone who stayed in the same institution her entire career, so I am not judging but being really mindful of for who's good that is and whether that really is in your best interest or whether it's actually convenient for the PI for you to stay on and finish that stuff off because you're really super useful and you know what you're doing is a really important thing to pick apart when you're kind of deciding what to do after a PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So much of what I coach on is about really figuring out what the thoughts you're having about why you would stay in academia, why you wouldn't, why you would go into one of these academic adjacent careers and why you wouldn't. And then think about which of those reasons you like best. So if the reason you would go into an academic adjacent career is because it sounds super useful and exciting, gets you to do all the things you're interested in, and the reason you wouldn't is because people might judge you for not having an academic career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might look at that and go, you know what? I prefer my reasons for doing an academic adjacent career. So you get to sort of balance it out. If you say reasons I would go into an academic adjacent career are because it feels easier right now and there's something happening at my university, but the reason you're do an academic career is because it's your dream job and you'd love to get there, you're just worried it's too competitive. Then you might look at those reasons and be like, you know what? I want to give it a year. Let's see whether I can make this happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So sort of balancing out what your reasons for picking each of them are and accepting that we don't get to micromanage everybody else's perspectives. We just get to figure out which reasons do we like best and then make it the right decision.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: That's a great point.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: So today's been super, super useful. I know it's going to stimulated loads of ideas for the listeners, potentially for people who are academics already. So my listeners are a combination of PhD students all the way through to academics and there's more and more people that are transitioning later in their careers as well. So I think it's been super, super useful. Thank you so much for coming in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you had to leave them with maybe one key thing, like a take home message about this, what would it be?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: I think I would say that the main take home for people is whatever you love about academia, whatever you've most enjoyed about what you've done in your academic experience so far, whatever that is, it is highly likely that there are roles, career routes, and other kinds of work that will let you do that thing very often, potentially more often than you get to do it in a traditional academic role potentially. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Perfect. And we haven't even touched on industry jobs. That's a conversation for another day. But people often hold up this dichotomy of either it's academia or it's industry. And I love that you've opened up this whole area where actually you can even have the bits you love, within an academic environment, within a university environment, without it necessarily being the traditional academic post. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if people want to hear more about academic adjacent careers, I know you've been writing about this, so where can they find it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Holly: I have, and, and you can find an article that I recently published on my blog about this. It's called “Academic Adjacent Careers. What are they and how can I find them?” And you'll be able to find that, on my PhD careers blog Post-gradual which you can find at www.phd-careers.co.uk.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Vikki: Amazing. And as usual, we'll link all that in the show notes, but it sounds as though they should be going to look for that blog, but also to have a snoop around on the website as a whole because it sounds like you've got a whole bunch of really important things. I know, I've seen it before, and I think there'll be things that are really useful for loads of people at different stages of their PhD journeys. So thank you so much for coming today, Holly. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week.  </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 26 Jun 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/37-what-is-an-academic-adjacent-career-and-why-might-you-want-one thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/36-why-we-should-be-more-proud-of-ourselves-and-how-to-do-it <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Lots of people struggle to feel proud of themselves, even when on paper they look really successful. In this episode, I talk about why this is, why it can cause problems and how to develop a habit of being more proud of yourself.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 36 of the PhD Life coach. First of all, I want to address last week's podcast. So last week was probably the most personal podcast that I've released so far. I was talking about the story of me doing my PhD, and quite a few of you have reached out to me to say how much you appreciated hearing the way that it was a lot of circumstantial stuff that made it easier for me to finish more quickly and how that made you feel better about the fact that things were taking longer for you when you didn't have that stuff in place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm really glad to hear that many of you found that useful. I have also heard people say as well though, that it made them feel a bit sad because it made them think about how their experience could have been different and how they wished it had been a bit more like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I just wanted to say that's okay. It's okay to feel sad that things could have been different. Often when we do coaching, people think that we're going to make all the negative thoughts go away and that we're going to focus on positive things, focus on being happy all the time and all of these things and that is absolutely not the intention of coaching.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I would encourage you to do instead is give some space for that sadness and disappointment. Maybe some of you're in an academic career looking back at your PhD experience or looking at your current academic experience and thinking it's not like that. It's okay to be sad and disappointed about that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We can choose in time to focus on different thoughts, other thoughts that you think are true, if you find that feeling sad and disappointed about it is preventing you from moving on and appreciating the things you do have, but we don't have to make it go away straight away. Let's accept the emotions that come up. Sit with them a while. And then figure out where do we want to go from here? Knowing that the situation is as it is, what thoughts do you want to have? What thoughts do you want to spend more time focusing on? And how can we move forwards from there? And the first thing I'm going to recommend, and the topic of this episode, is thinking about ways that you can feel proud of yourself. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I tried really hard in last week's episode to make it clear that even though I was saying that there was a whole bunch of circumstances that made my PhD be a lot easier than it is for a lot of people, that I was still proud of the work that I'd done, and I was still proud of the effort that I'd put in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And as I coach people, the more it strikes me that people really struggle with taking pride in themselves. I often ask people after they've had an achievement or something, have you taken a moment to be proud of yourself? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The answer is almost always no. And when I ask people what are they proud of about themselves, they usually have an answer, but they usually also make it clear that they haven't thought about this very much and that nobody's asked them that in a really long time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in this episode, we're going to think about why it's understandable that you might struggle to take pride in yourself at the moment. Why not taking pride in the things that we do can cause problems and some tips for how you can start incorporating more of this in your life. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So why don't we do this anyway? Well, I think the first thing is we're told from a really, really young age not to boast that we shouldn't be bigheaded. We shouldn't tell other people what we are good at or they won't want to spend time with us or people won't like us.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I think sometimes it is simply that we don't want other people to think that we're arrogant and overconfident or not as good as we think we are. That's what we fear, isn't it? That we'll be proud of ourselves and somebody else will be like, yeah, you are not that good. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often it's really about managing the thoughts of others and the expectations of others. And that's not something we should beat ourselves up about. You know, we're socialized into this environment where we're told, particularly if we identify and present as female or if we are a part of other minorities, ethnic minorities, for example. Society really tells us not to be above our station, not to make ourselves selves seem bigheaded and it's not surprising that we've internalized some of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also see, particularly in high achieving people like you lot, a belief that it's cause you've beaten yourself up that you've achieved what you've achieved. So often people that are doing PhDs or are further along in their academic careers believe that if they start being proud of what they've done, then somehow they'll take their foot off the gas. They won't push on to achieve things anymore because they'll be sitting around being proud and complacent.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also have clients tell me that because they know what happened under the surface, that they don't feel they deserve to be proud. So this is people who have achieved something but they only handed in at the last minute, or they've achieved something, but they did forget to say some of the things that they intended to say. You know, there's always those little caveats underneath that mean “Yeah, but I'm not really proud cuz actually this is the true story”. Have you heard yourself telling yourself that? It's something I hear a lot from my clients.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's also a bit of a belief that by saying that you are good at something, you are saying that you are better than others. That in some way, you being proud of something you've achieved puts down other people. So we sort of tell ourselves that we can't be proud of something because in some way that's being negative to other people.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final reason that I see is that we know we still weren't the best we could be. I can't be proud of that because it only got published in that journal and not this other journal that I wanted it to be. I can't be proud of that because it was okay, but I want it to be a bit smoother next time. I'm not going to be proud of that because I still haven't got the next promotion or whatever it is. So we see the next steps that we haven't achieved yet and think that that's a reason not to be proud of what we've done so far. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you think any of those things - totally normal, this is the society that we've been socialized into, it's the messages we hear all the time, and no one teaches us how to be proud of ourselves. So if you are feeling like, “yeah, I, I think all of these things or some of these things,” then welcome to the world. These are things that my clients are saying all the time, and it's something that I have heard myself say too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are not saying these things, I also want you to keep listening. So I've got a really interesting piece of feedback on a workshop I did recently where we were talking about how to write when you're struggling to write. And so I had made an assumption that people who were at a workshop called How to Write When You're Struggling to Write, were struggling to write. And so I really focused the workshop on what are you struggling with? How can we overcome those things? And really working from that perspective and this person in their really useful feedback said, “for those of us who weren't struggling to write at the moment, it felt like there wasn't anything for us, and it would've been really useful to hear more about how we can take the things that we do well and do it more.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I think it's such an important point. Some of you might remember that I did a podcast episode with Professor Jenn Cumming back in December time about reviewing your year in a strengths-based way. I'm a real proponent of building on your strengths. It wasn't something that I had built into that workshop because of who I thought the target audience was, but I am going to be in future because I think it's such an important point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In this context, I could make the assumption that you've only clicked on this podcast because you struggle to feel proud of yourself, but I know there's some of you who just listen to this every week regardless. So if actually you do find it easy to be proud of yourself all the way through, I want you to be thinking, why? What am I thinking that makes it okay for me to be proud of myself? How can I do that more? How can I make the most of those strengths?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, those are all the reasons I can think of why people don't do it already, but why is it a problem? Why does it matter whether we're proud of ourselves or not? Well, the first thing is, that when we're never proud of ourselves, we never reached the good bit. I have seen throughout my career, people always saying that they're going to be happy when they get to the next stage, and then they get to the next stage and immediately think of the next thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have had clients who have come to me because they want to get promoted, they want to get grants. They get those promotions, they get their grants, and in the next session they are literally like, “right next grant, next promotion, let's go.” And I say, “well, hang on. Are we going to take a minute to think about the fact that you've achieved the thing that you wanted to achieve?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It usually hasn't crossed their mind that there's any purpose in doing so. The problem is, what it means is we never reach that point where everything feels good. We don't create it for ourselves. We never reach that point. So let's start creating that bit where we feel good more often all the way through this process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I've seen is people being really reliant on external praise. When we never praise ourselves, when we're never proud of ourselves, we become really reliant on other people telling us we're good. And that can lead to people pleasing. It can lead to getting far too many qualifications. It can lead to to valuing the opinions of people that we don't necessarily even value the opinion of that much, but we want to please them because we want to get praised.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we can figure out how to be proud of ourselves, then we don't need to have quite as much external validation, and suddenly we're so much more in control of the things we do and the goals we try and achieve.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we're not proud of ourselves, we also accept unacceptable things from other people. So if we think we are not good at what we do, we accept it when other people tell us that. If we think we haven't done enough, we take on unreasonable workloads.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we also lack pride in ourselves and in our achievements and efforts, we also don't reinforce behaviors that we want to reinforce. So imagine you've just finished a hard day's work, one of those days where you get loads of stuff done and you know things are good. You could, and my clients often do, end those days going, “yeah, but I still didn't do that other thing. Okay, yeah. But now I need to do that every day.” And just generally sort of underplaying what they did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's far less natural and far less sort of habitual to end the day going “I am so pleased that even though that was feeling tough, I got on with it. I'm so pleased that I focused in on that thing that's really important instead of getting distracted by emails and stuff, I think I made some really good choices today.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We end up in this situation or at the end of the day, even when we've had really good days, we don't get positive reinforcement. There's no sort of incentive to have those good days again, other than this sort of added pressure to ourselves where we've like upped our maximal performance. We've made it so that now we have to that every day in order to succeed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And we know with children, if you want a child to repeat behaviour, you're going to give them attention. You're going to give them praise for it. And that's not telling them they're the best thing in the world, aren't they wonderful little Billy, whatever. I don't mean that, but if we want kids to tidy their bedrooms, we thank them when they tidy their bedrooms, we tell them that we appreciate it. We can do the same thing to ourselves to incentivize ourselves to take the same behaviors again in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we don't praise ourselves, we also just end up with a complete imbalance between the negative and positive voices in our head. If I asked you, what was the last time that you criticized yourself? What was the last time you felt like you should do more than you have or that you weren't good enough? I would take a bet that it was pretty recently. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We've done sessions before about how you can start to modify that voice in your head. But one way that's useful is instead of trying to make the negative thoughts go away, or alongside trying to reduce some of those, we can just pile in more good thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it can be really hard to practice and learn to stop criticizing yourself, but it can be easier to consciously add in more positive, to add in more praise, to add in more pride, more self congratulations and those sorts of feelings and those sorts of thoughts, so that at least when we're criticizing ourselves, we are all also nice to ourselves as well. In due course, we'll try and work on bringing more compassion into the critical voice, but let's add the positive stuff at least in the meantime.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hopefully you can see, and hopefully I've convinced you that it would be brilliant if we could all start to give ourselves a little bit more pride in ourselves, a little bit more pride in the efforts that we take and the things that we achieve. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But how do we do it? How do we do it when that feels uncomfortable to lots of you, when it doesn't feel habitual? Well, as usual, there's a bunch of approaches that you can take. These won't necessarily come naturally immediately, but as usual, we get to just practice them. We get to introduce them a little bit, try it out, see how it feels. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The first one is for people who are really uncomfortable with this feeling of pride. That's still part of your sort of inner beliefs are that being proud of something is somehow comparing yourself and saying, you're better to other people. We can recognize those beliefs and yeah, I can argue against them, but sometimes we just go, okay, yeah, I believe that. Let's go in easier route. Let's rename this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes when we see that we have a kind of longstanding belief that we just don't like the word pride, we can try and change that over a period of time with coaching or therapy or whatever it is. Or we could just call this something else. So one thing I'd like to offer is that you could call this giving yourself credit for what you do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If feeling proud of yourself feels like it's too far away, Okay! Let's give ourselves credit for what we do instead, and let's conceptualize it as giving ourselves credit. You could pick a different way of describing it if you want to, but it's a lot easier to try and change our behaviour if there's not something about the particular word or concept that gives us real resistance or gives us the ick. It's just easier. Let's change it. We're giving ourselves credit for what we do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to also remind yourself why we want to be proud, and I've just gone through all the reasons. Come up with your own as well. Come up with why it's important for you. Some of you might want to set a good example to your kids or to your students. There's a whole load of different reasons why this is important to you - try and remember those when you're trying to build this habit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When you're trying to think about what to be proud of, really try and focus in on the process. Often we think we can only be proud when we've achieved something. People sometimes have a brief glimmer of pride when they submit a paper or when they get good comments on their draft or they do a presentation and it goes out well, all of those things. But those are very outcome focused and we know that sometimes it's better to focus on the process because that's the bit that's really in our control. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when you're thinking about things to be proud of, see if you can be proud of the effort you put into things. Be proud of the thoughts that you chose to think in order to get something done. The fact you did something that you thought was difficult, the fact that you agreed to take on something that you thought was scary. These are the sorts of process things that you can explicitly say to yourself and say out loud if it helps.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am really proud that I did this thing that scares me. I'm really proud that today I felt like procrastinating and I got on with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or you can even be even less perfectionist about it. This is one I use a lot. I am really proud that when I was procrastinating today, I noticed what I was doing and I got myself gently back on track. And I'm going to do an episode soon about managing procrastination. But we don't have to have perfect days to be able to find little bits of the process where we can feel proud of ourselves. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That enables us to identify small things, which is sometimes easier to feel pride about. It means that we have control over it because there's always small things, but it also means we don't have to wait till the end. We get to be proud on the way. Often we want to achieve these goals in order to feel proud.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If we want to feel proud, let's feel proud as we go along so that we can enjoy that sensation all the way. And then let's just achieve the goals because they're important goals, to see if we can as a fun challenge, rather than as something that's going to confirm whether we should be proud of ourselves or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So try and remind yourself to be proud of things as you go along. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Focusing on the grey area. So we've talked about all or nothing thinking in recent episodes. It's something that comes up an awful lot, where we think we've had a good day or a bad day, we achieved it or we didn't achieve it. When you are looking to praise yourself, you're looking to try and develop more sense of pride in yourself, let's look in the grey. Let's look at the little bits that did go well in a presentation that you felt was a bit of a flop. Let's look for the parts of an interview you did well when you didn't get the job. Let's try and pick out the bits that we're proud of, even amongst something that doesn't particularly feel like a win. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And again, as usual, this is not a “just look at the sunny side of the life” situation. We want to analyze why we didn't do as well as we wanted to. We're going to think about those things. We're going to think about those things but first, we're going to be proud of the bits of grey that we did achieve in amongst the other bits that we struggled with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I want to say is, don't discount the things you find easy. This is something that I used to do a lot, so I'm somebody who finds it quite easy to talk, to present, to teach, all of those sorts of things. I also find it reasonably easy to write and that meant for a really long time, I didn't take much pride in any of that stuff. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I wasn't particularly proud that I was a good teacher, because I found it quite easy. I didn't feel particularly proud that I'd written things because I found it quite easy. And so, because I hadn't struggled, because I hadn't found it hard, I didn't really feel like something to be proud of. But over the years I've realized that I want to reinforce those things too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am proud that I'm a good teacher and I am proud that I can write fluently and easily. And just because I find it easy, it doesn't mean that I don't get to be proud of it. So don't discount the things you find easy and try and generate pride. Give yourself credit for those as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So when should you do these, you know, how do we develop this as a habit? It can be really useful to think about regular times that you might want to do this. So at the end of the day, you could get in the habit of writing down a few things that you're proud of that day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I talked a little bit about this in one of my previous podcasts about why I don't think you should have a to-do list and you should have a done list instead. You could check that one out for more details, but you can build it into a bit of a routine like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can start the day thinking about what you're proud of from yesterday to kind of set yourself in that, “oh yeah, I'm quite good” sort of mode so you can try and get into these sorts of regular routines. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another approach is that when you hear yourself criticizing yourself, you get in the habit of offering something you are proud of as a response. Say you hear yourself saying, “oh, I'm not very good”, you say, “yeah. But I'm really proud that I did this today”. So you can start thinking about these sorts of tactics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes writing them down can help. Set yourself the challenge that you have to come up with something different every day. So you're trying to come up with as many different things that you are proud of as you can. There are all these different sorts of practices, depending on what you think works for you and there's not a right answer as to how to do this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's just trying to make it more regular and feel more true for you. And that true element is crucial. So when you are saying things you're proud of, try and avoid saying things you don't believe. I'm so proud that I did this. Are you though or are you not? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you’re genuinely not, that's okay. Don't worry. If you're genuinely not proud yet, find the smaller things that you are proud of. Find little things to give yourself credit for. So try and make sure that they feel true for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another way you can try and generate this is whenever somebody says something nice to you, about you, you can practice just saying thank you. Often what I see when I give people compliments, when I see other people get compliments from others, is that people's immediate responses to play it down.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> “Oh, well, no, no. I was lucky. Really? Oh, no, no. There was just no other candidates. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. You know, whatever.” You don't have to do that. You can just say thank you. So one way to practice being proud of yourself and giving yourself credit is at least not minimizing when other people are proud of you or give you credit. Just saying, “yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you telling me that.” And getting in the habit of it that way.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another way you can do it is generating pride in others and looking for the small things they're doing that you can tell them that you are proud of. Because then we get in this habit. Partly it's just gorgeous. Tell somebody like, I was really impressed with how much effort you put into that. I was really impressed with how, even though you could tell you were nervous, you went and did it anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It feels really nice to say these things, but it also gives us practice of looking for the small things that we're impressed with, with other people, so that when we're then thinking about it for ourselves, we're a little bit more in the habit of looking for those sorts of things. Sometimes it's easier to see it in other people, and then we get to translate it back ourselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final tip on that is you can just go ridiculous too. So I think I've said in previous episode one things I struggle with is like getting stuff done around the house and that sort of thing, and I find it super useful to give myself ridiculous praise for tiny things. So one of the ways I've got used to this is being like, “I made my bed this morning. Check me out people. That's amazing.” And it's ludicrous but there's something about the fact that you are acknowledging that it's ludicrous and you are congratulating yourself ridiculously for small things, that gets over the kind of like, “oh, this is awkward.” Like, of course it’s awkward. We're being ridiculous. We're giving ourselves ton of praise because we put something in the dishwasher instead of down on the side. But it just gets us in the habit of thinking about these things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it has to be real. We have to practice, and it's okay if it feels a bit uncomfortable and weird along the way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> To finish, if you are really struggling with this, one thing you can do is borrow pride from somebody else. I am proud of every single one of you because you are working or studying in a sector that's under enormous pressure at the moment, where there's a whole ton of stuff going on with the strikes and the new REF and all of these pressures that are happening. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You are working and studying in that environment. You're doing something that's really important. You are listening to podcasts to figure out how you can be more effective, how you can give more to your studies and more to your work. I am super proud of every one of you, so if you don't feel proud of yourself just yet, borrow a little bit of my pride in you while you practice, and that'll tide you over until you develop some pride of your own. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I hope you have found today useful. Do let me know anything you've taken from it. I'd also really appreciate it if you could take the time to rate and review, so in places like Apple and Spotify and YouTube, the ratings and reviews and subscribers and all that stuff really makes a big difference. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please follow the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube, all of that stuff. Any five star ratings you want to give me would be amazing. Any comments. Tell your colleagues. Tell your friends. The listenership is already going up, I'm really, really pleased with who people I'm reaching, but I would love to help more people who are struggling in academia. Anything you can do to help with that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 19 Jun 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/36-why-we-should-be-more-proud-of-ourselves-and-how-to-do-it thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/35-how-i-finished-my-phd-in-just-over-two-years-why-i-wouldn-t-recommend-it <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People often ask me how to finish up a PhD quickly but not many people know that I did exactly that. In this episode, I consider why people worry about finishing quickly enough and share some reasons why it was possible in my case (sneaky preview - none of it was because I was cleverer or better than anyone else in my cohort...) I also discuss the downsides of speeding through and what I think people could do instead. This is my most personal episode so far so hope you enjoy!  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hi everyone and welcome to episode 35 of the PhD Life Coach. Today I am going to be talking about how I did my PhD in just over two years. To be honest with you, I've procrastinated making this episode. I had intended to do it sooner than this, but there's loads I hate about the entire premise of trying to do your PhD fast, and so I've really put off doing this, but I also think there is loads of merit in thinking about why you even clicked on this podcast. Thinking about why you want to know how to do your PhD that quickly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it's something I've noticed a lot. I get people messaging me, not my usual coaching clients and not the people in my membership, but like randoms off Twitter messaging me to say, how can you help me write as quickly as possible? And there's this real sense of urgency and this real sense of “we've got to do it now. How can I do this as quickly as possible?” that really makes me a little bit uncomfortable. And I'm somebody who's usually quite whizzing around on wanting to get things done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So why I decided I would go ahead with this podcast now is because I really want to think about why this is even a desirable thing. Now, I haven't click baited you into listening to this. Don't worry. We are also going to talk about the things that made it possible for me to get things done relatively quickly and what you can learn from that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there is also going to be a massive chunk of “why do you want this?” And a massive chunk of the kind of circumstances and privileges that conspired to make this possible for me, that mean that I don't feel that it's solely my achievement to brag about, as it were. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, as always, we're going to start with compassion. It is totally understandable that you clicked on this podcast. For some of you, you'll want to get your PhD done quickly because you are not funded and it's difficult money-wise when you're not funded, where the longer this takes, the more debt you get into, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other people will just feel like their PhD's been going on forever and you just want it to be done now. I get it. It's totally understandable and I'm not going to tell you that you should feel bad for wanting to get this done as quickly as possible. It's totally, totally understandable.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I am going to ask you though, is a series of questions that you might want to reflect on. So the first one is, how do you think you are going to feel when your PhD is handed in? One of the reasons people want things to happen faster than they're happening at the moment is because they think they're going to feel a particular way at the end. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They're going to feel proud. They're going to feel confident. They're going to feel validated. They're going to feel like people respect them. They're going to get treated differently. They're going to get treated as an academic rather than as a student. And the problem is, as much as we tell ourselves that those things will happen when we get to the end of our PhD, they don't happen automatically. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People don't just start treating you differently. You don't suddenly feel differently about yourself. I coach people who are early career academics, mid-career and senior staff, and all of them have concerns about how they're treated. They have concerns about how they feel about themselves. At the moment, it feels like the sticky badge you need is a PhD and that floppy hat, if you have that in your country like we do in the UK, but that floppy hat doesn't automatically bestow confidence and validation on you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also want you to think about what thoughts are you having at the moment that are making the process uncomfortable? So another reason people want the process of doing a PhD to be over faster is because they're finding the process hard. They're finding it uncomfortable. And I'd really like you to ask yourself why? Why are you finding it so hard? And why is finding it hard a problem?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe it's meant to be hard. Maybe you should feel uncomfortable. Now, I don't mean - as usual caveats - I don't mean that you should have to put up with poor mental health and all those sorts of things. That's not what I mean at all. But why is it a problem if you find it difficult along the way? Why are we trying to rush past that difficult and what's going to be at the other end of it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Are we assuming that what you do next will be easier? I see PhD students who are desperate to get through their PhD so that they can start their academic career because they're finding, doing a PhD, stressful and they want to get on with the real thing. And one of the things we often talk about is what's going to be different over there? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are doing research and you are doing some leadership bits and you are doing some admin, the stuff that you're planning difficult at the moment is still going to be over there. And even if you've decided that the reason you want to get your PhD done is so that you can go into a career that doesn't use your PhD, there's still going to be different difficulties over there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's going to be different challenges and this belief that everything will be fine once the PhD is done can sometimes just make it feel really “grass is greener”. It can make it really mean that we don't appreciate where we are at the moment, and we instead sort of fantasize about what it's going to be like when it's all done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also want you to think back and remind yourself what you wanted this experience to be when you took it on, because I coach a lot of PhD students who are finding it really uncomfortable, finding it really difficult, but who dreamt for years of doing a PhD. This was their dream, this was all the things that they wanted to do, and it ended up being hard, a little bit like at the moment, you are dreaming of what it's going to be like to have finished your PhD, and when you get there, you're going to find out there's going to be some hard stuff too. So really thinking about what did I want this experience to be and why am I looking to shorten it? Why am I looking to make this a two year experience instead of a 3, 4, 5, 6 year experience, depending on where you're studying in the world. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I want you to think about how could it be different if instead of looking for ways to shorten this experience, to get it done quickly, I look for ways to make it less uncomfortable, to make it less frustrating, to make myself feel validated now, to make myself feel respected and confident now. How would it change your experience and would it allow you to experience the PhD in its full length without wishing it passed?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also want you to think what you believe about people that finish quickly. So, in my coaching membership that I have at the University of Birmingham at the moment where students get access to two sessions a week of coaching, I have students who are writing up, they're into their fourth, fifth year. Some of them have been disrupted by covid, for example, and many of them have a narrative where that makes them a less good PhD student.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The fact is taking them longer makes them a less good PhD student. And I want you to really question that in your mind. What would you believe about yourself if you were someone who finished quickly? What do you believe about me because I finished quickly. I think I'm the fastest person I know to finish a PhD. I think. What do you make that mean about me?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because in a minute I'm going to tell you all the things I make it mean and I am absolutely sure it's not the same things that you are thinking right now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you think that finishing your PhD quicker makes you a better PhD student, makes you a better academic, means you'll progress faster, really query whether those things are true, because from my perspective over here, those things aren't necessarily objective truths. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So let me give you a little backstory. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Birmingham and in my third year I had to do a research project and I was allocated to a wonderful member of staff who absolutely ignited my interest in research. I had no intention of being an academic. I was going to be a primary school teacher, and those of you who know me can probably imagine me being a very bossy primary school teacher.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But no, I got the bug for research and I loved it and I was in a very privileged position that partway through my third year, my PhD supervisor offered me a funded PhD position, said, if you want to stay, there's a post here for you. And so I decided to stay. I graduated in July, 1999 - last century, I know I'm old. I graduated from my undergraduate degree in July, 1999. I started my PhD at the beginning of October, 1999, and I handed in in December 2001. So I handed in two years and three months after I started my PhD, and we had to seek special permission for that to happen because three years is meant to be the minimum registration. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to tell you a whole bunch of reasons why that wasn't about me, and I'm going to tell you a whole bunch of reasons why that didn't necessarily lead to everything being like amazing, high-flying career and perfectness afterwards.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But before I do that, I just want to say I am proud. I'm proud that I did my PhD. I'm proud that I achieved what I did within my PhD. I'm proud that I showed that I could finish something because that was something that I would question about myself. So none of this is about being modest. It's certainly not about being falsely modest and none of it takes away from the fact that I am proud of my PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not proud of the time I did it in because so much of that was outside of my control. So I accept a hundred percent that not everyone would've been able to do what I did. And do I take pride in that? Maybe a little bit. Not everyone would've been able to get it done in the time I did it, but it wasn't me and my abilities and my amazingness that made it happen. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was a whole cluster of circumstantial things that meant that that was how it worked out. And could other people have done what I did in my situation? Yes, absolutely. I would say that the vast majority of PhD students, if they had been in my exact combination of situations, would probably have been able to do it too. Okay, so none of this is to do myself down. None of this is false modesty. This is just genuinely, I want you to understand the massive combination of things that had to happen in order for this to be possible. In conclusion on that, my abilities, my skills were necessary, yes, but they were not sufficient. They didn't do it on their own by any stretch at all.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One thing, I was already there. I'd done my undergrad degree there. I was settled in housing, so there was no changing country, there was no changing university, there was no getting to know anyone. I was working with the exact same person again, so I literally turned up at the same place and carried on. Don't underestimate how much time that saves you. Are there down sides to that? Yes, absolutely. And I'll talk about some of them later, but it absolutely meant that I started running.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It wasn't directly related to what I did in my third year project, um, but everything was so familiar that I knew how it worked, and enabled me to start quickly. Another thing you might have noticed, there was no masters in there. I did a BSc and then I went straight into my PhD. And again, unusual combination of events. My supervisor didn't think there was any benefit to me doing a Master's. The PhD I was doing was a very interdisciplinary PhD and so there wasn't like one master's that would've absolutely made sense. I worked at the intersection between, psychology, neuroendocrinology and immunology. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I looked at how stress affect health. And you know, I could have gone and done a Master's in psychology or I could have gone and done a Master's in immunology, but we didn't really see what benefit it would bring for the project, and my supervisor was happy with that. A lot of supervisors wouldn't have been. I was at that stage in my life where I just thought this cool opportunity, I was like, yeah, let's go. Let's do it. I don't think I thought it through much beyond that, to be honest. but that's quite an unusual position to be in.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also, by chance, as much as anything, ended up with a pretty amazing combination of supervisors. So the supervisor who'd looked after me in my third year project, he was head of our department, which meant that he was in a position to just give me a PhD studentship. He had that power over finances and decisions and those sorts of things. And that also meant he had access to money and resource. So there wasn't any waiting around for grant money to do particular things. That made things pretty straightforward.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I was also second supervised by somebody who, at that stage was reasonably well known in his field, but reasonably early in his career. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So he was probably 10 years postdoc, something like that at this stage. Well known in a related field, but not specifically what I was working in. He was at that stage of his career where he had time and capacity to put into me. He had enough space to be in regular contact with me and those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also had the bonus, they were best buddies, so my head of school and my second supervisor, the other member of staff best buddies, spent so much time together, and so I was immediately in this really friendly support network where they saw each other all the time and talked about this stuff all the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They had also already established a relationship with the immunology department at the university where there was an absolutely amazing clinical immunologist who was insightful, open to the fact that psychology could impact immune function, which at this stage in the nineties, most people weren't. And who had access to all the assays that we needed, the technical support that we needed. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I was in this hugely privileged position of having like this perfect combination of seniority and access and resource and friendliness and social network and all of this that made it incredibly easier than a whole bunch of the situations that I could have ended up in. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As an example, we had lunch, so not the immunologist, the other two, and me and some of the other PhD students had lunch together every day. Five days a week, we toddled off to the staff canteen and had lunch together. 12 o'clock off for lunch. That was just our routine.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That is not typical. That is not something that you can expect to happen. Academia was a different time then. We're talking 24 years ago, which is slightly scary. It was a different time. So when people are like, oh my goodness, you finished your PhD so long quickly. I'm like, yes, I've finished it in a different world. And yes, it was unusual then. But the things that made it possible then absolutely don't happen now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Would members of staff in similar career stages to them now go for lunch together every day with their students? No. Absolutely not. But what it meant was I had constant feedback. I had constant praise and motivation and accountability because we were chattering about ideas, not in formal meetings where we wrote stuff down, but just while we ate our pudding. Because apparently we had pudding every day as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So it was highly, highly productive environment. It was also at that stage, this wonderful combination of a relatively small school. There was maybe 10 of us in my PhD year, something like that, maybe 30 PhD students in total, but we were a world renowned school, so everybody knew our school. We were really well connected, but we were pretty small and therefore got lots of attention as well. Again, unusual, completely different if you are like one little fish in the middle of a massive med school or something, totally different environment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My topic also was a whole bunch of things that kind of conspired to make it perfect at the time. It was a relatively new way of studying something that had been studied a while. It wasn't a brand new, I wasn't like, bashing through walls that were up, that this was a new idea that nobody believed in. Lots of people had been looking at stress and immune function before me. Nobody had been looking at stress and vaccination response, or a few people had done one or two studies, and so it meant that I was in a position where, people were really ready for this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There had been one or two proofs of concept. There was a whole bunch of questions still to answer, which meant that I wasn't having to convince people of it. But equally, I wasn't having to compete massively with loads and loads and loads of other people doing this. I basically knew all the people who were doing this sort of research in the world pretty much, and so when I was ready to publish studies, there were journals ready to take it because they wanted more of this stuff. Publication, it wasn't that it was easy, but it was inordinately easier than trying to publish things that are more saturated. Things that are more early stage and more controversial, and all those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was also in this wonderful balance where my supervisors were highly experienced in writing. They were highly experienced in the general field of how emotions affect health. They were highly experienced in statistics and all of these sorts of things. They highly specialists in the specific bit that I did, so they'd done some bits of stress and immune function. They certainly hadn't done stress and vaccination responses before me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what that meant was I had this amazing support network that would mean that anytime I had a problem, they could move me along, but they weren't micromanaging every reference I included because I knew the literature better than they did. I didn't have this sense that, “oh, they could write this better than me, or, this isn't good enough. They're going to think I'm rubbish” because I knew the area as well as anybody, and so that gives a sense of confidence. So having this sort of combination where your supervisors are enormously useful, but you're not in competition with them in knowledge wise, again, massively productive and super helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also meant I had quite a lot of freedom, so they weren't hugely invested in which direction this had to go in. They were invested in me and my success, but they weren't invested in, “we have to study it like this and we have to do this next.” So there was a whole bunch of freedom to pursue things I'm interested in, which for me is super important, but to also pursue things that came up. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that was one of the things that really helped this project move fast was the ability to be serendipitous. So we were reminded that all medical students have hepatitis B vaccinations and have their antibody responses to that (so how well they've worked) measured as part of their program. We were able to piggyback in that and just do a whole bunch of questionnaires. Somebody else was doing all the testing already. They were already giving them the vaccine. They were already testing it afterwards, and so we were able to do a really fast study by being able to piggyback on something that was already happening.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that was because we were open to those opportunities. We were at that kind of early stage where we could just jump into things and see what happened. And on that, the other thing that I was super lucky about was that these designs weren't necessarily that complex. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We were giving people vaccines, measuring their responses to them. We could get data collection done just over the period of a month or two. Yes, we had follow-up bloods like six months later, but it wasn't huge intervention studies. It wasn't accessing really hard-to-find archives. It, yes, we had to go through ethics, but we were doing stuff that was all like pretty mainstream. No one. We weren't sort of harming participants or doing anything complicated, and so it sort of just conspired to be pretty straightforward.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other way I was lucky - the studies worked. We found things. So it's enormously easier to write up a paper if you confirm your hypothesis, if you find exactly what you were looking for. And I'd love to say that we found those things because we made amazing hypothesis based on the literature, and I'm sure that was part of it. But sometimes data just doesn't work out for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I had that with PhD students later down the line, it becomes harder to publish when you don't find what you thought you would find. In my case, they all just kind of muddled out and it worked out fine, which made it really easy to write up and made it really easy to get accepted in places.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also use mostly standard assays. So those of you who aren't on the biochemical end of things, assays is how you measure stuff in a bodily fluid or anything else for that matter, and I was measuring antibody responses to vaccination. These were all established tests. I didn't have to do methodological development. I didn't have to make this work in my lab. Again, I've done all that stuff with other PhD students since then, and it's much harder when you have to go through all that kind of uncertain phase as part of your data collection. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We could send them to the lab and they got measured. It was super straightforward. So again, a whole bunch of reasons that meant this went faster, but weren't anything to do with me bringing this like brilliant thing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also wrote with my co-supervisors. So what that means is we literally sat around a computer together writing. I was always the one on the keyboard, partly because it was my PhD, and partly because their typing was painfully slow. Couldn't deal. I was the one typing and I was the one leading where we were going and stuff, but I was like checking it with them. We were brainstorming what would be where. I would do the polishing, do the editing and all that stuff separately, but that kind of initial thing of getting down a rough draft, we did it together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I still take ownership over my writing. Absolutely. But how much easier and how much faster is it that if you are going, “does this sound right” to be able to turn to your supervisor and go, “does this sound right? You're happy? I'm happy. Okay, let's go and keep going”. Sounds inefficient. Sounds like there was, you know, lots of people sitting around where maybe one person could do it, but oh my goodness, so efficient. There was no waiting for emails back. No waiting for comments. We would just talk about it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also was studying in a department where they were quite early adopters of thesis as papers, so I didn't write a thesis that was introduction method, series of results, discussion. I wrote a thesis that was a general introduction, relatively short. I had four separate papers. Within each of which we're intro method, results, discussion, and then a general discussion on the end. So what I wrote for my thesis was also what we put out for publication.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, we did that as we went along. So the other thing that sped this along was that by the time I was writing my last papers, I was already going through the review process of my first two. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so when I went into my viva, I had like three publications. And so whilst I was nervous about my viva, we knew it would pass because it was publishable. There was sufficient work there and it was publishable. And that was possible cause of the way I was able to structure my thesis. It also meant that because I was publishing in journals with a relatively short word count, my whole thesis is really not that big. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It was highly productive, but it wasn't that long because each of my papers are only like 3000 words and I have four of them. Bits beginning and end, that was about it. That helps enormously. So remember, one PhD isn't a set length, it's not a set thing. When somebody says they finished their PhD quickly, that doesn't mean they wrote 80,000 words. I did not write 80,000 words. I didn't write 40. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then from a personal perspective, I was funded. I wasn't funded well, but I was funded and I was funded enough that I could afford to live. I had a cheap housing because my mate's dad owned the house, so it was cheap. I didn't have to have another job, therefore, so I could work really properly full-time on my PhD. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I had a social network because several of my friends had stayed on. I was culturally similar to a lot of people in my department, which made it just super easy to fit in. It's not saying it's a problem if people are culturally different, obviously, but it can make it more challenging sometimes. So I had this enormous privilege of just being like, “yeah, you fit right in. That's fine.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was writing in my first language. So I often find people who compare to me and like, “oh, you did it so quickly. I'm taking ages”, are writing in a second language. I'm like, I, I can barely order lunch in a second language. I was writing in my first language. That helps enormously.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I did have one thing that could be considered a disadvantage, I guess, a lack of privilege, which is I had what I now believe to be undiagnosed ADHD, but actually in that environment, it really wasn't that much of a disadvantage. If I was doing a PhD where I was having to put my bum on a chair and do it on my own all day, every day, I would've… - I don't wanna say, I don't think I'd have got through. I liked believe I would've figured it out, but I don't genuinely don't know how that would've worked. It would've been really, really painful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But actually, if you take somebody with undiagnosed ADHD, give them an inordinate amount of support, an inordinate amount of attention and positive feedback, we get on really fast. And so I had this situation where I was able to write really quickly because I was getting near constant feedback from my supervisors, and then it's really easy in that situation to just crack on and do it. So we kind of benefited from the hyperfocus that can come with ADHD, whilst also massively compensating for all the things that were challenging. I didn't know that was what we were doing. Nobody talked about me having ADHD at the time, but those events kind of conspired to mean that I ended up in an environment that really, really worked for me and my needs. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also… now I'm going to say I'm not a perfectionist, and some people who know me listening to this will laugh at that. I am a perfectionist in the sense of I expect to be good at things. I am a perfectionist in the sense that I expect to be able to do everything and that be okay. So quantity wise, I'm a perfectionist.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, I've never been a detail-oriented perfectionist. I've never been someone who you can't take the essay off because they're tinkering with it and trying to make it perfectly, perfectly perfect. I'm somebody that if it's 97% done, it's done. Happy days, let's hand it in. And that really helped. So I never had that “Oh my goodness, is it good enough? Maybe I could just tweak this bit. Maybe I could tweak this bit. It'd be like, I've gone through it, they've gone through it. I've changed it. Happy days, let's submit.” And that massively helped as well.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I wasn't having to kind of overcome those kind of perfectionist tendencies. The other thing was there was a massive incentive. So how this all came about was I was due to spend the same amount of time as everybody else, three years, and then maybe a bit of write up, but the person who was a postdoc in my lab at the time - so that was another source of support that I had – she got another job. and so she was due to be leaving in the June of my second year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was just coming up to the end of two years. We were at a conference and she had handed in her resignation, and my supervisor said, “if you can be written up by Christmas, you can have the job in January.” And so I was also in a position where there was a massive incentive for me to get it done, but there was also a massive incentive for my supervisors to get it done as well, because they wanted me to have the job. They didn't want to have to recruit somebody else. And so there's an incentive for them to get me through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And, I didn't have to do job hunting. So loads of you are trying to write up your PhDs whilst also job hunting. I didn't have to do that, I just had to write my thesis. Now, I don't want to say “just” because obviously it was work, but when, when you're not working for money, I didn't have children, I didn't have any responsibilities and I didn't have to look for a job and I had tons of support, t was alright. It was fine. You know, there was a few late nights, but it was fine.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so again, as I said, I don't want any of this to be like, “oh, I anyone could have done it.” I don't mean that. But what I mean is any of you in my situation probably would've done the same thing. Anyone who is already a pretty good PhD student in my situation, could have finished as quickly as I did. This is nothing specific to me at all.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now before I go onto the bit where I do actually say, what can you can learn from this, I also want point out some downsides because people think this is all shiny magic. This is like, “oh my God, they're so amazing. You’re in job already, da da da.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, I started my postdoc position just after my 24th birthday. I was young. But there was a whole bunch of downsides to this. And the first one was related to that being young. I was in a department now where all of a sudden I was staff. And in my postdoc position, it was a teaching postdoc position, so I was supervising students and I was starting to supervise PhD students as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I ended up in this weird position where my kind of demographic cohort was the PhD students, but my professional cohort was the members of staff. And that was really hard. And I don't think I necessarily navigated it well. I was friends, like my social group or PhD students for way longer than probably would've been professionally advisable, who knows, and it made for some really blurry boundaries. It made for some really complicated situations. You know, I muddled through it, but I'm not sure it went well and there was definitely downsides to being so young in an academic role like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also had massive imposter syndrome. I don't mean in the sense of not deserving my job. I knew I could do my job, but in terms of believing in the depth of my knowledge. I really believed my PhD was rushed. I really believed that while I was good at getting studies done and I was good at getting them written up, I didn't necessarily have the depth of understanding that I felt I should have by that stage. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And some of that is the perils of working in interdisciplinary science. No one can be quite as, um, what's the word? No one can be an expert in all areas in interdisciplinary science. So looking back, I think a lot of it was by nature of working in interdisciplinary way, but a big chunk of it was knowing that I had gone through my PhD so quickly and it really made me doubt myself. It really made me over dependent on further qualifications.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So as an example, during my postdoc, I actually went back and did part of a masters. So I have a postgraduate certificate in immunology and infection that I did as a full-time student while doing a full-time job at the university because I was so worried about my lack of in-depth immunology knowledge. Did I need to, probably not. Was it useful, maybe. Was it driven from imposter syndrome that was caused by my thoughts about having finished so quickly. Yes. Hundred percent. Okay, so there's downsides to all of this as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another downside was that lack of a cohort and lack of a feeling of cohortness. I didn't really celebrate finishing my PhD because none of my friends were anywhere close to finishing. Most of my friends took at least another year, if not more, and I felt really socially awkward about that. I didn't wanna be “Hey, yay, I’ve finished. Come and have a party with me. I know you haven't, but party with me.” So I didn't really - I celebrated my family a bit because they were proud, but I didn't really celebrate with my cohort. It was really awkward and there were people that didn't like it and I found that really difficult. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Even since then I've been generally embarrassed more than anything. Because when people, when you tell people, they're like, “oh my God, you must be amazing. Are you the person that finished in two and a bit years? Oh my God.” And you don't get to tell them all the story that I've just told you. You don't get to tell them all the reasons why it wasn't because you were amazing, it's just a cluster of things and that you are just pretty middling to compare to everybody else. So I was just generally pretty embarrassed about it to be honest and tried to avoid talking about it whenever I could. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then there are some things that aren't downsides, but they're like, not upsides. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So some people are like, “you must have progressed so fast.” And I look at people in my cohort and I would say, I'd say I progressed middlingly. So I reached full professor, which I'm super proud of. I reached that when I was 43. Other people had reached it before me who were either cohorts behind me or similar cohort. So did it help me progress faster? Probably not. Am I the most successful person in my cohort? No, not by a long stretch. There's people off all over the world doing super exciting things, creating incredible careers.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So has it meant that because I did it fast, I went further and faster? No. I'm really happy with my career. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I haven't achieved, but did I achieve because I got that done so quickly and got on first? No. That wasn't what did it. In fact, other than the niggling doubts that remained in my mind about whether I was good enough or not while I was, whether I was well trained enough, after a couple of years, it just wasn't even a thing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is amazing how fast something becomes unimportant. I have the same conversation with undergraduates when they're freaking out about whether they're going to get a first class degree or a 2:1 or whatever. No one knows what, what degrees did your supervisors get? No idea. I have this conversation with some of my PhD students on the membership. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I say, how long did your supervisor take to write up? No idea. How many changes did your supervisor get? No idea, because it really rapidly, doesn't matter. Once you get to the stage where you've got to your PhD, how long it took, how many changes you had, none of these things matter. They're just not markers that are important, and that's why I'd really encourage you to be really skeptical about anyone who's giving tons of advice about how to get your PhD done really quickly, because it's just not an important marker. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what do I want you to learn instead? I want you to learn that you can be proud of things. I've got a podcast next week about being proud. You can be proud of something without taking credit for every element of it. So I am proud of my PhD. I'm proud of what I did, but there's huge amounts that were out of my control. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to encourage you to be careful what you wish for. Getting these things done faster isn't necessarily the dream you think it can be and sometimes it can create different challenges that you can't even anticipate at the moment. And I'd really encourage you to think, what do you actually want? You think at the moment you wanna finish your PhD faster. What do you actually want? Do you want a feeling of security? Do you want that feeling of validation? Do you wanna feel like you're enjoying what you're doing?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How about instead of figuring out how to finish your PhD faster, you figure out how to do that now? How can you make yourself feel validated now? How can you make yourself feel secure now? How can you make yourself enjoy what you're doing now?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because not only will that make things feel better, it also makes it more easy for you to get on and do your PhD as well. So ironically, it might make you more efficient in the long run too. But really ask yourself, what are the feelings that I want and how can I generate them now rather than trying to generate them by whizzing through this as fast as I possibly can? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Next one, everyone's journey is different. Some people do it fast, some people take ages. It tells you nothing about where you're going to end up. Everyone's journey is different. Focus on your own, not where everybody else is. I know I caused inadvertently a whole bunch of pain for people in my year who looked at me and were like, “oh my God, if she's finished, should I be?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I never intended to create those thoughts and I hate the fact that I did. They have to take responsibility for their thoughts. I know that now, but I beat myself up about that for a really long time. So if nothing else, reme. So if nothing else, remember everybody's journey is different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Next one, support is everything. This was possible because of the support I had, the scaffolding I had, and the amount of fun we made it. I genuinely loved every day of my PhD because we had a laugh. We had a good time, and we worked together. If you don't have that automatically with your team like I did, I want you to think about how you can generate it, how you can generate it with the team you have in tiny steps. Listen to some of my previous podcasts about building community and things like that, if it would help. Or how can you generate this in your life aside from your normal supervisory team. So if your normal supervisory team aren't providing this sort of scaffolding and support and cheerleading that I just fell on my feet and got, how can you generate that for yourself?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So that you can support yourself, so that you can scaffold yourself and you can make sure that you enjoy this journey no matter how long it takes. Thank you so much for listening. This was a really personal one for me this time, so I hope you forgive me waffling on, and I hope you found something useful in there. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Thanks for listening and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </span> </div> </div> Mon, 12 Jun 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/35-how-i-finished-my-phd-in-just-over-two-years-why-i-wouldn-t-recommend-it thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/34-what-i-learned-about-task-transitions-from-doing-triathlons-badly <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So many clients tell me that they struggle to transition between different types of tasks, particularly when it comes to fitting writing into their regular days. In this episode, I'm talking about my not-very-illustrious history of attempting triathlons and what I learned about "transitioning" between the different sections of the race. If we're going to time block effectively (and not just tell ourselves that it "doesn't work for us"), then we can pick up some really useful tips from triathletes to use in our every day lives. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 34 of the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, before I became a life coach, I was sort of a sports scientist. I say sort of because, even though I spent 20 something years working in a School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, which I adored, I never felt like a proper sport scientist. My PhD looked at more psychological factors and immune function. It wasn't really sport per se. And even though later in my career I moved into more exercise type research, I was never really your archetypal sport scientist. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that extended to my sporting abilities too. I'm what could very much be described as a jack of all trades, master of none. And one of the things with being in a sports science department is that what science is first and foremost what we do, there's an awful lot of people who are super good at sport. Really fit, you know, go off and do races for fun on the weekend and all of these things. And so I sort of found myself in this world where I could kind of do a bunch of sports, sort of, but I was surrounded by people who were amazing.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, that's a very long way around to explain how somehow, for lots of different reasons, I ended up doing some triathlons. Sprint triathlons, I hasten to add. Those of you who know anything about triathlons, sprint triathlon is very much the baby brother of the full triathlon. I never did a full triathlon. I've certainly never went near an Iron Man, even though I knew lots of people who did. But back in the day, many moons ago for a good cause, I did two sprint triathlons.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The reason I'm talking about triathlons today is not to try and pretend that I am the kind of person who just goes and does these races, because I'm really, really not. But because one of the things you have to do in triathlon is you have to transition between disciplines. You have to switch from swimming to cycling, cycling to running. If you are into triathlon, this is a whole thing. People perfect the art of the smooth transition, where it’s as fast as possible, moving from one discipline to the next and then onto the next. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really got reminded of this recently when a lot of clients that I've been talking to about time blocking said that one of their biggest problems with time blocking is that they get to the end of their block that they'd assigned to writing, for example, they hadn't finished all the things that they wanted to finish, and so they then choose not to transition into the next thing that they had planned.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So maybe they'd planned an hour for writing. And then an hour for some committee task that they need to do, but they hadn't got enough writing done and so they didn't, and then they didn't do the committee task and they get behind and they declare time blocking doesn't work for them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And thinking about those transitions really made me think back to my triathlon, my very amateur triathlon days when we would go down to the astroturf, we would practice running in our wetsuit, taking our wetsuit off, getting onto our bikes, and then dropping off our bikes and putting our trainers on and running. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If I learn anything in my time in the sports science department surrounded by people who do Ironman competitions for fun, is that these people take their stuff seriously. They hone it down to a fine art. And so it just made me think, what could we learn from triathlon transitions that would be useful in time blocking? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So today I'm going to be telling you nine lessons that I have learned from my rudimentary, very amateur triathlon experience. None of them include avoiding the geese, but at Windsor Triathlon in London, I would highly recommend that. I got delayed because there were geese at the point where we needed to get out of the water and I don't know about you, but we don't want to start a fight with those geese, but there's no, you know, so avoid the geese. There's an extra bonus one for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, nine lessons. First lesson. It's okay that it's hard. So sometimes people seem to think that if they find it difficult to transition between one thing and another, that means they shouldn't. That means they should decide not to follow their time blocking for the day. It's difficult to transition, so I'm not going to transition. I'm just going to keep doing what I was doing until I feel like changing and then I'll do something different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Imagine if that was how it went in triathlons. Now there's always in triathlons, people have preferences for which leg they like best. Most triathletes hate the swimming. Tweet me if you're a triathlete that loves the swimming. I've never really met one. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Well imagine if they could just decide, “oh, you know what? I'm only going to swim a tiny bit and then I'm going to do loads and loads and loads of cycling.” It doesn't happen. You have to accept that just because transitions are hard doesn't mean that you get to just avoid a transition. You're going to have to change task sometimes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's okay that it's hard and when something is difficult like that, we don't get to just avoid it. We have to practice it. And so if you find transitions difficult, then the first step can be, let's practice making transitions. Let's set up our time blocking in such a way that you are switching between tasks and let's just accept in advance it's going to be difficult, but you are going to do it anyway. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It being difficult is not a reason something has gone wrong. There's nothing wrong with finding it difficult, but it doesn't mean we don't do it either. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing that doesn't help is keep telling yourself that you are somebody who finds it difficult to transition between tasks. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but the more we keep telling ourselves that we are not good at it, the less chance there is of us actually wanting to practice it and give it a go. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A triathlete can spend all this time saying, they're not very good at transitioning from swimming to bike, they're still gonna have to do it. So we might as well say, “okay, that's okay. Maybe I find it difficult, but that's okay. I can get on and I can practice.” So let's turn this into a skill that we try to develop rather than something we just tell ourselves is hard and therefore we're not going to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing is to allow for transitions. Now, whenever I've seen an academic’s diary, including my diary when I was working in academia, we will go straight from one task into another task and we wouldn't leave any time for transitions. We know when you get your triathlon breakdown at the end, you get your swim time, your transition time, your cycle time, your transition time and your run time. You can see the breakdown of it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to accept that we need to plot in a transition period, five or 10 minutes between meetings, and do not tell me that this is not possible because the stuff that you have to do in meetings or in lectures or whatever it is, doesn't just happen to fit into exactly one hour blocks.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It fits into an hour block because you schedule an hour block for it. If you scheduled a 50 minute block for it, you could make it fit into a 50 minute block. If you scheduled 45 minutes, you could make it fit into a 45 minute block. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There is nothing magic about one hour meetings, so you do not have to have one hour meetings back to back. You can plot in five minute transition, 10 minute transition. In fact, this is something that I've massively noticed since the pandemic, so back in the day, you know, pre pandemic, the olden days, all of that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I used to walk between meetings. I would go to a meeting in somebody's office and then I would walk to a committee meeting and I'd have a meeting there, and then I'd walk out of that meeting and I'd walk somewhere else. I'd go back to my office to meet somebody. I'd walk to my lecture theater, da, da, da. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I worked out once that I was walking like three miles a day, just around campus, going between meetings and. Somehow there was time for that yet. Now that so much happens on Zoom, we often up using all the time right up until the last minute. End that meeting. Start the next meeting, and off we go. The meetings haven't got longer, we're just using that time that we used to spend walking between them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Reinsert that commuting time, reinsert that time that you would've allowed to walk between them so that you allow yourself some transition time. It's no wonder you find transitions difficult if you're not allowing time for those transitions to happen. Nobody boings straight out of the river onto their bike with no transition time, and you shouldn't expect the same thing either.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also want you to think about how much time you give yourself for these transitions. Sometimes we feel like we have to jam pack every single moment of every single day. I just saw a tweet today from Dr. Liz Gloyn talking about how if you've got five hours of meetings in a day, You're not allowed to beat yourself up about not being productive in the other two hours. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's so true. Sometimes we expect ourselves just to be able to transition from one thing to another to another. Even triathlete rest after their second transition. They do three things and then they rest. So thinking about how can you actually plan in short transition times for some parts where you just want to get going on the next thing, but then plan in longer transitions your gap between races, as it were, where you know what, it's perfectly fine not to be productive during that time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In fact, the productivity that's expected in that time is just you clarifying your brain, resting your body, having a moment outside. Planning in those breaks is all part of your effective transition strategy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing, is if transitions are difficult, let's minimize the number of them we need in a day. Sometimes we, again, we can feel like that's out of our control, but there are things that are within your control. So one of the things I talked about last week in my session on role-based time blocking is trying to slot together things that feel similar.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you have a couple of teaching sessions in an afternoon, for example, can you plot in to do teaching admin in between those sessions so you sort of stay in that teaching mode. If you've got a couple of committee meetings, can you plan to do admin stuff in between those so you stay in the same mode? Let's minimize the number of transitions that we have so that we can keep it as efficient as possible.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You don't see triathletes. Do a bit of swimming, do a bit of running, do a bit of cycling, bit of swimming, bit of right running, depending on how, what they feel like at the time. Let's see how it goes, know how long it takes. No, they do this, then they do this, then they do that. We can channel more of that into our daily planning as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tip four. If we're going to transition, let's make it as easy as possible. So those of you who have ever seen a triathlon, transition area, you'll know that the athletes like lay it all out in advance. So before the race begins, you'll find all the people in the transition zone laying out their bike exactly where they want it, checking they know where it is putting their bike shoes, if they're using specific bike shoes, their helmets, all of those sorts of things, the tools they need for the next section, they lay it out all nicely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So right down to having the helmet lying on its back so that the opening is upwards and the little straps out to open already so that you can literally just grab it, shove it on your head, do it up underneath your chin and off you go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So getting your thinking about where am I gonna need this? What's going to make it super easy to transition? This is something you can spend time doing when you look at your diary thinking, okay, I'm going to have a meeting there. I've got an hour to get that task done. And then I've got a meeting there. How can you lay out your work in a way that makes it as easy as possible to jump into that task and get it done in that hour? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can you make it really clear what you're doing? How can you make sure you've got all the things you need for it? You've had a quick look at it in advance so that you know it can happen in that gap. One of the things that people often do is they leave forms. They don’t know how long a form's going to take to fill in, and it's not until they decide to do it that they open it and realize actually it's really short or actually it's really long. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have a look in advance. What bits of information do you need to request from somebody else? Is there anything like that? How can you set it up so that you know that when you transition into that task, you make it as easy as possible? Connected to that at the end of our sessions, we can also make it as easy as possible for next time. And this is something that you probably not allowed to technically do in a triathlon, but I call it parking on the downhill. So if you've been writing, for example, and you know that you're coming up to the end of your session and your brain is saying to you, “oh, but actually I know what I want to write for this next bit, maybe I'll just keep going.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Don't keep going. Write some quick notes to future you, telling you what comes next. Because actually, if you are leaving this feeling like I know exactly what I need to do next, that's the perfect way to leave it. Because if you can take a few minutes to write those thoughts down, quick bullet points to your future self with an encouraging statement, suddenly it's so much easier to transition into next time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you'll notice in triathlons, people do this even though they're not returning to the cycling leg, once they start running, for example, they do have to avoid something called littering, which is essentially getting your kit laying around in other people's way. So they do, when they come in, they put their stuff back exactly where they intend to put it, so that it's kind of tidy and away, and you can do that too, so that you are then set up ready for the next time that you dial into this particular activity. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tip five. Triathletes know that those transitions are key points to look after yourself as well. So I mentioned that triathletes will lay out their kit. They'll have it all exactly where they need it, but it's not just the kit for the next leg that they lay out. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They also lay out their water. They lay out their sun cream, they lay out their gels, for example, their carbohydrate gels that they might use for energy. I would lay out jelly babies because I wasn't fancy enough to do gels and this was in like the early two thousands or something. So I just stuffed jelly babies in my face. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Worked quite well to be fair. So I would lay out my little open, already open, ready to go bag of jelly babies so that I could stuff some of them in my face. I say this like I did lots of them. I did two. Two. Stuffing jelly babies in my face was my favorite part of it anyway. They know that transitions are a key point for you to look after yourself as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So in your transitions between tasks, what can you do to look after yourself? Do you allow enough time to actually go to the toilet? Do you allow enough time to make a cup of tea? Do you allow enough time to actually just take a moment, close your eyes and remind yourself why you're doing this anyway? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whatever it takes for you to have a good transition. Do you put music on? I would love to hear if any of you use music to transition between tasks. Say after something that involves interacting with lots of other people, maybe you put some calm music on to transition into doing writing, or if you are going from writing out into needing to be more sociable, maybe you put some upbeat music on. That would be pretty cool. So think about how can you look after yourself in those transitions so that they become points of the day where you just touch base with the fact that you are a physical being with a body as well as a brain and that looking after that can make all of this a whole lot easier.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm trying to get in the habit of refilling my massive water cup thing. That those of you on YouTube will be able to see. Refilling that because if that sat on my desk, then I do tend to drink it. And if it's not full, then I tend to not drink anything and then crave Diet Coke. So one of my transition tasks is in between moving from one task to another is refilling my water cup to try and increase how much I'm drinking.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Number six, accept that you need to transition. Triathletes don't get to decide that they're just not going to transition. They don't get to decide that, actually, “I'm quite enjoying this swimming. I think I'll go round again.” When they've done the distance, they have to get out and they have to get on their bikes even if they don't like the bikes, even if they were enjoying the swimming, even if they felt like the swimming was going quite well, and so maybe they'll just keep doing some more so they get further ahead. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to just accept that there are times when we're going to need to transition. Fighting against it, saying it shouldn't be like that, doesn't really help us. And avoiding the task until you don't need to transition doesn't really help either. So one of the biggest outcomes I see of this non-acceptance of transitioning is people saying that they can't write unless they've got a whole day aside for it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The problem is a), those clear days don't come along very often, especially for academics, maybe a little bit more for PhD students. But once you are teaching and you've got admin roles and stuff, a whole day aside for writing is really, really difficult to find, and it's also easily disrupted. So you can have a whole day put aside, somebody puts a meeting in the middle of it and suddenly your day’s ruined and you can't write anymore. That's not a way to stay in control of your writing habit and to get done the things that you want to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe your life would be easier if you could just write all day, but if you want to get writing done within the constraints and the reality of the job that you have, maybe we just need to accept that we need to practice transitioning into it and out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> With that comes the fact that the amount of work you do in a slot isn't going to just tie up neatly in a little bow. It's not going to just happen to take an hour when I set aside an hour for it. So you didn't finish it. Okay? You didn't finish it, but you made a damnsight more progress than if you waited for the next time you've got three hours spare to spend on it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you can also just decide how long something takes, and this is something I've talked about in previous episodes, but just to remind you, you get to decide how long something takes. If I told you to write 3000 words now, you could write 3000 words pretty fast. If you weren't worried about how good they were, you could write them pretty quickly. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to decide how long we put into these. There's consequences if you take less time, potentially. The quality of it might not be so good. The scope of it might not be so good, whatever it is, but you can decide to do it in that amount of time, and that's where you get to pick which things do you give more time to and which things do you give less time to, because frankly, the quality of it is less important to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You get to pick that. Often my clients seem to think that it's a fixed amount of time that things take, and you just have to accept that and fit it in. No. You can do things fast and scruffy if you want to. If it's something that's not that important and you just need to get it done fast and scruffy, let's get it out of here. You get to pick how long it takes. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've forgotten what number I'm up to, but we'll just go with it anyway. The next tip is it's OK if your transitions are wobbly. One of the things that all triathletes know is that when you transition from cycling to running, your legs feel really weird. There's something about the different muscular movement, something about the fact that you were sat down even though you were powering yourself with your legs, moving into running your legs feel really weird and the wobbly legs can last a good few kilometres, especially depending on how hard you pushed yourself on the bike and how sort of accustomed you are to running.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So one of the things they used to tell us even when we were like baby beginner triathletes like me, was practice that. Don't just do the three disciplines separately. Practice running after you cycle so that you get used to that sort of wobbly feeling and you understand that it disappears.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The same is true when you transition. So if you are coming out of a committee meeting and going into doing some writing, there's going to be a wobble at the beginning. Even with the best laid plans in the world where you've written nice detailed guidance to yourself, you are probably not going to just go straight into beautiful fluid prose. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's okay. You don't have to. You can have wobbly legs for a while until you get your writing groove on. So sometimes I think we tell ourselves that like, we come out of this committee, we're going to start writing. Five minutes in, it's not coming. And it's like, “oh, this is rubbish. I'll just wait until I've got an afternoon free and I'll leave it.” And then we go and check our emails or whatever because it's uncomfortable to stay here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Stay with your wobbly legs. Stay writing really slowly. That's one of the things they recommend with running, is just you don't have to push it hard at the beginning. Just keep moving. Don't stop. Keep moving. Gentle jog. Your legs will start to feel like they belong to you again soon.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the same's true with run with writing. If you're transitioning into writing, you're going to be wobbly at first. It's okay. Let's just keep writing. Stick with the wobbly and you'll start to feel a bit more human soon.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My second to last tip because I've utterly lost track of numbers now is analyze it. Now triathletes get to decide what type of triathlon they do. Some people realize that they're really good at the endurance components of it, and actually they want to go for the longer course triathlons all the way up to Ironman. Others decide that actually they hate the swimming, they don't want to do triathlons anymore. They're going to do biathlons where it's just biking and running. Others, you can just do swimming and running. There're all different combinations that you can go for. You can decide that you are only going to do pool swims. I did one pool swim, one river swim when I did mine, and it's very different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You could decide you're only going to do pool swims. You could decide you're only going to do river swims, but not sea swims. You could decide that you are only going to do races where the cycling is super hilly, or you only do it where it's super flat. I'm a big fan of flat, it has to be said.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'd also recommend not having a running course that goes past a Haagen Daas and a Ben and Jerry's. I do not thank you for that Windsor triathlon. I had to run past those three times. Cruel, cruel and unusual punishment, that was. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Anyway, you get to pick where your strengths are and how things work, but the only way you get to understand that is by trying them out and then analyzing it afterwards. Which bit did you do better? Which bit did you enjoy more? How did it work for you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Often with time blocking and the transitions that come with time blocking, we just decide that we didn't stick to it, and therefore time blocking is rubbish and we can't transition between tasks. Then we sack it off for a while, until we feel so overwhelmed again that we listen to some podcast and they tell us to time block and we give it a go again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't have to do that. We can try it, and then after we've tried it, we can analyze what worked and what didn't. Maybe you are routinely finding that you don't finish the writing bit that you want to. You've sort of end up feeling like you didn't quite get into it in the session. Okay. Let's look at our diaries and plot slightly longer blocks, maybe an hour and a half writing block works better for you than an hour.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's okay. Let's try that. Or maybe we realize that actually what we need to do is if we've only got 45 minute slots available for writing, we need to have much clearer guidance as to what we're going to do in that slot so that we finish it feeling like we accomplished something, because what we set out to accomplish was just a paragraph or two paragraphs. So, we get to pick, we get to analyze, and then we get to decide what we're going to try next week. This doesn't have to be perfect. It's an iterative process and remembering that means you can kind of analyze your performance and keep going with it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final tip, and I remember this vividly when I was a baby beginner triathlete, people were giving me advice about the transitions, but they were also saying, don't overthink it. The majority of your triathlon time is going to be down to how fast you swim, how fast you cycle, and how fast you run. Yes, if you are at the kind of peak of human condition and you are trying to make up those hundreds of a second, that will get you into first place instead of second place, then yes, spending more time really perfecting the transition is, can be really important. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when you are a beginner time blocker, maybe just accept it takes you a little bit of time to transition between tasks and that's okay. So we allow for it. With practice, we reflect, we have a think about how we can make it easier, but let's just accept that actually the important stuff is the work we're doing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is why I love working with PhD students and academics. You guys do such important work. You are out there at the cusp of human knowledge, changing the world, learning about the things we need to move our cultures forward, to understand why we did the things we did, to understand hearts and minds and bodies and souls, and all of these things. You're doing such important work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The transitions. It can help stop using it as an excuse and just focus. What can I get done in this chunk of time? Now I'm going to get done something else in this other chunk of time. Let's learn from triathletes and particularly learn from the ones that said, don't overthink the transitions, just focus on getting the stuff done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I really hope that's useful. I would love to hear from you on Twitter or through my website, Instagram as well in LinkedIn, all these different places. Let me know if you've ever done a triathlon and what you learned about transitions and whether you can apply them to your time blocking journey too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So good to talk with you and see you next week. </div> </span> </div> </div> Mon, 05 Jun 2023 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/34-what-i-learned-about-task-transitions-from-doing-triathlons-badly thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <span> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You may have heard of, or even tried, time blocking before. It can be a great way to take control of your to do list and get things done, but it can also get really overwhelming. Role-based time blocking is a streamlined version, designed specifically for roles (like academic jobs) that have lots of different components. Check it out, and discover why I'm committing to NOT making a bunch of tiny personalised hats.... </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Transcript </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 33 of the PhD Life Coach. Today we're going to be talking about a type of time blocking called role based time blocking. So for those of you don't know, time blocking is where you look at your diary in advance, sometimes a week in advance, sometimes just the day before and decide what things you're going to do when. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It doesn't sound like rocket science does it really? But it’s deciding not only what meetings and things like that with other people you've got, but also what tasks you are going to do in particular time slots. It takes your to-do list and turns it into something actionable. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For years and years I tried to time block. I knew that it would probably be useful for me and when I tried, it would go one of two ways. So I'd either start the week super energized and enthusiastic, and I'd cram in way too much because I'd be like, “oh, I get this done here and this done here. And it's like, oh my goodness. By the end of this week it's going to be incredible. I'm going to have so much done.”  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And on those weeks, what would usually happen is I'd get a few hours into it, realize I've massively over-committed, that I've forgotten half the things that were actually going to take time. I hadn't allowed time to walk between meetings. I hadn't allowed time to have a break or anything and just not allowing for those kind of transitions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Within a day or two, I'd fallen off and wasn't sticking to it and then usually I'd ignore it for the rest of the week. So I'd sort of be like “Ugh, I'm rubbish, you know, I've sacked off this week, rubbish. I'm just going to do whatever, we'll try again next week.” And I'd beat myself up for that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Then the other way a week could go would be that I'd start the week going, right, what am I going to do when? And I'd be looking at all of these to-dos that I had and just feeling super overwhelmed. And part of my brain will be going, “oh, stop faffing about planning. Just get on and do something. You just need to do something. Why don't you just write that thing? Just get on with it.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And part of my brain would be going, “no, we have to fit 'em in. We have to fit them in.” And then it'd be like, “this doesn't fit, nothing fits.” And my solution to that would then be stop planning and just get on with doing something.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> In those weeks, I'd sort of rush through the week doing things, doing things, doing things, and I'd end the week with no idea what I'd done and having not really decided what things were the priority this week versus not, but just get to the end of the week and see which ones I'd done or not.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I did when I was time blocking was I would block off time to do my own tasks, but then when somebody asked me for a meeting, I would give those slots as available because I felt very uncomfortable with telling somebody, “no, I don't have time to meet with you till next week, next month, whenever it is, just because I had planned to do something then.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would immediately break those appointments with myself if somebody else needed me during that time, and I know this is something that my clients struggle with too. All the way through this, I would beat myself up about the fact that I wasn't doing this well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Those were my experiences with time blocking. Now as I've learned more about it and I've learned more about my coaching, I've realized there was a lot wrong with how I was implementing time blocking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was very, all or nothing about it. If you want to know more about all or nothing thinking, check out my podcast from a couple of weeks ago. I was very all or nothing about it in terms of I either stuck to it or I didn't. And as soon as I realized I hadn't stuck to it, then I would start to neglect it again. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I expected myself to go from not to time blocking to time blocking. Again, very all or nothing and so I'd time block every element and not really see it as a skill to be built. I just saw it as I'm either doing it or I'm not. So there's a lot that I would do differently if I was implementing standard time blocking now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when I was first trying all this stuff and I didn't know any of that, it just wasn't working for me. And yet I also knew that it should work. We try and avoid “should” words usually, but I knew in principle this could be really effective for me. I knew that I struggled with long empty days, so I always used to find the summers the hardest. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Everyone kind of like, “oh my gosh, shall we? So lovely. Once we get to summer and things calm down a bit,” I'd go nuts in summer because I didn't have that structure. I had long days. I was indecisive about what to do in them, and I found it really difficult to prioritize and I knew time blocking would help with that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I also knew that I had a tendency to focus on things I enjoyed doing or things that were urgent or things that were for other people. And part of this is my probable ADHD coming out, but a lot of this is really common amongst lots of people that I coach.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I found it much harder, and lots of people find it much harder, to prioritize the things that are for our long-term good or to improve the processes of how we do things, and all these things that are sort of deferred gratification type tasks. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> They were really hard to prioritize and so I knew time blocking probably could in some way help me with these things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That was when this idea for role-based time blocking came along. And so this is something that I sort of started thinking about when I was an academic, and I used it quite successfully for a while, while I was still an academic, and it's something that has popped back into my mind. I'd kind of forgotten about it for a while and it's popped back into my mind now that I'm running my own business.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is the idea that whether you, you're an academic, whether you're a PhD student, or whether you're a small business owner like me now, we have multiple roles in our job. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It sounds like your job description is “academic”, but actually you are a module organizer or whatever you call them at your institution. You are a principal investigator. You'll have some sort of admin roles within the school. You'll be a reviewer or an editor for journals. You'll have a whole bunch of different roles, different types of roles, that are all part of this wonderful world of being an academic.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> As a PhD student, you may find that you have fewer of them, but you might find that you are a data collector or a data analyzer. You might find that you are a writer. You might find that you are doing some teaching, some research assistant roles that are slightly separate, you may have a paying job that's a different role entirely.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can still divide up your professional life into a variety of different roles. And the reason that's important is that these roles are really quite different from each other. The headspace and the person that you need to be when you are reading current literature in your research area is very different than the person you need to be when you're filling in the quality assurance form at the end of your module for the year. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's very different from the person you need to be when you are marking dissertations. It's very different than the person you need to be when you are planning a public engagement event. These are all very different tasks, and when they're all on one massive to-do list, it's really hard to prioritize and it's really hard to time block. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now some of you will have already thought about that kind of golden hour principle where you pick the time of day when you are at your best and slot in the things that need the most cognitive load. That's the beginnings of role-based time blocking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what we're going to do is take it one step further. We're going to really identify what all of our different roles are so that we don't divide our lives into like the golden important things that we do in our golden hour and the rest. We've got more than just a role that's important and a role that's everything else. There's different chunks to what we do, and we may prioritize more than one of them. We may value more than one of them.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So what we do in role-based time blocking is we identify those different roles. We identify what the job descriptions of each of those different roles are, and then what their current priorities are. So you almost start to see yourself as a series of people who have these different jobs and have these different elements to do. And what you can then do is divide out your to-do list to each of those different roles.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What this then enables you to do when you are time blocking is you get to decide how much of your week you want to spend in each of these different roles, or how much of your week you need to spend in each of your roles, depending on what the time of the academic year is for you at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because it changes, right? With the seasons, depending on what area, time of semester we're in, holidays and so on. You might be able to change up your proportions in different roles, but you can look at over the next couple of months, I need to be spending about this percentage of my time being module organizer, this percentage of my time being a principal investigator, and so on and so forth. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can even use this to analyze your meetings. So most of us, when we look at our calendars, even if we're not doing time blocking, we have meetings and other commitments in our diaries. So one thing you can do is go through your calendar and classify them. If you use something like Outlook, which I use, you can change the colours. I know you can do that in, Google Calendar and things as well. Whatever system you use, I'm pretty confident you can change the colours of your different meetings so that you can see which meetings or which roles. That can give you a bit of an overview of what's going on in your week already. Then you can start to plan in when you are going to be your other roles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And having classified the meetings, one of the things that really, really helps is to go, “okay, I have two meetings on Monday, which are both to do with module review, for example, this time of year maybe, and I've got some marking to do. So actually I'm going to slot in some module organizer time into my Monday, because then I'm in that headspace for the day. I've got module organizer meetings. I'll do my marking in amongst that, and I'll be in that kind of module organizer headspace all day.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Tuesday, maybe you've already got PhD student meetings, so maybe you would want to slot in some PhD supervisor time or you slot in your researcher time, so perhaps because you're meeting your PhD students that day, and you're going to be talking about research anyway, maybe that's where you'll plot in some time, where you'll be doing things like your ethics applications or your reading or doing writing on a manuscript or on a grant proposal, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you get to plot in when you do which role. And the key here is you haven't got to decide exactly what tasks you're going to do within that slot, and you haven't got to decide, therefore how long those tasks will take you. You can decide that as you go along.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Beginning of the session, I am going to be module organizer. I look at my module organizer to-do list. I decide which things are the things that are most priority at the moment. I crack on and do them. We'll talk next week a little bit more about transitioning between tasks and how you can decide how long something's going to take rather than just waiting to see how long it takes, but you can just work through the to-do list for that role.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It takes away so much of the decision making of exactly which task am I going to do on Thursday. Well, I don’t know. Other things might have come up by then, mightn't they, it takes away so much of that it takes away from, but what if it doesn't take me that long? What if I then have something else I need to do? All of those things you can say, I'm going to do as much module organizer stuff in that two hours as I can.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> A few things with this. Don't try to have too many different roles. The first time I did this was towards the beginning of the pandemic. I was Head of Education for my school and Deputy Head of School, and I think I worked out, I had 38 roles at that stage and that wasn't including personal roles. It was a little bit ridiculous. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One of those roles was Head of Education. Yeah. Got a bit out of control. And that was stupid. I couldn't do anything with that. And so what I ended up doing was kind of consolidating roles together. I was a module organizer and that covered multiple different modules. I was an article reviewer and that covered multiple different journals, so I kind of clustered them together. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no hard and fast rules about how many to have, but I would probably aim for somewhere in that kind of six to nine kind of number. You know that there's that thing about how many numbers you can hold in your head. So like if someone tells you a phone number, there's a certain number you can remember back. That's kind of the number. You need to be able to think of all these roles. If you can't list them off, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, then there's too many.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So to give you an idea, for me, currently in my business, I have strategic leader, by the way, I've given them silly names just because it makes me happy. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I have strategic leader, I have content creator, I have, operations whizz, financial guru - told you I came up with stupid names - marketer, coach, and personal assistant to the CEO. And that's because during the day sometimes I need to get personal jobs done during the day. And so I decided to give myself a role of personal assistant to the CEO and I do things like dry cleaning and returning things I've bought from Amazon in those slots too. So those are my, so what's that, seven I think, those are my titles at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> See how many it works out for you, but I really encourage you. Don't have too many. It needs to not feel like a massive pick n mix when you put it into your calendar. It needs to be a sort of manageable amount.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I want to put in your mind is that you can do this in a fixed way or in a variable way. And what I mean by that is you could decide to have a weekly structure. You could decide, and a lot of small business owners do this, that Mondays is camp is content creation day, that Tuesdays is operations day. I coached Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or something like that. That can sometimes be difficult in the university world because we don't get to decide what days we teach and what days we have meetings and those sorts of things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But you might decide that there are certain times a day that are always particular roles, or you might decide that actually at the beginning of each week or the beginning of each month, you decide what role-based time structure works for you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's no rules here. I've literally made it up. You can make it up for you too and you can play with this. And that's one of the biggest things with any of these productivity tools is not to see it as something where you are doing it right or you're doing it wrong.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I teach a process called Monday Hour one, which was taught through one of the places where I trained as a coach and it's great, but people get really het up about whether they're doing it right or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One's not a thing. Monday hour one's not really a thing. Somebody just made that up too. But it's just a thing. I don't care how you do it. It's up to you. Play with it, see what works. But what I'm going to take you through is a bunch of benefits that I see from role-based time blocking, over standard time blocking that might be worth pondering and seeing if you want to give it a try. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So, I find role-based time blocking massively less overwhelming to schedule. You are not trying to go, “oh, there's this task, that task. Where should I put that task and we're going to have time to do that task? Or I don't know,” looking at your huge to-do list, you just go, I've got like seven roles. When am I going to do them this week? It’s quite straightforward. Everyone can plot that in. So it really reduces that cognitive load. Especially if you're doing that - I try and do this on a Monday morning, you know, you've just come back after the weekend. You're still trying to get your brain in gear, getting working on things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Rather than having to be like, right, “exactly what am I going to be doing at three o'clock on Friday?”, we can just go three o'clock Friday - operations. That feels like a good time to be tidying things up, closing things down, making sure my policies are all straight, all of those sorts of things. So it just really simplifies that scheduling process. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also means you can keep separate to-do lists. So if you could look to my side over here, I have a whiteboard, it's divided into eight at the moment, and I have my seven roles plus one corner is personal jobs, like ongoing big like house projects and that sort of thing. Patio building at the moment. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I have my role descriptions for each of my little roles, so what things that person is responsible for. And then I have a to-do list. I have them on those little cards, you know, the little index cards. And so for each one, I have it labelled up like for the month, and I put my tasks. So as a content creator, making this is one of the things that is currently on my to-do list, so I can already tick off Plan podcast 33. I am currently ticking off record Podcast 33, and that's on that card.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when I look at my content creator one, I can't see that I need to invoice that university that I ran a course for or follow up with so-and-so to see if they want to coach with me after all, or not. I don't have to see all those to-do lists. I only have to see the things that are content creator relevant, so it keeps me focused when I'm in that mode. I'm not looking at a to-do list, seeing a million different things. They're only the things that are in-keeping with this current job.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I can also at a glance at my calendar, see what proportion of my time I'm spending on different things. So one of the things that brought me back to this process was realizing that since I've been started doing this back in September last year, that I've spent a lot of time coaching. I have quite a few individual clients now. I'm doing more and more university workshops. It's wonderful. I love it. Super exciting.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I was spending lots of time in coach mode, but behind the scenes, some of my systems stuff, feeling a little less organized than I would've liked. And it was this realization, “Vikki, if you're going to run a business, you need to spend more time in strategic leader role. You need to spend more time in operations role. These are things that you're going to have to prioritize even if they're not necessarily the bits you love.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I love being strategic leader. When I'm doing it, I'm making all these decisions. I get really excited, but I still don't always prioritize it unless it's scheduled in. And so that was when I realized, okay, I need to actually schedule in time in these different roles. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so it can really help, now it's color coded, obviously. I can just look at my calendar and be like, okay, well this week's quite a busy week cause I've got quite a few university workshops. So I'm in coach mode quite a lot. But there's a clear block there, so we're going to make that purple for content creation to make sure that I definitely get all that stuff done. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My marketing stuff is sort of sprinkled through so that I can make sure that I'm kind of mindfully spending time on social media, engaging with you all and those sorts of things. So I get to sort of, see exactly how much time I'm spending in the different places, and from there I can make decisions about what I want to do in the future. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because with all of this, we're trying to be compassionate. We're not trying to come up with the perfect system that's going to work forever. We're trying to come up with a system that we think will work this week. Try and implement it this week, see what happens. And if it doesn't work, try it slightly differently next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> See what proportion of it works, which elements of it work. Because again, it's not a, it does work or it doesn't work. These things come with gradations, so being able to see what percent of time I'm spending at the moment, and whether that aligns with my priorities or not. Super useful.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also doesn't rely so heavily on predicting how long something takes to do. Now I spend a lot of time coaching people that they can decide how long to spend on something. A form to fill in. Doesn't take a set amount of time. It takes the amount of time that you choose to give it. Obviously there's some boundaries around that, but you could fill it in in 15 minutes. You could spend three hours on it, depending on the level of detail you go into, whether you correct all the fonts, all of those things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You do get to pick how long things take. But I'm also aware that people still get really hit up about this. They still get really, “oh, I don’t know how long it's going to take me to make this presentation.” Hey, you need to plan in some time as presenter in your presenter role, conference preparation role, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And you can work through and then you can prioritize within the time you've allocated to conference preparation, how much of it do you want to spend on preparing the presentation? How much of it do you want to spend on figuring out who else is going and maybe reaching out to set up some meetings, for example. Within the time you can give for preparing for your conference, how do you wanna split that out?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And suddenly that's a lot easier job than, how much of my time this week will it take me to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this. So it makes that time prediction A, less important, and B, just much easier to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is also a way to make sure that you schedule the less urgent tasks. Like I said, for me, some of this came about because there were just some basic processes that I needed to tidy up, make sure things were stored in the right places on my computer and all that kind of stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And those are the to-dos that never come to the top of a normal to-do list. If I've got a to-do list that says record podcast, which is urgent cause it has to go out on a Monday and that says, write something for your newsletter, and that says, prepare for that client and design that workshop and tidy up your client contract file, that is never, never going to come to the top of my to-do list. Not in a million years. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if I plot in an hour for operations jobs, and I just have my little list of operations jobs in front of me, then those jobs get done. Because I'm just operation dude. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm not coach, I'm not going to start reading my books and going off into my CPD world. I'm not going to start answering client emails. I'm operations and these are the tasks that I need to do.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So now I'm not choosing between fun recording podcast and boring sorting files. I'm choosing between boring sorting files and boring something else, so I might as well just get them done. Makes staying within those roles so much easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also enables you to keep your mind in the same vibe. So one of the things that I know people struggle with transitions, like I said before, I'm going to talk about this next week, but one way you can manage that is by reducing your transitions. So if you know that you are going to plot amount of time to do operations stuff, you can get into operations mode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like I say, you could slot it between meetings. Perhaps you've got a bunch of faffy committee type meetings, let's slot operations mode in between those so you can bang out some of the to-dos from those meetings immediately.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can keep going in that sort of, “I'm all organized and administrative” kind of mode without going, oh, and I'm going to plan for my presentation in that gap where suddenly you've got to get yourself out of quality assurance mode into, I'm undoing a research presentation mode and then back into school committee mode or whatever. Okay, so you can plan to keep yourself in particular vibes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It also helps with this idea of people wanting meetings with you. So if you are allocating time and maybe being available to students is something that's really important to you. We often have structured office hours for our undergraduate students to come and visit us. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe you want to have specific times when you are open to PhD students contacting you, for example. If they don't contact you during that time, then you might be reading their drafts, doing comments for them, checking their ethics applications, whatever it might be. So it's like PhD time, but if they need meetings, then you can slot them into those slots. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you can sort of have areas in your diary where it zoned off for PhD students stuff, but if no one needs the meetings, you'll do other PhD student stuff during that time. And you can translate this out depending on which stage of the academic journey you are at. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What all sorts of time blocking help with is knowing what you are saying no to when you say yes to something. So what I see a lot of people do with their diaries is put in the stuff where you are with somebody else. So you put in meetings, you put in one-to-ones, you put in committees, you put in teaching, you put in those sorts of things, classes, if you're still doing classes, you put in those kind of fixed things that involve somebody else, and then you have blank time.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The blank time is when you'll do other things. And so when somebody asks you for a meeting, it's really hard to say, “no, I'm not available”, because you can see blank spaces in your diary and you know you've got a bunch of stuff to do, but you kind of go, “oh well I'll fit that around. Yes, you can have this slot. That's fine.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's really, really common. And that's true whether you're a PhD student thinking you're saying yes because everybody else is more important than you, or whether you are a senior professor and you are saying yes, because you don't want everyone to think that you are kind of out of touch and unhelpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So whatever stage in your academic career you are, this happens. And the challenge is when you are saying yes to them, you don't actually know what you would've done in that slot, because you haven't planned it. And so it's then just, yeah, I can squeeze that in. But the fact is every single one of us is occupied 24 hours a day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I’m going to repeat that. We are all occupied 24 hours a day. Now, sometimes that occupied is sleeping, sometimes that occupied is messing around on our phones. Sometimes it's watching Netflix, sometimes it's just staring into space, wondering what life choices we made.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But we are occupied 24 hours a day. So anytime you say yes to something, there is something else that you would have been doing. And maybe that's something else is something you are very willing to give up. Maybe it's tidying your study because there's you who follow me on Twitter. My study is still struggling in a tidy sense. Maybe it's something you don't mind giving up at all. Maybe it's something that you really, really, really want to be doing and now it's devastating to lose it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But if you haven't planned it into your diary, you don't really know what you're saying No to. Whereas if you've zoned out your diary, then when somebody says, are you available Wednesday afternoon? You look at your diary and you're like, okay, well that was Finance Time. And then you can look at your finance to-do list and go, “how many finance to do your jobs have I got this week?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Can I actually give up a chunk of my finance time in order to have this meeting? Yeah, I probably can actually. Cuz that invoice is done. That's sorted. That's under control. Yeah, actually that's fine. I've had a look, I can fit that in. Or you look at it and you go, no, I've got 13 invoices to send out. I need to do this, I need to do that. There's no way I, I need that slot for these jobs.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so you can make decisions about when you accept meetings in a much more informed way, if you know what you would've used that time for if they hadn't asked.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's true regardless of whether you do standard time blocking or role based time blocking. The thing I like most with with role based time blocking is that instead of going, can I do that one thing another time? You're kind of looking at it in the round. You're kind of going, within this role, do I need this time this week, or can I make it work somewhere else? And I think that just helps sort of see the bigger picture slightly and keep it all focused. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I think there's a whole bunch of benefits to this. Before I go though, one thing I want to remind you, and this is true of role-based time blocking, it's true of ordinary time blocking. It's true of any productivity suggestion you ever hear. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This isn't a solution. This isn't that you've got some huge problem and this is the thing that might work. You know, the miraculous bullet journal or notion worksheet or whatever it is that some gurus told you is now going to fix your life.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Your life doesn't need fixing. You're just a busy person who's trying to do a lot of things and that's okay. So this isn't a solution to some terrible problem you've got. This is a tool that might help make some of the things you're trying to do a bit easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can do it a different way. You could do this for a while, then try something else. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing at the moment, but this is an approach that I'm finding helpful and that you might want to experiment with how you could fit it in to your life and make it work for you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you do decide to do this though, please make some promises with me here today. That you will do it with compassion. This is not something that you're just going to slot in and do perfectly forever. I'm not even sure what perfectly looks like. I'm certainly not doing it perfectly.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You will look at this with compassion. You'll see it as a skill that you can build something you'll tinker with, you'll play with, experiment with over time and see what feels good and see what makes your life easier. If it doesn't make your life easier, sack it off. Try something different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My final tip, as usual with these things, don't spend too much time messing about with it. I've spent a little bit of time working out my colour coordinated calendar, but try not to get too caught up in the process. This is a means to get the important things that you want to do done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The aim of this is not to have a perfect role-based, time blocking system. The aim here is for you to do the things that are important to you and to enjoy your life. So keep that aim top.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My other promise to you is that I am going to restrain the desire to have different costumes for my different roles because my creative brain went to, “ah, I should wear a suit when I'm in strategy mode, and I should have different outfits that I wear for different ones.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I am not doing that because that is not the purpose of this new system. So that is my commitment to you. I am not going to get carried away with new costumes or even, as my partner suggested, different hats. I mean, I might get carried away with different hats. If you make different hats, please do let me know and let me know how you get on with time blocking. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I would love to hear how it goes for you. I hope that has been useful and I will see you next week. </div> </span> </div> Mon, 29 May 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/33-how-to-use-role-based-time-blocking thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/32-how-to-seek-the-help-you-need <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <i> <div> <br/> </div> </i> </div> <div> <i> It can be so hard to ask for help, especially if you believe that you don't deserve it or that you should be able to solve the problem yourself or that there's nothing anyone can do to help. In this episode, I talk through the thoughts that you can cultivate to make seeking help feel a little easier.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Transcript </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 32 of the PhD Life Coach. When I was an academic, I spent a lot of time in student support type activities. So I was a full academic, I had a teaching and I had a research load for quite a lot of my career, but alongside that I did a lot of supervision. I was welfare tutor. I led on postgrad training and things like that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I was also a coach for academics, did a lot of mentoring and staff development on that side of things too, and one of the things that we really struggled with for years and years was people not accessing help when they needed it.  </div> <div> So we knew that the PhD students would really benefit from loads of the training programs that were available at the university. The staff as well, but they were really reluctant to seek that sort of help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And looking back, I think one of the things we did wrong, and I see a lot of universities doing wrong, is we responded to this by putting on more and more services. There was more and more training opportunities. There were more and more things there for people to access and we upped the comms, you know, we made sure there was emails going out, made sure there was really good awareness of what there was going around in the university.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But people rarely stopped to think much more deeply about why people weren't accessing these services in the first place. Sometimes we thought about the accessibility of it, particularly making sure that things were available during working hours, that people were relieved from their work in order to be able do it, that things were free and accessible and all those sorts of practical things.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But what we never really talked about was what beliefs do PhD students and academics have about seeking help that are barriers to them engaging with this sort of help. And so that's what we're going to think about today, is what beliefs do we need to develop in ourselves or remind ourselves if we already believe them, that will make it more likely that we'll seek help when we need it. </div> <div> And we're focusing on that more positive side. We're not thinking about what thoughts are a barrier. We're thinking about what thoughts can I try and cultivate? What thoughts can I try and pay more attention to, to make it more likely that I will seek and get the help I need? And so today is a bunch of thoughts that you might want to hang onto. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Some of them, you might already be thinking, some of them you might feel like you completely disagree with. Let's go. You can always let me know in the comments what you think.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the first one is really fundamental to this, is it's okay to have a problem. Often, if people are struggling with something, they make it mean something intrinsic about them. They make it mean that they're not good enough to be doing their PhD, and someone will find out that whole imposter syndrome thing that we talked about a couple of episodes ago. I remember having a senior member of staff say to me when I was relatively junior, “I'm just not sure you're coping at the moment”, and I was mortified, absolutely mortified. </div> <div> The truth was he was right. I was absolutely drowning in about 4 million different things, but I was so embarrassed that he had said this and I made it mean something about me. I made it mean that he was telling me that I wasn't good enough, that I couldn't cope in this environment. But when we can normalize that it's okay to have a problem, that everybody needs to seek support at some point, suddenly it becomes a lot easier because seeking support doesn't mean admitting to some weakness or failing in yourself. It just means that now's the time that you need some outside input, whether that's from a practical point of view, an emotional point of view, or whatever it might need to be. So we need to remind ourselves that it's okay to have a problem.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Linked to that is it's okay to need help to solve that problem. Sometimes people think it's okay to have a problem, but only if they solve it entirely themselves. When I was a welfare tutor, I used to beg students to access wellbeing services. They're like, “no, no, I think I'm doing okay. I think I can work through this. It'll be okay. It'll be okay.” It's not a problem to need somebody to help you solve a problem. People have different skills, people have different experiences. Sometimes they're not even any better at it than you. They're just somebody other than you. So they can look at your brain from the outside. Same as you can help other people, other people who aren't even better at it than you can help you just because it's not their mess.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's like, have you ever been around to somebody's house and like help them tidy up. So much easier to clear up somebody else's house because you've got no sort of shame or anything like that attached to the mess. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can just help them clear it up. Whereas when we try and clear up our own houses, it is all mixed up in a, “oh, I should have done this before. Oh, I'm so lazy, I should be better, blah, blah, blah.” Yeah, somebody else's problems infinitely easier to solve and give ideas for. So we need to believe that it's okay to have a problem and it's okay to need somebody else to help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> None of those things mean anything about us and our abilities. I see that just from the range of people I coach. You know, if you are a PhD student listening to this, I coach people like your supervisor. I coach people like your boss and all of those people have the same sorts of problems and have the same sorts of challenges every day. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's literally amazing. The parallels there are between first year PhD students and senior academics in terms of the stuff we coach on, it's all the same stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also have to believe that we have the capacity to seek help. So one of the things I see most regularly is people saying that they haven't got time to access coaching. They haven't got time to go on a workshop to help them with something. And it reminds me a lot of a book that I read. It's a very cheesy self-help book, so please forgive me, but one of the chapters in it really stuck with me. It's Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and the final chapter is about sharpening the saw.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So the seventh habit is, what's called “sharpen the saw”, and that's a story of a man who is cutting down a tree, and he had a very blunt saw that he was using to cut down the tree, and somebody walked past and saw he was using a blunt saw and said, “why don't you. Take a moment and just sharpen your sore cuz it'll go so much faster.” And he said, I can't. I need to finish cutting down this tree. So he kept on going. He didn't take that time to sharpen his saw.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I think a very similar analogy is true for seeking help. If you tell yourself you haven't got time to seek help, chances are everything else is going to take longer and you are going to end up with less time. We always can have time to seek help if we choose to put it to the top of the list. And so often seeking help will speed up everything else that we have to do. So we need to believe that we have the capacity and the time to seek help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We also need to believe that other people seek help. Again, One of the things is I used to tell my students who have big personal issues a lot was that other people used extensions. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes we have this narrative that students get extensions all over the place and they're, you know, they try and lie about who they're granny dying in order to get an extension. In my experience, the exact opposite was the truth. The people that had serious things going on didn't want any special treatment. They didn't believe that other people accessed that help, and they thought, therefore, that they shouldn't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We need to believe, and I want to try and convince you, that other people seek help. Other people go to those workshops to try and write more effectively. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Other people go to time management workshops. Other people access wellbeing services. Other people get coaching. I know because I've been on both sides of it. I've supported people through it. I've delivered it. I've received it myself. Other people seek help. You're not gonna be a strange special unicorn if you go and seek help. People are using this help all the time, and you can access it too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing we need to believe is that a problem can be solved, or at least that a problem can be improved. And this can be sometimes hard to believe because when we don't really understand what a solution could be or how muchjust some support with a problem can help, then we often tell ourselves, well, there's no point. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I see it with academics quite a lot. So people I interact with on Twitter quite regularly will say, “ well, you can't take my workload away. So I don't really see the point in coaching. I have too much to do. That's what's causing my stress. And so I don't really see the point.” And what it really underestimates is how much it can help with other things, even in the absence of reducing your actual workload.  </div> <div> How can we make your workload feel less? How can we get your workload so that it can go through faster, more efficiently? How can we make it so that you're not beating yourself up while you do it?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> When we believe that a problem can't be solved, we then don't seek help that could help us solve it in ways we hadn't even anticipated. One extra tip I would add to this is that a specific problem can be solved. So if you are ever accessing support and you want to go and ask somebody for help, the more specific you can be about what the problem is, the far easier it is for them to help you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you go to somebody and say, “I'm really rubbish at writing”, then that can be a bit of a struggle to help you with. We might be able to refer you to particular courses, but it's very hard to help with very large, generalized problems like that.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> However, if you say, I'm struggling with writing because I don’t know where to start on my first draft, or, I struggle with writing because I can get my first draft all down, but then I'm not very good at editing and I don't really understand what the process is, suddenly so much easier to help you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So a problem can be solved. I want you to remind yourself any problem can be solved or can be made easier. Let's not go as far as solved necessarily, but any problem can be improved. And a specific problem can be improved the easiest. Another thing that we need to believe is that there's a range of people who might be able to support us. Often people believe that it has to be their supervisor who helps them if they're a PhD student, has to be your principal investigator if you're a postdoc, it has to be your head of school, if you are an academic, And so on. And if that person isn't somebody that you are willing to talk to, often you can feel like there's no one who will help you.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If it's somebody who you don't feel like has the skills….So one thing I see quite a lot in my PhD coaching program is students whose research has kind of developed in a particular direction that means it's not necessarily right in the core expertise of their supervisor, and they feel a bit lost that they're suddenly doing qualitative research and their supervisor isn't a qualitative researcher and they don't have in their words, anyone to help them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to believe that there are a whole range of people that can support you. Look around your department. Who else is there in your department who has those specific skills? And it goes back to that specific problem. The more you can get it to a really specific problem, the easier it is to find the right person. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There might be peers who have done this before. There might be people who are more senior to you who have done this before. There might be specific courses on that particular thing. You might be able to access people from different universities. You might be able to approach people on social media to give advice on particular topics. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's a whole range of people and a whole range of ways that you can access help. And remember, help doesn't have to be one-to-one talking with somebody. Help can be finding the right article that will push you in the right direction. A book, an online course. All these different types of things are sources of help available to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the more you can believe that someone somewhere will be able to help me with this and that it's perfectly valid to seek help from other people, the easier it is to access that help.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You also need to believe that you can explain what the problem is. Now, I said that you need to be specific about your problem. Sometimes it's not that straightforward. Sometimes it's hard to explain exactly what's wrong, and so we need to encourage ourselves that we can figure out what the story is. We can spend some time thinking through, “okay, what is the problem? I know it feels like everything's terrible at the moment, but I can help myself to work it through. I can talk it through with somebody I love and figure out what's the specific problem here. And once I've got it, once I've figured that out, it'll be so much easier to explain to somebody else.” </div> <div> And then when I explain it to somebody else, maybe take, you know, a few notes with me of the key things that I want to make sure that I say we can learn how to explain the problem to somebody else. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes people are really worried about, “oh, but you know, oh, I just won't explain it right. It always sounds silly when I say it out loud.” And those are the thoughts again, that we can work on. We can explain this in a way that somebody will understand. </div> <div> We need to believe that the person that we are speaking to won't judge us, or at minimum, we need to believe that if they do judge us, it doesn't matter. And this is a really important one. There's a ton of research that shows that people are less likely to seek support for mental health problems because of stigma and a fear of judgment from the people that they're seeking help from. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you believe that people will judge you for seeking whatever sort of support you might need, then we need to start building little bridges as to how we can move you towards believing that that will be okay. One, I would encourage you to think is, not everyone will judge me for this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Somebody won't judge me for this. And that kind of encourages us away from the all or nothing thinking that I was talking about in last week's podcast and towards this idea that, yeah, maybe some people will judge you. And maybe we'll be able to guess that in advance and avoid talking to those people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Maybe we won't, but maybe we'll end up getting judged, but that's okay. We can look after ourselves. Or maybe we can figure out who we think is our best chance of somebody not judging us. Often, if it's specifically within their role to support you, they're much more, much less likely to judge you. If they have specific expertise in the area that you are interested in, they're much less likely to judge you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the key to remember here is that all of this time that you are not seeking help because somebody might judge you, you are judging yourself. You are judging yourself as not important enough to seek help, not deserving of that help. So let's stop judging ourselves, stop making assumptions about who will judge us and figure out who's the person who's least likely to judge us that I feel most comfortable talking to, and see if we can talk to them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thought that I want you to cultivate is that it is never too early or too late to ask for help. Sometimes people say, “oh, well just give it a bit more time, see if I can figure it out,” and that can sound super independent and it can sound like, you know, really problem solving. But sometimes it is just you procrastinating being a little bit vulnerable, where actually if you seek support earlier on, then it may be that you can nip problems in the bud before they get any bigger.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, other people say it’s late to seek support now I'm graduating in six months, you know, or I'm leaving my job at the university in two months time. It's no point seeking support now. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It is never too early and it is never too late to seek help. At minimum, they can help you in the immediate time and they can help you for things in the future. You can learn stuff that will help you with parallel issues that you may experience in the future. It's never too early. It's never too late. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's kind of related to another point that I wanted to make, which is that we seem to fetishize in our society people solving things for themselves, you know, the “independence is king”. So often people are reluctant to ask for help because they're determined to sort it out for themselves.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I want to really remind you that asking for help doesn't mean you wouldn't have worked it out. People sometimes think you only ask for help when you're sure you won't work it out yourself. Sometimes, why not ask for help as you go along? Why not ask for help as a confirmatory thing? “I think I would do this. What do you think? This is the solution I've come up with so far, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you are somebody who really worries that you should be more self-sufficient and solve problems for yourself, ask for help by telling them what you are thinking you are going to do and get their opinion on that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That way you are helping yourself, but you are also allowing others to give you input so you'll develop further and faster.  </div> <div> I have two more points and these are probably the two most important thoughts for you to cultivate. The first one is that seeking help is self-reliance. We've built this thing where people have to be independent, they have to look after themselves, and that's what we respect and that's what we want to be able to do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But seeking help is part of supporting yourself. Seeking help doesn't make you weaker. Seeking help is you building a scaffold around yourself in order to support yourself to grow. Seeking help, generating the thoughts and beliefs in your mind that you need to in order to seek that help, is part of self-reliance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's knowing yourself. It's knowing the specific challenges that you are experiencing and the specific people who might be able to help and taking those and putting them in place so that you can create this like nurturing space that are going to help you become everything that you want to be. Seeking help is self-reliance.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And finally, and this one is probably the hardest of all for some people, and that is that you deserve help. Sometimes people just don't believe that they deserve help. They believe they should be able to do this themselves, and they believe that other people are busy. They haven't got time to help me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You deserve help. Whether you are a PhD student or a full professor, or anything in between, you are doing something really hard. There is no way in the world that you should be trying to do this without appropriate mental health support, without appropriate coaching and without the sort of specialist, whether it's life skills or research skills training that you need. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is hard. You deserve help. Please, if you believe nothing else, please believe that you deserve help. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This final thought, that you deserve help, is the most important to cultivate if some of the others didn't feel true to you today. So if when I said that it's okay to have a problem and that people won't judge you - if those things don't feel true to you. If you feel like you shouldn't have this problem. You should be better than that. You shouldn't need support, but other people probably will judge you.  </div> <div> That's okay. You've probably had experiences in the past that have reinforced that, and now by keep thinking that thought, you are reinforcing all those memories. So it's okay if you're finding those ones hard to believe. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Please start from “you deserve help”, even if you think there's no one that can help you, even if you think your problems can't be solved, please believe that you deserve help and use that to help you take the tiny stepping stones towards getting the support that you deserve. I hope that's helpful. I would love to hear if any of you reach out for support from anybody at all on the basis of listening to this episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's so important. Thank you all for listening and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 22 May 2023 09:27:21 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/32-how-to-seek-the-help-you-need Getting support thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/31-how-to-spot-and-stop-all-or-nothing-thinking <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <i> <div> <br/> </div> </i> </div> <div> <i> If you find yourself thinking that everyone else has it together, or that you'll never finish your paper, or that you always procrastinate, this is the episode for you. These are examples of "all-or-nothing thinking" where we take a really black and white view on the world and forget to see all the shades of grey. The problem with all-or-nothing thinking is that it feels pretty rubbish, encourages  us to focus on our "fails", and makes it harder to change our behaviour. In this episode, I help you figure out how to spot all-or-nothing thinking in yourself, and give you some tips to deal with it.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> *Important note. People with anxiety or depression may experience a lot of all-or-nothing thinking. If you have mental health conditions like these, you may wish to work on your all-or-nothing thinking with your counsellor or other clinical practitioner, so that they can help you uncover some of the root causes and help you process any trauma safely. This episode is aimed at people who are finding that they're increasing their own stress a bit with some all-or-nothing thinking and who would like to learn some techniques to move their goals forward.  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Transcript </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode 31 of the PhD Life Coach. Today we're going to be thinking about all or nothing thinking. I used to tell myself a lot that I never stick to anything. That was a phrase that went around my head, more than I can to admit. And whether it was a new planning system for work or an exercise regime or some healthy eating plan, I would have a go and I would tell myself that I'm going to do it this time. It's going to be different. And then when I inevitably stopped, I would tell myself, well, you never stick to anything, do you?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And it was just a thought that I accepted as completely true. I was someone who never stuck to anything, and it wasn't until I started getting coaching and really looking at the power of my thoughts and thinking about where they came from, that I realized how much that thought’s not true and not helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a really all or nothing thought. Notice that “never” word in there. I never stick to anything, not. I sometimes find it difficult to stick to this, but not that. I stick to things in this circumstances, but not in those circumstances. What does “stick to” even mean? What level of compliance counts as sticking to, but no, it was an absolute statement that I never stick to things.   <span> Absolute classic, all or nothing thinking. It's the same as thinking “I always got distracted”, which is another one I used to tell myself a lot. I never stick to anything. I always get distracted.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> It's important this week for me to be clear on the scope of what I'm going to be talking about today. All on nothing thinking is something that is known as a cognitive distortion. It means that it's a sort of error in our thought processes and it's something that will often get talked about by psychologists and psychiatrists in the context of mental health problems.  <span> So if you have anxiety, depression, other mental health conditions, um, you may have experienced all or nothing thinking and be working on that with your therapists, counsellors, and other medical practitioners.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> In those scenarios, you might be having quite extreme issues with all or nothing thinking. You may be having thoughts where it's querying your entire value, your place in this world, and so on. And if you are experiencing those sorts of all or nothing thoughts, I really encourage you to speak to the counselling services at your university if you're a student or Or to speak to your doctor or other professional advice.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I'm going to be thinking about today is the sort of all or nothing thinking that prevents us from getting stuff done that we want to get done or achieving our goals, not the sort of all or nothing thinking that's really threatening our mental health.  <span> Now, if you are in that situation, you might still find this episode interesting and useful, so I'm not saying go away. But if you are experiencing mental health problems at the moment, you might not find it easy to apply some of the hints that I'm giving it towards the end of this session. So have a listen, stay involved. It's wonderful to have you here, but please try and make any changes in the context of the clinical support that you deserve in your situation.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> So, let me give you an example of the type of all or nothing thinking that we're going to be talking about today. I had a client recently who is towards the end of her PhD and was feeling like she had lots to do and that it wasn't going to fit into her normal pattern of work.  <span> She was telling herself that I'm going to have to work all weekend. And I want you to notice the words there. I'm going to “have to”, so there's no decision there. There's no kind of nuance. No “well, I could, or I don't have to”, but “I have to. I must. And I have to work all weekend.”  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> And the problem was when this client told herself that she had to work all weekend, she was finding herself resisting it. And in those situations, what she'd end up doing is either working all weekend but feeling really miserable all the way through, or she'd end up not working at all because she was really resisting this voice in her head that was telling her she had to work and it was all weekend and nothing else was good enough. And so it became like, well if she hadn't worked on Saturday morning, then she might as well sack it off and try again another weekend because she wasn't going to work all weekend. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I've seen this across lots of different PhD students, lots of different academics. It's an example of all or nothing thinking, turning into all or nothing behaviour. Because she thought she had to work all weekend, she either ended up working all weekend or not working at all or if she did something in between calling it a fail anyway.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another example that I saw recently was a PhD student who had got feedback back from a supervisor and it was more extensive than they were expecting. That ended up in this all or nothing feeling of, “I need to do all of these things or it's not going to be good enough”. “If there's this many comments, I'm probably not going to be able to, I won't be able to finish this paper. I'm probably not good enough to be here.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So there was a big chunk of all or nothing thinking with a little bit of catastrophizing where you kind of snowball, this means this, which means this, which means this thrown in for good measure.   <span> So these are the sorts of all or nothing thinking that I'm really talking about today. And I bet if you're a PhD student or an academic, you have probably experienced them, I'm going to say in the last fortnight, because these are really common.   </span> <span> I certainly see them come up in my client sessions all the time, whether they're my one-to-one sessions or my group coaching. And the problem is even though they're common, it doesn't stop them being really painful. It means that we're less likely to get on with something if we think we have to be perfect, we have to do it in its entirety. We're much less likely to start and find ourselves procrastinating.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> It means that we don't recognize the progress we have made. We have a tendency to think that if we didn't do everything we intended, then we failed, it wasn't good enough. I didn't stick to my diary, for example.  <span> It means we focus on our flaws. We notice the nothings, we notice the bits where we didn't do everything we intended, and we attribute that to our flaws instead of noticing some of the places where we bought our strengths and achieved some of the things we intended. And all of this, if it's left unreflected on and unlooked at can lead to us getting really lower confidence in not achieving our goals and not achieving our goals. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> So this episode is called How to Spot and Stop All or Nothing Thinking, and that's because spotting it is a massively important first step. Most of the time when I point this out to newer clients, it hadn't even crossed their mind that they were doing all or nothing thinking. They kind of knew what the concept was when I mentioned it, but they hadn't noticed it in their thoughts at all. </div> <div> And what I love to see, particularly with my clients that I work with for a long period of time, so for example, my students who are in the PhD life coach membership, I see them over time start to notice. So when we are coaching now, they will sometimes say, “I know this is all or nothing thinking, but it's what's going on in my brain at the moment” and that being able to recognize it is an incredibly important first step. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how do you go about spotting this sort of thing? Well, the first thing you can look out for is very extreme words. I want you to notice if you are thinking always never success failure everyone. Everyone else is doing more work than me. Everyone else is more successful than me. No one procrastinates the way I procrastinate, for example. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So anytime you notice those extreme thoughts, those really binary, categorical words. Always, never, everyone, no-one, none. Success, failure, those sorts of things. I wanted just to raise a little flag in your head and go, ah, hang on. That was one of those categorical words. That was one of those extreme words. Did I really mean that? And we'll talk in a second about what things you can do when you notice it, but noticing it is a big issue.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> One tip that can help with this, particularly if like me, you've got a brain that goes 400 miles an hour sometimes writing down what you are thinking can make it easier to spot these things. So if you are finding yourself just getting yourself a bit stressed, because there's lots going on in your head, grabbing a piece of paper, writing it down, and then looking for these words is another way where you can spot where you are having all or nothing thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other sorts of words I want you to look for, whether it's in your mind or in your written thoughts, is big superlative words. So where everything's terrible, it's awful, it's a disaster. All those sorts of words. Even sometimes, to be honest, the positive ones, if I do this, everything will be amazing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to look out for those sorts of words as well, because again, they can indicate this sort of extreme all or nothing thinking. And now, as always, when you're looking at this stuff, we have to come at this from a place of compassion. There's nothing wrong with you if you're doing all or nothing thinking, okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If it's severely affecting your mental health, then seeking some support for that would be brilliant. But there's nothing broken here. It's totally normal to experience this stuff, but we don't have to have it like this. We can manage it differently to make it a little easier and to spot it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first of all, when we notice it, please try and avoid then going, “oh gosh, I'm so stupid. I'm doing all or nothing, thinking I'm making this worse”, and kind of beating up on yourself.   <span> The fact you've noticed this is amazing. The fact you're beginning to reflect on your thoughts and think about the impact they have is huge.  </span> <span> And now what we get to do is we get to take that insight and compassionately and non-judgmentally think about how can we address that in ourselves.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> So there's a few different approaches you can take here. I find humour helps enormously. Now you have to be careful. If you're in the extremes of negative emotions, then this may not work for you. But if you are just finding yourself getting a bit het up about something, I sometimes find that repeating it to myself or to my client can really help but doing it in that sort of lighthearted way.  </div> <div> So “no one, no, no one has ever felt like this. No, you're right. No one. No one in the history of the world has ever procrastinated. Does that sound right to you? Every single person in your department has four publications every year, do they? Is that true?” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So just bringing a slightly lighthearted kind of, “Terrible. Yeah, it's going to be awful. They'll probably kick you out. It'll be dreadful.” usually makes my clients giggle when I say it because they see how extreme it is when you make it that little bit more extreme, but in a comedy way, then they kind of “go, yeah, no, I know. I don't really mean that. That's not what I really mean”, which is exactly how you want to try and stimulate it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Like I said, don't try this in for you in the midst of feeling really down and really sad about it and things like that, you know, little bit Mickey taking never goes down well when you're feeling particularly vulnerable, but when you're just feeling a bit frustrated and overwhelmed and those sorts of things, being able to take that step back and have a little giggle about yourself can really, really help. </div> <div> And the thing I love about that most is it just shows that we don't have to make these thoughts go away. It's fine that you are having some all or nothing thinking. It happens to everybody. We don't have to make those all or nothing. Thoughts completely disappear. We just have to help them lose their power a little bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's kind of the cognitive equivalent of imagining your audience in their underpants. It doesn't make them go away. It just makes them a little bit more ridiculous and a little bit less threatening. If we can make these all or nothing thoughts a little bit more ridiculous and a little bit less threatening, then they suddenly don't have the power over us quite as much as they did before. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Once we've got ourselves to a place where we're not in the midst of a spiral, but we're feeling a little bit calmer and able to look at our thoughts a bit more, we can ask ourselves the questions that I often talk about on this podcast, my three favorite questions. Is it true? What else is true? And what if it is true and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So we can start to look at the truth of it. Is it true that you're going to have to work all weekend? How much are we actually talking about? What else is true? Well, it's also true that I could find time to have coffee with my friend. It's also true that I actually probably don't need to do that one piece of work, so I could work a little bit less this weekend if I could just put that one off. And what if it's true and that's okay? Okay. You're going to have to work all weekend on your PhD that you chose on a topic that you love. So how can this be okay? Maybe you do have to work all this weekend. Maybe we reframe it that you're choosing to work all this weekend, and then we start to think, how can I make it really lovely to work all this weekend? So you either dig holes in it, you find other truths you also believe, or you work out a way that that can be true and it be completely okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Similarly, if it feels like everyone in your department is getting publications except you, is that true? What else is true? That you are part-time. It's also true that you are running a longitudinal study. It's also true that you are using a hard-to-access archive. It's also true that you've got a ton of experience giving presentations where most people haven't got that. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then what if it's true and that's okay. What if that means you work in a department with a whole bunch of really clever, amazing students? Wicked. A little bit like I talked about in the episode last week about imposter syndrome, what an amazing opportunity to be surrounded by people who know how to publish. Let's go learn from them. Let's go pick their brains. Let's figure out how we can do this too. So just by asking those three questions, again, we can take a little bit of the sting out of these all or nothing thoughts.  </div> <div> Building on that. Some people talk about an approach to all or nothing thinking, being to look at the positive. And people who know me, you know I like to look at the positive. That's kind of my thing, a lot of the time. I'm known for being kind of chirpy, but it's not necessarily everyone's thing. And there's a whole load of people that get really turned off by the idea of, “oh, let's just see the positive” and find it all a bit sugary and sweet and not authentic even. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I'm not going to say, look at the positive. What I'm going to say instead is, let's be specific. Let's be clear and accurate here. So in the examples I gave, if you need to work this weekend, how many hours? Why that many? How do you know if you think everybody else has got published in your department? How many people, how many publications? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's be specific. We don't have to be positive, we just have to be accurate. And I almost guarantee that every time you are having an all or nothing thought, when you get specific about it, then it starts to crumble and it starts to not look quite so all or nothing.  </div> <div> Now, I mentioned at the beginning that one of the things I used to have all or nothing thoughts about was that I never stick to anything, and this whole getting specific approach really, really helped me to address that and learn to take those thoughts a lot less seriously.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not going to say I don't still have them, but I take them a lot less seriously and that's cause I got specific about it. When you start to get specific, you start to see the nuance. You start to see the detail around the thing that you are saying about yourself or the situation, and then suddenly it doesn't become all or nothing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You start to see the shades of gray that sit between black and white. I no longer believe that. I never stick to anything. I believe that I'm somebody who needs to put a certain amount of scaffolding in place in order to make it more likely that I'll do more of the things I intend to do. I think that is true, but I'm somebody who in a lot of situations will persistently turn up for something, and that's a lot different. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now it's also important to allow for paradoxes. So what do I mean by that? Paradox is where two things are true that look like they're opposing, but they are actually both true. Again, an example from my life, I believe, I still believe, that I'm somebody who procrastinates quite a lot, who “wastes” a lot of time, because it's probably objectively true.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm not going to use all or nothing words. I'm not going to say I always waste time, but it's something that I, I'm constantly working on, but I believe it about myself. But on the other hand, I also believe I'm somebody who gets an awful lot done.  <span> I used to focus very much on the fact that I waste so much time. I really beat myself up about it and partly through the support, as I've talked before of Professor Jen Cumming who does a lot of strengths-based work, I've really learned the benefit of focusing on the other side, focusing on the fact that I get an awful lot of stuff done. And I find that the more, I think that I get an awful lot of stuff done, the more I get stuff done and the less I procrastinate. Whereas the more I think that I'm someone who wastes time, the more I waste time.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> The key here has been accepting that both are true. If I needed to believe that I am someone who gets lots done and I don't waste time, I would really struggle with that because I have lots of evidence that I waste time.  <span> But now that I can allow both of those things to be true in my head, even though they seem contradictory to each other, so much easier, and now I just choose to spend more time thinking that I'm someone who gets lots of stuff done and less time thinking that I'm somebody who wastes lots of time.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> So allow those paradoxes. If you are feeling like, I got so much negative feedback on my draft that I probably shouldn't be here, you can allow the thought “wow, I got a lot of changes on my document. That's disappointing.” You can have that thought, but you can also have the thought, “but I can work through them systematically.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So you are allowing those two things to be true. You're allowing it to be disappointing that you got as many comments as you did when you thought you were nearly done, but also to believe that it's possible for you to just work through them one by one and get it done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that leads on to another tip, which is about seeking partial success. So one of the big challenges with all or nothing thinking is that when we tell ourselves we have to stick to our new schedule or everything will be awful, I'll never get all this work done. As soon as you don't stick to it a bit, then the tendency is to just give up trying.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm working on a version of time blocking where at the beginning of the week you kind of plan out roughly when you're going to do key things so that you decide ahead of time. Decision making is one of the things that I find slows me down. If I need to make a decision about what to do, I can faff about. Whereas if I've decided in advance what it is, then I get on a lot better. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one of the things we know with time management tools like time blocking, is that people tend to start very gung ho. They start very, “I need to schedule everything. I need a new planner.” Listen to episode two. If you think you need a new planner. “I need a new planner and I need to schedule everything, and then I need to stick to everything.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then they get to Tuesday afternoon and they realize they haven't stuck to some of the things, and so they don't stick to any more of the week. They give up on the whole technique, or they didn't say it hasn't worked for them, or they say, oh, well, I'll try again next week and next week I'm going to stick to everything. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's a real example of all or nothing thinking, that these tools are only useful if you stick to them at a hundred percent. And if you don't stick to them a hundred percent, then it wasn't worth it. You know, this approach has failed for you. What I would really encourage you to do is seek partial success. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if on the Tuesday afternoon you are realizing that you haven't stuck to it as much as you would've liked, let’s figure it out. First, get specific, like we said before, how much have you stuck to it? You’ve probably stuck to it more than you think. Which hours were you doing the things you intended to do? Wicked. How now for the rest of the week, can we get that number a bit higher? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Instead of sacking it off and going, oh, well, I've messed it up, we can go right? At the moment I've stuck to about 40% of it, but I reckon with a good day tomorrow I could get that up to 50%. And then who knows what we could do Thursday, Friday, let's go. Let's see how high a proportion we can get here. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Allowing for partial success allows us to reengage when it feels like things are going to downhill. It's the same with exercise. So sometimes, and again, this is something I'm still working on for myself, but sometimes we think, oh, “I haven't got time to go to the gym. I can't do any exercise.” Whereas if we can say, I can't go to the gym, so I'm not going to do the full workout that I'd planned, but I can do some stretching in front of the tv, or I can try and do 30 press ups over the course of the next 30 minutes, or whatever it might be. But you know, I haven't got time to go for my full walk, but I can go for 10 minutes. So let's do that. Allowing for partial success allows you to sort of pick up as soon as you notice things aren't quite where you'd planned and still get something out of it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the important bit is that with your partial success, you recognize it as it's happening so that you can make decisions that you pick up as you go along, but then you also congratulate yourself. You are so proud of yourself afterwards because achieving 70% of your time blocking plans, or whatever it is, is still such an achievement in ourselves, whereas when we got this all or nothing habit, we'll see 70% as less than a hundred, and therefore I failed. I didn't stick to my plan. Let's recognize, praise, and be proud of partial success. </div> <div> The other thing with all or nothing thinking, and we touched on this slightly at the beginning, is that it can really rapidly lead into catastrophizing. It can really fast go from if “I don't work all this weekend, I won't get this done.” That can very quickly slip into, “and if I don't get this done, then my supervisor's going to be angry with me. And then if my supervisor's angry with me, they probably won't give me a reference. And if they don't give me a reference, then I'm never going to get a job. And if I never get a job, then this is all a complete waste of time. And I don’t know why I ever signed up for my PhD in the first place. I shouldn't be here.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's really quick. And I know those of you listening are going to be like, “yeah, I've been down that spiral.” It's really easy for all or nothing thinking to turn into those sorts of spirals because you start with quite a catastrophic description at the beginning. </div> <div> So with all of this stuff, be careful what you are making it mean. If you notice that you never do something, you are going to query it the way we said, but also, what are you making that mean about you? Maybe you don't ever stick to something. Think it's unlikely, but maybe you never do. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Okay. What are you making that mean about you? Are you making that mean you are lazy? You're useless? What are you making that mean? Because sometimes things can just be true without having to mean all the things we're putting on it. So maybe, if you don't work all this weekend, then you're not going to finish that paper before the deadline. What does that have to mean? The only thing that means if it's true is that you won't finish that paper this weekend. Does it have to mean everything else you're saying? No. Maybe you'll publish it somewhere else. Maybe you'll write a different paper instead. Maybe it'll go in your thesis and never exist beyond your thesis and be read by two people. There's lots of us that have got those papers in our thesis is, don't worry, it happens. It doesn't have to mean all the drama.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But when you start with this kind of catastrophic all or nothing thinking, there's so much drama tied up in that that it's just easy to snowball out. So just be cautious what you're making it mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now finally, with your all-or-nothing thinking, please don't get all-or-nothing about stopping all-or-nothing thinking. So one thing that I noticed with my clients is when they start to become aware of how often they exhibit all-or-nothing thinking. They start to notice those words in their heads. They forget to do that with compassion and they start to beat themselves up about it. </div> <div> And they say, I always beat myself up. I'm someone who always does all-or-nothing thinking. Um, I'm never kind to myself. So they get a bit all-or-nothing about trying to address this stuff.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> These are long habits. They are long habits that's reinforced by the society that we live in and the structures we went to school in and all of these other things. Let's not expect that you're going to listen to one, however long this is, podcast from me and go, oh, okay. I won't do all-or-nothing thinking anymore. That's not going to happen. I still do all or nothing thinking. The coaches that taught me still do all-or-nothing thinking. It still happens. It's fine. So remember, even when we are talking about all-or-nothing thinking, it's okay for there to be a paradox. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You can exhibit all-or-nothing thinking and not take it too seriously. You can notice that you're starting to do that again without making it mean that you are completely out of control of your brain and that it's all going to go wrong, and you've messed up coaching now.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's just notice it. Notice it with compassion, and then try and work through some of these steps where we just query it. Just pull it apart a little bit. Just make it a little bit less important, a little bit more ridiculous, and let's celebrate all of those partial successes. Thank you so much for listening, and see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 15 May 2023 04:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/31-how-to-spot-and-stop-all-or-nothing-thinking thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/30-how-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> <i> <div> <br/> </div> </i> </div> <div> <i> Have you ever felt like an imposter? Worried that someone will find out that you're not good enough to be here after all? Unfortunately we know that imposter syndrome is really common in academia and can lead to reduced wellbeing and even people leaving programmes or jobs. In this episode, I share some simple tactics that everyone can use to help feel a little less like an imposter. Importantly, I also discuss how imposter syndrome is not an individual failing, but rather a result of structural issues in our environment.  Because of that, we need to address it as a community, so I  </i> <i> talk about how we can help others feel more included and competent too.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> I talk about a book chapter in this episode by Rachel Handforth. It's called "Feeling “Stupid”: Considering the Affective </i> </div> <div> <i> in Women Doctoral Students’ Experiences  </i> <i> of Imposter ‘Syndrome in Higher Education" and it's chapter 18 of the Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome. You can find out more <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-86570-2" target="_blank"> here </a> . You'll need a uni login to access it but if you're struggling, DM me and I'll send it over!  </i> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> Transcript </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 30 of the PhD Life Coach, where we are going to be talking imposter syndrome. Have you ever worried that someone is going to find you out? That you've somehow convinced your supervisor that you are better than you actually are, and that one day you are not going to be able to wing it anymore, and they are going to realize that you are not clever enough to be there? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Have you ever sat in a meeting thinking, how am I in a room with all these amazing people who've done all these amazing things, and there's me over here being little old me, and if I say the wrong thing, they're going to realize they totally should never have let me into this room? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you work in academia, or doing a PhD, I'm pretty sure you have experienced those things, and for many of you, these will be thoughts and feelings that you are having a lot of the time. There's tons of research that shows that academia is a hotbed of people experiencing imposter syndrome, feeling like they don't belong, and that this has real impact on wellbeing. It makes people more likely to leave their program, makes them more likely to experience mental health problems, to feel that they're not part of the environment that they're part of. So in this episode, we're going to be thinking about this really real and important issue. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now before we get any further, I want to address one thing. Often when people talk about stress in academia or talk about imposter syndrome in academia, they reassure people with the thought that it's normal. And this is something that we actually talked in one of my coaching sessions this week, with my PhD students, where one client talked about how her supervisors had told her that the way she was feeling was normal and that that had made her feel invalidated. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so I think it's really important to recognize that when I say that something's normal, when I say that it's quite common and I see it in a lot of people, that isn't me saying it's okay. It isn't saying that, “therefore you shouldn't be upset by it. This is normal. Get used to it. This is normal. Get over it.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is me saying, yep. There's nothing weird about you. There's nothing wrong with you if you feel like an imposter in academia. This happens to quite a few people, but that doesn't make it okay. That doesn't make it not painful, and it doesn't mean it has to stay like that. That's what I mean when I say that these things are normal. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you are experiencing these things, I see you, I hear you, I understand. I've been there. I've supported other people through the challenge many, many times. What you're feeling is completely valid, but it doesn't have to feel this bad. So in this episode, we are going to be thinking about what specifically we can do to address imposter syndrome. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The other thing I see a lot is people thinking that imposter syndrome will get better when they reach the next stage. That once they've got their PhD, they won't feel like an imposter anymore. Once they're a senior lecturer, they won't feel like an imposter anymore.  <span> But again, there's evidence in the research and certainly in my coaching practice that this doesn't just automatically go away because you become more senior.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> There's an article by Rachel Handforth which I'll link in the show notes for you about imposter syndrome, and she asked a bunch of PhD students to write to themselves over various different time points in their PhD. And one of the things she asked them to do, as a final year PhD student was write to their past selves, write to their first year PhD self. And she then analyzed that text to see what themes came out. And one of the quotations that she included really struck me. One participant said:  </div> <div> “the most striking thing that you will learn,”… so this is them talking to their past self… “is that I don't think I'm wiser than you. The same insecurities about what to do next. The imposter syndrome and the uncertainty about where we will be happy is still there. They have not gone away and I suspect they never will.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that really struck me because it really matched up with what I see with my clients, that people at all different levels of their academic career have these same imposter syndromes, they just have them about different scenarios. They have them about the new room they're in, the new meeting they're part of the new conference they go to, the new role they take on.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And what I really want to reflect from this is if we just expect that cause we've reached a new stage, these feelings will go away, then this person is completely right. They don't just spontaneously go away because you achieve a new thing.  </div> <div> However, the bit I want to dispute and that I want to address in this podcast is this idea that they will never go away. These thoughts and feelings can either go away or at least be reduced in their impact by some simple things that we can do as individuals and much more importantly as a collective. So it doesn't have to be inevitable, that we feel this way. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you are listening to this as a PhD student, there's going to be tons of stuff that you can take for yourself. </div> <div> If you are listening to this as a more senior member of staff, there are going to be things you can take for yourself, but also things you can take for your department and that kind of wider community because it is so important for us to address this as a collective.  </div> <div> This is not an individual failing. Imposter syndrome is not an individual failing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Imposter syndrome is not a function of you not being good enough. Imposter syndrome is a function of the environment that you're working in and the expectations and stories that you absorb and internalize every day. That's why imposter syndrome has been shown to be worse in women, in people of colour, in people from working class backgrounds, people with disabilities, essentially anybody who doesn't fit that kind of academic, historic ideal of the white cisgender male who can devote their life to academia, who has somebody at home looking after them and doing other jobs for them, and who sort of fits all those normal stereotypes. </div> <div> This comes from structural exclusion of particular groups of people and particular types of people. If you feel like an imposter, it's not because you're not good enough, it's because academia, higher education are not set up to make everybody feel welcomed and included and valued at the moment.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's something we are trying to work on. It's something that is improving in places, but there's still an awful lot of stuff that we internalize, forget that it's almost things that we are told or that we're implicitly sold, and turn it into our own self-doubts as though it's somehow originated in us. Okay? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the problem is because we forget where it comes from, we think it's a personal failing. We think that in addition to not being good enough to be in this room, we're also failing because we're suffering from imposter syndrome. We become imposters because we think we're imposters. We think, oh, well maybe if I'm feeling this imposter syndrome, even if it's not true, maybe the fact I'm feeling it means that I'm not cut out for academia. We turn it into a personal failing. And so my first thing here, if you take nothing else, feeling like an imposter is not a personal failing, particularly if you come from any of those minoritized groups. It is entirely not surprising that you feel like an imposter sometimes.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> That's not to say white cisgender males can't feel like imposters. I coach many that do. And I think that's just a real example of how institutions and sectors that have structural inequality in them benefit no one because we've somehow created this highly competitive, highly pressurized environment that structurally excludes certain groups. It also just makes it an environment that's challenging for an awful lot of people. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you feel like you have imposter syndrome, this is not about you. It is not for you to individually fix. However, we also don't have to make it worse for ourselves. So what I often see is people who are beating themselves up about stuff, they're making it true. They're making it mean that they're actually not good enough, and then they stop engaging. They remove themselves from in the environment, and they tell themselves all the time that they're not good enough as though society doesn't tell them this enough. They tell themselves that this is the case too.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Imposter syndrome isn't your fault. It's not a personal failing. But that doesn't mean we have to just accept it, experience it, tough it out, or any of those things. There's a bunch of things we can do to look after ourselves better, and look after each other better. </div> <div> So the first thing I want you to think about, is, I want you to stop making this binary. By calling it imposter syndrome, we give it this name, we have imposter syndrome, or we don't. We are an imposter. Or we're not. And what that means is that if we ever have doubts about our right to be somewhere or have doubts about our abilities, then we are an imposter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know, it's a noun, it's a thing. An imposter is a thing. You either are it or you aren't. And that sort of binary thinking just really doesn't help because as soon as you have any doubts, then it launches you all the way over there into imposter zone and we start to think that this is a massive problem. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I would really encourage you to do is to think about it much more as a continuous variable. We're not either an imposter or we're not. We belong to a greater or lesser extent. We are able to a greater or lesser extent, we have skills to a greater or lesser extent. And when you start thinking about it like that, all of a sudden you can start thinking about the ways you do belong, the ways you are good enough, the ways that you have skills that you are bringing, and you get to also recognize the things that you're finding more challenging or that you are less able to do and not see them as something that launches you straight into the imposter zone, but as something that can be worked on, that can be accepted. It doesn't have to mean anything about all your other skills and abilities and qualities and what you bring to academia, so try to avoid having this binary of imposter versus not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thing I want you to think about is not waiting for external confirmation. So one of the things we do see in research is that for short periods of time, after you've had some sort of accolade, you feel a bit better. So when you get promoted, you feel a little bit less of an imposter. And when you get something published, you feel a little bit less of an imposter. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And as I said at the beginning, these feelings don't last. They don't sustain us forever. But in that short moment where we get external validation, then we feel that little bit better.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'd really like you to ask yourselves why external validation means so much more to you than internal validation. Why are we putting somebody else's opinion of our abilities, who doesn't know us anywhere near as well as we know ourselves above our own opinions? </div> <div> Because there's problems with that. Other people have their own agendas. They have reasons for thinking things about you. They're only exposed to certain parts of you. They only see some sides of you. They don't see all of your abilities and skills and wonderful self.  </div> <div> And we also have far less control over when we get external validation. We don't know when a paper's going to get published. We don't know when someone's going to give us positive feedback.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we do know is that our voices are inside our heads all the time. We hear ourselves talk to ourselves all the time. So if you feel better when you get more validation, let's start giving ourselves some more validation. </div> <div> Let's start thinking of all the reasons why we do deserve to be in this room. Let's start thinking of all the reasons why we belong in academia and why it's important that we're here.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I said at the beginning that for those of you who have some influence or power over others, so perhaps you're a supervisor, you're running a program, for example, that there's going to be lessons for you, some more structural changes.  </div> <div> The lesson here is even if we're trying to encourage people to be more internally validating, giving themselves positive feedback, do not underestimate how much external validation helps. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have students in my PhD coaching program all the time who get one bit of positive feedback from their supervisors, and they're ecstatic. Now we work on not being reliant on that and being more in control of our own sense of satisfaction, but if you are a supervisor, if you are in any sense of power over other people, don't underestimate how much just a little bit of external validation helps.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Saying “I can see how hard you've worked on this. I can see that this has really improved since last time I looked at it. I'm really chuffed with how much you've got done on your study this week”, or whatever it might be. Don't underestimate how much that means.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> This is particularly true when you're giving feedback on drafts. So one of the things I see with my students a lot is that their supervisors focus on the things that need changing. And I used to do this, I get it. When you are in a hurry and you just need to get the comments done for somebody, you tend to just focus on the bits that need to be done. But what the students see is a whole series of criticisms and they often interpret that to mean that there's nothing good in the piece. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now we work hard on looking at how many sections of your work had no comments on, how can we interpret no comments as positive, but if you can just take those few seconds and recognize how important it is to write “Oh, I like this bit. It's really clear. Oh, this bit's so much better than the last version I saw.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It means so much to your students. Students, you don't get away from this either. Your supervisors are feeling under pressure, undervalued, and they worry about whether they're doing a good job supervising you too. Remember how important external validation is to you and consider when you can give it to your supervisor. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just saying “thank you. Your support on this has really, really helped me.” I know so many supervisors that keep the emails, you send them in a special folder. If they get emails from students that say nice things about them, they keep them in a special folder to look at when they're feeling sad. Send those messages to your supervisors sometimes. We all need as individuals to work on not needing so much external validation, but as a community, let's think about giving each other a little more external validation whenever we can. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The third thing that I want to talk about is the hidden curriculum. So people have talked about this before where there's a whole bunch of things that people assume that you understand about academia. These are all the sort of unsaid things that carry a lot of power, but they often aren't explicitly taught. So, how to influence more senior academics, how to raise your profile around your university. The process for publishing a paper. Some of these things get taught, some of these things, we just sort of assume that people will pick them up by osmosis. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the issue is that the people that tend to know these things are the people that are already privileged. So people whose parents were academics and who understand academia, people who have lots of friends who are academics, people who fit the traditional picture of what an academic looks like. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> People who have time and energy and money and capacity to go to the pub on a Friday night and socialize with academics from their department. Who have the resources and ability to go to conferences and meet lots of people and get insider information that way.  </div> <div> There is a whole bunch of stuff that we need to find out and when we don't know these things, when nobody shares them with us, we can feel like an imposter because we don't know what these words mean. Or we feel like there's a route to promotion that some people got a map for and other people didn't.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And the first thing to say is you're not wrong. There is, and these things are not well explicitly taught, and they're not widely shared in a conscious and inclusive way. So if you don't understand this stuff, you feel like this things you're missing, there probably is.  </div> <div> That might sound like a depressing thing to say, but the bit I want to challenge is that that makes you an imposter. Because what happens is people think that because they don't know these things, they therefore don't belong.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I would encourage you is to accept that there probably is a bunch of things that other people know that you don't know, but that doesn't make you an imposter. It doesn't make you any less welcome, any less important to the environment that you are working in. It just means there's a bunch of stuff that you don't know, and the annoying thing is that often you don't quite know what you don't know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So first step is we accept this as truth. The second step is we start to think, how can I start to uncover some of these things? So if I'm somebody who can't be in the pub on Friday night, cause I've got caring responsibilities or who I can't go to conference because there's no funding for it, how can I socialize in different ways? How can I form connections in different ways? Who can I ask about these different questions? I'm really starting to pick these apart.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The thought I want you to have is “I don't know these things. I don't know what I don't know, but I deserve to know and I have the ability to find it out” instead of “there are things I don't know, that I don't even know I don't know, and that's not fair, and it means that I shouldn't be here.” Okay, let's focus on, you deserve to know and you can figure this stuff out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Again, if you are somebody with influence, then we flip it around and we think, how can you share some of this hidden curriculum with other people? How can you check understanding of even some of the things that seem really basic to you? How can you have more conversations with people about some of this hidden stuff, about how to influence people, how to get promoted and so on.  </div> <div> If you have some of that insider information, how can you make sure that that's shared and is shared widely and is shared inclusively and preferably is shared in some sort of structured way so that everybody has access to it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But at minimum, who could you have coffee with? Who might not have access to all of this information? Who could you help to understand some of the unspoken rules of academia? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> My fourth tip is to stop comparing your insides to other people's outsides. And we've touched on this in past episodes, but when you are inside your own life, you have access to everything. You know, all the deepest, darkest worries, you know all the stupid things you've ever done. You know the child you were, you know the dreams you've got, you know all the mistakes you've ever made. </div> <div> And we only really get to compare that to other people's outsides. So you are in a meeting thinking everybody else knows what they're talking about, and I'm the only one here who's wondering what these acronyms even mean, when you haven't said it out loud. They don't know that you don't know what those acronyms mean. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> There's probably other people in the room that don’t know what those acronyms mean. There's probably other people in the room experiencing imposter syndrome. There's probably other people in the room who actually aren't even listening to what's being said, because they lost track 15 minutes ago. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Just be aware of that difficulty of comparing your own insides to their outsides. They have an internal life, and internal worries, that you will likely never know about, and you're making a really unfair comparison. A common comparison. Don't beat yourself up for making unfair comparisons, but just remind yourself that you're not on an even playing field, if you compare your insides with their outsides from the outside. I'm pretty confident you look super competent. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, if you are in a position of power, you can also think about sharing your insides sometimes. One of the things I know my students always used to value when I was an academic and that I certainly still try and do now as a coach, is when I tell them about the things that I still find difficult or the things that I worried about when I was at their stage. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Being honest about some of those things that you find challenging can help other people see that they're not the only one that worries about these things. Now I want to acknowledge that there are some power issues that happen here whereby it is often people who feel particularly secure in their position, so people who have permanent positions, for example, who are generally accepted by the academy.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And for them it's quite easy to share failures and to say, yeah, yeah, I struggled with this. In fact, people have got CVS of failures on the internet and those are wonderful things to see. And if you feel empowered to do that, then it is super useful for people to see them. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But I do want to also acknowledge that if you are somebody who feels more precarious that is an awful lot harder. So you might be somebody who has students, you know, you have PhD students that you're supervising. You want to be as open with them as possible, but perhaps you've got a precarious position. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Perhaps you feel like a bit of an imposter yourself. Perhaps you are one of only a few women in your department, one of only a few people of colour. Maybe you've got a disability. And it can be a lot harder then to be open and admit your failings and admit your concerns. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I get that and I see the privilege that you need to believe that you can admit all of your messy insides and no consequence will come of it. However, the more we can nudge towards that, the more we can make it okay to admit even just small things like “oh yeah, I didn't used to know what that was too. I pronounced it wrong for like three years” or whatever. The more we can admit even these small things, the more we help the people who are behind us in their academic journey, to see that we're human beings too. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now for the fifth thing, we've already talked about reminding yourself why it's not true that you don't deserve to be here. Reminding yourself of all the things that you've achieved, all the skills and qualities that you bring. We've already touched on that. People talk about that a lot with imposter syndrome. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want to suggest that you consider what if you have conned somebody into being here, and that's okay. What if when you sit in that meeting, everybody else in that room is more qualified than you? Is more able, more intelligent, whatever it is you worry about than you, and that's okay. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because actually a lot of the problem with this comes from identifying it as a problem. So it's not just that we are saying we are not good enough to be here and someone will find out, it's that we are not good enough to be here. Someone will find out, and when they find out they'll be consequences. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'll be kicked out, I'll be humiliated. I'll be told I shouldn't be here and how dare I, and it's all those consequences that are really the challenge here. What if, if we're struggling to believe that we have the right to be in the room and that we are just as clever as everybody else, what if we believe that we've somehow made it to this room, to this department, to this program, and everybody's better than us and that's okay.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because once you start saying, that's okay, then you open yourself up to a whole lot of different emotions. You start believing how lucky you are to be here. Hey, if it's true that I'm not clever enough to be here and I'm still here, I can learn so much from these people. I can get so much out of this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> For the record, I am not encouraging you to believe that you are not good enough to be in a room, but it can be a really useful interim coping strategy. Maybe I’m not, but I'm here, aren't I? I'm here and I'm going to get everything out of it I can. I'm going to bring everything I've got. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I might not have as much as you guys, but I'm going to bring everything I've got. I'm going to bring all the knowledge I can think of, all the experience I can think of. I'm really going to try and contribute and I am going to learn from being in a room with all these amazing people, it's such a different vibe than, oh, I'm not good enough to be here, so I'm not going to say anything and I'm just going to sit here and panic about it because I shouldn't really be here and someone's going to realize. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How different is it to be “no idea how I got in this room, but hey, I'm here. Let's go. I'm going to contribute best I can and I'm going to get everything I can out of this experience.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Such a different vibe and you can work on these things in parallel. So you can work on believing you have something to offer, that you deserve to be here and work on believing that if everyone else is more experienced, then I'm super lucky to be here.  </div> <div> When we're thinking as a more senior member of a meeting or a group, I want you also to think about what you can do for the less experienced people there. So if you find yourself in a meeting where there are students there when you are a member of staff, or where there's newer members of staff, when you are a more experienced member of staff, what can you do mindfully and consciously to make sure that they feel included and valued? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Can you make sure you introduce yourselves to them? Can you make sure that you take their agenda items earlier? Can you make sure that you remember to specifically ask for their opinion, to thank them for their contributions?  </div> <div> Now, a bunch of these things sound like they should be kind of common behaviour if we're just polite human beings, but we know when we're in a hurry and we're whizzing through the quality assurance committee or whatever it is, that sometimes these things go by the wayside.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're caught up in finishing off our emails before the meeting starts, whizzing through the agenda, just trying to get it done in the time we got available, and we don't necessarily remember what everybody else in the room might be thinking.  </div> <div> So if you are in that more privileged position of feeling quite comfortable in a room like you belong, how can you take a moment just to cast your eye around and see if there's anything you can do to make other people feel like they belong in that room too.  </div> <div> And then my final point for anyone who feels like they're sometimes an imposter or a more general sense that they don't belong, is to build tiny bridges. Often we think about ourselves over here on an island where we don't belong, and we want to get to this island where we do belong. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's a huge bridge that's needed to take me from this island to that island. Whereas if we can think about it, not so much as that, but as a series of stepping stones, as a series of tiny bridges, that we can make that just help us feel more embedded in the community. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So how can you just do one thing today to feel a little bit more connected to one person in your academic community? If you are going to a conference, how can you identify one person who doesn't look too scary that you could just say hello to and have a conversation with? How could you just ask one person if they'd like to go for lunch, or how could you just slide into the side of a conversation and say hello and smile and nod along.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Try and build some of those tiny bridges because that's how communities are built. They're built one tiny bridge at a time. Because the problem with telling ourselves that we're an imposter or that we don't belong is that we often don't even try to build the bridges anymore. Because it can hurt to try and build bridges and it not work. It can hurt to try and go to something and then nobody talks to you. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And so we sort of protect ourselves from that sense of rejection and often end up withdrawing ourselves. And so often the people that feel most excluded are in some ways excluding themselves as well by not putting themselves in that environment in the first place.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm definitely not saying just tough it up, you're causing this yourself. What I'm saying is allow yourself to be in the environment, maybe on the periphery, and build tiny bridges around the edges. Be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that you can leave at any time if you're feeling uncomfortable, but can you make a conversation with this person? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Can you have a little chat with that person? Can you hang around the food? I hang around the food. It's a really easy way to get talking to people. So you just start to get those little tiny bridges of feeling like you belong to your community. </div> <div> If you are in charge of your department or you are in charge of your research group or any small part of that community, how can you create more opportunities for that to happen? How can you spot people that are maybe on the periphery and help them feel included? How can you make it easier for them to build bridges with each other? </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> How can you avoid awful icebreakers, but at the same time give people reasons to talk to each other. How can you make it normal to create bridges that help people to feel included? Because the way we address imposter syndrome is together, together as a community, because it is not a problem that's caused by individual failings. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It's a problem of the community as a whole, and we can each do our bit to solve it for ourselves and to support ourselves through this experience. But we can also each do our bit to make sure that other people don't feel like imposters and feel like they belong to a wider community.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'd love to hear your thoughts on imposter syndrome, whether any of these resonate with you or whether you found them, any of them helpful. Do follow me on Twitter @drvikkiburns. I'm also newly excitingly on Instagram @thePhDLifeCoach, so follow me over there because at the moment I look like a Billy No Mates. So I want you all to follow me over there too so that I get that sense of belonging as well. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. </div> <div> <br/> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 08 May 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/30-how-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/29-how-to-get-more-confident-about-teaching <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> <i> <div> <br/> </div> </i> </div> <div> <i> By most people's definitions, we're experts. Whether you're a PhD student or a more senior academic, you have more expertise than most people in your subject. However, us "experts" often still lack confidence when it comes to teaching. In this episode, we think about how we can put things in perspective and develop more confidence in your teaching. </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Transcript </i> </div> <div> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 29 of the PhD Life Coach, and this week we're actually going to be talking about a topic that was requested by a listener. So I got a lovely message on my website from somebody who said that they'd been really enjoying the podcast, finding things super useful, but that would I ever talk about something to do with teaching. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now this podcast is for everyone, from PhD students to senior professors. And for a lot of us that means that our roles involve teaching. Even as PhD students, you might find yourself running seminars, delivering laboratories, those sorts of things, or even looking after some of the day-to-day activities in undergraduate projects.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And even though universities have really increased the amount of support there is to develop teaching skills over the last five or 10 years, certainly compared to when I started out in academia, it's still an area that a lot of people feel under prepared for and under confident about. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So today we're going to think about how can we feel more confident about our teaching and… I'm not going to teach you how to teach. This isn't actually going to be “here's a bunch of new skills that will make you feel more confident.” Because one of the things that we know from coaching work is that having objective skills, having an actual ability to do something doesn't always lead to confidence.  </span> <span> Often when lecturers used to talk to me about being worried about their teaching, I'd watch them teach and be like, but you are great. You're really good at this. You're absolutely fine. There's no problems here. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The problem wasn't that they couldn't teach. The problem was what they were thinking about their ability to teach. So today we are really thinking about how we can generate that confidence and the good news is, that today, I'm talking about it in the context of teaching, but actually you can use this for anything. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Say you've got a conference presentation coming up, or you've got a job interview coming up, or you're going to be submitting to a journal and you're really worried about it and lacking confidence in your ability to get published. You can do exactly the same thing for all of these things.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So the first thing we need to think about is why it’s totally understandable that you lack confidence in this. This is not what you were necessarily selected to have done. You know, when we get accepted onto PhD programs, accepted into academic jobs, it's usually on the basis of our research and our research ability, and so not necessarily feeling comfortable in other arenas like teaching, it's totally understandable.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> This is not something that's weird about you. It's not something that's broken. It's a totally legitimate response to the way the sector is set up at the moment. And that's really important to recognize because sometimes on top of that lack of confidence and worrying, we then lay a judgment that we shouldn't lack confidence, that we should be okay, that everybody else can do this, and that's simply not true. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> There's a huge proportion of PhD students and academics who feel deeply uncomfortable about their ability to teach, and sometimes that can really carry on for a long time, even once they've got quite a lot of experience. So there's nothing wrong here, but equally, it doesn't have to be like this either. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other thing that I want to say upfront is your lack of confidence as a teacher doesn't have to mean you're not going to do a good job as a teacher. We are going to think about ways that you can increase your confidence, but we're also going to think about ways that you can teach while being less confident and still being perfectly good about it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You don't have to generate this huge overwhelming, “I'm amazing” confidence before you can do things. You can choose to do things and support yourself to do things while still feeling like you wish you had a little bit more confidence.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So the first thing to think about is where does confidence even come from? Because we all sort of assume that confidence comes from past experience. We typically automatically get a bit more confident when it's something that we've done lots of times before, and so we know that we're able to do it at least to some extent, and that, we think, spontaneously generates feelings of confidence, but in reality, the feelings of confidence come from the fact that we are telling ourselves, I can do this, I've done this before. I know I'm capable of this, and that's where the confidence comes from. It's just much more likely that you are saying those things to yourself when you have done it before. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now the fact is for all of us, if I asked, how much teaching would you have to do before in order to feel confident, for some of you, it would be just one thing. You know, if you've done it once, fine, I can do it again. For others, it would be, oh, and I need five years experience. I need 10 years experience.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> There's no objective amount of experience that will definitely make you feel confident, and that's because it's about the thoughts that we're thinking, not about the experience that we have.  </span> <span> So what we can do is we can use that to our advantage and as usual, we can choose the thoughts that we focus on more. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to think about a few different ways that you can choose to focus on thoughts that will help you to feel more confident about teaching.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So the first thing we're going to think about is keeping it in perspective. I mean, this is going to sound a little cynical, but I've been academia for a really long time. So I was 20 years at the University of Birmingham, I externally examined a variety of other universities, I observed teaching in a variety of places. I went to billions of conferences and watched people present. And so the first thing I want to say, in terms of keeping this in perspective is there's a whole lot of quite mediocre teaching out there. </span> </div> <div> <span> I don't mean that with any disrespect to anybody. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. The students were learning, it's all good. But it wasn't outstanding. It wasn't overwhelmingly inspirational. It wasn't beautifully fluid and you know, well-structured and pedagogically perfect and all of these things that we tell ourselves it has to be. There's a whole lot of quiet, ordinary teaching, and you know what? It does the job.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> So remembering that, remembering what we're aspiring to, can be really important, and that's not to say you shouldn't have high standards. I super care about teaching. I spent most of my career either developing my own teaching abilities or trying to support others to develop theirs. Trying to make sure that teaching quality was high on the agenda at universities. I believe in good quality teaching. I just don't believe in a kind of perfectionist approach to teaching that means you terrify yourself if you're not doing anything other than the absolute perfect session.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Most of the time, good enough is good enough and you do it good enough, enough times, and you start to get a little bit better, and you start to automatically feel a little bit more confident. So next time you're thinking, this is not going to be amazing, this is not going to be the most perfect session either. Remind yourself that nor are most of the other sessions that they're, the students are experiencing that week. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other bit that goes alongside that is if you are worrying about how good your teaching is, whether you're going to be good enough, you are already better than the worst teachers at the university because the worst teachers at your universities are the ones that aren't even thinking about whether it's good enough or not. They're not bothering, they're just getting it done. So if you are thinking that you want this to be effective, you want your students to have a good experience, you want them to learn, you already are above the baseline because you care about the student experience.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The other way I want to put this in perspective is by sharing a few of my experiences. Without wanting to blame my own trumpet too much. I'm an award-winning lecturer. I've had awards in the university. I've had awards from my own university. </span> </div> <div> <span> I've had national awards. I'm a national teaching fellow. I'm a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I used to go to other universities to support people to be better teachers. I'm a good teacher. Okay. It's what I do.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> However, over my career, I have still had a whole variety of things go wrong in my sessions. Things not be the best they could be. To give you some examples, I have forgotten to turn up for a session. I've gone to the wrong room for a session. I've not been able to log into the computer and had to do the whole thing from my memory, which was an interesting one. I've…. this one's probably too much detail, but you know what, I'm going to share it anyway. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I've been partway through a first year lecture wearing skinny jeans. Wondered what's that? Lump on my calf and realized that it was yesterday's knickers. I wore these trousers yesterday. That's not an easy way to continue concentrating when you're trying to talk to freshers. I've broken the heel on my shoe part way through a lecture and managed to cover it up, so the students didn't see what was happening. I've accidentally drawn a penis when I was trying to draw the head of a femur in an anatomy lecture and got laughed at by a bunch of 18 year olds. I've flicked onto the next slide, looked at the graph I was about to present and realized I have no idea what they did in that study and had to admit as much to the students because I hadn't had time to check that lecture before I went into class. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I've also been in situations where I'm talking, I'm presenting a lecture that I've done so many times before, that I suddenly realize, I have no idea what I've actually just said and where in the sentence I was. I have done a whole lot of ridiculous things, and I think if you talk to anybody who has taught, they might not have quite such a ridiculous array of things, but they will have their stories of their mediocre sessions, of their sessions that went badly, of their sessions, where you come out of it going, “okay, I definitely need to rewrite that lecture next year.” It happens. There's nothing wrong with you if it happens to you. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The thing that has always saved me, is that the students knew I cared. The students knew I liked them and the students knew I was interested in my subject even when it was things I wasn't that interested in. They still thought I was interested in my subject. </span> </div> <div> <span> And you know what? Those things are generally enough. If you show up as a human being who is actually vaguely invested in the student experience and vaguely invested in the thing that you're talking about, and you let them see that, and when you make a mistake, you're honest about it.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> When I forgot what the graph said, I just said, “yeah. I'm really sorry. I have no recollection of this study whatsoever, so I'm going to tell you about it next week. The reference’s at the bottom, how about you guys will read it and we'll talk about it in more detail next week, but now we're going to move on to the next slide.” And they laughed and they understood, and I still got really good teaching reviews. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> It's not about being perfect, it's about showing up and caring and just doing what you can do. Qualities I used to show up with were enthusiasm, honesty. Things like that. Maybe you'll show up with different ones. Maybe you are not a naturally sort of bubbly person, but maybe you show up and you're thoughtful, and you're kind and you're calm and you make them feel better about themselves. Maybe you are reassuring, maybe you are interesting. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Maybe you have a way of telling a story that just draws them in. You have qualities that your students will resonate with, and you don't have to have the perfect session planned, and you don't have to have the perfect PowerPoint slides and the perfect graphics and the perfect everything else for that to happen. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You have qualities they need. Maybe spend a little minute figuring out what qualities do you bring, what qualities could your students value that you can bring to those sessions, no matter what preparation you've done, and no matter how confident you are feeling. </span> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <span> So I really want you to keep this all in perspective. When you hear the thoughts, “this has to be amazing. They're expecting a lot. They're paying a lot of tuition fees for this.”… you don't have to think about it like that. Show up, show you care. It's all that needs to happen. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now one place we know we can draw confidence from is past experience, but people are often really limited in what they interpret as past experience. Have I ever done a lecture before? No, I haven't. Therefore, I haven't got experience. What do you have experience in? When have you spoken to anyone? When have you presented anything? When have you explained anything to anyone?  </span> </div> <div> <span> For me, one of the massive experiences that helped me was I spent most of my teenage years teaching like kids camps, like sports clubs, those sorts of things. So I used to do coaching, I used to go on like holiday camps and be one of those annoyingly enthusiastic people in a bright coloured T-shirt that would entertain your kids for the summer holidays. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And actually loads of that translated through into my teaching. I also used to marshall on massive corporate multi-sport adventure races and that sort of organizing people really helped my teaching as well, especially in the more of the sort of small group seminar workshop type basis. None of those are teaching experience, but they helped me hugely in my teaching. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> What experience do you have that isn't teaching that might set you up to teach well, how can you draw confidence from that?  </span> </div> <div> <span> The next tip though, is how can you draw confidence without having experience? Because usually that's the only place we think it comes from. But actually where you can draw confidence is confidence in yourself. You can have confidence that you can learn to do things. You can have confidence that you can make it work even if something goes wrong. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And most importantly, and if you listen to nothing else in this entire podcast, listen to this. You can have confidence that you are going to be nice to yourself however this goes, because let’s think it through, if something goes wrong, what are the consequences of that? If you forget what a slide means, or you realize that you've got an error on your slides, or you try and explain something and it comes out wrong, what are the real consequences of that?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> In most situations, there are no consequences other than what we say to ourselves. The bit that makes that painful is when you lie awake at night going, oh my God, I was such an idiot. They were all staring at me. They must have thought I was so stupid. I can't believe I didn't prepare that more. I can't believe I didn't spot that mistake. I'm so lazy. I'm so stupid.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> That's where the lack of confidence comes from, is knowing that you are going to beat yourself up if you get this wrong. How about we just decide now. Let's make a pact together. Now let's make a pact that the next time we teach, if something's not perfect, we can be super kind to ourselves about it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We're not going to tell ourselves what we should have done. We're not going to tell ourselves how we should have started preparing earlier, or we should have paid more attention or whatever. We're just going to accept it. We're going to figure out how to learn from it, perhaps. You can listen to last week's podcast about how to learn from your mistakes, if you want to hear more about that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But the main thing here is deciding here and now that we are not going to beat ourselves up if we're not perfect, because then every eventuality you can think of comes much less of a problem. Are you worrying that no one will listen? Okay, so what do we say to ourselves if they don't? Are you worrying that you're going to forget what to say? Are you worrying you don't know enough, you're worrying. Someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to?  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Okay, why is that a problem? The only reason it's a problem is because you are going to make it mean you're not good enough. Yes, only a problem because you are going to make it mean that they're not learning anything and this was a terrible thing and that you are an imposter and all of these things that we tell ourselves.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> If we just don't tell ourselves those things, then it doesn't matter. If they ask you a question, you don't know the answer to it. Okay. One thing you can do, just as an aside, is plan for some of these eventualities. Someone asks you a question and you don't know the answer - you say, “that's a really interesting question. I'm going to write that down and let's ponder on it next week. I love that I'm not in a position to answer it right now, so let's have a think about it. You have a think too. See what answer you'd have and um, we'll talk about it next week. Alright. When I've had a bit more time to ponder it. Cool. Thank you.” </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Or “actually I can't remember the detail of that study. You know, I, I know all the main things, but it's been a while. You know, do you find that when you read papers, you don't remember all the details? It's totally normal happens to all of us. So, no, I don't remember that exact detail. I can look it up for you though. Or actually, if somebody's on their laptop, do you want to have a quick peek now and let us know what type of participants it was? You can let the group know in a second.”  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Okay. Because if it doesn't mean anything about you as an academic or an intellectual or a teacher, if you don't know the answer, then suddenly there's a whole ton of solutions. And actually what we're doing is we're modelling for the students that it's okay not to know. That it's not a big deal if you don't know, because you can figure it out. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> One of the things that allows us to take that sort of approach is to keep our worries in this room. I don't mean my room specifically where I'm recording this, but whatever room you are currently in. So what we often do is we take something that happens in the teaching room and we make it mean a whole bunch of things about us and our future. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We make it mean whether we're ever going to be a good teacher, whether anyone will ever give us a lecturing job, whether the students are going to pass their degrees, whether they're ever going to do well in their exams. All of these things we make it mean all of this stuff. And in life, just generally, if you just worry about that specific thing in the room and not all these things that we make it mean, then suddenly it's so much easier. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because actually if we are just in this room, all we've got to do is figure out how we get that student that bit of information that I didn't know the answer to in the moment. We haven't got a solve for why I now think I'll never get a job as a lecturer or whatever. We can just stay in the room, worry about that specific thing, then we can resolve all of these issues.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Another thing that I see regularly is, particularly junior staff who lack confidence in teaching, spending a disproportionate amount of time preparing. And that's because we let ourselves believe this myth, that more time preparing will lead to more confidence. </span> </div> <div> <span> To some extent, there's a little bit of a linear relationship at some ends of that, particularly at the beginning end. If you spend no time preparing, it's going to be hard to feel confidence unless you're somebody who's really, really comfortable winging it. But there definitely reaches a point of limited returns. There definitely reaches a point where more time preparing is not going to make you more confident because the problem here is not that you are not prepared enough. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The problem here is that you're telling yourself thoughts that are not making you feel confident. They're thoughts that are making you feel anxious or shame or guilt, or whatever it is. Okay, so what I want you to do is I want you to have really sensible discussions with yourself about how long you have to give this piece of teaching. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> That's not how long do I have to work in order to feel confident because we are not going to feel confident by the duration of time we've worked. How much time is a reasonable and proportionate amount of time to spend preparing for this piece of teaching? How much time do you have? How much time do you wish you had? Find somewhere around those. In between those.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Can be worth discussing with your mentors. It can vary quite a lot depending on whether it's something where you've had materials from somebody else, whether you're starting from scratch, whether it's within your topic area, whether it's not within your topic area. So do discuss with a mentor how long you should be spending on it, but try and break this belief that more time gives you more confidence.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> My final piece of advice is we have to stay out of the students’ models. Now, when I talk about models, some of you who come regularly to my coaching sessions, either my free monthly group coaching, or maybe you're a member of my membership or have been to some of my training sessions, you'll know I use something called the self-coaching model, and this is where we look at:  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> The Circumstances - the true facts of the situation </span> </div> <div> <span> The thoughts we have about those circumstances, which are up to us to determine </span> </div> <div> <span> The feelings that those thoughts generate, </span> </div> <div> <span> the actions that we do when we're feeling that way  </span> </div> <div> <span> and the results that we have.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We are in control of this model. We're not in control of our circumstances necessarily, but we are in control of what we think, what we feel, what we do, and therefore what results we get.  </span> <span> One of the reasons people lack confidence in teaching is because they get all up in other people's models. They start thinking that their students' models are things like, their thought is “this person doesn't know what they're talking about” and feel disrespectful or judgmental. Or you’re worried, they're thinking, “oh, this is really boring,” and they feel fed up. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> You see what I mean? We're getting into the heads of our students and starting to think what thoughts are they having? What feelings are they having? Now, it's always important to consider the perspectives of your students. But I hate to break it to you, but you don't get to control what thoughts and feelings they have. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And the fact is you could go and do the exact same teaching session and some of them will have good thoughts and some of them will have bad thoughts. Nothing amazed me more than getting my first batch of feedback forms after I was teaching like straight out. It probably even during my PhD actually and I got my first batch of teaching feedback forms And. It would amaze me that like some of them would be like, oh, Vikki talks far too fast, there's too much information to take in, da, da da. And then others would be like, it was so slow and boring. There was so much, you know, too much to take. There was, you know, it was all stuff we already knew. Didn't have to take any notes. I'm like, This was the same lectures, exactly the same person, exactly the same teachers, and you guys are having completely different responses. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I had everything from, you are the best teacher I've ever had. This is an inspirational, you're incredible, through to, you're a bit much, aren't you? And everything in between, so we don't get to control the thoughts and feelings of our students. What we do get to do is turn up and do a session that we think is good enough considering the amount of time and effort we are allowed to put into it. We were able to put into it. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> We get to decide that, and then they get to have their own experience and to have their own thoughts and opinions. It's a hard one to land. We all love getting positive feedback. It's nice when the students tell us that we're their favorite lecturer or it was a really interesting session, or whatever. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> These things are lovely. But we don't get to control when they come. Same as everybody else in your life. You get to turn up the way you want to turn up and be the best version of you, whether it's as a teacher, a researcher, as a partner, a friend, a parent, whoever. You get to show up as the version of you that you want to be, and then we have to accept that other people will just have their thoughts and feelings about that. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because the irony is the more we try and get up in their thoughts, the worst job we usually do. So usually, have you ever been in that situation where you're like looking around a teaching room going, “oh my God, they think I'm an idiot, they're bored, that person's not even listening, that person's asleep.” And just start worrying about what they're thinking.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Do you do a better job in that situation? When you are trying to interpret every thought of every person in the room? Do you do a better job when you make it mean something about you? No. You start doubting yourself and then you start sort of stuttering and you start forgetting what you are going to say and you don't do the best job. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Because when we try and get in other people's models and really figure out what's going on in their heads and change what's in their heads, because we're making it mean something negative, that's when we actually end up doing a less good job. You are much better off getting out of their models, delivering a session that you can deliver and getting it done. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Obviously this doesn't mean we don't try and assess where the student's understanding is at, but there's a massive difference between having a look around and going, okay, are people generally taking notes? Do they look confused? And using that as an information gathering as to whether you can move on to the next topic or whether you're going to spend a little bit more time here. </span> </div> <div> <span> That one's fine. But now compare that to, “they look bored. I must be boring. They look confused. I must be explaining this badly.” That's different. That's where we're making it mean something about us. So try your best. Get out of other people's heads. Stay in your own.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, at the beginning I said that one of the really important things is knowing that after the session, you're not going to beat yourself up however it went. You're not going to beat yourself up. You're going to tell yourself you did the best job you could on the day, and you're going to be supportive and kind to yourself. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> Now, some people say, “ah, but doesn't that mean I'll never get better? If I always tell myself I've done a good job, I'll never get better”. It doesn't mean that you don't reflect on the session, but there's a massive difference between, “oh my God, I can't believe you did that. You're terrible. Why did you do that?” </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> And “ah, that was interesting actually. I think I included too many slides and I had to rush a bit at the end there, didn't I? I'll make a note of that and remember next time.” Those things are so different. You're not beating yourself up about the decisions you made. You're looking at them compassionately and going, “oh, that's really interesting. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I wonder why I thought I could have fitted all that in, because actually, yeah, on reflection, I don't think that was ever going to work. Okay, next time I need to remember. I have a tendency to be ambitious about how much I can fit in and let's maybe try and chop it.”  </span> </div> <div> <span> So what we can do is we can reflect with compassion, we can still learn. And again, I talked about this a little bit last week when we were talking about learning from your past mistakes. We can still reflect, but we can reflect from a place of compassion and respect and understanding with the intention of improving our performance next time, rather than attributing blame and beating ourselves up for last time. </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> I really hope that that was useful. And just to remind you, this was a topic entirely done on the basis of a request from a listener. So if there are things you think I should be talking about that you worry about that I haven't covered yet, get on my website, drop me a message, or find me on Twitter @DrvikkiBurns and let me know and I might do your episode too. Thank you so much. Particular thanks to the person who requested this topic, and I will see you all next week. </span> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 01 May 2023 04:45:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/29-how-to-get-more-confident-about-teaching thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/28-how-to-learn-from-past-mistakes <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> We all make mistakes but some of us getting stuck in them, beating ourselves up and often repeating them. In this episode, we consider how you can instead approach past mistakes with compassion and curiousity, so that we can learn from them with less judgment. So, whatever your past mistakes, this is the episode for you!  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> <i> In this episode I talk about a piece of work by <a href="https://www.drpragyaagarwal.co.uk/" target="_blank"> Pragya Agarwal, the author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias. </a> You can find the article here in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-brain-stops-us-learning-from-our-mistakes-and-what-to-do-about-it-203436" target="_blank"> The Conversation </a> . I also talk about a film and it DID star Gwyneth Paltrow after all! Details <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_Doors" target="_blank"> here </a> if you want to check it out!  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> <i> Transcript </i> </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode 28 of the PhD Life Coach. Now, do you have decisions from your past that you look back and question whether you did the right thing? Should you have started this PhD in the first place? Should you have got going on something sooner? Should you have left that person, not left that person? </p> <p> Whatever it might be, I want you to have a think about a decision from your past that you maybe consider a mistake, because one of the things I've been seeing a lot recently with my clients is this problem of looking back in time and beating ourselves up about past decisions. Sort of spending a lot of time now ruminating on what we should have done differently and how much better things would be if we just made a different decision. </p> <p> I just see that causing a lot of problems for my clients. So firstly, it's not a fun experience to spend time thinking about something you've essentially got no control over now at all, and saying lots of horrible things to yourself while you do it. That you “should have known better”. You “should have been braver”, you “should have been less reckless,” whatever it is, you know, it could go both ways. Berating yourself for having done it, berating yourself for having not done it.  </p> <p> So it's not fun in the here and now. It also means that we don't learn from these mistakes because when we make - if they were mistakes, indeed - because when we make these decisions in the past and then we turn them into these massive mistakes, things we regret and we start attaching a whole bunch of meaning to that. We start attaching a whole bunch of emotions to that. Then we don't really want to spend time analysing it, do we? We don't really want to spend time thinking about it. We kind of want to stick our head in the sand, pretend it didn't happen. </p> <p> Or when we do think about it, thinking about it in a kind of more compulsive like, can't really help it, thinking about it kind of a way. And I had already planned this topic for this podcast, a little while ago, but I read a really interesting article earlier from Pragya Agarwal in The Conversation. So she's an academic at Loughborough, I think it is. She wrote a book called Sway, which is about unravelling unconscious bias. And she was talking about why we don't learn from our mistakes from a psychotic cognitive psychology perspective. </p> <p> And one of the things that she talks about in that is how it's cognitively much easier to do the same things we always do. It's habitual. We don't have to think as much. We don't have to overcome emotions. We don't have to change our thoughts. Even when it's things that we maybe regret having done in the past, it's much easier to just keep doing them now. </p> <p> I'm not going to revisit everything in that article, but I really, I strongly recommend you have a look at it. I will link to it in the show notes. There's some really interesting stuff there, referring out to various different psychological, um, studies. It really emphasized this idea that I already had, that we don't learn from our mistakes when we make them this big, painful, horrible thing. </p> <p> And the third thing, which is something I'm really seeing with my clients at the moment, is that if we beat ourselves up now about past decisions, it makes it incredibly hard to make decisions now. Because if you think about it, current Vikki, for example, is beating up past Vikki for having made a stupid mistake or having done something that turned out not to be the best thing to do. </p> <p> Now when current Vikki is now trying to make a decision, she's trying to choose whether to do this or do that, whether to do it or not do it, she knows based on current experience that future Vikki is gonna beat her up. Future Vikki is going to be like, “you should have thought this through more” or “you should have just been braver and gone for it”.  </p> <p> Knowing that you don't have your own back when it comes to your decision making makes it so much harder to make decisions now. And that's why I decided to do this episode, to think about how can we change that? How can we make it so that it's okay to learn from decisions we made in the past? </p> <p> How we can stop ruminating on it, stop beating ourselves up about it, actually just learn from it and move on. And how we can use that to make it easier to make decisions.  </p> <p> So how do we do it? Well, first of all, we remind ourselves of our two favourite qualities that if you've listened to my podcast before, you all know compassion and curiosity. </p> <p> We are going to address all of this from a place of compassion and curiosity. This is not about beating ourselves up. This is not about attributing blame. This is not about really understanding, you know, why we were so stupid as to make this decision. It's looking back with love on our past self and going, “oh, why did we do that?” </p> <p> It's okay that we did it, but let's try and understand it. Okay, so we are gonna be channeling compassion and curiosity all the way through this, and as usual, I've got some steps for you to go through.  </p> <p> And the first one is avoiding generalizing. So one of the most common things we see when people think about a mistake they've made in the past is that they generalize that mistake to mean something about them as a person and something about them as a kind of habit, an ongoing way of being.  </p> <p> So instead of being, “oh, I think I rushed into it a bit that time”, it becomes “I always rush into things. I'm someone who just doesn't think things through. I'm stupid. People have always told me that”. You make it mean that you are not brave. I'm just not a brave person. </p> <p> I was coaching somebody this week who was talking about, “I'm just not a resilient person. That's just not who I am”. We look back at times where we've struggled in the past and generalize it to mean something, and the problem is with that, our brain loves patterns. So as soon as you start to generalize, you start to think, oh, you know, maybe I am just someone who rushes into things, or maybe I am someone who's not resilient. </p> <p> Maybe I am someone who can't take the brave decisions, then you start to remember all the other times when you've done that too and you start to forget all the times that you were brave and forget all the times that you were resilient. Because that's the other thing, because we spend so much time thinking about our mistakes, or lots of us do anyway, we're also usually spending much less time thinking about our successes.  </p> <p> So our mistakes are much more present in our brain because we rehearse them so much more than our successes. So the first tip really, really be careful not to generalize any one decision that you made that maybe didn't turn out the way you wanted to mean anything about you and to mean anything about your sort of general tendencies. That's the first one.  </p> <p> Number two is to decide that you made the best decision that you could make at the time, regardless of what the decision was. Even if now you look back and you're like, what was I thinking? What were I doing? You need to decide now that that was the best decision that you were capable of making at the time. </p> <p> And that might sound weird because you might be looking back and objectively it really wasn't. I really should have thought that through more or I really should have known to leave or whatever it was. But that was the decision you made. And so there's a lot of power in just deciding that it was the best decision you could have made. </p> <p> Because what else do you do? Let's work out what happens. Okay? Let's think. Yeah, that was a stupid decision. I made a stupid decision. Now when we think the thought I made a stupid decision, what emotions do you feel? For me, things start to come up, like shame or embarrassment or disappointment in yourself. </p> <p> These sorts of emotions that firstly aren't that pleasant. And secondly, we know they don't lead to actions that are, make us more likely to be successful and do different in the first place. In fact, it's often all these emotions that we have around this decision that we made that prevent us from analysing it and learning from it. </p> <p> If you feel shame when you think about a decision you made in the past, you're probably not going to sort of sit and go, oh, I wonder how I could avoid that in the future. You're going to avoid thinking about it other than in the depths of the night when it just appears in your head uninvited. </p> <p> By believing it was a terrible mistake and you should have done something different, generates all these emotions that are just not particularly helpful. We can say “it was the best decision I knew how to make”, then we can reach something around acceptance. I'm not asking you to be proud of those mistakes. I'm not asking you to be super happy I made these mistakes.  </p> <p> I'm just asking you to say, you know what? I made the best decisions I could at the time, and I accept that - I have an emotion of acceptance. Now, really importantly, this doesn't mean you can't learn from it in the future, and it doesn't mean that you wouldn't do it differently if you have that opportunity again in the future. </p> <p> Sometimes people think if we think, oh, that was, you know, that decision was absolutely fine, no problem. Um, that we’ll never change because we're essentially accepting all these flawed decisions. That's not the point here at all. We can simultaneously believe we made the best decision that we were capable of at the time, and that we will do it differently in the future.  </p> <p> And in fact, having these more compassionate and curious thoughts make it much more likely that we can learn from it in the future and I'm going talk about that in a second.  </p> <p> The other thing, and this starts getting a little bit Sliding Doors, I don't know, you guys might not - some of the PhD students might be too young to remember this film, but when I was growing up, there was a film called Sliding Doors. </p> <p> Was it Gwyneth Paltrow? It might not have been. I'm really bad at knowing who was in films. It was someone blonde. Anyway, she was in a film where it was all about a moment on a tube, on the underground in London. And in one version of the timeline, she just got through the sliding doors as they shut. And that shot her off into one timeline where she met someone and I can't remember exactly what happened. And then in the other timeline, she just didn't make the doors and they shut in front of her and the train went off without her and so her life went in a different direction.  </p> <p> I can't actually remember the outcome of the film because I'm not good at remembering films either, but I remember that concept that just that either you make the train or you don't, can send your life in totally different paths. So the other thing I want to offer is that you don't know what negative consequences there could have been if you'd made a different decision. You know the negative consequences that you experienced because of this decision. </p> <p> Maybe there could have been completely different negative consequences if you had taken the other decision. And because there's an infinite possibilities because we never know what those might be, we tend not to think about them. We tend not to think of all the things that could have gone wrong if we'd taken different decisions. </p> <p> We just know the ones that happened because I did this thing, and we tend to remember and believe, “oh, but if I'd done this thing, it would all be great.” Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it would've been terrible. Maybe all sorts of awful things could have happened because you took a different decision.  </p> <p> So my recommendation would be to tell yourself that you made the best decision you could at the time, and then all of those other things fall away. </p> <p> Then what do we do from this place of compassion and curiosity and now acceptance? The next step is asking yourself, can I make this the best decision I've ever made? So we've told ourselves it's the best decision we could have made at the time, but what we often don't do is try and prove it to be the right decision. In fact, sometimes the opposite happens once we start to have concerns about, you know, “Ooh, should I have started my PhD” for example? </p> <p> Maybe that was the wrong decision. Maybe I wasn't ready. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I shouldn't be here. Maybe I should have taken that other job. Maybe I should have done something different. As soon as we start to have those thoughts and we have doubt, what happens is we start to withdraw from the thing. </p> <p> So say you're doing your PhD and you're starting to have doubts that it was the right decision for you. What happens without really making a proper decision about whether you are staying or going, just having these doubts, you avoid making the actual decision because you're feeling doubtful and shame and all these horri emotions, but you also start to withdraw a bit from the PhD itself. </p> <p> That's what tends to happen. So once you start having doubts, you start doing a bit less work. You start engaging less in the community activities in your school or department. You go onto campus less often. You avoid talking to your supervisor. You start to withdraw a little bit. And so what you start to do is by telling yourself this might not have been the right decision, you make it not a good decision because you start to withdraw it and start to not do all the things that you need to do in order to make it a success.  </p> <p> So my third tip for you is really challenge yourself to think, is there a way I could make this the right decision? So even if at the moment it feels like it wasn't a good decision, can I make it a good decision? </p> <p> Can I try and get out of it as much as I can get. So here's an example for you. I've talked before about planners and, in fact my second ever podcast episode is about why you don't need another planner. I released that in late October. </p> <p> I stand by everything that's in it, yet in January, I still bought myself a new planner, and you may remember there is also a podcast episode where I talked about how I'm using that planner to record the things I've done and the things that I'm proud of, and how well that system is working. And it was for a while. </p> <p> Currently not working. My planner is, those of you on YouTube can see, my beautiful planner, so gorgeous. Look, look at all of this. Gorgeous, that's January, uh, into February. </p> <p> Yeah, this is March. Not so much. So I could very easily tell myself that it was a bad mistake by my planner. Now it wasn't a big mistake. I spent like 20 quid on it or something. I can afford to spend 20 quid on a planner I don't use. But in the past I have beat it, beaten myself up about decisions like, oh, you've wasted money on a planner again. </p> <p> Oh, you didn't stick to it again, did you? Now I can decide now that it was a great decision that I had a lovely six weeks or so where I was using it and I really enjoyed it and it was worth the money. So it was a great decision from that point of view, but I could also choose to go back to it and say, you know what, I can make it the right decision. Maybe I haven't used it for most of March and April, but it's only April. Imagine if I used it now for another month. I'm not even going to… I nearly said for the rest of the year, who am I kidding? I'm probably not going to do it for the rest of the year, but maybe I could say, you know what? </p> <p> I'm goin to get some use out of it over the next few weeks. I'm going to make it the right decision to have bought this because I'm going to have some more fun with it this month. I can make it the right decision. So that's the third thing to do, is to really think about, are there ways that you can make this the right decision? </p> <p> Now, one thing to be cautious of. Sometimes you need to spend a little bit of time, when it's a more important decision than whether you bought planner or not. Whether it's maybe your brain is offering that you shouldn't have started your PhD. Maybe spending a little bit of time analysing whether that's true is important because part of this process of making sure that you make it the right decision doesn't mean keep flogging something that you don't want to do anymore.  </p> <p> So what I have also seen with some of my clients is them putting pressure on themselves now to do something in order to prove a past decision right? I need to get this to happen because otherwise it means that I shouldn't have started. If I don't finish, it means I shouldn't have started, for example. </p> <p> And I just want to emphasize that I'm not saying that in order to make the decision to start a PhD, for example, right, you have to lean in and finish it. Sometimes leaning in could be deciding that you don't want to finish it, and that you're going to get out of it what you came for in terms of some experience, and then you're going to leave. </p> <p> That can also be the decision. Sometimes we clinging to decisions we've made. It's called sunken cost fallacy, where we've put in this much time so far, so we've got to finish it. We've put in this much money, so we've got to follow through. Sometimes goal disengagement, so moving away from goals and goal re-engagement into something else can also be super important. </p> <p> It can really help with motivation.  </p> <p> So overall though, you can think about how you can make that past decision the right decision for you.  </p> <p> The fourth thing is a bit of a process. It's not just a a one-off. But the fourth thing is now that we are in a place, hopefully, where we are feeling compassionate and curious, and we are feeling more accepting that we did the best we could at the time. We love Past Us, we're going to bring love and understanding to our relationship with Past Us. </p> <p> We can now step into analysing that situation. And the reason this is important is because what people usually do is they say, oh, I'll just choose the other thing next time. So when I was an academic, I was an academic for a really long time. I was teaching for like 20 years. And one of the things I always saw with my students, would wait until the last minute to get their coursework done, handing things in, and then when I talk to them afterwards, they'd be like, oh my God, that was so stressful. I'm so frustrated with myself. What an idiot can't believe I left it to the last minute. Again, I always leave things to the last minute. So remember generalizing all of that stuff, I shouldn't have been so stupid. Um, so judging past self, um, next time I'm doing to start earlier, next time it'll be different. </p> <p> And what they rarely did was spend time analysing why they did what they did last time. They were just absolutely convinced that past them were stupid, made a bad mistake, feel embarrassed, feel shame about it. But future them is going to make the right decision. It's going to start it early. And they don't want to spend too much time analysing it, because frankly, they feel a bit shame and embarrassment over here and they have absolute fate. </p> <p> It'll be fine. Next time I'll do it. I'll start earlier. Next time I'll remember it's important. And the fact is you see these students go through these cycles and they do the same thing every time. Because they haven't really addressed what the issue was. They haven't really figured out why they did what they did last time because Past You wasn't an idiot, Past You was trying to do their best. </p> <p> Whatever decision they made, they thought it was for the best at the time, one way or another. And so, when we sort of relegate Past Us to, well, they were stupid, but I won't be next time, we sort of miss out all the nuanced understanding of the barriers that we were facing at the time.  </p> <p> So when we analyse this from a place of curiosity, from a place of compassion, and from the starting ground, that we probably weren't an idiot in the past. </p> <p> So why did we do this thing? Suddenly it becomes so much more informative. So what you could ask yourself is, why did you choose this, last time? So if it now feels like it was a mistake, why did you pick it? So for example, why did you leave it to the last minute last time? What happened? Did you underestimate how long it would take? </p> <p> Did you overschedule yourself so you forgot to leave space or didn't think about leaving space for yourself to do it? Did you find it uncomfortable doing it and so you tried to avoid it for as long as possible? Did you not keep track of your deadline so you didn't know that you had some clashing things and so you didn't plan for it accordingly? </p> <p> Did you get distracted by friends or social media or games or whatever it is? Why didn't you choose this option ie starting it earlier last time? You were probably about as sensible then as you are now. So why didn't you? Let's ask ourselves that question honestly.  </p> <p> Second question you can ask when you're analysing this is what options did you reasonably have? So again, we say these like I should have started earlier. Okay. When could you have started? And how could you have known that? So when did you have all the information from your tutors? When did you have time to put aside for it? How many options did you actually have? And sometimes you might go, you know what? </p> <p> I could have started it like two months before this deadline. I really could have done. Other times you’d be like, Yeah, actually we didn't have the final instructions until like three weeks to go, and I had that other piece of work and I was working 30 hours a week. So you know what? I probably couldn't have started it much earlier. </p> <p> Maybe a little bit, but not much earlier. So you start to analyse what other options you reasonably had. So same thing if you're regretting starting your PhD, for example, at the point you decided to start your PhD, what other options did you have? What were you choosing between? Let's really understand that context in which you made this decision. </p> <p> And then what I want you to do is put yourself back in the position of Past You and say, why didn't I choose those? So I had the option to start this a month before the deadline. Why didn't I? What happened? So not just why did you choose the option you chose, but why didn't you choose the other options? </p> <p> So we're really looking at this from every angle. We're trying to understand why ourselves, who we know to be a good person, and we're really building that belief, why didn't we choose the other options? Why didn't we choose to do the other thing you could have done instead of starting your PhD? Why not? </p> <p> Then we get to look at all of that and we get to decide what do we want to learn from this? And sometimes that all can help us just build compassion. And go, you know what? Actually I'm not surprised I didn't start it sooner because I had a bunch of other stuff on, and looking back, given the situation I was in, I probably muddled through about as well as I could have done. </p> <p> And so in that situation, you might want to learn, okay, my mistake wasn't leaving it to the last minute. My mistake was not checking my calendar when I also signed up to do that concert and that match and that whatever other commitments you have without checking how that lined up with my academic work. </p> <p> So actually my mistake wasn't just being lazy and stupid, and leaving it till the last minute. My mistake was not double checking my schedule and thinking that all through. That's the bit I want to learn from it. Next time, I need to be looking further ahead so that I can try and avoid getting in that position. </p> <p> Or maybe you want to learn from it that actually when you sat down and got on with it, you quite enjoyed it. And that actually you need to figure out a way to remind yourself that when you work on this, you quite like it. And so this notion that you are avoiding something that's uncomfortable isn't actually true and maybe that's the bit you need to learn.  </p> <p> Maybe looking back, the moment at which you got on with it was the moment at which you finally plucked up the courage to ask your supervisor's advice, and then you knew exactly what you were doing and you could get going, and that was the reason that you were late to the deadline, was because it took you ages and ages to feel confident enough to ask for help. </p> <p> So we get to figure out what were the things last time and therefore what do we want to learn if we find ourselves in this position in the future.  </p> <p> And all the way through this, we're going to be really kind to ourselves because we can make mistakes and still be good people. We can make mistakes and still be humans, still be competent, still be skilled, still be worthy, still deserve to be here, and all of these things. In fact, we all make mistakes.  </p> <p> One of my favourite things to do is to Google like CVs of mistakes and things like that. There are lots of wonderful academics, who have published all the things that have gone wrong for them. CV of failures is the other phrase that you will hear, and we do all make mistakes. And so when we think about them in this way, we get to analyse them as lessons rather than as marker that we are inherently unworthy in some way.  </p> <p> But we haven't finished because we can decide what we want to do in the future, but we all know that behaviour change isn't straightforward. We all know there are various things that we've intended to do that we haven't ended up doing. So the final step that I want you to take is If you want to do something differently next time, how are you going to make that more likely to happen? </p> <p> How are you going to make it more likely that you will start the piece of work earlier so you don't leave it to the last minute this time? How will you make it more likely that you'll be brave enough to take on a new opportunity next time if you are regretting having not done so before? How are you making it more likely that you won't overcommit next time. </p> <p> Now, part of it comes through this understanding, but part of it needs much more systematic planning than that. So have a think. How can you make this easier to make the right decision? Do you need a wall calender? Do you need a planner? Maybe you need a planner. Do you need a wall calendar that makes it easier for you to see where you've got competing demands? </p> <p> Do you need to always take a pause before you agree to something? If you are somebody who has jumped into too many things and that's what you regret is that you took on too much stuff, do you need to build in an automatic pause?  </p> <p> I've worked with a client recently about having a stock phrase of, “thank you for that opportunity. I'm going to take some time to think it through”. Whenever anybody suggests that you collaborate together or that you could teach on their module or whatever, having that sort of stock response, so you never say yes or no immediately, you always take time to think.  </p> <p> How can you build in that there's always somebody who believes in you that you could go to. So if you know you are somebody who tends to find it difficult to put yourself forward for things or that you feel like you're not ready to, and then you regret afterwards that you didn't do it, maybe you put in place that I always talk to this person because they believe in me and I can borrow their belief for a while and encourage myself to do it by surrounding myself with people that cheer me on. So we can start thinking about things like that. How can we make it more likely that we'll do it?  </p> <p> Within all of that, how can we make it easier? How can we make it more fun? So to make the decisions that we now want to make, how can we make that easier and more fun? </p> <p> And before we leave this, I want you also to look back with gratitude to your past self because, because you made the decision that you made and you experienced the consequences that you experienced, you are now learning this lesson now. And so while it might feel really tough and it might feel like you wish you hadn't had to have this experience, it's because past you took that decision that you are now having the self-development that you are having now.  </p> <p> And so we can even look back with a little bit of gratitude that we are now getting to learn what we do want in the future, partly on the basis of experiencing some of the things that we don't want. </p> <p> You might be thinking, this sounds like it takes a whole lot of time sitting and working through how I feel about this and what I might want to do differently, and yeah, it does. It does take some time. But what I promise you is it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as years of beating yourself up for making bad decisions. </p> <p> It doesn't take anywhere near as much time as unravelling the stories that you will create about yourself if you keep telling yourself that you're someone who always makes mistakes, always screws things up, or always leaves things to the last minute, or always chickens out, or always takes on too much. </p> <p> Okay? So working this stuff too takes a little bit of time but not as long as all of that. Finally, we've spoken about how to learn from your past mistakes.  </p> <p> I'm sorry for those of you who are on YouTube, you might be wondering why my hand is stuck out at right angles here. It's because I have a Labrador chin on my hand and he telling me that it is very nearly dinnertime. So I'm going to wrap this podcast up, but I'm going to wrap it up by saying, we've been thinking today about how to learn from your mistakes, but what I want you to also think about, and I might do a podcast about it in the future, is how you can learn from your successes. </p> <p> One of the things we know is that people spend an awful lot less time thinking about their successes, why they were so amazing, why they were able to achieve them, and how they can replicate them more in the future. And so I would also really encourage you every time you remember a mistake that you made, even if you're taking this really positive analytical approach that I've talked about today, I want you to also think of a success that you've had and think about how can you replicate that success in the future? How can you build on the things that you are already good at? </p> <p> It's a strength-based approach. You might remember us talking a bit about it with Professor Jenn Cumming at the end of last year. If you haven't checked out that episode, go find it. It's called a Strength-Based Review of the Year. A really wonderful strategy for learning is to think about what have I already done right in my life and how can I do that more? </p> <p> So check it out. Have a think. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that was useful. I hope you can go away now and analyse some of your past mistakes and feel much better about them moving forwards. Take care and see you next week. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 24 Apr 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/28-how-to-learn-from-past-mistakes thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/27-how-to-get-into-science-communication-with-the-struggling-scientists <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> This is a  bumper episode because it is a crossover with The Struggling Scientist podcast! I am joined by Susanne and Jayron, founders of The Struggling Scientists to talk about all things science communication. Susanne and Jayron will give advice about getting started in science communication and I will offer coaching tips on some of the common barriers and worries that people have about engaging with the public. You can check them out at <a href="http://www.thestrugglingscientists.com"> www.thestrugglingscientists.com </a> .  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> <i> Transcript </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 27 of the PhD Life Coach. Today is a super exciting episode because we are doing our first collaboration. So we've had guests on the show before, as you know, but today is a full collaboration with the Struggling Scientists Podcast. So I am here with Suzanne and Jayron from Struggling Scientists, and this episode is going to go on both of our podcasts. So we are going to be thinking today about getting involved in science communication, why you might want to, what things might hold you back, and from my perspective, how we can use coaching to overcome some of the worries and concerns that you might have about getting involved in these things today. But before we get started, Suzanne, Jayron, do you want to introduce yourselves and let people know a little bit about you.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes, of course. So I'm Suzanne and I am now a fifth year PhD student, still working on it. Almost done, hopefully soon, writing the thesis. A lot of work. I'm from the Netherlands, and that's also where I'm doing my PhD now. And my PhD is in medical biochemistry and in cholesterol metabolism. So I'm a very fundamental scientist and generalist as well. And yeah, we are from the Struggling Scientist Podcast, but I will let Jayron introduce that part. </p> <p> Jayron: Yes. So I'm Jayron, the other half of the Struggling Scientists. I also do my PhD in the Netherlands, also fifth year PhD student, same department as Ison. That's where we met. And my PhD is more focused on one particular gene in diabetes and insulin secretion and stuff like that. So slightly different from Suzanne, but we're still both in fundamental science. </p> <p> And yeah, we both got started with the struggling scientist back in April of 2021, I want to say. And yeah, it's taken off quite a bit. And here we are now.  </p> <p> Vikki: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here. Let's start with how you guys got involved in science communication. I know for your listeners, you've, recently done an episode about this, but for the benefit of my listeners, how did you get involved in the first place? </p> <p> Suzanne: So yeah, we got started with science communication because Jayron had a real passion to want to start a podcast. He has once been told by a PI that he had a real podcast voice and it always stuck with him. He first started a podcast actually about investing and that was really not my topic. I love to talk about science. So when he wanted to do something together with me, it quickly became a science podcast instead. We have been really lucky that it's been really successful and grew a lot. </p> <p> And when we started with that, we realized that we had a real passion for science communication. We sort of rolled into it and it's been this really great, amazing thing that we got to do next to our PhDs, which has been a super lot of fun, but also a lot of work, of course. Jayron, do you have anything to add?  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, I would also just add that it, we didn't really just stop with the podcast. At a certain point, it became social media newsletter, some blogs, a website. We kept adding more stuff on top of it. So yeah, science communication doesn't just stop with one thing, you can always add more.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. We, we are not that good at sticking to one thing, I guess! </p> <p> Vikki: You make it sound quite straightforward that you just thought you'd like to do a podcast and started doing it. So was it that straightforward or did you have concerns and things along the way?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, honestly, I think one of the things that the PhD taught me the most was that you can teach yourself anything. You can dive into a topic, you can read all about it, and you can do it. You are smart. You can do anything you want in the world, basically. And it also teaches you how to find information and how to take that in and how to start rolling with it. And that has been super helpful also in this area where we just are self-taught, of course mostly by YouTube videos, watching about how to edit podcasts and how to do everything. So yeah, it is actually quite easy to get started with it and it also involved a lot of experimenting, I would say, with what works and what doesn't work. And that's also something we of course love from our background as PhD students. So yeah, it worked out quite well, I have to say.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, I would just add maybe that the one thing that we sort were sort of hesitant a little bit about in the beginning was how to bring the podcast forward to our network. Because we originally only started by putting it on LinkedIn. It's like, “Hey guys, by the way, we make this”. And from there it was like, okay, but should we be a little bit more confident about it and bring it forward like that also on Twitter for example. Neither of us really had Twitter or Instagram or anything like that, so it was a process of learning to put yourself forward a little bit, I guess. </p> <p> Vikki: I love that because so often when I'm working with clients, they talk about a barrier to doing something, being not knowing how to do it. “I've never done this before. I don't even know where to start. I don't know anything.” And I love the way you've sort of flipped that around and gone, no, I don't. That's true. And that, but that doesn't mean I can't do it. That doesn't mean that this is too difficult for me. What's also true is that I know how to find things out and I know how to learn to do things. </p> <p> And that's one of the techniques we often use in coaching is if you're having a thought that might hold you back - so the thought, “I don't even know how to do this” perhaps - you ask if it's true and sometimes maybe it is true. And then the, the sort of approach is, okay, what if it's true and that's okay? And what if something else is true too?  </p> <p> And in this case, the fact that you had confidence in your ability to learn things and that you knew where you could find resources and you were willing to spend some time in that bit where you don't know and you can see it as an experiment, just feels like such a positive thing. </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes. Well, it's almost like we find it kind of fun to learn new skills. Mm-hmm. So for example, I also learned website building and I learned how to edit podcasts and I learned to do so many different things just for this podcast basically, which grew into so much more. And yeah, I really enjoy learning new things and things like accounting, there was a little bit less fun.  </p> <p> Vikki: But yeah, we've all got to do the admin stuff as well, haven't we? Now you guys are starting to help other people get into science communication, I think.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes. Yeah. That's our goal.  </p> <p> Vikki: How's that? How's that going? What barriers do you see people talking about?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, it's often that people don't know where to start. That's like a really, really big one. Or that they don't feel like it would be interesting enough what they want to talk about. And that's also something we struggled with in the beginning. Definitely. </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, no, for sure. I agree with that. It's also like, I want to say, it seems like a lot of people put their stuff forward. They do try, but then they don't see the results immediately, like their, their tweet or whatever doesn't go viral, it's like, okay, this was much harder than I thought. </p> <p> And then they maybe tone it down a little bit or maybe end up quitting or after a certain amount of time. Something along those lines as well. I think.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah, there are a lot of people who start very enthusiastically… </p> <p> Jayron: And then hopes and dreams dashed! </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. I mean, it's something I've had to coach myself through that, you know, you find yourself, you're celebrating 10 downloads, you're celebrating the fact that you've published five episodes and all of this. </p> <p> And you know, especially as people that are used to being quite high-achieving in our normal lives, that's starting right at the beginning and understanding that it can take time and there's going to be times when not many people are listening or when you don't feel like doing the episode or whatever it is. </p> <p> It does take that sort of persistence, I guess, and that understanding that it will take some time. How did you kind of coach yourself through that? I mean, you have billions of listeners now, but I do assume you didn't leap straight to having tons and tons of listeners. So how did you like coach yourselves during that? How did you keep going?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, one really big thing, we also agreed that consistency is an important thing. You need to keep going. It really helped that we were with two people instead of one, because we could sort of help each other through the difficult parts. </p> <p> And when I wasn't feeling getting prepared for an episode, Jayron did a bit more or the other way around and that really, really helped. And yeah, I personally think metrics are also kind of fun. You see it going up and you should enjoy that, but it can also be really, really difficult when you see it going down for, for a month. </p> <p> I mean, in the end, you need to look at the bigger picture and what you're working towards and keep the big goals in mind. And of course, we're also doing it to help other PhD students or other scientists basically when the days are a bit harder or their experiments failed that we want to talk about that are fun science or help them get through their difficult day byentertaining them basically. So that's also a, a big goal that we keep in mind.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, and I think also when we started out we were very happy with like those first 10 downloads of we were celebrating that. We didn't expect it to do as well as it did at all. Like, it was just sort of a hobby that we were putting our sort of money into buying some equipment to get started with, which even that is, you don't really need to do that at the beginning if you really want to get started. </p> <p> But it was just like, we're doing this because we want to, not necessarily because we expected to do well or anything like that. We just did it because we wanted to. And even when it was sort of hard, it's like, but we still want to do it. We still want to be consistent. We still want to keep doing it, I guess, you know. </p> <p> Vikki: I love that, that idea of keeping the bigger picture, the sort of remembering why you decided to do this in the first place at the front of your mind is a really good way to get through those times where you are, “oh my goodness, nobody's listening.” Or “fewer people, you know, fewer people are listening to this episode than the last episode. Am I getting worse?” Keeping that bigger picture of why, why you're doing it, can help loads.  </p> <p> I also love that you're talking about sort of relying on each other there as well too. Because often I hear my clients talk about relying on others almost as a weakness, almost as a, “I should be able to be independent. Sometimes my friend has to help me, but you know, I should be able to do this independently.” </p> <p> And I'm a big believer that actually putting that stuff around you is part of being strong and independent. That somebody who's strong and independent builds bridges with people who help them to be even stronger and even more effective, and that actually setting up that scaffolding is part of working well. I'd love to hear your guys' perspective on that. </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. Well, we lean so much on each other's strengths also, I mean, Jayron is basically responsible for our social media, and he works on real magic that I would absolutely not be able to do. And I edited podcasts and that's something he would absolutely not be able to do. And in that sense, we, we are a real team and we couldn't do it without each other. </p> <p> I think that's also a little bit different than what I ever experienced during like the academic world, because in our group, we didn't really work as teams on certain projects. We all had our own projects, and then you're basically alone responsible for that. So it's also been really nice to be able to be so much part of a team, I would say. </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. No, I agree. I also say like, I think it's more along the lines of no one is really expecting anything out of this podcast in that sense. There's no real expectation to meet a certain milestone, meet a certain goal. It's because of that we can sort of experiment a little bit with what we do and try out new things. </p> <p> Start a newsletter, start a website, a web shop and stuff like that. And all that also adds on top of what we're doing that and keeps it fun for us. And in terms of leveraging each other's skills, we pick up new skills along the way as well that we can sort of compliment each other with. So, yeah, definitely. </p> <p> Vikki: Anyway, I feel like I've asked you loads of questions. Have you got questions for me?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Um, yeah. Well, we actually had, of course, quite some experiences during making this podcast. And we also had some comments from other people that didn't always understand why we love doing this so much or why we wanted to do it, and then there's of, of course, always the big thing that you already are doing a PhD, so why would you want to add more on top of that?  </p> <p> So we actually had some comments from people that we heard. Not necessarily like in a, they didn't mean it ever in a negative way. That's really important, but they can be sort of demotivating and we would love to hear your perspective on them. And I mean, we can explain how we got through it, of course, but we also would love to hear what you would recommend if we would still be in that stage.  </p> <p> Vikki: I would be very happy too. Just one thing with coaching, so I rarely recommend what people should do, but what I would do and what I can talk with you about today is what things I would get the person to consider. Because you know you better than anybody else. I could say, “yes, you should do this, or you should do that.” But I don't know you, I don't know my clients as well as they know themselves. And so what I'll do is if you tell me some statements, I'll tell you the sorts of things that I would want you to ask yourselves or the people you work with could ask themselves to figure out what they want to do in those situations. </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes. Okay. So the first one is also something that we quite often hear from people who might want to start with it or from colleagues or whatever is like, “why would anyone want to listen to you in case of this podcast or read your blog? Or why would my topic be interesting enough to put out there?” </p> <p> And that's something I think a lot of people starting out with science communications struggle with. Especially if you talk about your own science or about something that's dear and near to your heart of course.  </p> <p> Vikki: Of course. Definitely. And our brains are really good at that, aren't they? They're really good at throwing up questions. And one of the things I always encourage my clients to do is notice when your brain is asking you questions and just take a second to answer it. Because one of the unhealthiest things we do is just throw around questions “what if no one listens? What if I'm not interested enough? What if this, what if this, what if this, what if this?” </p> <p> And it sort of all spins in your head and takes up lots of cognitive space and leaves me, you know, leaves you feeling quite anxious quite often. And so I've asked, okay, so you are asking why would anybody listen to you? Why would they? Let's just answer that question and then people start going, “well, you know, I mean, I think it's interesting and other people study this topic too, and actually I don't think there's anybody out there really talking about it. And I, you know, I would try really hard to make it interesting and you know, maybe everyone wouldn't want to listen to it.” </p> <p> And so you start to answer your own question, what if no one listens? Well, okay, what if, what do we do if no one listens? And then we start to look at it as a problem to be solved rather than as a reason not to do it. So that's where I'd really encourage people to start.  </p> <p> The other thing I would always encourage to remember that the things that seem easiest and most obvious to you are often the things that are super interesting to other people. We often really downplay our strengths, downplay the things we are good at, because we think they're easy and so they're just no big deal. </p> <p> You guys know all this stuff about cholesterol and diabetes and all this stuff, and you don't think – well, you guys do science communication, so you know, it's interesting, but a lot of people are like, “oh, well yeah, but that's all, you know, they'll have done stuff like this. You know, they'll, you know, if they did Biology A level, they know the basics and the rests just details or whatever.” </p> <p> But actually the stuff you take for granted is super interesting for people who don't. So that's the other thing I get people to reflect on is what's the stuff you are taking for granted that people know? Because there's tons and tons and tons and you just think it's normal.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. I think a way I also always thought about it is like, would I be interested in listening to listening to this? Because in the end, especially with what we do, we make a podcast for other scientists of course. So we are our own audience basically, which really helps. Like, would I enjoy if I would listen to this? And then if the answer is yes, I'm like, oh, we made a great episode. That's great.  </p> <p> Jayron: And I think maybe expanding on that a little bit. I also think about it like, did we have this problem? Did, like if, if we're having this problem or like we're thinking about this as a question, would someone appreciate an answer to this? Would I appreciate that answer to it? Sort of like we've tackled topics along the lines of having problems with your PhD and stuff like that. </p> <p> So if I experienced that problem, would someone else want that information as well? And that's how we also share via the podcast.  </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. I think consulting in with yourself is a great shout. The other thing you can do is consult in with past you. So especially for something like you guys are doing, and for me, I'm just casting my mind back further, but you know, your fifth year PhD students. Thinking back, would I have wanted to hear this in second year? Would I have wanted to hear this in my first month of doing a PhD? Because again, often the stuff you take for granted now would've made a massive difference back then when you didn't know that, when you weren't familiar with those things. So yeah, consulting with your past self, I hear a lot of people talking about how they do the things they do now because they want to create what they wish had existed when they had needed it.  </p> <p> Jayron: No, for sure. I definitely agree with that. And that's also one of the reasons why we've been diving a little bit more into like productivity tools as well, because I wish I knew about some of them in my first and second year. That made, would've made a big difference.  </p> <p> Vikki: Absolutely. </p> <p> Jayron: Yes. So yeah, maybe then moving on to our sort of next statement or problem that we sort of faced. I guess it comes in sort of the sense of but are you not busy enough with the PhD? So if you have enough free time to be doing this, couldn't you spend that more on your PhD and stuff like that? Should you not focus on your science? And does doing this sort of take away time and cognitive mental energy from your PhD and, yeah. I don't know. I sort of see it as like, I personally have always felt it like a like a weekend, like we have weekends to rest and recovery. And I also see this, yes, it's still kind of work and it's still fun and stuff like that, but it's also, it takes you away from that thing for a bit, but it brings you back sort of fresh again to to approach it with different eyes, with fresh eyes and tackle the problem. At least that's how I felt about it.  </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely, definitely. But I think it's a really important question to ask. And again, it's a really important question to take seriously and not just to have as a worry. Because for some students it might not be the right thing to do. So some PhD students are working for money, they are doing tutoring in their departments, they're doing lots of other things as well. And so it may be that some students, especially if they're people, you know, I'm someone who generally takes on too many things. </p> <p> It's something I've really worked on, but I tend to be sort of, “oh my god, yeah I could do that, I could do that, I could do that.” And you know, so sometimes actually just stopping and going, okay, well is it too much? Is is a really good question to ask. Because for some people it might be. But whenever you are making a decision, what I encourage people to do is to think about what are your reasons for doing it and what are your reasons for not doing it? </p> <p> So, maybe for some people doing a podcast would be because it would be fun. It might be because people might want to listen to it. It might be to build a career. It might be because someone's told them they should do science communication. It might be because they think they're rubbish at presentation skills and they want to get better at it. </p> <p> And then the flip side reasons for not doing it might be, I'm too scared, no one will want to listen to me. Or they might be, I'm in a phase of my PhD where I really want to focus in on my writing. And what you get to do then is you get to look at your two lists of reasons and decide which ones come from the best version of you, which ones come from the version of you that you want to be. </p> <p> Because the truth is there's no right answer in this. There's no, yes, you definitely should, or no, you definitely shouldn't. You get to pick and then you get to decide that you love that decision. So that's how I always get people, when they're thinking about decisions to work through that process.  </p> <p> The other thing I'd say, and especially in response to the busyness thing, is whenever you take on something new, I'd encourage people to really mindfully decide if I do this, what am I not doing? Because all of us fill 24 hours one way or another. Some of that's sleeping. Some of it's messing around on social media in a non-productive way. Some of it's doing social media in a productive way. Some of it's seeing our friends, it's exercising, whatever it is. And so even if people consider themselves to be someone who doesn't do very much, you're filling all those hours, even if it's with Netflix. </p> <p> And so saying, okay, which bit of my week am I swapping out realistically? How much time is this and what am I stopping doing? And for some people it would be, oh, if I do this, I'm going to have to do less work on my PhD because everything else is already stretched fully. And is that what I want? I don't know. Is that for the best? Not sure.  </p> <p> Other people will be like, you know what? Tuesday nights I just watch Netflix and I'm happy to swap Netflix for podcasts. That's fine. Just means I don't watch TV on a Tuesday or whatever day you do your things. So properly thinking through what am I not going to do if I do this and will that net either improve or keep my life where it is is another way to, to ponder through those decisions.  </p> <p> Suzanne: I think for us it was definitely a weekend and evening thing. We definitely had to give up some other things. It was our main hobby and every evening after dinner, we would go back to our computer and work on it. </p> <p> It did help me also survive the PhD almost during the difficult times. I've had this other thing that still kept my love for science alive, basically. So in that sense was really helpful. But there were definitely things we had to give up, especially once we started taking it more seriously than we perhaps had to. </p> <p> Because of course we were went a bit crazy with it. On the other hand, I think also the PhD is a time where you are supposed to discover what you love and what you want to do in the future. And it's not bad to experiment a little bit with that and just try it out. And I wish especially in our Dutch PhD system where we are fully paid workers to be 36 hours in the lab basically, and then right after that, there isn't a lot of focus on development and coursework and things like that. </p> <p> And I wish it was a bit more accepted to develop yourself in other ways during the PhD because not everybody is going to end up in academia. Not everybody is going to end up as a PI. And it's okay to spend some of your time also developing perhaps science communication and finding out that that's what you want to do with your life. </p> <p> Or teaching, and finding out that that works great with you, and at the same time, it sort of develops this guilt at the same time that you're not in the lab and that you're not writing your paper. That I really think shouldn't be there. And it should be a bit more accepted that, that you're also doing this other thing, that it's still science related and still very cool and interesting, but, um, it's a bit. different than, than the standard stuff.  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. And there's, there's so much in what you just said that I want to respond to. I think that's brilliant. And it actually relates back to something Jayron said earlier about it energizing you as well. So when you're thinking about what would I stop doing in order to do this, you can also think about what does it add to my life? And for some people, especially people who identify as more introverted and those sorts of things, it might actually be a net drain that actually you love doing it and you want to do it, but you have to allow then for the fact that you'll also need some time to rest and recover from that sort of sociability of recording podcasts and that kind of thing. </p> <p> Whereas, certainly for me, I'm a pretty extroverted person. I get energy from doing this sort of stuff. I will get more work done after talking to you guys today than I would've done if I hadn't talked to you because I come off these calls just like, “yay, that's so exciting.” And then get on with all my things. So thinking about what it adds to your life as well, I think is really important.  </p> <p> I think your point about training so well made, you know, it is one of the big, sort of hidden, I guess to some extent things of academia is that this relatively small percentage of PhD students that will go on into academic careers, you know, it's pretty shocking in many ways how low those percentages are. And spending some of that time figuring out what types of things do you like doing, not even necessarily what career you might do after a PhD, but what types of things would you want it to involve?  </p> <p> Would you want it to involve this sort of public facing communications stuff? Would you want it to involve teaching? Would you want it to involve working in teams? All those sorts of things. I think any opportunity to try out those different things and have those experiences is brilliant. And I mean, you guys, whatever you go on and apply for after this, if you are carry on working for yourselves, then obviously that's the thing, but working for other people, you're going to have so much to talk about and so many, you know, skills and experiences that you can bring to that. I think it's amazing.  </p> <p> And then the last thing, you talked about guilt and the guilt of I should be doing something else. I always encourage my clients to be really careful when they hear the word “should”. If you hear your brain saying the word “should” really start examining those thoughts because this really comes back to that point that I briefly made about really loving your decision. </p> <p> So what I would really encourage people to do is if you decide to do something like this, say you listen to this and you decide you want to set up a podcast, decide for how long you are deciding and decide that this is the best decision you ever made. And it doesn't have to be long. I'm going to do a podcast for six months, say. </p> <p> That's what I'm deciding. I'm deciding I'm going to do, you guys do fortnightly, don't you? I'm going to do fortnightly podcast for six months. That's what I'm deciding. This is the best decision ever. And then whenever you hear your brain go, “oh God, if you hadn't started this, you could have gone on with your writing or whatever”, then no, this is what we decided. </p> <p> This was a great decision. This gives me energy. It rejuvenates what I love about science. I've still got time to do my writing. This was an amazing decision. And then at the end of that period, you still get the opportunity to reflect and you still get to go I love that decision. I'm so glad I did that, but you know what? </p> <p> I need to tone this down to monthly. Or you know what, that needs to be a first season and we're going to have a break before we start the next season. And you still get to reflect. But it's this constant beating ourselves up about whether we made the right decision or not and feeling guilty that we didn't make the other decision or feeling like we missed out. </p> <p> So if you decide not to start a podcast, you have to remind yourself that that was the best decision. I'm so glad I put my PhD first. I'm so glad I gave myself the space to write my PhD and I didn't burden myself with having to think about that stuff that you love that decision too. And in six months you decide, do I want to start a podcast now? So we can still revisit it the other way round. But loving on that decision, so that we're not constantly remaking it, really makes things easier.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah, I can imagine that actually. Shall we move on to the next one?  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, let's go.  </p> <p> Suzanne: So something we also heard as a joke at some point during, I think it was drinks from work or whatever, was saying, so are you influencers now? Which was a joke for sure. It also kind of felt like being made fun of almost for wanting to do this. They didn't mean it badly for sure. But yeah, it sort of invalidates what you're doing. How, how would you recommend working through that or like, um, yeah? </p> <p> Vikki: So I have a question. So let's put ourselves back in that situation. And somebody says to you, so are you influencers then? What are you making that mean? </p> <p> Jayron: I would not necessarily think of ourselves as influencers, at least back that time point. I don't think we were influencers. I'm not really sure we really are influencers right now in some shape, way, or form. It sort of depends on what that description, I guess is, but it's sort of like, I think we were thinking about it like sort of the YouTube influencers, those people who just… </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, it comes with a negative connotation though. </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, exactly.  </p> <p> Vikki: So tell me that, what's the negative connotation? What does it mean about you if you're an influencer?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, we like it now! </p> <p> Vikki: But in that moment, go to, at that moment, I'm going to ask you in a minute how you came to then accept it. But in that moment where you felt - because Suzanne, you said that it felt like you were being made fun of a little bit. </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah.  </p> <p> Vikki: What were the thoughts that you were having? It was actually what we were wanting to do. We wanted to do science communication via social media, which kind of means that you turn into a science influencer almost. So it was sort of our goal to become that almost, I'm not sure if it's like the right name for it, but it was basically, we weren't there yet for sure, because we were still very small and we were growing and it was, it felt like, our main goal was sort of laughed at almost. And I think that was what, what made it uncomfortable in the moment.  </p> <p> Vikki: But were they laughing?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes.  </p> <p> Vikki: So they're laughing when they were saying it? </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. And the other people around it too.  </p> <p> Vikki: And so they, you made that mean that they thought what you were doing wasn't serious? </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah, I guess that's how it felt. </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. Yeah. Not that, not taken seriously I guess.  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. Okay. So, because this is what's really important with these things. When, when you find that somebody asked you a question, it kind of, I'm going to use the word triggers. I don't mean triggers and like triggers, but you know what I mean. And it like upsets you or bothers you in some way, asking yourself, what am I making it mean? </p> <p> Because we have no idea. I mean, I certainly have no idea what they meant by it. But they could be “are you going to be influencers? You know, I watch influencers all the time. That's, you know, that's exciting. That's cool.” And when we find ourselves getting offended by these things, it's like, okay, what am I making that mean about me? </p> <p> I'm making that mean that they're not taking me seriously. I'm making that mean that they think I'm going to be selling Amazon products and dancing around on TikTok or whatever. They're making that mean that I should be doing something else or they're making that mean that I am superficial somehow, or, you know, all these like preconceptions we have. </p> <p> And it's not that there's anything wrong with having those thoughts, but recognizing that that stuff is coming from us. They've just said words to you.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.  </p> <p> Vikki: Your answer could very easily have just been, “yeah, we're working on it, but not now, we're quite small </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. In that moment, we didn't feel comfortable enough to say, yeah, yeah. That's what we want to do. You know, we were still kind of uncomfortable.  </p> <p> Vikki: Because of things you were telling yourself. You know, either that they think you're silly for wanting to do it or that you think that you're nowhere near doing it. And so you can't claim that title yet, as it were. </p> <p> So yeah, it feels embarrassing to say that that's your goal if you're definitely not there yet and it sort of feels still like this unreachable thing that you might want to do and then you get uncomfortable with people like sort of calling you out like that.  </p> <p> Vikki: So if somebody said, are you going to be an academic? Would you feel equally embarrassed about it and be made fun of and stuff?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, if they say it in the same way, like, so you want to be a PI now, huh? Then I think so, yeah. Because that's also feels like this may be unreachable thing for a lot of people and I think, yeah, I would feel the same way like that. </p> <p> Vikki: So it's not, and this is what's interesting is you start to dig into it a little bit and you start to figure out what the actual issue is, and you can do this for yourself, you can, you can sort of just sit and be like, ok, what, why did that bother me? What did I make that mean? Would it have been different if it was this, would it have been different if it was that? </p> <p> What's interesting here is it sounds that it's less about the fact that they were somehow mocking, influencing, but more about the fact that you maybe felt a little bit imposter-y, that you weren't, you know, you know, oh, I'm no way near influential enough to call myself an influencer. </p> <p> You know, I'm no way near far enough through you to say, I want to be a PI now, or whatever. And so, and that's really useful because then you start to figure out, okay, right. That's why I felt uncomfortable. Because I feel like I'm quite a long way from that.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. No, we would definitely also respond differently if the same thing was set now, now we would be way more comfortable, saying like, yeah, yeah, that's, that's what we do. </p> <p> Vikki: And why is it different now?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Because we feel like we're closer to that goal. We feel we have more right to say it now. </p> <p> Jayron: I guess more confidence in what we're doing and how long we've been doing it and sort of the results that we've seen from it. I guess something along those lines. </p> <p> Vikki: So how close do you have to be in order to claim something without embarrassment?  </p> <p> Jayron: Sponsors! </p> <p> Vikki: Someone paying me to do this! </p> <p> Jayron: I feel like the moment we started getting sponsors like, oh, I guess this is really happening.  </p> <p> Vikki: Would everyone have the same answer? I don't have sponsors. Is my podcast proper? I mean, I don't have as many listeners as you guys, but… </p> <p> Suzanne: Would you consider yourself an influencer?  </p> <p> Vikki? Would I consider myself an influencer,? </p> <p> Suzanne: A science influencer. </p> <p> Vikki: That's a really interesting question because I think I still conceive most of what I do as teaching and coaching. </p> <p> Suzanne: But that's what influencers are though.  </p> <p> Jayron: Well, some of them.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, you try to put a message out there and try to help other people through what you're creating.  </p> <p> Vikki: So yeah, I think I probably wouldn't call myself an influencer, but not because I don't feel like I'm there yet and not because I have any like “what that would mean about me”. I'm just not sure that's what I'm aiming to be.  </p> <p> Suzanne: I can imagine that.  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, probably that’s where I would sit with that. But these are really important questions to ask yourselves. And that question, it sounded a little bit flippant when I said, how, how big would you need to be before you can feel comfortable with it? But the reason I asked is because there's no right answer to that. I could ask a whole bunch of different people who were on that influencer journey and you'd have people that say, as soon as you put a TikTok up, you are an influencer. </p> <p> And other people would say, until you have a million followers, you're not an influencer. Who do you influence? Yeah. And everything in between.  </p> <p> And the joy of that is you just get to decide. Confidence doesn't come because of an absolute thing that you achieve. I tell you guys now when you get your PhDs, you are not going – well, for a day, you're going to feel more confident about yourselves because you're going to be walking around going, check me out, doctor.  </p> <p> And then you're going to start worrying again about all the things that you worry about now. And I know that because partly it's true for me and partly I coach people all the way through to full professor who feel like imposters, who feel too scared to talk to people at conferences. </p> <p> And it's like you're a professor, like a full, full professor and you're too scared to talk to people at conferences. And so it's not the milestones that you meet that make you feel confident, it's the thoughts that you have. And usually we just allow those thoughts to just pop up and that once enough stuff's happened, you start to automatically start having thoughts that actually I'm quite good at this actually. </p> <p> You know, maybe I am an influencer. And for you guys that seems to have happened quite organically and it can go like that, but you can also just choose to pick those thoughts earlier and to spend more time on those thoughts.  </p> <p> Jayron: No, for sure. I agree. And I also think like, coming back to that original sort of comment about like, uh, being an influencers and stuff like that, looking back at it, I also think people didn't have like a better term maybe to, to sort of say like, okay, oh, are you going to do this? Maybe they were just genuinely curious about like, okay, but what's your goal? What are you planning with this? And sort of the influencer, yeah, title was the best thing that they could come up with in that moment. </p> <p> And we just interpreted it maybe the wrong way in that sense. Um, so now I'm also more conscious of when we talk to people to also like, okay, maybe they just don't know the right terminology for it, or they most likely don't mean it in the wrong way. It's just, that's the only word they might have at that moment to describe it. </p> <p> Vikki: And sometimes they might just be taking, making fun of you. They might be, but you are absolutely right. And this is one of the things we get up in people's heads thinking about what it is that they intend by the thing they're saying. And we're interpreting the fact they said that and then laughed as they're making fun of you. </p> <p> For me, it's just as plausible that they used a word that they don't really understand what it means. And they laughed awkwardly because they're like, I don't really know what an influencer is, but I'm asking you if you are one. Maybe I look stupid, maybe I've used that phrase wrong. Maybe that's not what they are. I don't know. I'll just feel a bit uncomfortable, so I'm going to laugh.  </p> <p> And so often when we spend time in other people's heads trying to figure out what it was that they meant by the thing, it just, it just gets a mess. Because you just don’t know, unless somebody tells you what's in their head, you don't know what's in their head. </p> <p> And so spending as little time in other people's heads as possible, being like, well, am I happy with what I'm doing? Am I comfortable with this? Yeah, I am. Happy days. Let's stay there.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah, for sure.  </p> <p> Jayron: Okay. So maybe moving on to the other statement that we also heard throughout our science communication journey. </p> <p> Suzanne: Recently also </p> <p> Jayron: What makes you knowledgeable enough to talk about this? Yeah.  </p> <p> Suzanne: And this one was also specifically when we decided we wanted to start giving courses. And honestly, I have of course also as a PhD as a student followed courses about science communication. And I think we are knowledgeable enough to talk about this, especially compared to some of the other people. </p> <p> But how do we respond to something like that?  </p> <p> Vikki: So, What was the scenario? Because how you respond slightly depends on who you're talking to.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Oh, in this case it was, uh, another PhD student who I was just talking about, oh yeah, we're now also going to start these courses and whatever. Oh, what, what are you going to give courses about and well, this and this and this and this. </p> <p> And then the question was like, but why are you knowledgeable enough to talk about this or to teach about this?  </p> <p> So the reason I ask is, so this person's not commissioning courses from you?  </p> <p> Suzanne: No. No. </p> <p> Vikki: So the first question is, do I need to explain this to them? Because you don't have to explain everything to everyone. </p> <p> Suzanne: True.  </p> <p> Vikki: Sometimes we do. Because again, what are you making that mean about you? Is that making you doubt that you know enough? Is that making you go, Ooh, maybe I don't, maybe few people are going to think I'm stupid. Maybe people are going to think we're all like uppity and telling people what to do and actually we don't know what we're doing. Yeah. So the first thing is, do I actually even need to like explain?  </p> <p> “Because we've learned a lot doing this.” There we go.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. Yeah. That was also the answer I gave.  </p> <p> Vikki: You know, just a really short, if it's some, so thinking through in this environment, I don't need to explain it to another PhD student - because I think it'll be cool. No reason, whatever.  </p> <p> Now where you might want to think it through is if you are contacting universities and offering these services, then you might want to think, okay, how can we demonstrate our credentials? Because then again, we look at this question without judgment. So instead of how are you knowledgeable enough to do this meaning, “oh God, they think I'm not knowledgeable enough to do this”, we take it at face value. How am I knowledgeable enough to do this? Well, I've been running a podcast for this long. I've got sponsors, I've got this many listeners. I've got social media with this sort of following. I post this often and this is what I've learned. </p> <p> And so sometimes if we can just take the judgment out of it and just answer the question for people who actually need to know the answer to the question, then suddenly it's not really a scary question anymore.  </p> <p> Suzanne: No. And I also think that if it's, if it's like a general, like for example, for somebody who really needs to know the answer, I have absolutely no problem like telling it. </p> <p> But it's always almost more difficult to explain to your direct colleagues or your family, which is also a big, big one of course. Because there's this extra layer of of stuff. And I definitely recognize that that's where it comes from also.  </p> <p> Vikki: Well, families, there's always a whole extra layer of stuff. I got the cutest message from one of my sisters yesterday who'd listened to one of my podcasts for the first time yesterday, and she sent me a really lovely voice note to tell me how useful she'd found. She's not an academic, but she was like, even though I'm not an academic and you were talking about that it's really useful for like normal people like me as well and, and all of this and she was really and absolutely lovely. And it was like, oh, that's so nice.  </p> <p> And then she was like, and I particularly loved your silly podcast voice you put on, and I'm just like, “it's not put on, I'm just enthusiastic.” So yeah, there's always stuff that's fair to say.  </p> <p> But then again and again, that's not a problem. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not something broken that we bring stuff where there's long histories of how we've interacted through our whole lives, of course, there's going to be stuff, that's fine. We just have to recognize that so that when it comes up, we can respond to what's actually being asked rather than to all the subtext that we're sort of sticking around it. </p> <p> Jayron: No, I agree. I, I specifically like your, your answer about like, do I actually need to, to explain this to this person? Yeah. Yeah, definitely going to remember that to use that a bit more.  </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. And it's not, I'm certainly not suggesting you answer by saying “I don't need to explain myself.” You know, that's probably not the going to, I mean you might need to in certain situations there.  </p> <p> Jayron: My PhD defense!  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. You kind of gotta explain yourself to them! But even in your PhD defense, if you can interpret those questions in a way where they just want to know the answer to this. You know, because often people get asked, you know, why did you choose that method? </p> <p> That's a perfectly reasonable question to ask in a PhD viva. Absolutely fine. But if in your head you are going, “oh my God, they think I chose the wrong method. They think I should have done something different. Maybe, maybe I didn't do it very well. Maybe I, you know”, and you spin off into that, suddenly it's a really painful experience. </p> <p> Whereas if they say, you know, why did you choose this method? You say, oh, because I was picking between this one and this one, and they had these qualities and that was what we were able to do. So I did that one. You sort of almost take that question at face value.  </p> <p> The other thing I would always say is, especially with this thing of, do I know enough? Because you guys are talking about that in the context of your courses, but I'm sure that's often the case when people are starting podcasts and things as well. You know, do I know enough to talk about this in public? Is remembering that you only need to know more than your audience. So you only need to know more about being productive in your PhD or whatever than people who are behind you in your PhD journey. So as long as you know more than third years or second years, or at least some third years and second years and first years, not even all of them, some of them, then what you're doing is of use. Yeah. Often people think that they need to be leading expert in the thing in order to be useful, but actually there's something really special about hearing from people who are only a few years ahead of where you are at. </p> <p> You know, I can tell people about how I managed my PhD and how I got by and whatever, but I got by in a completely different world and era to you guys. You know, academia was a very different place in the early two thousands, and so the things that I did and got through aren't necessarily relevant. So now when I'm coaching, partly I steer away from advice, but also I tend to refer more to the students that I've supported through and things I've seen there than I do to my experience because it's too long ago. It's too far away.  </p> <p> So that thing of, are you just a bit more knowledgeable than somebody else who might want to hear this? Yeah. Happy days, let's go.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes. No, for sure. I think in terms of science communication, it can also be really helpful to take people along on the journey, which is also a great way to, to do it. </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely, definitely. And for them to see someone who looks like them and sounds like them doing it too. That helps too.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. And I mean, I also think it's along the lines of if, if you need to prove that, when it comes to starting a podcast on the, like your production is on the level of Joe Rogan or any under of these like million-download podcasts to be able to talk about it at all, no one is ever going to start a podcast like that. No one is ever going to do anything because you constantly need to prove that you're already in the top 1% to be able to start it. So I think if you can, if you're happy starting sort of at the bottom and learning to get to the top, then hat didn't take you a long way. </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. And on a really practical one, go back to the beginning and listen to their first episodes.  </p> <p> Jayron: Oh, no, no, don't do that.  </p> <p> Vikki: No, not Joe Rogan. I'm not saying him, but some of the podcasts that I listened to where I was trying to learn from them and stuff, and I went back and listened to the very first one. It's like, this is rough. Your microphone's terrible. Your little intro doesn't sound that good. This is, yeah, it's like, it's totally, I'm not sure I can do what you guys are doing now, but I can definitely do this.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Also, listening back to our fir our own first episodes is not something we like to do.  </p> <p> Vikki: Mine, I just tried to grab everything. I love my first episode. But it's got enough stuff in it for like 10 episodes. I do a whole two hour course now based on that one first podcast. And even that doesn't cover everything that I covered in that. It's like, right, let's go. Boom, boom. So yeah, you learn as you go through, for sure.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes. Um, yeah. Something that we also hear from others and have also experienced ourselves, ourselves is that people are often surprised when it takes off and that people are actually listening to you and that so many people are listening to you and then they compliment you. </p> <p> Like, oh, that's really great that you're doing that. But at the same time, they're sort of surprised that it's actually taking off and doing great, which can of course be quite a difficult thing to sort of go through every time again, that people keep being surprised that more and more people are listening to you. </p> <p> And I think that also is probably something that you take out of these comments that they don't actually mean for sure. But how would you suggest people, people handle that?  </p> <p> Vikki: I think it's the same answer. What are you making it mean that they're surprised?  </p> <p> Jayron: I mean, I think a bit because for us we sort of decided that we would do the podcast and we would keep going with it and we were committed to it in that sense and everything else with the science communication journey as well. </p> <p> So it sort of feels like, yeah, this is the “natural progression” of it. Like if you just keep doing, eventually if you keep running, eventually you'll be good enough to run a marathon. If you keep working at your PhD, hopefully eventually you'll be able to defend it. So it's sort of like, oh, you didn't expect me to actually get this far if I just work hard? </p> <p> Vikki: And so that's what you are making it mean?  </p> <p> Jayron: Yes.  </p> <p> Vikki: You are making it mean that they didn't expect you to succeed. That they didn't think you would stick to it this long or that they didn't think that you would be good enough? What, what are you making it mean?  </p> <p> Jayron: I think, at least for me, um, it's maybe some combination of the two. Because I think we, we can be quite committed people with things that we set our minds to. So maybe it's more along the lines of, okay, we know ourselves well enough that we know that we were going to stick with it, that it was going to be successful. We didn't know that either. So I think maybe it's just a disconnect with what we were getting inside their heads and thinking about it like that and just misinterpreting what they were saying. Because they also just don't know of any other podcast people doing science, communication, stuff like that in their immediate area as well. So maybe it's just along the lines of curiosity and maybe framing it slightly differently and us interpreting it the wrong way.  </p> <p> Vikki: And again, it's not necessarily interpreting it the wrong way. I don't want you to think this is something that you are doing wrong. What you're doing is completely human. When people say things to us, we add in layers of meaning to what we think they mean. What that means about us. It's why we get most defensive when people say things that we worry are true. So you don't, you never worry. The example I've heard used by coaches before is if I told you, Jayron, I really hate your red hair, you'd be like, well, I don't have red hair, so that's an irrelevant comment. So you wouldn't even think about it. But it's where it's things that we sometimes worry about that we then put in all this layer interpretation. So you're not doing anything wrong. It's not that you're interpreting things wrong, you're just adding meaning to stuff. And assuming that it's true. </p> <p> So in this situation, I want to compare to something you just said. So you said we didn't know it was going to be successful, so in some ways you are getting bothered because somebody's surprised that it succeeded. if we've gone back and told you 18 months ago how many listeners you have now, you'd be surprised. </p> <p> Suzanne: True.  </p> <p> Jayron: For sure. Yeah.  </p> <p> Vikki: So you're actually expecting a level of faith in you that you didn't have in you 18 months ago. And that wasn't because you hated you 18 months ago. You just didn't know you were capable of that. And so maybe these people just didn't know you were capable of that. They hadn't seen you do it. </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. Yeah. There was no sort of evidence to base the confidence on, uh, neither for us or, or, or them, I guess.  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of developing confidence and sort of mindfully developing confidence for things you've never done before just by, kind of similar to you said at the beginning, Suzanne, about trusting that you can learn things and trusting that you can develop your skills, that's a brilliant way to develop confidence in advance, but most people don't do that. </p> <p> And so the fact that somebody was surprised that it did this well is, is only really the same as you back then were surprised except you've just gone along the journey. You've seen it happen, and so for you, it's not surprising anymore.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah, I have also, of course talked with other, other people who struggle with the same stuff because it's fun to talk with other people who talk, struggle with the same stuff. And uh, yeah. I think this one is also something that I've heard more often that, that it's sort of a double edge sword where you want people to be, like, happy that it works out for you. But you also don't want them to act as… it never, it's never okay what they say. Yeah, exactly. And that's where if we are relying on other people to say things to make us feel a particular way, then we're always going to be in trouble. So if they have to say the exact right combination of being impressed, but not surprised, because if they're too surprised, we're going to get upset. And if they're not impressed enough, we're going to get upset. So they have to hit it exactly so that we feel pride, for example. </p> <p> Then it's just, you're just fighting losing battle. Whereas you can feel pride just because of the thoughts you have about what you've done. And then it's irrelevant what other people say. They're impressed. Nice. They're surprised. Fine. So was I, that's okay. Um. But I'm proud because I know how much work I've put into this and how well it's going, and I'm really proud of the consistency we've shown and how we've worked together and how we've done it. </p> <p> So a lot of the problem comes from we want people to say the right things in order to make us feel that way. If you take responsibility for your own feelings and tell yourself what you need to hear to feel the way you want to feel, they can say whatever they like. And it doesn't mean we don't care. It doesn't mean it's not nice to get compliments, but our sense of wellbeing's not dependent on it and that's such an easier place to be.  </p> <p> It's the same deal with your supervisors. People often say, you know, I just want my supervisor to reassure me. I just want my supervisor to tell me I've done a good job and all of these things. Let's reassure ourselves. Let's tell ourselves we've done a good job. </p> <p> You know, I ask PhD students all the time, when was the last time that you look at, you know, what you've done? You said, I'm so proud I've done that. I'm really pleased I got that done today. I'm really pleased. I ticked that off. Even on most productive days, people are usually still focused on the bit they haven't done, they don't reassure themselves the way they want to get reassurance from others. So do it for ourselves.  </p> <p> Suzanne: I think that's really great advice for anybody who wants to start science communication. I think also at the same time, we might overthink it as scientists being scientists, you know, you're thinking it, overthinking it too much.  </p> <p> Vikki: Oh, definitely, definitely. That whole, you know, we have such high standards for whether we're expert enough to talk about particularly things. You know, I used, so I used to manage teaching programs and I would have really senior academics being like, oh, I couldn't do, no, I couldn't do lecture on that. That's not my, that's not my specific area. I'm like, Come on. It's a first year undergraduate lecture. You're a specialist across this. You, you can do an introduction to psychology or whatever. </p> <p> You can, you can do this. It'll be fine. Oh, no, no, but that's not really my thing, you know? So, again, it, it carries on throughout your career unless you choose to think different thoughts about it and recognizing our own expertise, that even if, you know, you guys are an expert, expert, expert in that specific thing, for your PhDs, but you are relatively expert, again, across an awful lot of things compared to, um, like the general population who doesn't have a science training, recognizing your expertise really helps with, whether it's academia or whether it's science communication.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yeah. So we also had perhaps some things that we might want some tips for.  </p> <p> Vikki: Okay.  </p> <p> Suzanne: So for example, how do you communicate with people or colleagues or family that you are really enthusiastic about, in this case, science communication without seeming overconfident or boastful. How would you handle that? Because that's of course, a kind of delicate balance that also very much to do with how you feel yourself, but… </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I guess as always, first question is what would be the problem with feeling like you were being overconfident or boastful? So, I would spend a little bit of time just exploring what judgments you are making about what it would mean if you were overconfident or boastful. Because some people think that it will make other people around them uncomfortable or that it would mean that they're a selfish person or that they've got an inflated ego or whatever it is, and you can really ask yourself, is that true? </p> <p> You know, can I talk enthusiastically about all this stuff without it meaning those things? In terms of actual tips though, for how to do it, one of the things that I do, I work with academics who are going for promotion and going for like teaching awards and those sorts of things. I have a package where I look after them through that process, and people often don't want to come across like they're blowing their own trumpet too much. </p> <p> That they're boasting too much but they have got to talk about their achievements. And one of the really concrete tip tips that I give them is to really focus on facts. So to really focus on evidence and impact of what they've done rather than just talking about how wonderful they are. </p> <p> So for you guys, if you say, if you are going, I have an amazing podcast. We have so many followers. We're just so influential. It's incredible. Everybody loves us. Then that might feel a bit overconfident and boastful. But if you can say, we typically have X thousand listeners a month and that's, you know, that's doubled, over the last six months. </p> <p> And now we have sponsors for most episodes. You know, you start to just impart statements, then it sort of conveys how big and amazing what you're doing is without saying, look at us, we're big and amazing. Do you see what I mean? And the same's true when you're talking about your science, talking about, you know, you can talk about, where you've presented it, where you're writing it up for, what it's gone on and influenced and all those sorts of things. </p> <p> You can kind of talk about why it's important, how many people are affected by diabetes, how many people are affected by high cholesterol, why this is so important to understand and sort of getting into that side of it can really help to be enthusiastic, but without it being, this is all about me because I'm amazing kind of thing. </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. No, I definitely agree. I think the, the issue sometimes, at least what I often have is I like to rely on the metrics, just, yeah, here's the number. But a lot of the, a lot of the time those metrics require some sort of understanding about these numbers to begin with. You can't just, like, we have X thousand downloads, and then the immediate next question often becomes this, is that good though?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Is that a lot?   </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. Yes. Are you doing well? Um, so it's all, I struggle often to explain like, I guess it's okay because also for podcasts it's unclear what is a successful podcast? When are you sort of doing okay as a podcast? At a certain point we came across a metric that said like, if you have over eight episodes and you're being consistent, that's, you're already a very good podcast. </p> <p> That's, most podcasts don't go over eight episodes and they sort of stop. So, yeah. I struggle with giving some context to some of the numbers and making it concise without it sort of seeming like, here's my entire backstory from… </p> <p> Vikki: And again, is that whole thing, you don't have to overexplain so convey why are you conveying any of this anyway? But you can then choose you and you can convey it either giving some sort of benchmark for them to understand.  </p> <p> So you know, you pick, you know, to put that in context, that puts us in - did you guys say the top 1% of life sciences podcast in the Netherlands?  </p> <p> Suzanne: That's what Spotify told us. We don't believe it, but that's what Spotify told us. </p> <p> Vikki: I, I mean, I would take Spotify, I would take what they say. So, so that's a way to say it. That's a way that you can contextualize it. You can say top podcasts usually have X number of listeners. We're about here. So you can see where we are compared to that. But that's pretty typical for a life sciences podcast, for example. </p> <p> You know, you can contextualize like that or you can contextualize against your own benchmarks. So you can say, when we set out, we aimed to have 500 listeners a month, and now we're way over that. And so you can sort of contextualize to your own goals as well. That's another way that you can sort of show people that you've surpassed your expectations or you can talk about your future goals. </p> <p> So we started here. We've got to here, we're aiming to get to 10,000 listeners a month or whatever. I don’t know your numbers, but you know what I mean. And, you know, and so you can contextualize like that so they can see where you are in your journey as well. </p> <p> The other way, actually, to think about it is the other way is, you know, you guys a bench scientist, but qualitative data's a thing too. I love telling people about the messages that I get. So, you know, I don't have billions of listeners to my podcast at the moment. I'm trying to build it, but I do get people messaging me saying, I feel like you're inside my brain. When you talk, I feel normal because I'm like, oh my God, it's not just me that feels like this, and I can see that there's a way I can feel different. And for me, that feels much more important than how many hundreds or thousands of listens I get. </p> <p> Because I get messages like that from people. So that's the other thing you can say to people is, you know, oh, we get this many listeners, but to be honest, it's when somebody says that, you know, we've told 'em about a bit of science that they've just never heard before, and now they want to learn more or whatever, that's what's really important to us.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. Really have that sort of direct impact on someone. Uh, yeah. I like that too. Yes. Okay. Um, maybe moving on to our next thing that we would really like a tip on, and this is a big one. Do you have any recommendations for how to sort of keep your work life balanced through everything that you do if we do stuff like that? </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, absolutely. I just did a workshop on this for a charity in the uk. So first of all, you need to define what you mean by a work-life balance, because that balance sits somewhere very different for everybody. And so I don't particularly like the phrase because I don't particularly like the dichotomy between work and life. </p> <p> I think, you know, I'm the PhD life coach because I think you get to curate your whole life, part of which is your PhD, part of which is everything else that you do. And in fact by the time this goes out, I've had an episode now with Jamie Pei the messy PhD coach talking about how to curate your PhD life. </p> <p> And so I would think about it, not so much about work life balance as about what do I want my life to be? What would an ideal life for the phase I'm in look like? So this is not the ideal life if you had a million, you know, when you are famous influencers and you've got billions of pounds and sponsorship deals all over the place, what your perfect life on an island somewhere looks like. </p> <p> But in the phase you are in, where you are writing up your PhDs, you're running a successful podcast, and trying to look after your health and have social life and whatever, outside of that, what would you want that to look like? And actually spending a bit of time on that because until you've decided that, you can't decide whether you've got a work-life balance or not. </p> <p> So figure out what it looks like and then, I would really ask yourself, what are the barriers to that being your life at the moment? And sometimes that can lead to things where you realize, actually, this circumstance needed to change. I need to do, I need to extend my PhD, or I need to pause the podcast for now, or I need to do less of this, or more of this, or whatever. </p> <p> Sometimes it's that, but often, again, it's the thoughts that you are having. So often the problems with work-life balance come because at the end of the day when you've been working, you tell yourself you haven't achieved enough today. You tell yourself you should have done more. You tell yourself you're behind. </p> <p> You tell yourself you should be somewhere other than where you're at. And the problem with that is it just generates anxiety. It generates shame. And those emotions don't lead you to having a good work-life balance or to even being successful in your work. They lead to you procrastinating. They lead to you getting distracted from things. They lead to you spending time doing things that contribute neither to your work nor your life. </p> <p> You know, just wasting time distracting yourself from how you're feeling. And so what I do with clients is sort of work through what some of those thoughts are, and you guys can tell me which ones come up for you, maybe what some of those thoughts are that make you work longer than you intended to, or work less than you intended to. </p> <p> So which way round for you guys, what, what way round would be your sort of issues with work-life balance, do you think?  </p> <p> Suzanne: Well, honestly, when I was still in the lab for the PhD, I felt like we had our work-life balance pretty much figured out because we were during the day in the lab working on that and then in the evening and the weekend, we're doing this fun thing that is the podcast. But now, recently when I am more at home writing, and also the podcast is taking off, we're getting sponsors that require a lot of work, but it felt like it was all one big blob of just a to-do list that was never ending. Uh, so I've been working on trying to make it a bit separate again, and I bought myself a Switch, ton have some fun time in the middle. That, that's what I've been struggling with recently in terms of work-life balance.  </p> <p> Vikki: So that thought this is never ending is one to really watch. First thing we do is we stop and think, what's it trying to tell me? And I love the fact that you are already starting to think, yeah, what it's trying to tell me is these things are all blurring into one, that I'm not seeing a distinction between the different things. Now everything feels like work and everything feels… So sometimes our thoughts are actually giving us information that we need to listen to. And that's why we don't just try and push negative thoughts away. </p> <p> We stop and go, oh, that's interesting. I'm feeling like this is never ending a lot. Why is that? What is it that's happening here that's making me feel like that. Okay. And so the things that you've started doing to try and make things more distinct, build in some relaxing time and stuff as well, absolutely brilliant.  </p> <p> What I would caution you to keep an eye out for is these thoughts are habitual. And so once you've put in place some more boundaries where actually I don't work on this then and I always have a gap here and those things you are working on at the moment, you are now going to need to look out for your brain still throwing up “this is never ending” because it will. Because that's a thought that's been coming for a while.  </p> <p> So even in your new scenario, your brain may still offer you that and at that point you get to go “Yeah, yeah I know, but remember that's why we decided to x.” You sort of reassured like a child, like yeah I know, but we've talked about this and, and that's why we only do podcasts on Wednesday and Thursday now, or whatever. </p> <p> So, that thought, that thought will come back up and it's not a problem, it is just a habit and you just get to nudge it away and remind yourself of the things you're doing to make it not feel never ending now as well. And that's the bit people often miss. They try and put in place something to make it better and then get upset when it doesn't really fix it.  </p> <p> We have to work on the thoughts that come with it as well. How about you Jayron? What's your, is it similar sorts of things or do you have other thoughts that make work-life balance hard?  </p> <p> Jayron: A little, some of the same, but also a little bit different now. So I am in the last stages, I've sort of submitted my thesis and I need to get it printed now, and I have my defense date. </p> <p> I have more of a problem with like, I don't know if you're familiar with like the, you have a jar and you have like big rock, small rocks, some stage.  </p> <p> Vikki: Oh, yes.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, that one, that sort of analogy. I know I have to sort of put in the big rocks first and do those difficult tasks for the PhD to get it wrapped up. Yet I'm sort of focusing on sort of the smaller things because I like, okay, I can scratch that off my to-do list first and do that first, and then by the end of the day I always feel like, but I didn't do those big important things. Okay. Tomorrow then, and, I'll skip my running and then do it, but then, yeah. </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, firstly, so common. Why do you think you do - I mean, you've started talking about why do you think you do go for the small things? </p> <p> Jayron: It's just that it's sort of easier to scratch it off the, like, to get that in immediate sort of dopamine of one thing is off your to-do list. Yeah. It's easier I guess. </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. And again, so common. So, and again, we tend to beat ourselves up for this. We tend to finish there going, oh my God, I did all the easy things and I should have done the big things and ugh, I'm never going to get this done. So firstly, totally common, totally normal. But what we do is we get some data from that. </p> <p> We look at what you've done. Okay. You like being able to scratch small things off. You find it easier if you can feel a sense of accomplishment that you've ticked things off. Okay, well, your big jobs, you are at the moment telling yourself they're the important and difficult jobs. Of course, you're not going to sit down and go, do you know what I want to do today? I want to do the important and difficult jobs. I really like important and difficult jobs. Of course not.  </p> <p> But how can you break those down into sufficiently tiny steps that actually those rocks become sand? Because you haven't got to do an important and difficult job. You've got to do a series of small jobs. And I know, you know, break it down to small tasks is a really trite bit of advice. But believing that your big task actually is just a series of small tasks can really, really help.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah, no, for sure. And I'm now trying to apply that a little bit more in the sense of, I break it down. So for the thesis, like, okay, contact the printer, um, have a meeting with my supervisor. All those things by themselves, obviously they're tasks, but they're much more doable than, I need to have my almost 150 page thesis printed out by have my suit ready and everything. Yeah. A little bit easier. </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. And that's often where the problem comes. So I had this, you know, we were talking about podcasts. I had this when I was first doing a podcast because I published this on, I do the video version on YouTube and I have a podcast version. And then I put the transcript on my blog. There's sort of multiple steps, you know, I'm using like five different bits of software. </p> <p> There's multiple steps to what order you edit in and what, how you put your intro and outro on and all that stuff. And it always felt like this big job of process podcast. And I'd procrastinate it horribly until it was right at the very last minute before I would do it. And then eventually I was like, I put myself in boss mode and I was like, right, what do I actually have to do? </p> <p> And I literally wrote down, and I think it was like 19 steps or something like that. And even just having it spelled out like that made it feel so much easier. And for a while I used to have these little tiny see-through post-it notes that I could move down as I was on the different steps. Now I know it well enough that I can just do it, but that really helped to do that. </p> <p> And so sometimes when we've got a big task, we're avoiding, it's because we haven't actually spelled out specifically, what do I need to do to get this done? You know, people write, write introduction on their to-do list. No, don't write, write introduction, say, write paragraph on blah, using evidence from that paper, that paper, and that paper, and put them in a folder. </p> <p> So you get to put yourself in boss mode and make really specific instructions for worker you, okay? In the next hour. I need you to write about 200 words that summarizes those two articles. You’ve done yours Jayron, I’m talking to you now Suzanne and that's your task for the next hour. So you try and be the best boss to yourself that you can by making it as specific and achievable as you can. And then it's all small things.  </p> <p> Jayron: Yeah. Thanks.  </p> <p> Suzanne: Yes. I think in terms of what we are doing, we have also prioritized always that this needed to stay fun. And if it wasn't fun anymore, then we were doing too much. Especially like doing this next to the PhD. It had to stay something that we kept getting energy from. </p> <p> And that's something that as soon as that changes or it becomes a drag to make a podcast episode every time and it becomes difficult, we are really like, okay, stop, back to what we find fun and how we want to do this. And that has been really important. And keeping this up and keeping it going. </p> <p> Vikki: I love that. And I particularly love that you're not just taking it as, oh, at some point it'll stop being fun and then we stop. But that, if you notice that it's starting to get not fun, you actively go, okay, we need to retreat to the bits we find fun. Let's do the fun bits. This was meant to be fun because even that, finding it fun, is, that's constructed by thoughts in your head. So you get to decide it's fun, and you get to decide to do more of the bits that you find fun. So I love that you are kind of not only reminding yourself of that, but also constructing that for yourself. That's perfect.  </p> <p> Susanne: Yeah. Because it can definitely be very, very hard to, even if you have your PhD defense, there still needs to be an episode that comes out, and even if you're writing a paper and you're in the, in like writing with your supervisor until three in the morning, you still need to get the episode. Also, you know, it, it's a lot.  </p> <p> Vikki: But you can also look at how can I be kind to future me? So if you've got your defense coming up, Jayron, you can look ahead and decide, okay, actually could we get an extra episode done early so that we don't have to do one the week you've got your defense. You know, are there things like that? Could you do a special episode where Susanne does it with somebody else so that you get that one off or something like that. You know, you can look ahead and go, how can I be kind to future me and make this easier? So one of the things, we are doing this now, I'm plotting this in so that I don't have to work during Easter week. This will come out just after that. So when you're listening to this, that's when it'll be. And that's part of me being kind to myself so that during that week I'm not going, oh no, and I still need to sort podcast for next week. It'll already be in the can, as they say, and processed and scheduled and everything ready to go. </p> <p> So you can sort of, if you know that this is meant to be fun, you can start planning ahead and think, how can we make sure it stays fun?  </p> <p> Susanne: Yeah. Yeah. And it, it's definitely one of the main reasons people stop. And it's a shame. So we try to be super, super conscious of it. Okay. I think that was our last, our last question to you. Thank you so much Vicky.  </p> <p> Vikki: Thank you so much guys. Today has been really fun doing this crossover episode. If people want to know more about Struggling Scientists, science, communication, and all the other cool stuff you do for PhD students, where can they find you? </p> <p> Susanne: I would recommend just googling the Struggling Scientist and our website should send you exactly everywhere you need to go. We are on a lot of social media channels, channel. Which ones are those again?  </p> <p> Jayron: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and also a little bit on Pinterest.  </p> <p> Susanne: Yes. And everywhere we're the Struggling Scientist and also on basically all your favorite podcast platforms, you can find us as the Struggling Scientists, so that should be fine. </p> <p> Vikki: Perfect. So definitely look them up. I can highly recommend! Thank you so much for coming. Thanks everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.  </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 17 Apr 2023 04:15:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/27-how-to-get-into-science-communication-with-the-struggling-scientists thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/26-how-to-be-kind-to-yourself <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode I talk about how I'm being kind to myself this week and how you can too! It's short but includes some important reflections on what we need to believe in order to take decisions that are right for us in the moment. Hope that you're kind to yourself this holiday period!  </i> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode 26 of the PhD Life Coach. And you might have noticed it sounds different. If you're watching me on YouTube, you'll see it definitely looks different. I am currently up the field with Marley. Where's Marley gone? There he is, with Marley, trying to get my head together to record this podcast. </p> <p> So if you're listening to this live, it will be Easter Monday. I'm talking to you from Thursday, the day before Good Friday. And I haven't recorded this yet, and I've tried a couple of times this week on a couple of different topics, and it just hasn't flowed. It just hasn't worked out the way I wanted it to, and I decided that I would walk Marley and really kind of - from my non-coaching perspective, really beat myself into how I was going to get this done before breaking up for the holiday so that I didn't have to work over the bank holiday weekend.  </p> <p> And just five minutes walking up here with Marley made me have the thought, “Why aren't you being more kind to yourself?” </p> <p> I've been running this podcast since the 18th of October. We've done 25 episodes. We didn't even miss Christmas because I pre-booked all of those and I was determined to do that. I was determined to stay consistent and to carry on through.  </p> <p> And I have to say this week it's been a slog and I didn't want to have to work during my holiday, and so I decided to ask myself a question that I often ask my clients, which is, “what do you need right now?”  </p> <p> And to be honest, what I need right now is to not be beating myself up, to not be telling myself that I'm not ready for my holiday, that I haven't done enough to have my holiday. What I need right now is to just be on my holiday and feel okay with that.  </p> <p> And so I've decided that the kind thing to do for myself today is just to record a super quick podcast that can go up for Monday, all set, and to be able to get on and enjoy my break. </p> <p> At first my brain resisted that a bit because I felt like I owe you guys a full episode and that it would mean something about me and about the podcast if I let that slip. But then I decided, you know what, I think PhD students and academics need to see this too. They need to hear this side of how things go and to think about ways that you can be kind to yourself as well. </p> <p> So I don't want you just to listen to this podcast and go, “oh, it's only five minutes this week. That's disappointing. But okay.” I want you to listen to this podcast and go, “okay, how can I be kind to myself?” What could I decide that I'm just not going to do during this break? And how can I be okay with that?  </p> <p> Because you know what? I feel okay with this. Last week you had an amazing episode with Jamie Pei. You haven't listened to that one. We were talking about how to curate your best PhD life, and ironically, we were talking about how to create more ease and those sorts of feeling. And next week we have a super exciting collaboration. Both of those episodes are long. Both of those episodes are far longer than my standard podcasts.  </p> <p> And, you know what, I've decided I'm okay with this. I have decided that I'm okay with spending my time up the field here with my beautiful boy who's wondering why I'm not throwing the ball for him right now. And, not recording more of a podcast.  </p> <p> So what do you need to believe in order for you to be kind to yourself this week? What do you need to believe in order for you to decide that actually there are things that you are not going to do. I need to believe that I've added a whole ton of value in the podcast so far, and I do believe that, I think it's true.  </p> <p> I need to believe that most of you won't have listened to all the episodes yet, and so there's plenty for you to be listening to over Easter, if you want to. I need to believe that rest and recuperation is just as important as productivity.  </p> <p> I need to believe it doesn't mean anything about me, if there's a week where I only publish a short podcast. I need to believe that this doesn't mean I'm not consistent. I need to believe that this doesn't mean that this is the beginning of a slippery slope. That did cross my mind. “Oh gosh, if you let yourself off now and don't do an episode this week, will you start missing weeks in the future?” </p> <p> And no. I believe that I won't do that. And the reason I believe is because I think this podcast is super useful and I think it's really useful for all of you. And so I believe in that bigger picture, and I don't think that I'm going to get to a stage where I just keep skipping it, because this is too important. </p> <p> You guys need this. I enjoy it. And it's part of the bigger picture of the PhD Life Coach. So those are the things that I think I need to believe. One more just popped into my head. I need to believe that you guys need to see me living the life that I'm professing to you guys. Sometimes I think people think that once they get involved in self-help stuff and they start getting coaching, that they're never going to struggle again. </p> <p> They're going to be able to coach themselves out of any situation. They're going to be able to get everything done. And that's just not what it's about. It's about sometimes being able to self coach yourself and make the changes that you need to make in order to achieve the things you want to achieve. But sometimes it's about accepting, you know what I'm tired.  </p> <p> I'm tired. I've done tons of work on this business and, and that's okay. I started this business so that I could spend more time with the boy and my family and living a life that I wanted to live. And I think part of being authentic is sharing with you guys when I'm finding it difficult and when I choose being kind. </p> <p> So this weekend I am not going to be stressing about needing to record a full length podcast ready for you guys to listen to or not listen to over your Easter breaks. I'm going to be helping Andy dig up a patio. I'm going to be hanging out with my stepdaughters. I'm going to be eating the Easter nests that my stepmom made for me, and I'm going to be telling myself I made the right decision. </p> <p> Because that's the other thing, and we've talked about this on previous episodes, that a big part of decision making is then loving the decision you've made. So one thing I'm going to commit to you guys today is that I am going to believe, and I do believe, that doing this short episode is absolutely the best decision for me, right now. </p> <p> And is the best decision for you guys too. And if my brain starts to offer, Ooh, maybe you should have done it. Maybe if you'd organized yourself more, you'd have had it up earlier, I'm going to tell myself, no, you made a decision. You made a decision with compassion and love for yourself and understanding of your business and the importance of the longevity of your business, and we're doing it from kindness today and also from kindness, if you guys are on YouTube with me, I'm going to leave the field before these clouds get any closer.  </p> <p> So for all of you listening to this, what are you going to do for yourself this week to just lift the pressure off, make something slightly easier and tell yourself that it is the best decision that you could have made. </p> <p> Whatever time of year you end up listening to this, I hope that resonates. Go cancel something, don't do it. And enjoy. You are more than your productivity and you deserve to be able to make decisions that are the best thing for you at that time. Take care, and I am going to attempt get Marley back from all the way down there. </p> <p> Take care and tune in next week because we have a collaboration episode next week with the Struggling Scientists. Super excited. It's about science communication and how you can get over the things that might be preventing you getting involved in the public communication of science. It's going to be on my podcast, it's going to go on their podcast as well. It's the first full collaboration PhD Life Coach ever done. So we're super, super excited. Make sure you tune in. I will see you next week. </p> <p> <b> <br/> </b> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 10 Apr 2023 04:45:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/26-how-to-be-kind-to-yourself thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/25-how-to-curate-your-phd-life-with-jamie-pei <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode we have another special guest! This time we're talking to Jamie Pei, the "messy" PhD coach about how to curate your PhD Life. We talk about what we mean by "curating" and why we mean your all elements of your life and not just your PhD. Jamie has a great perspective on how this approach puts you in the driver's seat, and enables you to guide and create the life you want. You also hear us demonstrating how little we actually know about fine art curation in an attempt to make useful analogies.... </i> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <b> Just to let you know, Jamie and I have a very exciting project coming up where we are going to be collaborating together. We are not ready to announce this yet, but please make sure that you are on our mailing lists.  <span> You'll be amongst the first to know when this becomes available. We are really excited. Hope to see you there soon! </span> </b> </p> <p> Links from this episode </p> <p> Jamie's link tree:  <span> <a href="http://linktr.ee/jamiepei"> linktr.ee/jamiepei </a>   </span> </p> <p>  S <span> ubscribe to my PhD mailing list: <a href="http://jamiepei.com/phdmail "> jamiepei.com/phdmail  </a> </span> </p> <p>   <span> Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/verymessyjamie/?hl=en" target="_blank"> @verymessyjamie </a> </span> </p> <p> Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/verymessyjamie" target="_blank"> @verymessyjamie </a> </p> <p> We also reference some work on values from  <span> Caroline Kay. You can hear more about her here!  <a href="https://carolinekay.co/"> https://carolinekay.co/ </a>    </span> </p> <p> Her podcast is called Snippets of Genius. Listen via her website ( <a href="https://carolinekay.co/podcast/"> https://carolinekay.co/podcast/ </a> ) or any preferred podcast platform </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Vi <span> kki: Hello and welcome to episode 25 of the PhD Life Coach, and today is another one of our special episodes because we have a guest with us. We have Jamie Pei, the Messy Coach here to talk about how to curate your own PhD life. </span> </p> <p> I am super excited to have Jamie with us today because Jamie and I met on Twitter just by following each other's accounts and then sending each other weird little messages, saying that we wanted to be friends and all of this. Um, and there was so much about, um, what Jamie talks about that really, really resonated with me as somebody who's always taken a slightly chaotic approach to life.  </p> <p> I found her just really open and honest and a refreshing change from all the coaches that are talking about “you just must be more productive.” So welcome, Jamie. Thank you so much for coming.  </p> <p> Jamie: Thank you for having me here. I'm so excited. And I was thinking about how we used to like, I was like stalking you on Twitter, being like secretly thinking like, I want to be her friend. </p> <p> Vikki: And then here we are! </p> <p> Jamie: Yes. But on that note though, I did want to say like, uh, I know we kind of make light of it, but, you know, a PhD can be quite a lonely place, I think, and that was something I learned sort of midway through my PhD. Don't be afraid to just go up to people and say hi. And people are generally nicer than we think they're going to be and you can make some really good friends from that, like you and me! </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. You were just so lovely and it's all good. So we haven't really taken a second - tell us who you are for anybody who hasn't come across your work before.  </p> <p> Jamie: Oh, thank you. Yeah, so I'm Jamie Pei. I am a PhD and life coach as well, so same camp as Vikki. I did my PhD in women's studies at the Center for Women's Studies at the University of York, and finally, finally completed it. The whole process was a bit messy for me as well as it is for most people. So I finally completed it in 2021, but I'd already started doing some training in workshops back in 2018 before I'd finished my PhD and loved it so much that I've gone on to do it full-time now.  </p> <p> Vikki: Amazing. And you mentioned there that your PhD felt a bit messy, and obviously that's how you sort of brand yourself - You're the “messy coach.” Tell us a bit more about that. Because that's not an obvious word. I really resonated with it, but it's not an obvious word to choose for this stuff. So why the messy coach?  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah, so this is, this was quite interesting, I guess how I came to messiness. Like, so a lot of my previous work before coming back into academia and my PhD were in worlds that were full of perfection. My immediate job before coming back to academia was in fashion journalism. Like I was working in a fashion magazine, so everything had to be perfect there, right? Like everything, your text had to be perfect. The visuals, the aesthetic of it, it's all about a aspiring towards this idea of perfection. </p> <p> So it was very uncomfortable for me to come into research where there are no real limits, right? Like things can take all sorts of different avenues and there are always surprises in research. There's no like clear cut style guide the way there is in a magazine, and you just have to bumble along and figure things out as you go along. </p> <p> But I had this wonderful supervisor who was very, very encouraging around letting yourself be messy and using that mess as a resource rather than as something to, uh, to bury or overcome. Instead of feeling the need to fix it, she was very much about like, let's work with the messiness. What can it tell us?  </p> <p> And really allowing that messiness in, first of all, made the overall process a bit easier because then I wasn't constantly feeling the need to be perfect. But also I think it made my research richer ultimately, because it was prompting ways of thinking or prompted me to look at things that I might otherwise not have looked at. And yeah, I think I came up with perspectives and ideas and directions as a result of being able to let that messiness in.  </p> <p> So I decided to embrace that and to make that, I guess, my thing when I came out into coaching, because I think we miss a lot by not embracing the messiness. I also believe that, you know, most universities and doctoral colleges and departments already have very good doctoral training, like the more formal stuff around how to do a PhD, how to write a lit review, how to collect data and all of that. But there is less around what to do with all this in between messiness and the, the states of being that are not so readily definable and for which there, there isn't often that training, right? </p> <p> Like so what to do when things go wrong in your research, what to do when you are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of literature and when the material feels messy. But also more than that, like what to do when like the rest of your life feels messy and you are needing to still make progress in the PhD. </p> <p> How to deal with the messy feelings. and the emotions that come from doing research. All of these things that aren't really tangible, but have huge impacts on how we actually do the research. So that's what I try to address really to try and help people muddle through the mess so that they can do their research with more ease. </p> <p> Vikki: I love that and I love the contrast with your previous workplace, because I think academia's such a weird place, in the sense that, as you say, it's so messy and there's so few rules and so much self guidance. But at the same time, most of my clients believe there's a version of perfection that they should be trying to attain. </p> <p> Jamie: Absolutely. </p> <p> So it's like there's no rules about what that looks like, but they need to write their papers “right”, and they need to do the “right” amount of work, and they need to show up for the “right” things and be at the “right” stages at one year in and two years in. So it's this very strange combination.  </p> <p> Jamie: I think PhD students are by nature, like they are high achievers and they're highly capable as it is already. So the bar is already high. And then there's also the high achieving side of PhDs and the competitive side and academia is competitive in itself anyway. And it's just a constant, perfect storm for things to feel uncomfortable, misaligned. You know, you are always feeling like you're having to catch up. There's always that sense of comparisons and that can feel very messy, right? Like, what is mine? What is it that I actually want to be working towards? And what is. someone else's path that actually has nothing to do with mine. And our paths get mixed into someone else's path. And then the whole experience and journey also becomes messy because then we lose sight of what it is we're actually trying to do. Um, yeah. All kinds of messiness.  </p> <p> But like you said, against that there’s the sense that we've got to have it all together and look like we know what we're doing and we're progressing in this beautiful, straight linear line when that just isn't realistic and nobody does that, right? </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. I mean I coach people all the way through to full professor and they're not following a nice, neat linear line where they feel perfect either. That's for sure. And that's always the irony is I'm coaching these PhD students and they're talking about their supervisors not understanding this, that, and the other, and I'm like, I'm not coaching their supervisors, but I'm coaching the equivalent of their supervisors. And it's like, “no dudes, if they didn't reply to your email, it’s not because they hate you. They have four thousand emails and they're not coping right now. </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. They're probably in a corner, self-flagellating as well.  </p> <p> Vikki: It's true. So there's mess at every level. The people that are supervising you are feeling their own mess. And you mentioned earlier, and it's really important for our episode today, about the mess outside of academia itself. Because I think often when people do these podcasts and blogs and whatever about succeeding in academia, they forget all the other stuff. You know, so many of my clients are, they're part-time, they're parents, they're really athletes, some of mine, all these sorts of things that they're balancing outside, and often there's not much of that recognition either, that your PhD is only one aspect of your life.  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah. And I think there's that tension as well because the PhD is one of so many other things that are going on. And then also like shit happens because this is life, right? And like life is messy. So there's that tension between the reality of things being messy and then the felt sense that we need to very cleanly compartmentalize the messiness of life from the PhD and they should be two separate things or that, you know, we shouldn't let the mess of our lives have any impact on our research. We still have to power through it. </p> <p> And that's a whole other thing, you know, this like “just do it”. Just “mind over matter”, “power through it”, “grit up and do it.” “Just be resilient and do it.” And actually in trying to block out that mess and the merging of those worlds, I think it makes it more messy, right? It makes it even harder. </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, no, absolutely. And that really leads us into the topic of today, which is curating your PhD life. And we chose that word very carefully. So tell me a bit more about what you mean by curating and why we chose that word.  </p> <p> Jamie: Oh, okay. So let's start with what that means, I guess, first and then why I chose the word “curating”. </p> <p> I think it's really important to clarify really exactly what it is that we want in our PhD life. And the emphasis here is on PhD life and not just what we want in our PhD. And that's really about having a vision of what it is that we will or will not accept or aspire towards within this overall PhD life. </p> <p> And the word “curate”, I love that word, first of all, because it puts you in the driver's seat, so to speak. It gives us that sense of agency and control and direction, like you are directing and making those choices for yourself for how you want that life to look like.  </p> <p> So when we use the word curate, we usually think of it in terms of like an art exhibition or something like that, right? So it's about taking charge or organizing or putting together selected pieces of art into an overall exhibition. And that's really what this is about, it's looking at your life, all the different components of your life, your values, your deep down soul desires, I guess, for how you want to live your life and do this research and putting those components together. </p> <p> So I have thought of other words like designing or finding or, creating, but I feel like the words, first of all, finding is, is more about accidentally, almost finding, like you don't really have as much of an agency, I think with the word finding. With things like creating and designing, yeah, you do. You are, you are still in the driver's seat, but there's almost a sense when you're designing or creating, you could be creating from nothing.  </p> <p> Whereas I like the word curate because it's like you are taking what is already there and putting together the life that you want for yourself within the context of your PhD. So for me, what that means really is to get super clear on things the qualities and the values that you want to live with and experience and enjoy throughout your PhD life. So there could be things like peace or joy or connection, like let's get real down to the basics of like how you want to feel on an everyday basis. </p> <p> And/or it could be the types of experiences that you want to have during your PhD. So it could be that you want an experience where you feel that you are generating research that's really going to make a difference in the world or maybe you are coming back to academia after a long time away and you want that kind of academic intellectual stimulation again, and you want to be in a space of learning. </p> <p> Or it could be about finding this really juicy balance between having stimulating work and also a really joyful, fulfilling family life. So it's, it's getting really to the core, it's not just superficial things of “ oh yeah, I want to be a successful researcher”, or “I want to publish like five journal articles” or whatever. </p> <p> It's really like, what is it that you… qualities, and almost like emotional states that you want to enjoy and experience on a day-to-day, even moment to moment, basis throughout your PhD and letting that be almost like the central core theme around which you curate the rest of your life.  </p> <p> Vikki: I love that. I love that. And it made me think about my own experience of doing a PhD and, as you can probably guess from our conversations and everything, I was someone who wanted to do absolutely everything. And I think, I think the thing with that curate really struck with me is there is that element of constraint there as well. </p> <p> That when you're curating an art gallery, like you said, you are not going to put every single piece of art you can possibly think of in there. You are going to put together, within the space available, a lovely selection that kind of meets the needs of you at that time. And I love the idea of that, when you're thinking about your life in this phase, you know not even in your whole PhD, but in the first year phase of my PhD, in the second year phase, what are the bits that would enable me to have a really lovely, joyful, easy, not easy in the sense of not being difficult, but living with ease, what do you need to put together for that to be possible, rather than just cramming in as many experiences as possible.  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah. And what can you let go of as well? I think that's so like, yeah, I was the same. I wanted to do everything.  </p> <p> Vikki: This is why we bonded! </p> <p> Jamie: Yes. I mean, it's that FOMO thing. That's another big one, right? For PhD students like that. FOMO. But actually if we take a step back and check in again with those, you know, two or three qualities that are non-negotiable in our lives, then we can really start to see like, okay, you know, this one thing, maybe attending this conference could be kind of fun, could be interesting, but actually, if I'm really honest with myself, doesn't really fulfil those qualities or maybe even distracts from me being able to enjoy those qualities a bit more and then you can make that decision to let it go knowing that, you know, I'm not actually missing out on anything. I don't actually need it.  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. Or it duplicates things. So again, as you were talking, I'm thinking Yeah, because like you're putting together a exhibition, you can be like, “I've already got one Monet. I don't need more Monets. I've already done some presentations at conference. I don't need to do all the presentations. Actually, what I haven't got at the moment is either rest time or I haven't got published articles or whatever it is. And rather than just having more and more Monets, I actually need to get a Renoir over there. I'm not an artist, I’m just picking names. </p> <p> Jamie: I'm not an artist either, so I don’t know we ended up with this metaphor when neither of us know anything. </p> <p> Vikki: I love it though. It's good.  </p> <p> Jamie: And we've never curated an art exhibition. </p> <p> Vikki: No, but we totally could! </p> <p> Jamie: And I think it's really important as well, and you kind of touched on that there, as well as not duplicating, it's also reminding yourself that not doing something doesn't mean that you are losing out. It means that you are creating space for something else that's more aligned. Or something else that's even better, right?  </p> <p> Vikki: Or you just make space for that picture to look beautiful and not crowded into a gallery as well. So hopefully we sold the listeners on the idea of curating their PhD life. So if somebody is new to this, as I'm sure most people will be listening, where would you start? If you're kind of, you know, you're either beginning your PhD or perhaps your partway through it and feeling like your PhD life's not looking the way you thought it would or the way you hope it is, where would you begin?  </p> <p> Jamie: Okay, so I think it does begin with spending a little time thinking about what it is that you actually want out of this experience and in your life as a whole. So maybe this would be best illustrated if I just gave you an example from my own experience.  </p> <p> Right. So for me, I wanted my PhD experience and my life in general as well, to be one that was full of ease. So ease was a very big quality for me. I didn't want to have to struggle more than I have to. Like why make life harder for yourself? Right. So that would be like the theme of the exhibition, I guess, right?  </p> <p> And then you shape your everyday experiences and you make those micro- everyday decisions around that value. So for example, part of achieving ease for me meant having a significant amount of time in the day for not working or having that time for myself. So then I would deliberately pick and choose commitments or activities or whatever that would still allow me to have, for example, like my weekends and my evenings off.  </p> <p> Or what I would do is that I would very deliberately prioritize my rest times first, or block off those rest times and then plan my work days around that, or choose what activity to commit to or not around that. </p> <p> So, I guess using the art exhibition analogy again, it would be like, okay, you know what? I really want to have this Monet, and I'm going to put that up first and then shape the rest of the paintings around that. That's a very crude metaphor analogy, but it's something like that, like deciding what it is that you want and like blocking that in making that as a priority or a non-negotiable, and then shaping everything else around that quality or that expression that, that you want.  </p> <p> Ease for me also meant that I wanted to be able to work in physically comfortable and conducive spaces. So this is again, another micro decision, like things like very consciously curating my workspace to best suit what would feel physically comfortable for me. </p> <p> So right down to things like having the right stationery, like having the right apps and programs on my university computer, having my own mug in my office, and having access to my own tea bags, things like that. And they sound silly, but you know, you are there every day. So you want to make sure that those little things are feeding into the bigger thing of those values and those qualities that you want. </p> <p> Vikki: And how did you - I mean, that sounds amazing, but my brain is offering me “Yeah. Ease sounds awesome. Maybe, maybe at ease would be my theme,” but then I think “but I have so many other things.” You know, “fun” pops in, you know, “connectedness” pops in. There's so many other things. So if listeners are feeling similarly and they're like, yeah, but which thing do I pick, how would you. encourage somebody to like narrow it down to, to a single theme at least for a period of time.  </p> <p> Jamie: Oh gosh. Okay. I actually came upon this from another co, she's a business coach called Caroline Kay and you can look her up. She's done some good stuff as well around choosing these values. She got us to do this exercise where, you know, you kind of, first of all, you select 10 values that you would love, and then you whittle that down to five, like, must have those out of that 10, you must have five, and then narrow that down to three.  </p> <p> It gets harder and harder, right? Because you want it all. We want it all. So I start with 10, go down to five, then go down to three. And Caroline's a thing where she makes us go down to one value. </p> <p> Like what is the one thing that if everything was like collapsing around you, but you had that one quality in your life, you could put up with all the other crap that's happening around you. I found it very hard to go down to one. I mean, I think it's a very powerful exercise to do for yourself. </p> <p> I mean, I guess maybe this is something that I have to work on myself. I stopped at three and I was like, you know what? I'm going to work with three. And I think three is a good number to have if you wanted to really go all out and push that practice a bit further, you could go down to one, but the premise of it is really like, what are the three qualities or one or two that you could not live without. </p> <p> And Caroline had used this example that, like, if I got knocked over by a bus and I was now in a hospital bed and my whole body was in a class and I couldn't do anything. I think for her, she said if I had joy and I could still have a big belly laugh and feel that sense of joy from being able to laugh, then everything else would be okay. </p> <p> So it's something like that. And when you do that, actually a lot of things clarify. The messy things start to untangle a lot easier and you start to get a lot more clarity around what it is that you actually want to keep in your life and what you can let go of.  </p> <p> Vikki: Cool. And we will link to Caroline in the show notes, so if anybody wants to look her up and find out more about that stuff, we'll link to that. </p> <p> And you used the word earlier that I just want to kind of clarify for everybody. You talked about micro decisions and that just really struck me. What do you mean by micro decisions and why do you think that's so important?  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah, so I think these are the little decisions that we might otherwise kind of disregard or even think of as like trivial or silly. And we belittle these decisions, but so things like how much you allow yourself to rest. What are you going to have for dinner? Like I was talking about earlier, like what kind of stationary do you have on your desk? </p> <p> Um, so yeah, I think these kinds of tiny decisions because they're micro, tiny decisions, I think we often have a tendency to dismiss them or ignore them, or we just try to power through them and think, oh, well, they're not important. The mind is more important, right? Like productivity, our outputs more important. You know, I'm a rigorous, hardcore, serious researcher, I shouldn't be held back by things like meal times and how many hours of sleep I get in a night or when was the last time I talked to my mother. Like, oh, I've got more important things in my life to worry about. But, those micro decisions are what make up that whole, ultimately productive or non-productive, successful day, right? </p> <p> So when you are making the right nutritious decisions for your meals and you are getting enough sleep, when you are consciously making that decision to check in with your partner or your family on a regular basis, and you are aware of when was the last time you spoke to your mom. All those things contribute to helping you to curate that life that you want and to support you having those values in your life. </p> <p> And when you have these things in place, that is what is ultimately going to support you to do the hardcore successful, serious research. When all those other parts of you are looked after, the research will take care of itself. </p> <p> Vikki: I love that notion of looking after yourself, sort of thinking, how can I be kind to me and not in a kind of a “light a candle and meditate” kind of a way, but just in a “how can I just make my life a little bit easier and a little bit more pleasant right now?” </p> <p> I think that's such a - you know, we think of it for other people, but it's such a lovely thing to think about for yourself.  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s this idea that like self-care is the soft thing of like bubble baths and candles and the sense of it's almost a complacent, lazy thing, right? </p> <p> And oh my gosh, this kind of terror we feel around having too much rest and being too indulgent or like self-care or kindness to ourselves being this thing that's like indulgent and frivolous. I think actually it's a very active thing that we're doing. I think when we, when we look after ourselves and it can be, it can be some of the hardest things we do.  </p> <p> I mean, learning to say no to a commitment is also self-care, right? It's making those micro decisions. It is saying, you know what? I'm not going to attend this conference because it's taking me away from those core values at the moment. It could be doing the hard things of saying, you know what, I am going to sit down and write for, for 30 minutes today, and that's all I'm going to do. </p> <p> I'm just going to do 30 minutes instead of forcing myself to do eight hours . And making those decisions are also self-care. You know, it's really about, it's not just some wishy-washy thing. It's about creating what is going to be most conducive for you to ultimately do that research. You know, like, and what could be more important than that? </p> <p> Like, we're so fixated on like, “oh my God, doing the good research, being a successful researcher” but how you get there is going to vary so tremendously from person to person, and it's really about checking in with yourself, what that means for you, and how you can create that for yourself.  </p> <p> Vikki: And that's going to look really different for different people, right? When we think of self-care, we usually think about that kind of relaxing stuff, don't we? We think about healthy food and an early night and all these things. For me, self-care, for me, one thing is play. I get really grumpy if I don't do something moderately silly every day. You know, I like to play a board game. I like to go to circus. I like, you know, those sorts of things where I'm focused on something, I'm not just laying in a bath. But it's not work, it's not productive in any particular sense that's the sort of care I'm learning or have learned that I need in order to be enjoying my life and turning up for work stuff with enthusiasm. So it's going to look really different, I guess, for everybody, what, what they actually need in order to thrive in that way.  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah. And don't let the self-care thing be another thing that we're comparing with other people. Right?  </p> <p> Vikki: Oh my goodness. Yes. So, you know, I see some of these morning routines on, on Twitter and Instagram and stuff I was thinking about, and it's like, oh my goodness, if I'm journaling and meditating and massaging my face, did you know we're meant to massage our faces with little rollers? Apparently. </p> <p> Jamie: I did not know that.  </p> <p> Vikki: No , I don't think we do. Influencer culture and all that. This sounds amazing. What barriers do you think there are for people doing this?  </p> <p> Jamie: Well definitely the pressures that they might be experiencing externally. So if you had a difficult supervisor, for example, who was constantly putting particular pressures on you or making you feel that you weren't doing enough. a I mean, there could be family pressures as well. You know, what we define as successful or not successful and who, you know, whose definitions of success we're working by. So, yeah, there are certain families that, you know, while you're doing your PhD, they may be pressuring you as to, you know, what are you going to do after this and what job are you going to do after this and all. </p> <p> So that, there is a lot of that as well. And I'm, you know, I recognize and acknowledge that being able to completely say, you know, have a hundred percent say in how you could curate your life is a privilege, and there may be other pressures that don't allow you to fully do that. People have different commitments and different responsibilities. Again, I'm not going to presume to, you know, to know everyone's possible lifestyle and commitments. But it's also, you know, it's also reminding ourselves that even if you cannot curate a hundred percent of what you want, it can still make a big difference to say, “okay, well, how can I bring myself 1% closer to this?” or if I, you know, even if I can't curate a hundred percent what I want, what is one area where I could begin to let things be a little easier? Or even, you know, right now there are these barriers, but what support can I ask for or what help can I ask for in order to help me get a little bit closer to that. </p> <p> So, for example, it could be, you know, you've got lots and lots of commitments right now and you are wanting more ease and you're wanting to create a more easeful life, but you're feeling these pressures to do the conference and organize this and do lab work and write up and, you're being pulled in 101 different directions. Like could it be as simple as having a conversation with a frank, honest conversation with your supervisor or PI and saying, “I am feeling really overwhelmed. Can we have a conversation just to check back in with, you know, what are the key goals that I should be working towards at the moment and maybe rejigging things around, maybe pushing some things back for a while or putting, hitting pause on some things.” </p> <p> “What could I possibly even feasibly drop for now completely?” Yeah, and, and allowing ourselves to ask for that help sometimes can be a big step just to at least meet those barriers. And I think even in the first place is acknowledging those barriers. I think a lot of times what does become messy is that we're not even aware of what the barriers are or what those pressures are, and we're just allowing ourselves to be swept along. </p> <p> And now you are kind of buried under all these commitments. You know, like, “I don't know where they came from on, how have I ended up with all of these things?” This is something I talk about a lot as well with my clients, and part of working with messiness is untangling what is actually truly yours and your desires, your values, your goals from what is someone else's and even if you cannot completely divorce yourself from those things, like if you've got children, you cannot suddenly say like, no, I don't want to look, I don't want to look after them anymore. But it could be, you know, again, like, how can I get support or, or help with this so that I can begin to, to curate and create that life that I, that I want more of. </p> <p> Vikki: I love that notion of untangling, because I think sometimes we don't even stop long enough to think who says I should do this? Where does this even come from? You know, you're talking about looking after children. I don't have children, so I do not profess to be an expert on this at all, but I look at my friends, I look at my relatives, and everyone does it in different ways. There are things that people accept are absolute non-negotiables. I have to do this, that other parents don't do. So even those things, how we show up as a parent, how we show up as a partner, whether we do all the things our supervisor suggests we do, we have more choice around all of that stuff than I think sometimes we, we acknowledge. And I think just stopping to spend a little time going, “okay, so your supervisor suggested you did this. What are you making that mean?” Are you making that mean therefore you have to, or what? What's going to happen because they're going to be mad at you? Because they're going to be disappointed? Because you are going to judge yourself for not being able to do all the things?  </p> <p> You know what does the fact that somebody has suggested you do this thing, what are you actually even making that mean? And does that actually mean you have to do the thing?  </p> <p> Jamie: And what does it mean if you don't do it as well? Right? So many times we get barreled along. We think, oh, I have, I have to do this thing. I have to do this thing. Yeah. Why do you have to do this? And what happens if you don't do it? And you know, a lot of people say, “oh, my supervisor says I have to do, they're not very understanding. You know, they're not in support at all of me, curating my own PhD life and therefore I have to just still accept it.” </p> <p> But even in those cases, if you are not getting the adequate support from your supervisor, there should be measures in place for you to be able to ask for help from a wider thesis advisory panel or to even change supervisors. There have been situations where people do that, where they feel, you know, they're not able to do the research that they're wanting to do, or, or in a way that feels supported. So again, it's about asking for that help, and allowing yourself to ask for support and help in order for you to meet those values and, and to be able to curate as much of that life as you can for yourself.  </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. Because I think, you know, towards the beginning you talked about agency being so important and this idea of curating because it's us having control over what we choose to bring into our life. </p> <p> But I love the idea that that's also an interconnected thing, that in order to curate our life, we also have to work with the people in it. So you know, if we want to free up an evening in order to do a certain thing, how can I work with somebody else to make that happen? Or if I want to get my lab work finished over the next six months so that I can then really focus on my write up or whatever it is, who do I have to work with? What do we need to do in order to make that possible.  </p> <p> And so I love this balance of kind of having autonomy over your life, but also that that doesn't mean that you are a kind of self-contained island that can never ask for help and has to just accept everything that people ask them to do.  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah. You don't have to do it all yourself. It is, there is the idea that like, you know, PhD work is quite solitary and you have to do the research on your own and it's your project. Um, but also like we're not. Single. Like, we're not, we're not islands that are just, you know, living on our own. Um, and it's, yeah, it's, it's absolutely Okay. </p> <p> And, and that's part of the curating, right? Um, and it's also, this is, this, this is so important, and I'm sure you've talked about this with a lot of your clients and in your podcast, the importance of, of setting those boundaries for yourself. That's a big part of curating as well, like knowing the parameters of what you want and what you're going to allow in or, or not. </p> <p> What's going to support those boundaries? What can people expect from you as well as you set those boundaries, so that you can meet those things that you want and the things that you don't want.  </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. Yeah, boundaries are a whole other thing, huh? But yeah, that's a whole other thing, but you're so right, but you're so right. It's so connected to this. It's deciding what things are okay and what things aren't on, you know, what am I going to do and what am I not in different situations? But one of the things that really helped me with setting boundaries and kind of having more focus was also picking a timescale over which I was talking. </p> <p> So especially if you're somebody like us who wants to do loads of things, knowing that you are not having to choose a value or choose boundaries for the rest of your life. This isn't something that's forever. You can decide for the next six months or the next three months if that feels too overwhelming, this is going to be my focus.  </p> <p> I got advised by a senior academic at my university. Years and years ago, but it really stuck with me that you can do everything over an academic career, you just can't do everything all the time.  </p> <p> Jamie: Oh, that's so good.  </p> <p> Vikki: You have phases where you are doing more outward facing stuff and raising your profile and all of those things, and you'll have phases, where it’s get your head down, get your book written or whatever, and that these things, and maybe you look after yourself, you curate your life differently in those different times.  </p> <p> So, I mean, to give you an example, when I used to be in academia pre pandemic, I was on campus all the time. And I had lots of hobbies and stuff in the evening and so the thing I had to actively curate was having some time to decompress on my own, because that was the bit that didn't happen automatically. </p> <p> But then during pandemic and then afterwards. And now when I'm working at home, it's the other way around. I have to make sure I'm curating connection with other people, because otherwise it's just me and the dog here until my partner comes home. So different phases of your life, I think you'll need to curate in different ways and I think it takes some of the pressure off to recognize that I'm just curating this bit, let's see how that goes.  </p> <p> Jamie: Yeah, I love that so much. I think it's absolutely right what you said, like how the PhD unfolds absolutely does evolve and change and shift from year to year, or even from month to month. And it's also giving ourselves that grace and that flexibility to evolve and change with it. So even if your values more or less stay the same, like for example, your value is joy or connection or stimulation, whatever it is you could still keep that core value, but how it manifests and what you need to do to curate that in your everyday life can shift and evolve and change, and that's okay too. </p> <p> Ultimately, the goal is not about living in this like fixed way. It's what is going to help you to enjoy those qualities in order for you to be able to do your research at your best self.  </p> <p> Vikki: I love that. And live the PhD life that you dreamt of. Because that's the thing. All these students, everyone listening, you, you're currently living past you's dream. </p> <p> You know when you were doing your undergraduate, when you were doing your masters, you were dreaming of doing a PhD a lot of the time and now you're doing it and how can we just make sure that it is the life we wanted. </p> <p> Jamie: And you continue to live that dream, right? Like, yeah, that you're not now taking on someone else's dream and someone else's expectations. You are allowed to enjoy the PhD, okay? You are allowed to feel joy and pleasure as you do it. It doesn't have to, this is something that I always say, like, just because you are enjoying it and you're not suffering, it doesn't mean that your research is less valuable. Like there's this very strange, upside down way of thinking that my research is only valuable if I'm like struggling and suffering for my art. But no, it, it can be, it can feel easeful and joyful and also as a result be really rich, thoughtful, insightful research.  </p> <p> Vikki: I love that. Do you have any final tips for our listeners who want to curate their PhD?  </p> <p> Jamie: Yes. So, I would love for you as you are curating your life and making those big and micro decisions to always ask yourself, “how can I act from a place of fulfillment and from a place that feels good?”  </p> <p> What do I need to do in this moment that would have me acting and living from a place of fulfillment and what feels good? Instead of living and acting and being from a place of scarcity or fear or competitive anxiety. So the result, like the action that you take may be the same. Like, you know, for example, if you're deciding whether or not to do a conference, you might decide, yes, I'm going to organize this conference. </p> <p> But choosing to do that from a more empowered place that feels fulfilled, that is aligned with what it is that you are wanting to experience in your PhD. Doing it from a place that feels good and really deeply fulfilling is going to be very different from choosing to organize that conference because you are scared of missing out or you are scared that like someone else is going to overtake you and you're going to fall behind. </p> <p> So it's just really checking in and clarifying for yourself what's truly supporting you to achieve what you want to do and enjoy and experience. And that's really, you know, aligning with those core desired values and not just what like the rest of the world is telling you. And it will also just help you to again untangle what is truly yours from the noise outside that you know is actually more of a distraction and doesn't really help you to achieve the things that you want. </p> <p> Vikki: Fantastic. Thank you so much for today, Jamie. It's been absolutely amazing having you on the show. If people want to hear more about how they can work with you and things, where should they be looking?  </p> <p> Jamie: So you could follow me on Instagram or Twitter. My handle is @verymessyjamie or you can visit my website, www.jamiepei.com and I think we'll put the links in the show notes. So yeah, if you just head on there, hope to connect with you somehow and we can muddle through mess together.  </p> <p> Vikki: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.  </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 03 Apr 2023 04:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/25-how-to-curate-your-phd-life-with-jamie-pei thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/24-how-winnie-the-pooh-can-help-you-manage-your-mind <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode we think about our own inner dialogue. How do you speak to yourself? Are you critical? Quick to judgment? Pessimisitic? Put yourself under pressure? All of these things are so common in academia yet we never really get shown how to manage our minds. Instead we either indulge these thoughts (ie we believe them and look for evidence they're true) or we admonish ourselves for having them (ie we tell ourselves "we're our own worst enemy"). In this episode I'll give you a very practical (and slightly silly) technique to help you develop a more kind, compassionate, and firm inner voice. And it involves Winnie the Pooh... </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hi everyone and welcome to episode 24 of the PhD Life Coach. Today we're going to think about how Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind. Now you might remember some of the inspiring quotes from Winnie the Pooh. Like: </p> <p> <b> “you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.” </b> </p> <p> That's lovely, you could put that on your wall. But that's actually not what I'm talking about today. What I want to think about is how we talk to our inner voice and how Winnie the Pooh can help with that. </p> <p> Now, what do I mean by our inner voice. For most people, we talk to ourselves in some way. Some people actually hear those voices in their head. Other people, it's more of a kind of just thinking those thoughts towards yourself. And one of the things that I hear from my clients a lot, and I've experienced myself, is when this inner voice says things that don't necessarily help. When you are about to be brave and do something new and your inner voice is going, “ooh, be careful. Are you sure this is the right time? Maybe you're not quite ready for this.” So sort of saying cautious things to you.  </p> <p> Maybe they're saying a bit meaner things. Maybe sometimes your inner voice is saying to you, “you are not really good enough. You don't belong here.” That's something I hear a lot from PhD students. “You don't belong here. This isn't the place for someone like you. Everyone's cleverer than you.” So it's this sort of critical inner voice.  </p> <p> Sometimes it's an over-enthusiastic inner voice. This is one I get a lot. “Yeah, you can do. Yeah, that'd be brilliant. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do all the things. Why not? Let's go.” </p> <p> So you have a whole variety of inner voices. Some people hear some of them more often, some of you'll hear others, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this. Most of us have it. There's no problem with this, except for when these voices aren't helping us live the life we want to live. </p> <p> They're not helping us to feel the way we want to feel, do the things we want to do, and achieve the things that we want to achieve. Whether that's actual goals in terms of getting your PhD, getting a promotion, whatever it is, or whether it's goals of living a calm and satisfied life, or living a fun life or whatever. </p> <p> There are various problems that come up with these inner voices telling us things that aren't necessarily helping. The first is that sometimes we believe them. Sometimes we hear these thoughts and go, “Oh, maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I don't belong here.” You know, we, we take them literally, we indulge them and then we start to make decisions from that place without really analysing the thought as to whether it's true or not. And if you've listened to my past podcasts, you'll have heard me go through those three questions that I want you all to keep in mind: </p> <p> - is this thought true? </p> <p> - what else is true? </p> <p> - and what if it's true and that's okay. </p> <p> And we can query these voices, but often when we hear these thoughts, we don't. We just accept them, start to believe them and indulge those thoughts and that's really starts to affect us.  </p> <p> Another thing I've seen people doing, particularly people who've done a little bit of coaching, is they then start to criticize themselves for having this thought. So quite a few of my clients will say to me, “I know I'm just beating myself up and I shouldn't do that, but I can't help it.” It almost becomes this additional stick to beat ourselves with. We've got a critical inner voice saying, “oh, maybe you're not good enough for this. Maybe you haven't made enough progress.” And then we're layering on top of that another critical voice going, “oh, by the way, you shouldn't be thinking that either. You should be able to be nice to yourself. If you paid more attention in coaching, you'd be able to be nice to yourself.” </p> <p> We start to critique our inner voice, we start to be mean to it and some of this even gets perpetuated in self-help advice online. So one of the things you might have seen is “banish that high school bully in your head. Kick them out, tell them you won't stand for it anymore”, and a really adversarial fighty approach to this voice that's in our head. </p> <p> Treating it as though it's our inner high school bully, or like this inner meanie that we've got in our heads and okay, may, maybe you can make it shut up. I've never seen that work for me or any of my clients, but voice is still part of your head. It's still part of your psyche. It's coming from somewhere. You're not beating yourself up on purpose.  </p> <p> By just telling it to shut up and go away, and I shouldn't be thinking this, stop it. It's just not a very compassionate or effective way of managing these sorts of thoughts that we experience all the time.  </p> <p> In this episode today, I want to introduce you to a much more compassionate approach that you can take where we hear these thoughts in our minds, and we have a strategy for not just believing them but not admonishing either.  </p> <p> Where we can take a compassionate and firm approach to managing these thoughts so that we can still do the things we want to do and feel the way we want to feel.  </p> <p> And we do this using Winnie the Pooh. I hope you're all familiar with Winnie the Pooh. If you haven't looked, seen them look it up. And I always have a caveat, you know, got to have an extra bit to the story. Some of you might have seen that in the Canadian Medical Association, I think it was about 10, 15 years ago, they did an article where they tried to say that each of the characters in Winnie the Pooh represents a different psychiatric condition. </p> <p> So Tigger's, ADHD, and Eeyore’s depression, all of this. I just want to say, if you have seen it, I am not doing that. That is not what we're talking about today for several reasons. Firstly, I think whilst I think they were trying to be funny and interesting when they publish that, I think it's misguided to try and retrofit diagnoses on something that was written a really long time ago without that intention. </p> <p> I also think it diminishes some of the real suffering and struggling of people who are experiencing these conditions. “Oh I'm just a bit Tigger.” No, you're not got a debilitating condition. So I am absolutely not suggesting that these characters represent different diagnoses.  </p> <p> However, I do think these characters can represent different tendencies of behavior and different types of thoughts, and by characterizing them in this way, we can look at them in a much more compassionate way. </p> <p> So let's give an example. Sometimes when I get up in the morning and I've had a cup of tea, I've eaten my breakfast, maybe I've gone and sat on the sofa for a bit. I've been scrolling on my phone and everything just feels quite nice and warm and cozy. I hear my inner voice saying, “oh, we could just stay here for a bit longer. We don't need to work yet. You're probably a little bit tired. Let's just stay here and scroll for a bit longer”.  </p> <p> That voice is quite a kind voice, and on some occasions if I'm super tired or not feeling very well, then perhaps it's a voice I want to listen to, but I also know myself well enough to know that that's not always helpful. That usually I will feel better if I get up and get on with a task, that's that's how I am.  </p> <p> I like to characterize that voice as Winnie the Pooh. Now Winnie the Pooh likes honey. He likes sitting around with his friends. He likes a nice, cozy, easy life. And that doesn't mean we indulge Winnie the Pooh. </p> <p> If Winnie the Pooh - you imagine him as a little separate dude next year. Here's Winnie the Pooh going “Should we just sit here, Vikki? Should we just sit here and eat honey and talk? It’s so nice.” We don't just indulge him and go “oh, okay, yeah, cool. We won't go and work. No, you're right Winnie. Let's sit here.”  </p> <p> But equally, we don't go “Shut up, Winnie your stupid lazy thing. If it was just up to you, I'd never anything, shut up.” Can't talk to Winnie the Pooh like that, poor little bear.  </p> <p> What we can do instead is respond with compassion and kindness. And I'm going to take you through a five step process. I love my step processes. I'm going to take you through a five step process of how we can talk to these characters. </p> <p> And that's just one example. Maybe you experience really the Pooh talking to you too. Another one that I experience often is Tigger. And Tigger thinks we can do everything. Tigger thinks everything's exciting, we will be most happy if we do all the things. So Tigger talks like this. Tigger is like, “yeah, let's do that. Yeah, we can fit that in. Yeah, let's do that as well. Yeah. And if we do that, we can do it bigger. We can do it better and we can do it more for more people.” </p> <p> And, and Tigger's utterly over excited and enthusiastic about everything. And again, imagine Tigger on the other side, boinging around and he's suggesting all these things. He's coming from a good place. He's just excited. He likes doing things. He's got lots of creativity and ideas. We don't want to indulge him. We just don't want to go. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Ok. Tigger. Yeah. Yeah, we can. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do everything.” because we know that's the route to overwhelm and eventually procrastination and potentially burnout and all of those things. </p> <p> We know that's not helpful, but equally, you can't be mean to Tigger. Look at his little face. He's just so excited. So he can't be mean to him and go “oh, you always do this yourself, don't you? You always take on too much. You're so stupid. Why don't you just learn to say, no” We can't talk to Tigger like that. We can be compassionate, we can be firm. We can explain.  </p> <p> I want you to think about which characters you hear most. Do you hear Winnie? Do you hear Tigger? I've actually had a lovely morning working out what I think each of the different characters represent. For me, Eeyore is the voice in our head that goes, “oh, there's no point really. Pretty sure it's not going to work. Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll just be a bit rubbish.” That sort of just dejected, seeing the downside, seeing the things that go wrong. Poor old Eeyore, he's not trying to be grumpy. He's not trying to pee on your bonfire, but he just doesn't really see how things could work out, and he's worried you're going to get your hopes up. </p> <p> Then we've got Piglet, cute little Piglet. Piglet knows he's little and he's very worried and he thinks everyone thinks he's a baby. And so he's the one that's a bit like, “but why would anybody listen to little me? I'm just Piglet. I'm only small. I don't know much what everyone's going to think I'm silly. Everyone's going to think I'm a baby. What am I doing in this place?” Maybe when you go into a networking event or you go to do a presentation, you get your Piglet going, “I'm only little, what am I doing?” </p> <p> Then there's owl. Now owl's meant to be this like big wise fella… Actually fella? I dunno. Am I misgendering Owl? I don't recall. Let's call Owl “they” as I am not sure of their gender. Owl is the voice in your head that says, “you're probably not clever enough. You're not as clever as me. You're not as clever as those other people.” And again, not trying to be mean, just concerned that maybe you are actually just not clever enough to do this and feeling the need to remind you. So if you hear a voice saying, “you're probably not good enough at this”, you can think of that as Owl sat on their perch looking down at you. </p> <p> Rabbit. Rabbit wants everything to be just so. Rabbit is the voice in your head going, “oh yeah, but it's, it's not quite perfect yet. Probably should be perfect. Should we try and make it perfect?” It's never quite good enough for Rabbit. </p> <p> So do you hear that voice in your head? I sometimes hear that voice, but for me Rabbit usually gets drowned out by Winnie the Pooh going “it’ll be fine, it's fine”. So for me, the balance of that actually sort of balances each other out to some extent.  </p> <p> Then we have Kanga. Kanga is the protective parental type. Kanga is the one that says, “you're probably not ready yet. You probably need to learn some more. Maybe do another course, maybe do some more training, because I just don't think you're quite ready yet.” And that's Kanga for me.  </p> <p> And then little Ru. Little Ru has no sense of self-protection. Little Ru is the one going, “yeah, let's do this. Woo”. Without even thinking about it. Yeah. Tigger enthusiastically wants to do everything, but Ru's got an eye for danger. Ru's got no sense of self-preservation with no consideration for practicalities at all.  </p> <p> If the Winnie the Pooh characters don't resonate for you, pick other characters. Pick Marvel characters. I know nothing about Marvel. I got mocked recently because I had no idea there was a difference between Marvel and DC. Who knew?  </p> <p> But if that's your world, pick characters from that. Are there people there that you are like, “oh yeah, that's the voice in my head. They're just like them”. Or are there voices from other films that you've loved or books from your childhood? Try and characterize these voices </p> <p> And the key is they have to be somewhat adorable. Okay. Please don't characterize voices in your head as the good voice and the bad voice where we have to banish the baddy. No, we are not doing that. They have to be somewhat adorable and that's what I love about Winnie the Pooh. That's why for me, this really, really works, is all of these characters are saying things to us that are not particularly helpful, but they're all really cute. There's none of them we dislike. Okay? They're all really cute. They all mean really well.  </p> <p> That's how I want us to think about our negative thoughts. They mean well, they're trying to help. There's nothing bad about them. There's nothing wrong. They're just not helping right now. </p> <p> Like annoying toddlers, they don't mean to be annoying. They're cute. They just want to do the thing they want to do, but we still need to learn to manage them.  </p> <p> So what do we do? How do we manage? I said I'd give you a five step plan.  </p> <p> Here is your five step plan, and those steps are: </p> <p> - Validate </p> <p> - Check </p> <p> - Reassure </p> <p> - Act </p> <p> - And remind. </p> <p> - Ok. And again, I </p> <p> So what do I mean by those? So you've got this cute character, you know, maybe it's Winnie the Pooh. Me this morning, I didn't really want to get going, and Winnie the Pooh was definitely talking to me on the sofa. </p> <p> First thing, and this is true with anybody, if you actually have irritating little toddlers with you, works with them too. First step, validate, because everyone wants to feel listened to. </p> <p> So first thing “I know, I know you don't want to get up right now. That's okay because we're super cozy on this sofa. Of course you don't want to get up right now. We've got a cup of tea and we're scrolling on a phone that's got endless entertainment. Of course you don't want to get up. That's okay. That's human. There's nothing wrong with you.” </p> <p> We start by telling ourselves we're not stupid. There's nothing wrong with this thought we're having. There's nothing broken about us. Of course, it's nice to just sit still, so we validate.  </p> <p> The second thing, and this one people often overlook is we check in. Have they actually got a point? Sometimes if we just try and ignore the little nagging doubts in our heads, we miss where it's actually useful information.  </p> <p> So I will then check in and be like, “is Winnie actually genuinely right? Am I actually exhausted? Am I actually ill? Is it the time of the month where really actually being a bit more gentle with myself would be a good thing?” </p> <p> And here you really have to go to your sort of sensible place and be like, if “I'm being really honest, no, there's no good reason around today”. Or I go, “you know what, actually Winnie, you got a point. Let's have 20 minutes extra and then we'll go. Because you are right. I haven't been feeling that good. Let's look after ourselves.” </p> <p> So we always check in to see if there's any truth in what they're saying. So similarly, if Rabbit is saying “it's not quite perfect yet”, then you'll check in with yourself. “Okay. , is there any truth in this? It's never going to be perfect, but is it, does it meet the basic criteria? Actually, I don't think I've hit this criteria, so we're going to work on that bit. Okay, Robert, thank you for reminding me. Yeah, we will work on that bit, but the rest of it is good to go.” So we check in to see if there's any truth in what they're saying. You never want to be just dismissing these thoughts entirely.  </p> <p> And then comes the really compassionate bit. This is where we get to reassure ourselves. We get to say, “I know Winnie, I know you don't want to get up right now, but we decided that we wanted to record this podcast this morning and we wanted to get it done before we go for the dog walk. And you are going to have such a nice time at the dog walk. It's going to be lovely. So let's get this podcast going. You're going to enjoy it once we're on it.”  </p> <p> Notice how we don't say “pull your finger out. Stop being so lazy.” We're saying, I know you don't want to, but this is why we're going to, this is what we agreed. We're sort of reassuring. So we validate, we check, we reassure, and then we get on. </p> <p> Don't spend too long in that reassurance phase. It's the same as with the toddler. Do not negotiate for too long. Explain why you're doing what you're doing, and then move. That might be moving to stop doing something, moving to start doing something. But whatever the action is that you need to do, then you move. Okay, so we act.  </p> <p> And then the final thing is remind. Our brains are persistent. This work that we are doing, this mind management is a skill. It's a skill that's developed over time and that means we're not going to be good at it at first. And to be honest, we've got human brains and we're never going to manage them perfectly forever. </p> <p> So expect the voice to pop back up. Expect later on for Winnie the Pooh after you've actually got as far as having a shower to go “we could just sit on the bed and scroll for a while though, couldn't we?” I hear that voice often. I've got Winnie the Pooh up the sofa. We've made it upstairs. We've gone for a shower and there's, “oh, could just sit here in your towel for a little bit and scroll and scroll on my phone.” </p> <p> So you expect them to pop back up and at that point we don't reassure. A lot of this is like parenting advice, isn't it? We don't reassure again. We're firm and we remind, “no, no, we decided. We decided we're moving now. Come on, let's go.” And that's all the justification you need at that moment. “No, we decided we're doing this. Let's go.” </p> <p> Or if this is Tigger, you know, you've decided “I know you're excited about this thing and I can understand why, because it would be really, really cool, wouldn't it?” And I'm going to check in and go, “would it actually be a really good opportunity? Could it actually fit?” </p> <p> And you're like, “Nope, nope. It's definitely over enthusiastic. I've definitely got enough on my plate already”. Then we reassure. “I know this is super exciting, Tigger, and I'm not saying no forever, but remember we are doing this, this, and this this month, and we haven't got time to take on another paper, another presentation. So I know it could be exciting, but we're going to let them know we can't help. And let's see if we have time next semester, for example.  </p> <p> So we sort of reassure ourselves, then we act. We let the person know that we're not going to do this thing or we get on with the other thing that we need to do. Tigger will probably put pop back up going, “yeah, yeah. But be really good on your promotion application, wouldn't it? That'd be really, really good.” </p> <p> And that's the point where you remind, you remind Tigger “I know, but we decided we're not doing it. We decided we have enough on our plate.” </p> <p> So validate, check, reassure, act, and remind.  </p> <p> With these characters, I really want you to think about what your most typical voices are, because we probably all hear the range of voices at some point, but we all have tendencies towards particular ones. </p> <p> So I am a mix of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. So a kind of, “oh, lazy, cozy, wouldn't it just be nicer not to do it” thing and Tigger going, “we can do everything.” In many ways, that has actually been a protective thing for me that I am Super Overexcited Tigger, but I have enough of Winnie the Pooh in me that I rarely burn myself out by working too hard, because at some point Winnie the Pooh is like, “no, let's just sit down now.” </p> <p> On the other hand, it can be a tricky combination because Tigger, if left unchecked, signs me up for loads of things, and then Winnie the Pooh doesn't necessarily want to do them all or put in the hours needed in order to make that happen.  </p> <p> Being aware that I have particular tendencies of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger to hang around me means that I'm so much more able to spot it when they appear. I noticed that it's Tigger and that this isn't my sensible brain suggesting that I should do this thing. This is Tigger telling me it'd be fun or I notice that actually when I stop and think about it, I'm not that tired. Winnie the Pooh just wants me to sit around and eat honey. By knowing that it's so much easier to spot it and go through that process much more quickly. I wonder what characters there are for you?. </p> <p> Be aware of that. Know your Hundred Acre Wood. Know who's likely to come up to you most often and be ready to manage them. As I said, like parenting. This takes a lot of practice and sometimes you will return to indulging your little characters or admonishing them. That's okay. We're not going to do this perfectly. </p> <p> Christopher Robin isn't perfect. We are not perfect. No one else is perfect. We can't always manage these. The best parents in the world sometimes indulge their children, sometimes they yell at their children more than they intend to. It happens.  </p> <p> All we can do in that situation is be compassionate, be kind to ourselves, remind ourselves why it works better when we manage it another way and get back on to trying to do that. </p> <p> This sort of supportive self-talk is a skill that you can practice and that you will get better at over time. And as you get better at it, you'll notice that you are able to nurture and support and look after yourself into doing things that you never thought were possible.  </p> <p> So many of my clients believe that the way to get stuff done is to beat yourself into it. That if things are challenging, what we really need to do is develop discipline, have grit, have resilience, force ourselves to do it, when in reality, supportive, compassionate, but firm self-talk is how we get stuff done.  </p> <p> I have a course on this that I run at universities for PhD students. It's called How to Be Your Own Best Supervisor. And in that course we are really thinking about what are the best bosses you've ever had, the best supervisors you've ever had? And when you think about their characteristics, I bet they didn't just indulge you and go, “oh yeah, they, no, this is quite hard. Probably don't bother.” And I bet they didn't spend their time admonishing you and disciplining you and reminding you of all the times you were rubbish.  </p> <p> When I talk to my clients about this, talk to students about it, the most common things that come up as they were understanding, they were encouraging, they believed in me. They were firm. They supported me, they helped me problem solve, all these sorts of characteristics.  </p> <p> And what I'd encourage you to do is to learn to do that for yourself. Learn to nurture yourself, to encourage yourself, to be firm with yourself, and to believe in. yourself Characterizing your inner voices can be a really good first step to doing this. </p> <p> So let me know how you get on with that. Let me know which of the Winnie the Pooh characters resonates most for you.  </p> <p> If you want further support and you think that your university should put on one of my workshops, tell your supervisors. If you're an academic listening to this get in touch. If you go to my website,www.thePhDlifecoach.com, you go to support for university's page. It gives you the information there. So get in touch. I would love to work with you all. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 Mar 2023 04:45:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/24-how-winnie-the-pooh-can-help-you-manage-your-mind thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/23-how-to-make-decisions-that-you-love <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> There are so many big decisions to make in academia, from what to research, what conferences to go to, what admin roles to do, where to submit your work, and even how long to stay in academia. Everyone is keen to give us their opinion on what we "should" do or what will be "good for our CV", but no one seems to ever help us figure out how to make our own decisions. In this episode, I share some frameworks and reflective questions that will help you make the best decisions for you.  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hi everyone and welcome to episode 23 of the PhD Life Coach. Today we're going to think about how to make decisions. Now, often when I'm chatting with my clients or listening to you guys talk on Twitter, there's just so many decisions that have to be made in academia. We live in this weird world where we've kind of got bosses, our supervisors are our bosses if we're PhD students or our heads of department, research leads, vice chancellors, whatever it might be. But at the same time, we have a pretty big amount of autonomy over exactly what we choose to do.  </p> <p> So there'll be some elements that you just get told you're doing, and then other times you'll get options as to what you do, what research you focus on, specifically which study you do, which conferences you go to, where you want to submit papers whether you take on admin roles, if you're an academic. Whether you agree to take part in all the different competitions and things that are open to PhD students, for example. So Three Minute Thesis and all these sorts of things. Do you choose to do those? What do you choose to do next after your PhD, after your postdoc? What do you choose to focus on?  </p> <p> It's really hard, and I remember being somebody who definitely erred on the side of not deciding and just doing all of them, as a coping strategy. Which was genius? Um. It was not genius and, and it kind of worked for a while. I was just super busy and super enthusiastic and it was a bit chaotic, but a lot of fun. </p> <p> But as I got more senior through academia, it became clear that I was going to have to make some decisions. And I made decisions about switching to a teaching focus contract, for example. So until I was a senior lecturer, I was research active, published quite a lot of papers, went to conferences, all that jazz. </p> <p> And I decided to become teaching focused. So that was a very big decision, but I even on a day-to-day basis, there's just so many - do you agree to sit on that committee? Do you agree to be the PGR rep? Do you agree to come onto campus on certain days - there's so many decisions? There's so many decisions. </p> <p> So in this episode, what we going to be thinking about - Why is it a problem to have to make so many decisions? Where do these problems come from? And I've come up with all of those little two by two grids that I've just invented, and I really like it and I think it will really help you guys. So I can tell you about that. </p> <p> And then we're going to talk about how to decide. You know, what actual steps can you go through? You know, we often talk about, “I need to think that through”, but we don't really know how to think something through in a structured way.  </p> <p> So starting out, why are making decisions a problem? Well. A whole bunch of reasons really. It's tiring takes brain space, doesn't it? You know, when you've got lots of choices happening and even if they're good choice, even if it's fun, things to pick behind, pick between, it's still just a lot to think about. I'm planning a wedding at the moment, which is super exciting, and it's definitely far enough away that I haven't reached the stress stage yet, but there's so many decisions. That's really tiring and it preoccupies your brain that really, especially as a PhD student or academic, you need for something else.  </p> <p> Another reason is depending on how you make your decisions, they influence your life coming up. So often, especially if you're making decisions about choosing whether to do something or not, or which thing to do, that's going to affect what you end up doing. And you might end up like me, too scattered and divided between a thousand different things and just feel a bit all over the place and like you're dropping balls everywhere. Or if you're somebody at the other end of the spectrum where you are perhaps reluctant to take on things, that “no” is your general sort of default answer, maybe you end up with missed opportunities and things you wish you'd done.  </p> <p> And that leads me to another problem with decisions, which is regret. After we make these decisions, sometimes it can be painful just from the point of view that we wish we'd made a different decision. We query whether it was the right thing or not. What would it have been like if we'd chosen the other thing? What if we hadn't agreed to it? How much easier would that be? What if we had agreed to it? How much better would that be? And that sort of spiralling, that rumination can be tiring. </p> <p> So there's lots of difficulties when we don’t know how to make decisions. </p> <p> The first thing to learn that can really help with all of this, and it sounds obvious, but people don't believe it, really, not truly most people, and that is, there's no right decision here. You just get to pick, and that sounds ridiculous, but outside the sort of major, major, “please don't kill anybody” decisions beyond that, you get to pick if you want to go to no conference ever in the history of your entire academic career. OK. Don't go to any conferences, figure out how you're going to have impact and make connections in some other way. That's okay. If you want to go to all the conferences, okay, let's figure out a way to pay for it.  </p> <p> You just get to pick, and often it's this belief that there's a right decision, that if only I can figure out what the right one is, it'll be okay. That actually makes it harder to make a decision. So my first lesson for you is just recognize that you can pick, you're an adult. You get to just decide. Once we take out that pressure that there's no right or wrong, then suddenly we're in a very different place to make our decision from.  </p> <p> My second tip is to really think about where these decisions are coming from. So where are the options coming from, and this is where I said at the beginning that I'd invented a two by two grid, literally just before I wrote this podcast, which is very exciting, I really like it.  </p> <p> So you know those grids where you have like two squares by two squares. You'll have seen it. I think we've talked before about Stephen Covey's urgent and important grid. So imagine a grid like that except the column headings are, who suggested these options and your columns are “you did”, ie this was your idea. And “Others”, ie this was somebody else's idea.  </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <img src="https://cdn.website-editor.net/s/2113598f8d77456288dd868f6e4bf7f3/dms3rep/multi/Screenshot+2023-03-19+193120.png" alt=""/> </div> <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> So we got that across the top. And then the rows are “who are you doing this for?” Is it because you want to or is it because other people want you to? Okay, so who suggested it? You or other people? And who wants it? You or other people?  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now that means we've got one quadrant, which you suggested these ideas, you want these ideas. That quadrant is called “self-created”. You might think you should do all of these ones. I am somebody with too much enthusiasm and possible ADHD. I can't do all the things in the self-created idea box, and that took me a long time to learn. But anyway, that's one quadrant. Self-created.  </span> </p> <p> <span> If it's suggested by others, but wanted by you, I've called that quadrant “welcome advice”. Again, do we do it all? Maybe, maybe not. Depends what you've got in there, but that’s “welcome advice”.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Then we've got a quadrant where it's suggested by you, but wanted by others, and I've called that quadrant “people pleasing”. Sometimes we might still do those things. Sometimes there's very good reasons why we want to do things for other people, but we recognize that we have suggested this thing and other people want us to do it. It's not because we specifically want to do it.  </span> </p> <p> <span> And then my final quadrant of suggested by others and wanted by others is “interference”. And you'll find yourself getting tasks in that box. So a project that your supervisor needs doing that doesn't really relate to your thesis. You are not really that fussed about it. You're not convinced it's going to add to your career, but they really want you to do it and have suggested so, and it would benefit them - that goes in the interference box.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now, there is a bit of qualitative judgment in that title. I am aware, and sometimes you might choose to do things in that box, and that's fine, and we're going to talk about how you'll decide in a second. But being aware that this is an idea that's come from somebody else and is for somebody else, is a really important thing to be aware of. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So I would highly recommend that when you're trying to make a decision, start out “which quadrant are we in?” Because then you're just bringing a little bit more awareness to the situation, a little bit more self-awareness, because you will know which of these boxes fills up fastest for you.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Are you somebody who has lots of self-created ideas like me? Are you somebody with a massive tendency to people please and agree to things for other people all the time? Offer things to other people all the time? You'll know yourself and you'll begin to recognize your patterns. So, figure out where it's come from.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The next thing I want to do is just take you through some steps where you get to decide. You just need to ask yourself each of these questions, and then you pick. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So your first job in that process is to define exactly what we are deciding. So sometimes people are like, I just don't know what to do with my life. That's not a decision, that's a ponder. That's a kind of daydreamy, stressy dream. It's not a decision. I don't know what to do with my life. You need to get this down to specific options.  So you are deciding, will I do a postdoc at my university after my PhD or apply to do a postdoc at another university or apply for a job in industry? Preferably specifying what industry job you're thinking about.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We're getting this down to much more specific decisions by actually putting some detail around exactly what we're choosing. It's easy to think the decision is clear in your head when it's not. So I'd really recommend writing these down. Grab a piece of paper and actually write down option one this, option two, that. And it can be as simple as:  </span> </p> <p> <span> - option 1: Take part in Three Minute Thesis. </span> </p> <p> <span> - Option 2: Don't take part in in Three Minute Thesis this year.  </span> </p> <p> <span> So even with that, where it's just one thing, two options.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Next step after you've defined your options is I want you to write down at least one sentence, maybe two or three, explaining why your life is going to be better when you've made a decision. So here we are not even thinking about what decision you're going to make, we are just reinforcing to ourselves that it's going to be so much better once we've made this decision. Because as I've said, living in that bubbly mess of “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do” is tiring. So why will things be easier if you just decide? Now, don't skip this. It doesn't feel like part of the decision making process, but it will really reinforce why you are doing this process. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then the next step is to look at each of your options in turn and write down what would be your reasons for picking that option. Because whilst I said at the beginning, there's no right answer or wrong answer, there are reasons that you prefer to others. So what we're going to get down here is what are your clear reasons? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So let's go, keep going with my example here, Three Minute Thesis. Those of who aren't familiar with that, it's a competition where you have to talk about your thesis in three minutes. You guys probably could have worked that out, but you know, just in case, look it up. It's quite cool.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Your reasons for doing it might be:  </span> </p> <p> <span> - Learn more about public speaking </span> </p> <p> <span> - meet some interesting people </span> </p> <p> <span> - do something I can put on my cv.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I'm going to do a podcast one day about why you should never do anything just for your cv, but that's a whole other story. That might be one of your reasons though. There's a whole bunch of reasons my supervisor wants me to. My friend is organizing it, and they'd like me to take part. Everybody else seems to be doing it. There's a whole lot of reasons. You write down your reasons why you'd do it.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now I want you to think, okay, if I wasn't going to do it, what would my reasons be? And they might be:  </span> </p> <p> <span> - I need to focus on my PhD </span> </p> <p> <span> - I've got a paper due that week, and I don't want to put the pressure on myself.  </span> </p> <p> <span> - I don't have the money to travel to the venue to participate.  </span> </p> <p> <span> - I'm scared of public speaking.  </span> </p> <p> <span> - I don't think I'm very good at public speaking.  </span> </p> <p> <span> - I don't think I'm going to win, so there's no point.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> When you are thinking about your reasons, I want you to think back to that grid we made of the you and others and all that stuff. If it was something suggested by you and wanted by you, what are the reasons for it and where does it stack up against other things? </span> </p> <p> <span> So in your reasons not to do it, you have to also include all the other things you want to do. A reason not to do Three Minute Thesis is so that you can do FameLab and really focus on it So if you are in that self-created, Box, you need to be double checking. Yes, you might really want to do it. Yes, it might be your idea, but how does it match up with all the other things that you've got on? </span> </p> <p> <span>  If somebody else suggested it but you want it, same deal. You might want to think about why you didn't think of it. Is it really welcome advice or are you feeling pressured by those people?  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If it's suggested by you, but for the benefit of others, really dig down into those reasons. You want to do it because it's nice for your supervisor, but why? What are your reasons for wanting to please your supervisor, for example? What are your reasons for wanting to please your family? Do you like those reasons?  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Really try and dig into it a little bit, and that is particularly apparent in that fourth quadrant in the “Interference” where somebody else has suggested it and it's for the benefit of somebody else. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What would be your reasons for doing it? And do you really like those reason? If your reasons for not doing it would be that someone else will be upset with you, there's a whole lot of other ways to manage that other than doing it for them.  </span> </p> <p> <span> It's not our responsibility to make everybody else feel the way they want to feel. It's not possible to make everybody else feel the way we want, that they want to feel. We get to behave in a way that we're comfortable with, that we think is ethical and fair, and in line with our priorities and who we want to be. We don't get to control everybody else's responses, so if in your reasons, you notice that a reason to do it will be your supervisor will be disappointed if you don't, or your mum will be disappointed if you don't, your dad will be disappointed if you don't, just be cautious around those. Why is that a reason to do it? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Another thing I want you to take into account when you are making decisions is not just whether you should do this thing, but what you are going to NOT do if you choose it. So often when we're thinking about tasks, we think about them in isolation or we think about careers in isolation. Job choices in isolation. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If I choose to do this, what am I not going to do? There's always a consequence to everything that we choose to do and everything we choose not to do. What I also want you to think about when you're making any decision is what implications this decision has for everything else.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So for those of you who like me, you have a tendency to take on too many things. Really thinking back to the plate spinning analogy that I mentioned in the “What to do if you've got too much to do” episode, go back and check that out if you haven't - but essentially this idea that we can only manage a certain number of spinning plates. If you are deciding to add a new task to your pole, so a new plate to your pole, what plate are you going to put down for a while? What task are you not going to do? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> When you're thinking about this task or this role, this career, whatever you are choosing, what other implications does it have? Is there anything in your personal life that you now won't do because you're doing this thing? Is there a way it's going to impact your health? So when you are thinking through those reasons why you would or why you wouldn't do it, make sure you're not only thinking about this task, you're also thinking about those knock on effects. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If I choose to do this piece of research, what effect does that have on the length of time my PhD write up will take, for example, and then what knock on does that have onto my cost of living, onto when I can move, when I can take a new job. All of those things.  </span> </p> <p> <span> So in that bit where you are thinking about what your reasons are, make sure you are thinking of all the kind of peripheral stuff that will need to move or not move in order to enable you to take this decision. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So, there's a whole variety of reasons and none of these reasons are inherently right or wrong. But what you get to do is you get to compare them and then the next step is you get to think “which reasons do I like best? Do I like the reasons to do it, or do I like the reasons not to do it?” Which of them feels like they come from your best self? Which are in keeping with the future you that you want to be? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> That doesn't mean that doing it is always the right option, or not doing it is always the right option, but you get to decide - in my current phase of life in this few months that I'm in, or whatever timescale we're talking about with this decision, which is the right decision for me, which are the right reasons for me, which are the reasons that feel like the best me? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now, one caution. I'm going to use the example of my laundry basket for this. When I say which come from your best you, I don't mean which come from the imaginary perfect version of you that can do everything. We don't make decisions from imaginary perfect yous. We make decisions from the best version of you. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So the reason I mentioned my laundry basket is I have quite a bad habit of leaving my clothes on the floor. My partner is super sympathetic, but I know he doesn't like it. I always used to say, “Oh, if I'm going to wear them again, I'll hang them back up, or if they're dirty, I'll put them in the washing basket and it's fine.” That's all I need. I need the washing basket and I need my hanging space. And if I wear them again, I'm going to put them away again. But I always end up with partially worn clothes on the floor. It makes my bedroom messy, it's not Andy's favorite thing in the world. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I know that when I'm making the decision that I'm going to hang up my partially worn clothes, I'm talking from imaginary Vikki, that is probably never going to exist. Ask my mother, ask my old housemates, ask anybody else. Pretty standard. Haven't done it all my life. Probably not going to do it now.  So, I decided recently that I'm going to buy another laundry basket to put partially worn clothes in. So when I take something off, if I don't put it in the laundry basket, it goes in the partially worn clothes basket. If Andy's cross that there's clothes all over the floor, he can put them in the partially used laundry basket and know he's putting them in the right place.  </span> </p> <p> <span> So that's a decision that I'm taking because it will make it easy for me, because it'll make our room more pleasant, and because it's taken from my realistic, not ideal, future me. So, think about your future, you, what's your best self, but also what's realistic for you.7 </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Then you get to decide how long am I making this decision for? Sometimes if it's like the Three Minute Thesis thing, it might be that you are making the decision for this year. Because maybe you could enter next year. If you are deciding to focus on a particular area of research, how long for. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So you've just said I like my reasons best, I'm going to focus on this area of research. For a year? For three years? What's your timeline here? And the reason that's important is sometimes it can just really reduce the impact of these decisions. I've had clients where we've been talking about what they're going to focus on what their expertise areas are going to be. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> That's one of the things we do in my promotion packages for academics is work out what are the kind of case studies where we really demonstrate that you are an expert in your area and use that to apply for recognitions, but also to strategize for the next few years development.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And often people think that if they decide what they're going to focus on, that's them forever. Or if they're deciding whether or not to stay in academia, that's their decision forever. If they decide to stay in academia, they're here till retirement. That's not true. There's a lot of power in going, do I want to stay in academia for the next three years? Yeah, I do. Cool. Let's work on that then. </span> </p> <p> <span> Excellent. Three years, we’ll reassess. We don't have to decide what we're doing forever. Let's reassess in three years. So decide how long you are deciding for.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So now you're really close to making a decision. You've identified the clear options. You've decided what reasons there are for each and which reasons you like best and how long you've decide for. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So now you get to pick. You just get to say, I'm doing that one. And this is where we lead to the most important part of all of this, that almost all of you will have overlooked up until now. I don't mean to overstate this, but it's true. This is the bit that you'll all have overlooked. I had overlooked before I was taught this technique.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now is the time that you decide and you decide that this was the right decision. Because like we said at the beginning, the pain from decisions rarely comes from the decision itself. The pain from decisions comes from how much you beat yourself up or question yourself or go back on your decision or remake your decision in the future. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> That's the bit that gets painful. So what we get to do is we get to decide that this is what I've decided for these reasons, for this long. If my brain queries that in future, I will reassure it that I made the best decision that I could at the time, and this is what we're doing until that time will reconsider at that stage. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> It's fine. And the joy with this is it means you don't revisit it all the time. It'll still pop up in your head, obviously, but you don't engage, you don't have to go back through all the decisions over and over again. You just remind yourself. This is what we decided. We're doing it like this. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> But the other joy with it is it means you get to MAKE this the right decision. If you decide to do Three Minute Thesis, all the time through it, I want you to be going, “I am learning so much doing this. This is putting me out of my comfort zone. But I'm loving it. This is so much fun. I'm going to get so much out of doing this. I'm so glad I met these people” and really reinforcing that this was the best decision ever.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Not spending a Sunday night going, “Oh my God, if I hadn't agreed to Three Minute Thesis, I'd have so much more time this week.” No, this was your best decision ever. Or if you decided not to do it, when you are at home working on your laptop and you're feeling like you're productive, you go “I am so glad I didn't sign up to Three Minute Thesis. It's so nice just to be able to focus on this writing. Knowing I'm doing it to the best of my ability, knowing I've got time to do it without exhausting myself. I'm so glad I didn't put that extra burden on myself”, instead of sitting at home going, “Oh my God, it would've been so much fun, my friends are having so much fun. I'm missing out. I'm such a wuss. Why didn't I do it?” </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So once you've made a decision, decide you love the decision and reinforce that in your head all the time. That is how you make good decisions.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Thank you so much for listening, and good luck with all the decisions that you get to make. See you next week. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> </div> Mon, 20 Mar 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/23-how-to-make-decisions-that-you-love thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/22-what-to-do-when-you-re-feeling-a-bit-bleurgh <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> What do you do when you feel disappointed, stressed or overwhelmed? These are such common emotions in academia yet most of us don't really know how to respond to these emotions. In this episode, I'll guess what you probably do at the moment when you're experiencing an emotion you don't like, and suggest some things you do instead. Emotions are part of the human existence and we can learn how to look after ourselves a little more.  </i> </p> <p> In this episode I mention the emotion wheel. There are loads if you search online but here's one I like - https://www.purewow.com/family/feelings-chart </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello, hello, hello and welcome to episode 22 of the PhD Life Coach. For those of you that follow me on Twitter, I have confiscated Marley’s squeaky ball, so hopefully he'll no longer be squeaking it while I'm trying to record. He's now staring at me looking unimpressed. For those of you who don’t know, Marley’s my black Labrador. If you like dogs following me on Twitter @drvikkiburns and you'll find lots of pictures of him doing silly things. I'm hoping he will forgive me for taking his toy and lie quietly while I talk with you guys today.  </p> <p> Our episode today is about what to do when you are feeling a bit bleurgh, and this has really come out of me having a couple of mornings where I'm just feeling a bit bleurgh and struggling to get going and then talking with some of my clients, whether they're my PhD students on my membership program, or whether they are academic clients, that sometimes our emotions are a lot and it's hard to know what to do with that.  </p> <p> I think this is really common. In academia, I think we don't talk about emotions very much. When someone asks how we are, I think probably 90% of the time the reply is “busy”. Now, busy's not an emotion. Busy is a thought, a state of being.  </p> <p> It only takes one look at Twitter to see that academia is actually a highly emotional place. We have people celebrating, having finished their PhDs, getting papers published, their first citations, where you're seeing them feel pride and happiness, and then we see people feeling frustrated and upset and let down by the system and let down by the people that should be looking after them.  </p> <p> I think we're getting better at talking about these emotions. The very fact that I'm seeing these things all over Twitter, um, can, is, is testament to the fact that people are talking about emotions more.  </p> <p> What I think we're doing less is understanding what we do with that. Are these emotions inevitable consequences of the environment that we are in? Do we know how to look after ourselves? Do we know how to change them? If that's appropriate, and that's what I really want to focus on in this episode is when you notice yourself having emotions that are not helping you feel good and are not helping you get done the things you want to get done, what do you do about that? </p> <p> Now, as always, there's a caveat in the beginning, which is that everything I say today is not a replacement for mental health support. So if you have anxiety, depression, any other form of mental health condition difficulty, please do also seek support from counselors, from people trained specifically in mental health, it's really important that you get that sort of specific response.  </p> <p> When we think about emotions, we often categorize them as good and bad emotions. We want to feel happy. We want to feel proud, satisfied. We don't want to feel frustrated, bored, overwhelmed, stressed, sad, angry, for example. One thing I've also noticed in my academic clients and my PhD student clients, is that sometimes the absence of a positive emotion is also seen as a problem. </p> <p> So absence of motivation, absence of confidence, for example, is seen as a real problem that prevents you from taking particular actions and from achieving your goals. So we really sort of categorize out emotions into the ones we want, and if we don't have them, it's a problem and the ones we don't want, and if we do have them, then it's a problem.  </p> <p> In this episode, I want us to think about why that's not a particularly helpful way of categorizing emotions and what we can do instead. </p> <p> As hard as it can be to accept sometimes, emotions are part of the human experience. It's entirely normal to experience a whole range of emotions, even within a relatively short space of time.  </p> <p> Certainly over the time course of, for example, completing a PhD or through, you know, five years of your academic career, it's entirely normal to experience a whole range of emotions and telling ourselves that that shouldn't happen can become part of the problem.  </p> <p> So what happens when we experience negative emotions and we don't really know how to accept them and how to manage them? I'm going to tell you four things that happen. The first one is that we act out of that emotion without thinking about it. So if you remember the last time you felt frustrated, for example, and there's lots of reasons you could feel frustrated in academia.  </p> <p> If we feel frustrated and we don't really stop and think about the fact that we're feeling frustrated and what to do with that, often we just act from there. We snap at people, we get grumpy with ourselves. We don't get on with the things we want to do, we maybe make rash decisions. There's a whole bunch of things that we do when we're feeling frustrated that don't necessarily help us to achieve our goals, and importantly also don't help us to feel and process and manage that emotion. </p> <p> The second thing we do is we avoid these emotions. They feel nasty, so we do something to try and make them go away. So if you felt bored or you felt embarrassed or shame, those sorts of things, then often we'll try and avoid it. And there's a whole bunch of ways we avoid our emotions. Sometimes it's the sort of things you might think of as traditional ways like drinking, taking illegal substances, those sorts of things. </p> <p> Other times it's stuff like watching hours of Netflix or scrolling on your phone so that you don't have to think about the thing you don't want to think about, and you don't have to feel that emotion.  </p> <p> So we act from them, we try to avoid them. The third one is, and I've seen this in clients recently, is we worry about the emotion itself. </p> <p> We think about the fact that we're frustrated, for example, and we start to worry what it means that we get so frustrated all the time. And if I keep being frustrated like this, then how are people going to treat me? And we start to worry about the consequences of the emotion.  </p> <p> I've seen this particularly with people who struggle with worry, that they feel themselves getting anxious. They feel the sort of physical sensations of being worried, and then they start to worry about the fact that they're feeling worried. They start to say, “oh no, I'm starting not to cope. I can't deal with this. What if this gets worse? I'm not going to be able to manage”. So we start to worry or have shame or have other emotions about the fact that we're having an emotion. So we're sort of layering one emotion on top of another and kind of compounding them.  </p> <p> And then the fourth thing we do when we have emotions without really understanding them is that we indulge them. If you imagine the parent that spoils their child, as soon as they have a little tantrum, they go, “oh, okay, yeah, yeah, it's all right. You don't need to do that. You can have this thing.” We tell ourselves that because we feel uncomfortable, we don't have to do it anymore. Actually, we should probably eat some biscuits and watch tv.  </p> <p> Then we indulge them by giving them space in our brain. We ruminate on them. We let it spiral round and round in our heads, not resolving it or anything, but just indulging that thought, just letting it be over and over and over again. We're not processing, but we're not acting either.  </p> <p> And if you are finding yourself resonating with any of those things, congratulations. You are a completely normal human being, particularly if you haven't had coaching and counselling and things like that before, the idea that emotions are just something that happened to us that we either act out of, or indulge, or ignore, or worry about, is completely normal. You are completely normal. </p> <p> You are a human being in a pressured environment. The good news, though, is that you don't have to. You don't have to do those things. You can choose to respond differently to your emotions, and it starts by accepting that emotions are normal. We are human beings. We are not academic robots.  </p> <p> This isn't about being so resilient, we can tolerate all the pressures that people put on us, and we should never feel bad and we should never feel stressed. And if we do, it means that something's not working, that we are not good enough, or that we haven't paid attention in coaching enough, that we are failing at that as well. </p> <p> Emotions are completely normal. You are never going to be able to structure your way out of emotions. You are never going to be able to coach your way out of emotions. You're never going to be able to talk your way out of them, whatever it is, and that wouldn't be desirable. Who wants to live a life where you don't experience emotions? Positive and negative emotions are all part of the human experience, and you don't get one without the other.  </p> <p> Once we accept that though, there are some things that we can do to look after ourselves. So, you know, I've given you a parenting analogy already of the overindulgent parent who just, as soon as their child has a negative emotion they give into them. Well, there's different ways they can learn to parent, and there's different ways that we can learn to look after ourselves.  </p> <p> So I'm going to give you four things that you can do instead. It's all about the fours today. The first one is you could just experience the emotion. And often people don't know how to do this. And certainly when I started coach training, this all sounded a bit woowoo to me. I wasn't really on board. Um, but sometimes if you are feeling disappointed, let's say maybe a paper didn't get accepted and you're really disappointed because you really wanted to publish it in that journal, maybe the best thing you can do in that moment is just stop for a minute and be disappointed. </p> <p> Tell yourself it's okay. Of course I'm disappointed. I cared about this. I wanted it to be published there. It's okay to be disappointed. I'm going to feel disappointed for a while. And what you do is you can put yourself in a safe space, put yourself somewhere where you feel like you are either with people that you love or you are alone and somewhere where you can be quiet, and you can just experience that emotion. </p> <p> How does it feel in your body? How would you describe it? If you were trying to tell an alien about your emotion, what would you tell them? What does it feel like? What does being disappointed mean in your body? </p> <p> And the whole time you are experiencing this, I want you to be telling yourself that it's okay to be disappointed. Now some people don't want to do this because they feel like if they start feeling an emotion, they'll never stop. But the fascinating thing is that you don't. </p> <p> When you sort of expand the room for that emotion to exist, when you sort of increase your capacity to have that emotion inside you then, and you give it a little bit of time, you don't act from it, but you don't try and make it go away either, you often realize it's not quite that bad. </p> <p> It's a sensation in your body, and that's okay. and you find that after a little while you start to feel it a little less strongly, and that's not the point of it. The point of accepting it isn't to make it go away, but often by just sort of accepting it and experiencing it, it does start to feel less crushing. It starts to feel less intense.  </p> <p> So the first step is always giving yourself space to experience it. One thing that can really help within that is try and name it. So often when I ask people how they feel, and in fact I did it in the title of this, they say, oh, I feel a bit bleurgh. Oh, I feel terrible. </p> <p> Terrible's not an emotion. Terrible's kind of a quality. It's kind of a, a description we are giving to those emotions. If I asked you to name the emotion, how are you actually feeling? Sometimes just taking a little bit of time to try and name it can really help you to experience it and understand it. </p> <p> If you find that difficult, there are quite a lot of emotion wheels online, which give you the names of loads of different emotions, sort of categorized by their type. That can be really, really helpful if you find that difficult, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you ever want my show notes, transcripts, all that stuff, it's at the PhD life coach.com/podcast. You'll find all of my episodes with any links that I mention and the transcripts there. You'll also find links to my YouTube channel there, if you ever want to watch my face instead of listening to this, or if you're already watching this on YouTube, you can find links to my podcast episodes there. </p> <p> So you can take this in however works best for you.  </p> <p> So the second thing, after you've experienced it a bit, you've kind of named it, you've kind of given it some space and reassured yourself, it's okay. The next thing I want you to do is ask yourself what the emotion is trying to tell you. Is it trying to tell you that you've tried to jam too many things into your week this week? </p> <p> Is it trying to tell you that you really wanted to publish in that journal? Is it trying to tell you that you haven't had enough sleep this week? What is the emotion trying to tell you?  </p> <p> Always check your basic needs first. So often when we experience emotions the most, it's when we are tired. It's in particular phases of our menstrual cycle for people who menstruate. Um, it's where we haven't drunk enough water. I just bought myself a fancy thingy off the internet like a proper influencer. </p> <p> If you can't see it. I've got a one of those massive water cup things that's like as big as my head with a sustainable metal straw. Often it's that we haven't drunk enough water. We haven't eaten good food recently. All of these things we haven't got out of the house. Have you seen the light today? Have you been in fresh air yet? </p> <p> So, checking our basic needs. Are our emotions, trying to tell us something about our basic needs. Is there anything you can do about that? So in some situations, like if you haven't drunken enough water, there's something quite straightforward you can do about that. You can go grab yourself a glass and have some water. </p> <p> If it's that you are feeling tired, for example, you might be able to do something about that immediately. Go and have a nap. You might not, in which case you might want to look at other ways that you can look after yourself. I'm really tired today, so I'm going to put some music on to keep myself going. Or I'm really tired today and I can't nap, so I'm going to make sure I do some nice, quiet, methodical work that's not too taxing, but that does need doing. So you can start thinking, okay, how can I look after myself through that.  </p> <p> So first step, experiencing the emotions, trying to name them. Second step is exploring what they're telling us and how you can kind of look after yourself through that. Again, not with the aim necessarily of making the emotion go away, but with the aim of helping you feel safe and secure and looked after while you're experiencing that. </p> <p> The third thing, and I really don't want you to jump to this, this is third for a reason, okay? The third one is you can challenge the thoughts that are causing the emotion. Now, we often think that the emotion is caused by the thing that's happened to us. The emotion is caused by the fact your paper's been rejected or caused by the fact that your supervisor hasn’t replied to your emails, whatever it might be. </p> <p> It's not. It's not saying those things are okay, but your emotion is caused by the thought that you are having about it. And we can choose to challenge those thoughts.  </p> <p> Now sometimes we'll look at those thoughts and think, actually that's entirely appropriate. So let's take that circumstance of your paper's rejected by a journal and your thought is I really wish that it had been accepted, let’s say that. And your feeling is disappointed. Now you might look at that and go, you know what? That thought's totally acceptable. I'm down with that thought. I agree with it. I am really sad that it's not going to get published in that journal. And so, yeah, I feel disappointed and I'm going to look after myself through that. </p> <p> So in that one, you are looking at the thought and you are going, you know what? Yeah, that thought will work. But if you look at it and your thought isn't just, I really wanted to publish in that journal. Perhaps your thought is, I really wanted to be published in that journal and now it's never going to get published anywhere. </p> <p> Now, that might be a thought that leads to, I don't know, hopelessness or something like that, where we might go, you know what? I'm going to challenge that thought.  </p> <p> So it's where there's a thought where you can see it's adding pain, it's adding an extra dimension. It's adding a sort of so what to your sentence that isn't necessarily there, and we can look at that and decide. Does it mean that? Now those of you who come to my coaching sessions, um, know that the three questions I'm going to make you ask yourself is, is this thought true? That's the first one. Second one, are there other thoughts that you also believe are true that you could focus on instead? </p> <p> And the third one is, what if it is true and that's okay.  </p> <p> So in this case, if your thought is I'm never going to get published anywhere, is that true? Is it, is it actually true? Let's explore what evidence is there that that's true? What evidence is there that that's not true? Okay, so you can work through that. </p> <p> You can also ask yourself, what else do I believe is true? I believe I could revise this and submit it somewhere else. I have no idea if they're going to accept it or not, but I do believe I could revise it and try somewhere else. So that might be a thought you want to focus on. So maybe you can keep the thought “I don't think anywhere else is going to publish this”, but you focus more on the thought, “I am capable of revising this and sending it somewhere else”. Okay. We don't have to make the other one go away. We don't necessarily have to believe this other place is going to publish it, but as long as we believe that we're capable of revising it and submitting it somewhere else, we keep open that possibility. </p> <p> And the final thing is, maybe it's true and that's okay. Maybe this paper is not going to get published anywhere. That could be okay. Lots of us have got papers. I've left academia after 25 years or whatever it was, with a whole ton of papers that never got published. Some of them, because they got rejected and I never bothered to do anything about it. </p> <p> Some of them, because I didn't get that far, never actually got round to writing it up. It happens. Talk to your supervisors. It happens. How could that be okay too?  </p> <p> So when you're challenging your thoughts, you're not just telling yourself you're wrong, you're saying, which bits of this do I believe in? What other things do I believe instead? Is there evidence for these thoughts? And even if it is true, how could that be okay? How would I look after myself?  </p> <p> Now as always, one little extra thing. If your circumstance is somebody behaving inappropriately towards you, then we are not going to challenge our thoughts that it's unacceptable. So I read a tweet this week for example, where somebody was talking about their supervisor being physically and verbally abusive towards them. </p> <p> And the thought there is, this is unacceptable. We are not going to challenge that thought. We are not going to work on figure out how to put up with this, how to cope better in that environment. How to feel compassion for the person who's abusing me. No, we are not going there. That's not what we're doing. </p> <p> The bit of the thoughts we might challenge is if you are thinking as this person was, my supervisor is being abusive, but I'll never get on another PhD program. That's the bit we might challenge. My supervisor is being abusive and no one will believe me. We'll challenge that bit. If you are having issues with this, do make sure you go back and check out my - I've got two episodes where I talk about how to have a good supervisory relationship and what to do if you have a toxic supervisory relationship. They're numbers 18, 19. Go check those out if that's relevant for you.  </p> <p> So just be cautious. We're not gaslighting ourselves. We're not challenging thoughts that we know to be true. We are challenging what we make that mean potentially.  </p> <p> And then the fourth thing, the fourth thing is with some emotions. </p> <p> And I'm going to say some emotions. We are going to accept that they can exist. So negative emotions. We can accept they can exist and we can still do the thing we intended to. So for example, boredom. People often think that if you feel bored doing a task, you either need to stop doing the task or you need to make the task more fun. </p> <p> You know, go somewhere interesting. Put some music on all these things. They can be great tactics, potentially. That's what you want to do. You want to make it less boring. But, I want you to leave open the possibility that one solution here is you feel bored - that's a negative emotion - no one likes feeling bored, but you can do this thing anyway. </p> <p> It's something we talked about in one of our group sessions a while ago. Sometimes there are parts of academia that are boring and we can choose to experience boredom and do them anyway. We can feel uncertain, perhaps. We can feel uncertain about whether an experiment's going to work, or we can feel like we are lacking motivation or we are lacking confidence to take on a piece of work or to go and do a presentation. We can lack motivation and still do the thing.  </p> <p> And sometimes the way I find to do this is to actually talk to. and actually say to us, I know. I know. It's boring. It is boring. Of course it is. It's stupid paperwork. You don't want to have to do that stuff for your accountant. That's what I'm doing after I've recorded this podcast. </p> <p> It's boring. That's okay. I've done boring things before. I can do boring things again. We're going to do boring things for an hour, and that's okay. Can't expect to run a business without some boring things. Can't expect to get your PhD without some boring things.  </p> <p> Similarly motivation. I'm not motivated to do this task. Okay? Why are we doing the task? Ask yourself that, genuinely. Why are we doing the task? And if you like your reasons, if it is something that you genuinely want the big picture of, you want to finish your PhD, you want to finish your paper, whatever it is, but you just don't feel motivated in the moment, that's OK. You don't need to feel motivated.  </p> <p> There's a whole science out there about how to make yourself feel more motivated and it's stuff we will touch on in future episodes, but you can also decide, I don't feel motivated to do this, but I'm going to do it. Those of you, and I'm sure there are millions of you who have had, um, I don't want to call it prep. </p> <p> Now remember, when we accept these emotions, it's not about squashing them down, denying their existence, any of those things, you need to go through the other steps first. But sometimes you just decide, you know what? I'm not going to squash down the fact I feel bored. I'm going to accept that I feel bored and I'm going to choose to do this thing anyway. </p> <p> So next time you are feeling an emotion, I want you to go through these four steps.  </p> <p> 1) Give yourself a minute to experience it safely and try and name it. Really be there with that emotion.  </p> <p> 2) Explore what the emotion is trying to tell you and figure out how you could look after yourself at the moment.  </p> <p> 3) Challenge the thoughts, not until you've done the other things. Don't try and challenge the thoughts in the midst of an emotion. It never works. It turns into kind of self blame. So step three comes after you've experienced the emotion, you've looked after yourself, you've figured out why it's there. Then we start to challenge it. </p> <p> 4) And then we can decide in certain situations to do the thing anyway.  </p> <p> I really hope you found this useful. I have definitely worked my way through some of these things this week and are feeling a lot better for doing it. I hope it helps you too. Let me know on Twitter if it does. You can find me @drvikkiburns. you can also sign up for my free group coaching, um, if you come along to, uh, PhD life coach.com/workwithme, that sounds terrible. </p> <p> Find my website, you'll find all the different ways of working with me. Um, most importantly, if you think your PhD students need coaching workshops from me on how to be your own best supervisor or how to write when you don't want to write, let me know. </p> <p> Figure out who in your university has the power to make these things happen and put me in touch with them. Have a great week everyone, and I will see you next week. </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 13 Mar 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/22-what-to-do-when-you-re-feeling-a-bit-bleurgh thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/21-why-i-want-to-coach-your-supervisor-and-your-vice-chancellor <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode, I consider the downside of always assuming that our seniors "have it together" (whatever level of academia you're at). Often we create a story where, if they haven't replied to our email or changed their mind about our study, it means that we're not important or our study is wrong. I'll be discussing why it's almost certainly not about you and what we should do differently as a sector.  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hi everyone and welcome to episode 21 of the PhD Life Coach. Last couple of weeks we've been thinking about managing supervisory relationships, and I'm kind of building on that this week too. And so this week we are going to think about why I want to coach your boss and what that means for you.  </p> <p> We make tons of assumptions about people that are in senior positions to you. If you are a PhD student, I want you to think about your supervisors, senior collaborators maybe, or postgrad lead, any of those sorts of people that have kind of direct responsibility for you. And if you are an academic listening to this, I want you to think about people above you, whether that's your head of department, head of school, your research group lead if you're a postdoc, maybe all the way up to your vice chancellor, the people that are in charge of your entire institutions. </p> <p> I just want you to take a second and reflect what thoughts do I have about those people. Now you might have positive thoughts, you might have negative thoughts, you might have a combination of the two. I think this is a particularly timely moment to think about this stuff as in the UK at least. There are a lot of strikes and disputes to do with pay and pensions and decisions that senior leaders make on behalf of other academics. </p> <p> Emotions are running really high and understandably so. They're really complex issues and we all want what's best for the sector and we want to feel recognized and we want to have secure jobs and to not have to give up the rest of our lives is it sometimes feels to succeed and to do the work that we want to do. </p> <p> And when we are in these kind of intense environments, it's really easy to look at the people above us and tell a whole bunch of stories about that. Because often we separate ourselves from the humanity of those people. And this isn't going to be a, please think of the vice chancellor's sort of a podcast. That's not what I mean at all. But some of the assumptions that we make are that they are operating from their best selves. That if they make decisions about workload, about pay, about all of these important things, that they are doing that with care and thought and attention and sufficient time to think things through and no emotions and absolutely logical, best selves. </p> <p> And that's simply not the case. All senior leaders are also under pressure. They're also fatigued. They're also working too many long hours. Now, it may feel very different from somebody who is struggling to bring home enough money to be able to support their family or support themselves.  </p> <p> Absolutely take that, but often, but often we assume they have bad intention. We assume they're coming at this from their best selves and they think they've made all the right decisions, and we assume that. They are disregarding our views or don't care about our views, don't value us, don’t think about us at all.  </p> <p> And what I've found fascinating through my journey through academia - so as many of you'll know, I started as an undergrad, finished as a professor in the same university - is people think this about the people at every single level.  </p> <p> So when I was a PhD student and people had supervisors that weren't great, the PhD students assumed, we assumed that our supervisor was deprioritizing us, that they didn't care, that they thought we weren't important or whatever it is.  </p> <p> And then when we got to be supervisors, we realize that sometimes we don't reply to our PhD students because we've just lost track of our emails and there's 4,000 things to do, and we're teaching this week and we're marking this weekend, we're doing everything else. </p> <p> And so we kind of cut ourselves some slack, but then we think that our program leads or our senior colleagues, that they've got it together. And so when they make decisions about where money goes in the lab, for example, that's because they don't value my research and they don't think I'm a good teacher and they don't think I'm ready for promotion and all of these things. </p> <p> And then we become those roles and we're program leads and we are research leads and things like that. And we realize “Oh my goodness. I just made a decision about that budget. I've never been taught anything about budgets. I just made a decision about that budget based on the things I could think of at the time and with the amount of time I had to consult. But I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not. And now everyone's yelling at me. Um, I did my best, but maybe it wasn't. I don't know.” </p> <p> We're thinking those things and we're like, “no, but there's more to this story. I didn't have enough time to consult. People above me were putting me under pressure. I had to just pick, and I can't fund everything. You know what? What do I do?” </p> <p> But we think the people above us - the head of schools should have given me more time. The head of school should have given me a bigger budget, and then I wouldn't have to prioritize like this. And then we become head of school, thank goodness, never did that. But we become head of school, lots of friends who did,  </p> <p> We realized actually we still got people above us, putting us under pressure, putting us under time pressure, and forcing us to make decisions but weren't necessarily decisions that we either had time to fully think through or even fully endorse, but we had to take them in our name because that collective responsibility is part of leadership. </p> <p> And where I saw this more than any other time was when I was doing leadership training through the university. So I did a whole variety of different levels of leadership training, and that brought me into contact with a whole load of academics at lots of different levels of seniority as I progressed through with them. </p> <p> So these were my peers at any one time and whenever I talked to them, they were genuinely all wonderful people. You know, you think that you're going to reach a stage where you meet the knobhead leaders, and I actually didn't. Very rarely! The vast majority of the time, these people had reached the next stadia leadership believing that they could do better than the last people because they had everyone's best interest at heart and they were going to work hard and consult and make sure everyone knew what was going on and they're going to make a difference. </p> <p> And then they got there and realized that they are the same old human beings that they were 10 years ago and that actually there's so much to do and so much time that you don't get to bring your best self to every level. And at every level I saw people, and I felt myself being someone who wanted some grace from the people behind me. </p> <p> I wanted people who I was giving these decisions too, to understand that, you know, I was doing my best here within the constraints, but the people above me I still thought should be doing their jobs better than they were. And then you get there and you're like, yeah, it's not that easy, is it? And the reason this is so important is because we forget that at every stage of seniority, we are there with the same human brain. </p> <p> We're there with our thoughts, which are complicated and messy. We're there with our emotions, which sometimes help and sometimes don't. We have the time pressure. We have all of those things running through our heads and we have to learn that lesson “Wherever you go, there you are” and at every level we're still human beings, and I think we expect ourselves to be different that when we're in those leadership positions or people that reach those leadership positions should be more on top of it by then. They should have more clarity of thought.  </p> <p> They should have the time and space to consult. When we get there, we will.  </p> <p> It’s similar with my clients. I coach across all levels of seniority. So from PhD students through to full professors. And at every level, I have people who worry about their confidence. </p> <p> I have people who worry, they're going to get found out, that they're not sure they're doing the right thing and, and it just makes me realize that you can get whatever badges you want. You can get promoted to any level. You can get awards and grants and papers and citations and all these metrics that we think will make us feel better when we get them and you don't necessarily feel better.  </p> <p> There is a very good chance that the people who are directly senior to you worry about their performance as much as you do. There is a very good chance that the people who are senior to you feel just as overwhelmed and incapable as you do sometimes.  </p> <p> There is a very good chance they procrastinate. There's a very good chance they regret snapping at you last week, but they only did it because they were exhausted, and their child's sick, and they haven't written a paper that they were meant to have written and they have no idea when they're going to do it. So they snapped at you and again this isn't making excuses. </p> <p> This isn't saying that any of these things are okay, but it's saying that everybody at every level of academia needs coaching and needs to understand how their thoughts and feelings influence their actions.  </p> <p> Now, some of you'll say that when you become senior at university, you have access to coaching, and that is true to an extent. So many senior leaders will have access to some coaching, and sometimes that can be really useful. In my experience there are many wonderful coaches working at universities, but often the style of coaching is focused on what am I going to do next? what are the pros, cons? Why would I do this? Why would I do that? Okay, let's go. We'll do this. And then accountability coaching from there.  </p> <p> And what I experienced much less of was coaching that really focused on the thoughts you are having and the emotions you're experiencing and what impact that has on your behaviours. And that's where I love the training that I've been through with the Life Coach School, where we really treat ourselves as rounded human beings whose thoughts and emotions dictate the actions that we take. </p> <p> So I want to coach your bosses, your supervisors, your heads of school, your vice chancellors. Because I know that when they're having thoughts like “there's too much to do, there's not enough funding for this. I don't know what I'm doing. I've never done a budget before. Everyone's going to hate me when I introduce this, but I think I've got to.” </p> <p> When they're having those thoughts, they are feeling emotions like overwhelm and guilt and shame and hurriedness and hopelessness and all sorts of emotions that do not lead to them taking actions that are coming from their best selves.  </p> <p> And the problem with other people's actions is they create our circumstances. They become the things that happen to us. Now with coaching, with support, with mind management, we can choose what we think about those environments. We can choose what we think about other people's behaviour, and therefore how we feel. It's not that their behaviours inherently dictate our responses. We get to pick, but we all know it's a lot easier to pick nice thoughts and to pick positive thoughts, if you are in an environment that feels like you are being supported and understood. </p> <p> And so when we are surrounded by people that are taking actions from shame and guilt and hurriedness and hopelessness, we've got a whole lot more mind management to happen because they're taking all these actions that are not necessarily helpful. </p> <p> When we come at a challenging situation, feeling overwhelmed, stress upset, tired, then we tend to make decisions to try and make those things go away. Now, sometimes that can be really fast decisions, so if it feels really uncomfortable to stay with a difficult decision, then sometimes we just make a snap decision and make it go away, and a snap decision isn't necessarily always the right decision. </p> <p> We sometimes make decisions for the wrong reasons. We tell ourselves we have to only focus on the facts and we have to take emotions out of it. That's some people's coping strategy, but that doesn't take into account the fact that you are managing human beings who have thoughts and emotions, whether you like it or not. </p> <p> Other people try and guess and pre-empt what other people's thoughts and emotions are and try and do things to fit in with that and to try and make them feel good when actually we can't make other people feel good. Only their thoughts can make them feel good, and we don't have responsibility for everybody else's thoughts and feelings. </p> <p> And if you've been in a leadership position, you know, if you try and make decisions so that you are popular with everybody, that's going to cause its own problems too. So these leaders with their human brains are not making their best decisions.  </p> <p> Another thing that people do in this situation is they generalize from their own experience. So when you don't have time to fully think everything through, you assume that people have a similar experience to you. Some of you may have experienced this where you've gone to somebody senior for advice or for mentorship, and they've said, “what you need to do is this, this, and this”, and you're like, “oh, hang on, that doesn't feel right to me. That doesn't feel like something that's possible at the moment.” </p> <p> We see it a lot in academia at the moment where senior colleagues will say to PhD students, “oh, as long as you've got maybe one publication, when you go for a job, you'll get a permanent job on that. That's fine.” Not looking at the fact that they got their permanent jobs 30 years ago, and right now the people who are applying for permanent jobs have far more qualifications than that person did when they were applying for these junior roles.  </p> <p> So not taking the time to think about how things have changed, not taking the time to think how somebody's route might be different. So I spent the last seven-ish years of my academic career as a teaching focus member of staff with emphasis on teaching leadership. And I had many people saying to me, “what you need to do, you need to get head down. You need to produce research papers.” And I'm like, “no, but that's not the career trajectory I'm on. That's not what I want to do.”  </p> <p> But they couldn't generalize beyond their own experience because generalizing your own experience is the easiest thing to do. And they were busy and they had like 10 minutes to give me advice, and they were thinking of 14 different things. And so the first thing that jumps into their head is, “oh, I did it like this. It worked. Yeah. Kind of do it like that. That sounds good.” </p> <p> And then we're like, “oh my God, they don't understand. Or maybe I'm wrong,” but actually they just didn't have that much time to think about what they were saying to you. </p> <p> I think we also underestimate how fragile people in leadership can feel sometimes. One of the weird things with academia is most admin roles, you kind of promote through your peers to get into them, and suddenly you are head of school and you’re line manager for a whole bunch of people that last week, you were peers.  </p> <p> Two years ago, you were all at the same level. 10 years ago you were students together, whatever it might be, and suddenly now you're in this leadership position and you can't talk to them about it anymore.  </p> <p> That's a weird feeling. That's a fragile feeling. Leadership is challenging, and when we can't bring our best selves to that, we don't make the best decisions and we change other people's circumstances. We change other people's experiences. </p> <p> And it cascades down. I want you to think about the last time you were tired and hopeless and overwhelmed and all of these things, and I want you to think of people that are junior to you. Whatever stage you're at in your academic career, there are people who are junior to you if you are a final year PhD student, you have people that are further down the PhD ladder than you, so the newbie first years perhaps. If you're a newbie first year, there are master students working in your department, there are undergraduate students. You might have children, you might have other people who are in your life who you have some sort of influence over. </p> <p> When you were tired, when you were overwhelmed, did you snap at them? Did you turn up as your best self and like carefully talk through the different options of what they might do? Or did you just tell them what to do? And then regret afterwards that you sounded so grumpy. I bet you did, because it cascades down. </p> <p> When we have people above us who are feeling all of these emotions taking actions they don't necessarily believe in themselves, and then we experience those actions, we then, if we don't learn how to manage our minds, we then have thoughts like, “oh, well they don't care about me. Maybe I'm not good enough to be here. Maybe this is just a toxic environment”. We get grumpy, we get upset, we get overwhelmed, and then we take actions that create somebody else's circumstance.  </p> <p> Sometimes in departments it goes around in circles. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of you who've walked into a room with colleagues not feeling too bad, and then this colleague moans about that and that colleague ignores you, and that colleague gets stroppy about something else, and you leave there going, “oh my God.” And then you are in a bad mood, so next time you walk into a room, you create that environment for somebody else.  </p> <p> And sometimes one or two people will step out of that and they'll get coaching and they'll learn to manage their minds and to explore their thoughts and the influences of those thoughts and learn how to choose different thoughts.  </p> <p> And that's what I help people with, and I help people at the very bottom of this pyramid a lot of the time, the grad students who are on the receiving end of lots of this. And we can make amazing progress to help grad students, help PhD students to interpret things a little bit differently and to look after themselves and look after their minds while they're managing this. </p> <p> But I want to coach the people above you too, because it'll help them, it'll help their interpretations of the people above them, but it'll help the PhD students too. When we start to coach at every level, that's when we can start to change entire environments because it shouldn't be your responsibility to survive and be resilient in a toxic environment. </p> <p> It should be the university's responsibility and everybody in it’s responsibility to target every single bit of it. So that your senior leaders are getting the support that they need so that they can make decisions from their best selves so they can show up the way they intended to, not the way that they ended up showing up just because they're tired and stressed and overwhelmed. </p> <p> So why have I done a podcast on this? Well, several reasons. First one is that I think you should tell your supervisors and your heads of school and your vice chancellors all about this podcast and you should suggest they listen to this one, and I would love to help as many of them as I can. </p> <p> I also made it though because having some insight into the humanity of your leaders can really help you with the thoughts that you choose to have about the situation. And this is not to excuse bad behaviour. I've touched on that in my last two episodes where we talked about managing, um, improving supervisory relationships, managing toxic supervisory relationships. This is not about saying it's okay to behave badly.  </p> <p> This is about accepting that the stories that we tell ourselves, that they intended this and this means something about us and it means something about them may not, often won't be, the full story. Having a little understanding of that can just take some of the heat out of what you are thinking about it. </p> <p> That's not to say you shouldn't disagree. That's not to say you shouldn't campaign against things. That's not to say you shouldn't strike, all of these things. You can absolutely believe that they have made the wrong decision and in many cases they probably have. But you can simultaneously believe that they made the wrong decision because they're a human being who was in particular circumstances, who thought certain thoughts, had emotions, and took actions that were probably not their optimal actions. </p> <p> They're probably not the best thing that they could have done. You can believe it was misguided. You can believe that it should be changed, without believing that they were inherently evil and intentional in those actions. </p> <p> And in doing so, we can try and figure out how we make this entire environment a little bit less angry and a little bit less stressful, and a little bit less overwhelmed.  </p> <p> We can also be a little bit less self-righteous about it. I spent a lot of time, as some people listening to this may remember, as a junior member of staff talking about how I would do it when I was in charge, saying, “you know, oh, we'll do this. There'll be so much better. We'll make sure everybody feels included. We'll do this, we'll do that.” </p> <p> Did I? To some extent, in some of the things I did. Did I all the time? No, absolutely not, because I was not my best self all the time. There were times when I was thinking thoughts that did not help, that led to me to make decisions that were not the best decisions and that other people didn't like. </p> <p> I didn't always show up as my best self, despite all the optimism of mid-twenties Vikki, who thought that if only she was in charge the world be a better place. </p> <p> We're all human beings. We all deserve a bit more compassion. Let's criticize the decisions that are made, but have understanding for where they might have come from, and let's try and ensure that as many people as possible have access to high quality coaching. </p> <p> So that we can make our little corner of the world a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more curious, and a whole lot less overwhelming. I'm really interested to hear what people make of this episode, so make sure you're following me on Twitter @drvikkiburns. Let me know your thoughts and have a wonderful week. </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 06 Mar 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/21-why-i-want-to-coach-your-supervisor-and-your-vice-chancellor thumbnail main image https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/20-what-to-do-when-you-have-too-much-to-do <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode, we accept a universal truth. We have too much to do. We'll explore what happens when you accept that as a fact and challenge instead the notion that we have to do it all (and especially the notion that we have to do it all this week). I teach you about boss mode and worker mode, introduce you to my plate spinning analogy, and explore how the project management triangle can be used when we're really up against it. We're also going to celebrate that this is my 20th episode! Yay! Thanks for your continuing support :)  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode 20 of the PhD Life Coach. Today we're going to be thinking about what to do when you have too much to do. But before we start, I'm actually going to practice what I preach. One of the things we often talk about is taking a moment to reflect on how far you've come and what you've achieved, rather than just looking at what's next. </p> <p> And so I want to do that. This is episode 20. I started this in October, 2022 and decided it was going to be a weekly podcast and that I was going to do it every week. Now those of you who know me, trying to do something regularly like that is not necessarily my strong point, particularly when I don't have somebody who's telling me this has to happen, ie when I'm my own boss, like I am now.  </p> <p> Now I say it's not my strong point. I'm going to call myself on that. I do finish things. I do stick to things, but I have a story about myself that I don't stick to things and that I can't do things regularly. And more and more I'm realizing that is just a story, and it's not a story that helps me because the more I tell myself, I'm not somebody who finishes things, who sticks to things, the easier it is to be somebody who doesn't. </p> <p> And so with this, I decided I was going to be somebody who published their podcast every week. I published it every week, all through the Christmas holidays, not because I worked through the Christmas holidays, because that's another boundary I've set for myself, that I'm not going to work holidays anymore. But because I planned ahead and got those episodes recorded. I nearly missed last week's episode because for various reasons, holidays, not feeling that great, I'd left it and left it and left it. But I decided, no, I am someone who does this every week. And so I got it done and last week's episode came out.  </p> <p> So I just want to take that second to say, yay me, I've done 20 whole episodes. Thank you all for listening. I really love hearing stories about how useful you are finding these. People keep telling me it feels like I can see inside their heads but I assure you, I am not mind reading. We are just all human beings coping with the same academic system. Here's to 20 more, a hundred more. Who knows? Let's go.  </p> <p> But today we are thinking about what to do if you have too much to. I was talking to a friend at the weekend and he was asking more about what I do in my job – he used to know me at my old job. And as I was explaining to him, he said, “well, you know, okay. , take an example. What would you do if someone said they were overwhelmed?” And I explained what I know happens when we feel overwhelmed, we start to think about all the things we have to do. We start to feel the emotion of overwhelmed, which can feel really crushing, it can feel like you're drowning. And then we start to not be able to prioritize. We able start to tell ourselves that we have to do all the things, but we can't do all the things. And so we either procrastinate entirely by doing something completely different, scrolling on social media, going and getting food, whatever your thing might be, or we do something called frantic action where we just try and get things done. So suddenly your admin is super important. Suddenly filing away those things that sat on your desk for three months is super important and has to happen right now. And as I was talking, he put his head on the table, um, was like, “Oh my goodness, this is literally me.” And again, this is totally human.  </p> <p> When we tell ourselves we have too much to do, we get overwhelmed. And when we get overwhelmed, we either don't do anything or we do the wrong things. We also sometimes take it out on others. I remember many times in my career where I was feeling under pressure. I was feeling behind, and like I wasn't on top of things, and it made me much less tolerant of other people. </p> <p> It made me much less able to cope when somebody else was late with something or didn't do it how I thought they were going to do it. I got more snappy, I got more judgy, and it all came from this place of personal overwhelm. </p> <p> So we know this thought “I have too much to do” is a problem because it leads to emotions like overwhelm, which don't lead us to feel good and don't lead us to get done the things that we want to get done.  </p> <p> Now, those of you who've been listening for a while will know - what do we do? We look at the thought and the first question we ask ourselves usually is, is it true? Is it true that we have too much to do? We're not going to do that this week.  </p> <p> The reason we're not going to do that is because if you are listening to this podcast, you are probably a PhD student or an academic. And if you're a PhD student or an academic, you have too much to do. We're going to take that right out of the thought line, put it in the circumstance line. </p> <p> It is a fact. There are too many things for you to do. If you look at all the things you could do and all the things you probably have on your to-do list. There's too many for this week. There's probably too many for this semester and for this academic year.  </p> <p> So what happens if we take that as a fact? There ARE too many things to do. </p> <p> What we traditionally do, if we accept yes, that is a fact, is we say, “yeah, but I have to do them all. I have to do them all.” Except we don't have to do them all, because every week we get to the end of the week and there's some things we haven't done that's inevitable. And so we can't have to do them all. </p> <p> That's the bit that we need to challenge. We don't need to challenge the truth of there being too many things to do. We need to challenge the truth of the thought, “and I have to do them.”  </p> <p> I remember telling a client quite recently that the thought “there's too much to do” is only a problem if you also believe you have to do it all. If you don't believe you have to do it all, too much to do isn't a problem because it means you just get to pick.  </p> <p> So what I want you to do is it really explore the notion, do you actually have to do this all? And do you have to do it all to the standard and level that you are thinking. </p> <p> So what we're going to do in this episode is we are going to use three different techniques to figure out what to do when you have too much to do.  </p> <p> The first technique is the idea of separating yourself into two different roles in your life so you can be in boss mode and you can be in worker mode. Often we're simultaneously in a place where we're deciding what to do, what to prioritize, what's in our best interest, what's strategically important, what makes us feel good, and the person who needs to do it. And when we're trying to do both those things at once, it can feel like a real battle.  </p> <p> Because part of you is saying, oh, we should do this and the other part is, oh, I don't really feel like that now. And then part of you is going, yeah, but it would be really important, and the other part is going, yeah, we haven't got time. And so you kind of end up having this, this sort of argument with yourself, which can be really, really tiring.  </p> <p> If we can separate out at different times a day when we are being the boss and when we are being the worker, it really simplifies all of this. So what you would do when you're in boss mode… now we're not talking like bossy boss mode, we're not talking like Instagram girl boss or anything like that. We are being the kindest, most compassionate, but firm supervisor you can imagine. </p> <p> We love this boss, we love this supervisor. They are fair. They're understanding, but they believe in you. They challenge you to achieve, but they support you to do it. That is the boss we want to be. And you might want to set aside 30 minutes or an hour to put yourself in boss mode and make some decisions.  </p> <p> Now, during this time, you are not doing any work. You are not deciding, oh, I'll just answer this email while I'm looking at it. Nope, that's worker's job. You are in boss mode. And while you are in boss mode, we look at the week and we think about what we are going to do. And I'm going to give you some strategies that you can use while you're in boss mode.  </p> <p> What then happens once you've made those decisions is you then put yourself in worker mode. And workers here do as they are told, and they do as they're told because they know that the boss had their best interests at heart when they made this plan. They were fair and realistic.  </p> <p> Therefore, even if we don't feel like doing the thing we do the thing because that was what our boss told us to do. Now, I am sure every single one of you listening to this wherever you are in your academic career, have had some other job. Some other job where you have to turn up at a set time and do as you are told. I know I had a million jobs growing up as a teenager through my student years, and to be honest, since to the early years of my academic career where I worked in shops, I worked in factories, I worked in offices, all sorts of different jobs where I had to be there at set time. They told me what to do and I had to get on with it.  </p> <p> And somehow it was a lot easier when someone else was telling you what to do just to do it. You just, you didn't just lay in bed and not go, because you didn't feel like it today. Oh, I don't feel very motivated today, maybe I'll go tomorrow. We didn't do that. We went because our bosses expected us and that was how we got paid. And that's the vibe we want to try and instill in our work ourselves. That when this amazing self boss has come up with this nice, realistic, fun, interesting, sensible plan, we can then follow it. </p> <p> So really think about trying to separate out those two sides of yourself. You might want to give them different names, you might want to wear different clothes or go somewhere different. So try not do it all at the same desk. Maybe worker does their work at your desk, but Boss mode goes to a nice coffee shop while they plan over a nice cup of tea or something. Maybe your boss sits at the kitchen table and decides what's going to happen for the week, and then the worker goes to your desk and does it. Try and separate out physically as well as psychologically these two different roles. </p> <p> Now that's useful, but you are still your boss in this case, and you've still got too much to do. So how do you decide what you're going to do? The first thing? We are going to really remind ourselves of that compassion. It is totally okay that you have too much to do. We can waste a lot of time “shoulding” on ourselves. </p> <p> I should have done this before. I should have organized this before. I shouldn't have said yes to this. If I was just further along and this would be easier, blah, blah, blah. We. Not the sort of boss that says those things to our workers, and we are not the sort of person that says those things to ourselves. </p> <p> Well, we might be, at the moment, we probably are. We all do. It's a habit that this society kind of creates, but we don't have to. We can tell ourselves that we are not that boss anymore.  </p> <p> It is totally understandable that you have too much to. You work or study in academia, there is too much to do. We live in a culture with very few boundaries where people talk about obscene levels of productivity as though it's a good thing. </p> <p> We are in this all the time. It's totally understandable that you have too much to do and that's fine. There will be things on your list that you could have done before and you didn't, but you were overwhelmed then, you're overwhelmed now. You've done nothing wrong. We are not doing this because there's a problem with you. We're doing this because there's too many things on your to-do list right now, and we just need to figure that out.  </p> <p> So if you haven't gone back to my very first episode where I talk about how to be your own best supervisor, this would be a really good time to revisit that. We talk about being compassionate and we talk about being curious. </p> <p> And the curious really comes into its own now because we start to go, okay, if I take all the shoulds out of this, if I take the fact that maybe I could have done this earlier. I shouldn't have said yes to it. I've got too many things. How do I solve this problem? Let's figure it out. We're clever people. We can figure these things out. </p> <p> The fact is you could look at somebody else's to-do list and help them prioritize it, and that's because you're able to separate yourself from some of the emotion that you have when you look at your own. But we're not just going to say prioritize it. I hate those advice things. When you see it on Twitter and stuff and it just says, um, what to do if you've got too much to do. </p> <p> Look at your list. Prioritize, work on the top priorities. Well, how do we prioritize? Do we prioritize what's best for our long-term career? Do we prioritize what's going to make it less deeply unpleasant in the next hour? Do we prioritize things we do for ourselves? Do we do for other people? What do we prioritize? </p> <p> The problem is there's no right answer to that. I can't tell you what you should prioritize, and that's where it's super difficult when somebody just says, oh, what you need to do is prioritize. People used to say that to me. And I'll be like, oh, really? Never thought of that. Cheers. Thanks for that. For those of you on the podcast. I'm pulling one of those, uh, faces right now. </p> <p> So I'm not going to tell you just to prioritize. I am going to give you some criteria that you might want to use in order to prioritize and to do this, I want you to think about spinning plates.  </p> <p> So some of you who listen to my podcast for a while, who know me outside of this, know that I love the circus. I am involved in some of the more acrobatics of circus stuff, um, but another circus task that people do love, the circus trick that people do is spinning plates. </p> <p> So having plates on tall sticks and you like wibble the stick. Not sure wibble is the technical word for it, but we'll go with it. You wibble the stick and the plate spins, and the problem is they can spin on their own for a while and they look super cool, but after a while then they slow down and they start to wobble, and if you're not careful, you don't give them another wibble, then they wobble too much and they fall off.  </p> <p> And working in academia, studying in academia can often feel like you're spinning plates. There's loads of different things for you to do. Even if you're a PhD student who's maybe only working on a single project, there's all the different components of that project. </p> <p> Whether you should be reading or writing, or doing whatever your actual data collection element is. There's lots of different things that you should be doing. You're also getting told all the time that maybe you should enter this competition or go to that conference, or go to this workshop or learn that new technique or whatever. </p> <p> We're all spinning lots of plates. So we are going to use this analogy, the spinning plates analogy, to think about how do we pick which things to do in a particular week. First job, what plates are you spinning? Let's get a list. Sometimes the problem is that we don't actually even know what's on our to-do list, because we don't want to write it down because that's too much. </p> <p> So get them all out. What plates are we spinning? What are the main tasks that are actually spinning at the moment? And the first question I want you to ask yourself is, which plates don't even need to be spinning right now? Often we have projects where we're going, oh, and I need to do that, oh, and I need to do that. But actually, they're not things you are planning to do this week. They're things you need to remember for next week or the week after perhaps. But they're not things that are actually at the top of the to-do list now.  </p> <p> So first job is look at this to-do list, which of these are you actually just realistically not doing this week? Maybe they don't need to be. Maybe it's planning for a conference. That’s not for six months and you don't actually need to plan it yet, but it needs to be on your to-do list.  </p> <p> Start next week's to-do list now. Don't worry if you're actually going to do it next week, just dump it over for next week. We consider it again next week. So which of these plates can you put down? It's a lot easier to spin plates when you've got fewer.  </p> <p> Now we're remaining with the ones that we think on some level at least we need to spin this week. What I want you to think about now is which of these plates are the most valuable? And you get to define this. So which are the most valuable in the sense they'll bring most benefit to you? Which are the most valuable in the sense that they bring value to somebody else in a way that you want to be a part of. So not just writing something that builds somebody else's career, but perhaps supporting students, returning comments on somebody else's draft, that sort of thing. So which of the most valuable plates? </p> <p> At the same time though, I also want you to think which of these plates are most fragile? Which of these plates, would it be a disaster if you let them drop? So perhaps you have promised somebody that you'll get comments back to their, um, on their paper this week and they have a deadline of next week, and it's a hard deadline. If they miss it, they won't be able to submit. Maybe that counts as a fragile plate. If you drop that plate this week, they're not going to submit for that conference. They're not going to submit for that special issue, whatever it is. Maybe that would be a fragile plate.  </p> <p> Maybe though you've said that you'll give it back this week, but to be honest, they're in the lab. They've got a ton of other stuff happening. If you just let them know, it doesn't really matter if it falls off or not. They're not counting. So knowing which plates are more valuable, knowing which plates are more fragile, can really help us to choose which ones we need to spin. </p> <p> The next question I want you to ask yourself though is how much spinning do they need? So when we think about what's fragile and what's valuable, sometimes there are things that would be really useful in the long run to keep going, but they're not urgent this week. If you're familiar with Stephen Covey's four quadrants, these would be ones that fall in the important but not urgent. </p> <p> Often it's things like reading around a subject, for example. It doesn't have to happen this week. Nothing's going to fall apart if we don't do it this week. But if we don't do it any week for six months, then we're going to find ourselves behind. And these are often the ones that we really neglect and we save them for a time where we are going to have time, but we never have time. </p> <p> So the next question I want you to ask yourself is, what's the minimum spin I could give this plate to keep it going. So, especially for important non-urgent stuff, rather than saying, “oh, I haven't got time for that this week. I'll find time next week. I'll find time the week after that.” And then that time never comes. </p> <p> What's the minimum little spin you could give it that would just keep it going? So could you spend 20 minutes scanning a new article just to pick out some key points? That's it. Rather than just putting the plate down, what's a little spin you could give it just to keep it ticking over. </p> <p> If you haven't got time to read somebody's draft this week, for example, um, could you drop them a quick email saying, “had a glance over it, I think we're missing a section on that. Why don't you crack on with that section and I'll read the rest of it next week”, for example. What's a little tiny spin you could do just to keep those going? </p> <p> Another question to ask yourself is, do you have any plates that if you gave them a good spin now, you could then take off and put down? So which plates - this is where my analogy starts to break down a little bit, but go with it - where they're nearly at the end of their spinning, where actually if you could give it two hours this week, then it could be the end of that plate. You could put it down.  </p> <p> Those are really worth prioritizing because they're ones where spinning it means that with a few hours work, you'll have one less plate to spin. So if you've got something that is just a few hours off finishing, how can you prioritize that one this week, so that next week, that's not even a plate anymore. </p> <p> So get the thing submitted so that it's somewhere else, whether that's submitted to your supervisor, so it's on somebody else's desk, whether it's submitted to a journal, whatever it might be. Can you get that thing so that next week it's not even on your to-do list? That's another one to prioritize. </p> <p> Another option you can do is to think which plates are close together. Now for this, I want you to imagine you are on stage. These plates are spinning all across the stage, and you are running around madly trying to spin all of them. Imagine that panic. Imagine how chaotic it looks. Imagine how you are not your best self if you're doing. </p> <p> Whereas if you can look at the layout of your plates and decide which ones are close together, um, it'd be so much easier if you could go to one side of the stage and spin all of those and then go somewhere else and spin all of those. Same goes for our to-do list. See whether you can cluster tasks together so that while you are sorting out that admin task, you also do that admin task, that admin task and that admin task.  </p> <p> I used to start organizing my to-do list by people. So when I was Head of Education overseeing all the undergraduate and postgraduate taught master's programs in my school, I would order things by person who I needed to speak to about it. So that when I went to see George, I had six things that I needed to deal with with George. </p> <p> They were all different things, but they were all George things. And so rather than sort of bothering him all the time, I would go and I would have my little list that were all him things. How can you cluster things? If you need to go to the finance office, what's four things you can do at the finance office while you're there so that you tick off a bunch of different things. </p> <p> So see if you can cluster things that are geographically close together, but also just type of thing. So if you are in the mode of just getting through emails quick, quick, quick, what other tasks can you do while you are in that sort of mode? Rather than trying to make a phone call here and then a phone call there, and then send an email another day, how can you cluster all that stuff together so you have an hour or two hours of going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, through those basic admin tasks. </p> <p> The other reason I really like the plate spinning analogy is I want you to think of yourself as somebody who only has a certain number of sticks to put plates on. So when you are making decisions then about whether you can take on a new task, you can take on a new plate, you look at how many sticks you've got and decide if you have space or not. </p> <p> And there's two ways of doing that. You can say, ah, actually I've just finished up this project here. I put that plate down. You know, I finished it to a point where I don't need to work on it anymore. I've put that plate down. Actually I have a gap. I could do that thing here for you or that I've come up with, or wherever this idea’s come from. Yes, I could take that on. So where you've got a pre-existing gap and you're like, yep, okay. There's space for that.  </p> <p> Or especially if you're asked to do something, but even if you come up with a new idea yourself, say, okay, I love this new plate. This is a new, shiny, exciting looking plate. What plate am I taking off another pole in order to put this one in the game? </p> <p> Because what we often do is just try and grab another stick and keep 'em all going anyway. And that's also where we get overwhelmed. So try and think of yourself as somebody who has a limited number of sticks.  </p> <p> Now, this actually comes from an idea called Spoon Theory, which a lot of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses will know about, where we have a certain number of spoons, a certain number of energy each day that we can use to do tasks.  </p> <p> That could be physical energy, cognitive energy, um, social emotional capacity, whatever it is, but we can conceptualize them as spoons and it follows from that. But the thing that I love about this is everybody has a limited number of spoons, or in my analogy, a limited number of poles to put their plates on.  </p> <p> So if you have disabilities, you have caring responsibilities, you have reasons that mean that perhaps things become overwhelming more quickly for you, then yeah, you have a limited number of poles and it's really useful to recognize that and be able to prioritize what you put on those poles. </p> <p> But those of you with disabilities are probably already really good at that. Where I see people struggling is where there's no specific disability, there's no specific reason, and they therefore somehow think they have infinite poles. I used to think this. I'm a highly energetic, highly enthusiastic person and always thought I had unlimited poles. </p> <p> I did not have unlimited poles. I just didn't acknowledge where I had limits, and so I would just keep piling more tasks on and try and do them all anyway and then beat myself up when I couldn't, as though I should be able to manage infinite spinning plates on infinite numbers of poles.  </p> <p> Learn from our friends and colleagues with disabilities. We all have a limited number of poles. You just need to learn how many you have. How many things can you keep going at any one? So when you're thinking about taking on something new, really look at those notional poles. Have you got a space? Can you create a space? Or is this plate going to have to wait until you finish spinning some of the others? </p> <p> So I said I was going to give you three tactics in this episode. First tactic is this idea of separating out the boss mode and worker mode, and then when you're in boss mode, it is using this plate spinning analogy to really consider what tasks you have, what you can put down, which ones you need to do this week. </p> <p> My final one actually comes from some project management training that I did years ago. I'm a bit of a habitual course taker. I think it comes from a sort of insecurity that I don’t know enough about this and I don’t know enough about that And so when I was doing my postdoc, I did, I had some funding for CPD and I did some project management training. </p> <p> One of the concepts you come across in formal project management training is the project management triangle. I want you to imagine a triangle where on one corner of the triangle it says time, another corner of the triangle, it says quality, and the other corner of the triangle, it says resource. </p> <p> So time, quality, resource and in the middle of the triangle is written “scope”. Now what the Project Management Triangle says is that if one of these things changes, the others need to change too. So if you want to complete something faster, you’re reducing the time, then you need to change either the quality, the resource, or the scope. </p> <p> So if you have less time than you thought, you either need to do it less well, you need to bring in people to help or at throw resource at it in some other way, or you need to reduce the scope of what you're doing.  </p> <p> Now this can be really useful for decision making. Often when we say, I have to do this, I don't have time, we don't have any other solution. We have to do it. We don't have time, so we just sort of put our heads down and try and do as much as possible. And what we are doing there is we're adding more resource in the form of ourselves doing more hours on it, and we do that as though that's our only option. </p> <p> And sometimes it is. Maybe there is an absolutely fixed scope, an absolutely fixed quality, and an absolutely fixed deadline, and you have no one else that you can ask to help you. So you have to throw more of your own resource at it. You have to give more of yourself. </p> <p> Sometimes that's the situation. It doesn't have to be the only situation, and it seems to be the only option that people ever consider. </p> <p> Now, instead, I want you to think what would happen if we considered the other elements of this triangle? Can you ask for more time? Can you get an extension so that you can give the same amount of yourself per day i e resource, but you have longer to do it. Sometimes that's possible. Sometimes it's not. It's useful to consider what's stopping you asking. </p> <p> Quality. Now we always say we don't want quality to go down. We don't want to hand in something that's rubbish, but it really depends what stage of the process we're at. If this is a draft for your supervisor, would your supervisor rather have a rough draft at the time you said you'd do it or something more polished with an extension? </p> <p> Maybe that's a question you could ask your supervisor. We always assume they want the perfect version, even if that means it takes longer. But as a supervisor, there were many times where I would rather have seen a rough draft on time, so I can see where you are up to, whether you're going roughly in the right direction, whether there's any fundamental misunderstandings, rather than you taking an extra two weeks to polish something that I am not even sure you're going in the right direction. </p> <p> So sometimes actually being able to say, look, I can either get you a rough draft by this time when we originally said, or I can get you something more polished by that time, you and the supervisor can work out together which of those is better.  </p> <p> If you don't, can't compromise on the quality. You can't ask for more time, and there's a limited amount of resource that you are able to give it or willing to give it, then the scope has to change. So in that case, maybe the parameters around your literature review need to be less so maybe you only focus on experimental studies instead of experimental and descriptive study or whatever it might be, Translate into your subject area. The scope needs to change. </p> <p> So keeping that in mind, thinking what different options you've got, is there more of me I can give to this or somebody else that can help with elements of it? That's the resource side, but remember you get to pick where your boundaries are with that. Can I ask for more time? What does the quality need to be? Is it better to do something complete but rough, or is it better to have done some of it in good quality or to have had an extension? And scope. Do you have to do the whole thing, say to your super, I can get you the introduction by the deadline, but I won't have the method as well, for example, rather than saying, can I have an extension for the whole thing? Sometimes that can be useful. Here's a section of it on time. Now I need an extension for another section of it.  </p> <p> Working around that project management triangle can really help you figure out how am I going to manage when I've got too much to do, but I feel I need to do it all.  </p> <p> Another place where the project management triangle can be useful is with some of the basic admin tasks that we do. We're all high achieving people. We like doing things well. I have spent a lot of time correcting fonts on forms because those stupid auto fill forms come out in one font for one box and one font for a different box, and it annoys me. </p> <p> That's not necessary. If I had been looking more curiously and mindfully at my project management triangle, I might have gone, “you know what, if I fill this form in, but to a lower quality ie I don't faff about with the formatting. I just get things in there that need to be in there and don't overthink it”, then I can get this done in a lot less time. Get that whole plate off my list and not have to think about it anymore.  </p> <p> So which of your plates, which of your tasks, could you actually do to a much lower quality than you're doing at the moment and it not really matter? You know the sorts of tasks this can be. Don't polish the underside of the banister. </p> <p> So those are my three tips for you today. </p> <p> If you are feeling like you have too much to do, you are probably right. Start from compassion, start from curiosity, and see this as a problem to be solved rather than a judgment of you and your capacity and your ability to do your job. There is too much to do for everyone. How we succeed and how we thrive is by deciding which things get, how much of us for how long, and to what quality. We get to pick.  </p> <p> Thank you so much for listening. 20 episodes Yay! And I will see you next week for episode 21. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 27 Feb 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/20-what-to-do-when-you-have-too-much-to-do https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/19-what-to-do-and-think-if-you-have-a-toxic-relationship-with-your-supervisor <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode, we’ll think about how to look after yourself if you think you have a toxic relationship with your supervisor. We’ll consider what that means, what effect it could have on you, and most importantly, how to manage your thoughts so that you can make decisions about this difficult situation. I’ll talk about some of the most common thoughts that I see students having and help you find some other thoughts that might help you more. If you find yourself in this situation, please do reach out to the wellbeing services at your university and make sure that you are also getting the professional help that you need.  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode 19 of the PhD Life Coach. Now, last week I was thinking about how to have a great relationship with your supervisor, and I'd always intended that episode to be standalone. I had other topics planned for this week and I was going to crack on with different things. But as I was planning and recording that episode, I realized that so much of the advice I was giving was super useful if you had a largely positive relationship with your supervisor that perhaps had some challenges, some differences of opinions, some differences of approach. Perhaps some areas of conflict, but that was grounded mostly in respect and positive behaviour. And if that's your situation and you haven't listened to that episode, really go back and listen to the next last episode because I think you'll find it really, really useful.  </p> <p> However, I found myself adding all these caveats about how that's not true, if you are experiencing problematic behaviour from your supervisor. Because we don't want you to cognitively argue your way out of thinking that a behaviour is unacceptable. We don't want you to learn how to just accept. Problematic behaviour and cope with it. That's not what we're here to do. So a lot of those techniques that are useful in those situations where it's perhaps just differences of opinion aren't appropriate where you are experiencing inappropriate and problematic supervision. </p> <p> So I decided to do an extra episode. This is your episode of what to do if you have a really problematic relationship with your supervisor. Now, what do I mean by problematic? Well, part of the problem is there isn't a specific definition of what's truly unacceptable.  </p> <p> I think there's a whole bunch of stuff that most people would agree, um, are unacceptable in an academic supervisory relationship, in fact, in most relationships. So these would be things like getting yelled at, physical violence, inappropriate comments, sexual harassment, racist, ableist, homophobic, any of those sorts of comments and microaggressions. Breaking confidences, stealing your work, belittling you in front of other people, excessive workloads. All of these things people would generally agree are unacceptable, and so if you are experiencing any of those, this is the episode for you. If you know anybody who's experiencing any of those, please do pass this episode onto them. </p> <p> That is not an exhaustive list. You may well have things that would be unacceptable to you, and that's absolutely fine. We get to decide. We get to define, what is unacceptable behaviour in our supervisory relationship. So please don't treat that as a checklist, that if you don't have one of those, then yours is okay. You get to choose. </p> <p> Now this is a complicated topic to give advice about because so much depends on the context that you are within. Do you have a problem just with your individual supervisor, but actually the rest of the research group, the rest of the department are supportive. Do you feel like the whole place has a toxic environment and isn't a good place for you? </p> <p> So all of the advice that I'm going to give today is really focused on managing what you are thinking about the situation and choosing your response from there. So I'm not going to say you definitely should do this, you definitely should do that because you get to choose that. You get to decide what is appropriate for you. </p> <p> But hopefully today I'll give you a framework that will help you to figure out what's right for you and what you want to experience, and what you don't want to experience, and what you want to do about it.  </p> <p> A lot of this work is based on my training from the Life Coach school, which developed the self coaching model, which I use in a lot of my work. </p> <p> Those of you who have been coached from me either in my free monthly group coaching (if you haven't come to that, sign up for my newsletter and you'll get all the information). Or in my university membership programs, when you've been coached by me, you'll have experienced this. But essentially that model shows that we have our circumstances, the facts of what are happening to us, and then we have the thoughts that we have about those circumstances. </p> <p> And these are the lines that run through our head and we get to choose those, and the thoughts generate our feelings, the emotions we experience. Our emotions influence our behaviours. And our behaviours are what dictate the results that we get. Some people who work with a self coaching model would argue that all circumstances are inherently neutral until we have thoughts about them, that it's only our thoughts that make them negative or positive. </p> <p> I am not going to argue that in this podcast. I believe that certain circumstances are not inherently neutral. I believe that we live in a world with structural inequalities. I believe we live in a world where certain types of people get treated less well than other types of people. And that's not just in our heads. </p> <p> That's the societal environment that we grew up in and live in. So what I'm not going to do is suggest that you cognitively reframe thoughts about experiencing your having to make them OK. </p> <p> However, we do have thoughts sometimes that lead to emotions that don't help us manage these situations healthily. And so we are going to explore what some of those thoughts that you might be quite understandably having at the moment and the consequences of them. And I'm going to offer some alternatives for you that might help you manage the situation more effectively. </p> <p> Before I do that though, I have a couple of caveats I want to put out there. As usual. It's complex. First one, I am a white, heterosexual, cisgender woman. I. kind of have ADHD although I'm not diagnosed and it's always manifested as overactivity in terms of my academia. And so hasn't really been a, um, a point of problem for me in my working environment, certainly not externally. I come from a background where my parents hadn't gone to higher education, but I was well resourced, well educated, well supported. So I come from and recognize the privilege that I bring to these situations. That's why I'm not going to talk a lot about my own experience in academia, because I haven't experienced a lot of these things because I come from quite a privileged demographic in that. </p> <p> On that, I'm hoping in the future to bring guests onto the show who have specialisms in some of the areas that make all of this stuff hugely more complicated. So I hope in the future to have episodes where we look at racism in academia and how we manage that homophobia within academia and so on. So keep an eye out for those in the future. </p> <p> The other caveat that I want to bring to this is please don't try and do any of this thought work when you're in the midst of crisis. So if you are experiencing anxiety and depression that are affecting how you function, both at work and outside, so perhaps you're experiencing physical symptoms, you're struggling to sleep, you're struggling to look after yourself, all of these things, please focus on looking after yourself first. </p> <p> First step is you have to get out of the situation for a while and you have to look after yourself. You have to get support from people that are independent and are trained in your specific issues and bring some care and compassion to yourself. Please don't try to do reframing when you're in the midst of that sort of emotional crisis. All that will happen is you'll start to beat yourself up about the fact that you're finding it really difficult. You should find it difficult in that situation. Don't try to do it. Look after yourself first, and then as things start to settle a bit and things start to clear, then perhaps revisit some of this work. Your universities will have wellbeing teams and support services available to you to try and support you through that time.  </p> <p> If, however, you are at a position where you are feeling not in the midst of an emotional crisis, but that you are in a difficult situation, this is absolutely the episode for you. </p> <p> I am going to go through eight thoughts that I suspect you might be having, and we're going to look at each one in turn and think about: </p> <p> - is it true? </p> <p> - what else is true </p> <p> - and what if it is true?  </p> <p> Those are the questions we always ask ourselves about thoughts, and I haven't just invented these thoughts. These thoughts are things that have come through my own supervisory experiences, my work with PhD students who have other supervisors. My coaching, I've even been involved in investigating bullying allegations and things like that for other departments at my old university. So these thoughts are all things that I have seen students experience where they're having difficult supervisory experiences. </p> <p> The first thought is “perhaps this is normal.” </p> <p> There's a real tendency to start doubting ourselves, especially if your supervisor is telling you that they're not doing anything wrong, that this is just what you should expect, and this is academia, this is exactly how it's going to be. You start asking yourself, maybe this is normal, maybe getting yelled at, maybe being expected to work 18 hour days, maybe this is just normal.  </p> <p> Thoughts like that lead to confusion because that conflicts with the other thoughts in our head that are like, this can't be right. Surely we can't be expected to put up with this. And you start to get really confused. And the problem when you get confused is you can't really think things through clearly and it's really hard to decide what to do because you're really doubting yourself.  </p> <p> So we go back to that thought. Perhaps this is normal. Is it true? How can you figure out if this is normal or not. Are there people that you could talk to other colleagues, so people who are same sort of year as you, perhaps maybe people who are one or two years ahead of you, maybe people with this supervisor or a different supervisor, or is there a member of staff who's unconnected with your research group that you trust? </p> <p> Is there someone you could talk to to figure out is this normal and to help you work through whether that's the case. Often it's not normal. Okay. Often it is not what you'd expect. Certainly looking across all of my experience in academia, across lots of different disciplines, working with a huge variety of people, you shouldn't expect to be treated in these ways. </p> <p> But if you are trying to figure out your specific situation, try and open up those conversations to figure out is this normal or not.  </p> <p> Another thing I see, especially at the early stages of relationship breakdown is the thought, “if I can just X, then they will Y”. So if I can just work a bit harder, then they'll praise me. If I can just get this thing done, maybe they'll soften up on me. Maybe if I didn't do that, then they wouldn't yell at me.  </p> <p> Again, is it true? What else is true? And what I want you to start with with this is I want to start by reassuring you. You are not responsible for your supervisor's behaviour. You are not responsible for their feelings, and you are not responsible for their behaviour. They are grown adults who, whatever problems they have going on in their lives, are responsible for their thoughts, feelings, and actions. </p> <p> What you do does not cause their results, the thoughts that they are having causes their behaviour, not the things that you are doing. And when you get into these sorts of toxic relationships and you just try and appease, you try and get this sort of hopeful but slightly desperate feeling, Ooh, maybe if I just do this, this and this, and I don't annoy them and I don't do this, then it'll be okay, then you are chasing a moving target because you’ve never been the one that's causing their behaviour. That's their thoughts.  </p> <p> It can become this desperate struggle where you just can't meet an expectation where you prevent their negative behaviour because it was never about you. Okay, so if you find yourself saying, if I can just do this, then they'll do that, really take a moment to pause and remind yourself you are not responsible for their behaviour.  </p> <p> I'd also be really cautious about trying to get approval from people that you don't like. I have seen this in both personal and professional relationships in the past. When you have somebody who perhaps praise doesn't come from very often, there can be a real tendency to really want it and to almost value it more because you don't get it very much. </p> <p> This can be really toxic because again, you're trying to seek approval from somebody whose judgment you don't actually agree with, somebody who behaves in ways you don't like and you're trying to do things to get their approval. Instead, I'd really try and get you to focus on what do you approve of? What do you think is good behaviour? </p> <p> Who do you want to be and focus on giving that approval for yourself, so that you can see your supervisor and their behaviour as something that's completely separate to whether you approve of you and whether you are acceptable to you.  </p> <p> Thought 3 that you might be having is maybe I'm just not good enough. </p> <p> I see people turn this in on themselves so often that when you've got a hypercritical supervisor, you start to think, well, maybe, maybe I'm just not good enough. Maybe I'm not cut out to be here. And that thought can really lead to feelings of shame and the problem with shame as an emotion… Firstly, it doesn't feel good. </p> <p> That doesn't mean we have to avoid it. Sometimes feeling it can be, you know, you, it's part of the human experience, but when we feel shame, we tend to isolate ourselves. We tend to avoid talking to other people. We just tend to hide and make ourselves smaller and smaller, which makes it really hard to reach out for help. </p> <p> So when you read like blogs online about what to do if you think you're being bullied, it's always talk to somebody, do this, do that, and it's like, Yeah. But if if you are having these thoughts, maybe I'm not good enough, and you're feeling shame, it's really hard to reach out for support. </p> <p> That's normal. That's human because you don't want to reach out to support and for that person to be like, well, yeah, of course you should be able to do that. Yeah, you're clearly up to it then if you can't. You are worried that that person's going to agree with your supervisor.  </p> <p> Again, I'd really encourage you to be really careful about what you make your supervisor's behaviour mean about you. If you got into your program, you are good enough to be there. Even if, so, one of the questions we ask ourselves is, what if this was true? Maybe you are not good enough to be there. Okay. I think it's unlikely, but maybe they made a huge error when they appointed you. </p> <p> I don't believe that, but let's go there. Maybe you are not good enough to be there. You still deserve to be treated with respect. You still deserve to be supported to figure out what you are good at and what else you could do instead. Regardless of whether you are good enough, you don't deserve to be treated with disrespect. </p> <p> What you can do here is you can really start to unpick, okay, what evidence is there that I am good enough to be here? I got in, I'm here. There's a big reason. But why else? What else are you good at? What else have you made progress on? Really try and get in the habit of building those thoughts for yourself as to what you are good at. </p> <p> And then rather than having this generic, maybe I'm not good enough as a, like, as a whole, start to go, okay. If I'm worried I'm not good enough, specifically at what? Which bit of this am I not good enough at? Because we hide behind this generic, I'm just not capable. Okay. Tell me. Are you not good enough at writing? Are you not good enough analysis? Are you not good enough at project management? What is it?  </p> <p> Because if we can pin it down, then it's not about you. It's just about skills you haven't developed yet. And then we can start thinking, okay, well where can I develop those skills? So you see how once we take ourselves away from just this overarching, maybe I'm just not good enough, I shouldn't be here, thought we can start to really sort of pick it apart, reassure ourselves where that's appropriate and target where we can improve, where that's appropriate. </p> <p> Thought four that you might be having. This isn't the right place for me.  </p> <p> Sometimes we take what's happening instead of making it mean something about us, we make it mean something about the whole place. Because I've had this negative experience with this supervisor, the whole place is toxic. The whole place is not the right place.  </p> <p> An extra element you might add onto this is, this is not the right place for someone like me. Now that might relate to some of your demographics, that might relate to your personality, your style, or your discipline, whatever it is.  </p> <p> And the problem with that thought is, again, we allow it to isolate ourselves. It's very hard to reach out for support if you believe this isn't the right place for you. Let's think about that. In what ways is that not true? In what ways could this be the perfect place for you? Are there other bits of the place you're at? So if you're in a department, are there other research groups that actually feel like less toxic environments? Are there other schools, other departments that feel like less toxic environments to you?  </p> <p> And if it does feel genuinely like this isn't the place for you, let's not make that mean anything about us. Let's look at that curiously and go, okay, maybe this isn't the right place for me. So what next? What steps do I need to take because I deserve to be somewhere where I'm treated well. I deserve to be somewhere where I feel like a part of the community. So how do we make that happen? What do I need to do to make that happen? </p> <p> You see how that's a very different thing than maybe this just isn't the right place for me. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I'm awful, and all the thoughts that that leads to, and all the emotions that that leads to, which mostly lead to us procrastinating, hiding, isolating ourselves. </p> <p> The fifth thought I'm going to tell you about can sort of sound resilient, but it worries me. So the thought is I'm just going to get my head down and get it done.  </p> <p> I've heard students say this before particularly where the problems haven't really come to a head until two, three years into their PhD, they're nearing the end. Certainly in the uk they would be and they think they've gone too far through to leave now, and it becomes this, I'm just going to get my head down and get it done. And that can lead to feelings of kind of resignation, I guess. It's just like, Ugh, I'm just going to have to do this. </p> <p> Before you decide that that is the answer for you, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. I want you to ask yourself, what would be the toll on you doing this? So what will be the physical, emotional, professional consequences of you just getting your head done and doing the thing. How difficult is that going to be? </p> <p> What toll is that going to take on your mental health? And try and be really honest about that. Try not to come to this conclusion from the point of view that you have no other choice. There is always another choice. No matter how far through you are, there is always different choices you can make. But if you are going to choose to stay and tough it out as it were, then what would the cost of that be? </p> <p> Then you get to decide is it worth it? Is it worth that cost? And if it is, how can you look after yourself during that process? How can you ensure that if you are going to put yourself through what could be a very challenging period because you're determined to see it out, how are you going to make it as loving and caring and compassionate from the inside of you as it can be? How are you going to look after yourself?  </p> <p> And one big tip I would give you is don't keep your head down. Keep your head up. Often we isolate ourselves, as I said, if you are going to tough it out. If you're going to try and stay, you're going to try and finish anyway. Keep your head up, keep contacting other people, creating communities outside of your toxic relationship, finding support and finding the advice and care that you need from other people. Keep your head up as you are going through. </p> <p> Thought six is one that often holds people back from talking to others about this, and this is that no one will believe me. Other people love them. They don't treat anybody else like this. It sounds so stupid. Nobody will believe that this is a problem. And that can lead to feelings like despair. And again, despair doesn't lead to positive action. </p> <p> We just have to look after ourselves when we're in despair. It doesn't lead to us actually resolving situations either by staying or going. So the first thing to say when you're thinking “no one will believe me” is that might be true. Unfortunately, we see lots of situations where a student comes forward with a complaint about a supervisor, and for lots of reasons people don't believe them. </p> <p> Maybe that supervisor is lovely to lots of people, but isn't being lovely to you. Maybe that supervisor used to be a kind and supportive supervisor, but they're not at the moment. Maybe that person is powerful and brings a ton of money into the department and nobody knows how to manage them. Maybe they've been like this for ages and people will believe you, but they won't believe that you can do anything about it, so they won't support you. Maybe they don't want to be the one that puts their head above the parapet and risks being targeted.  </p> <p> Unfortunately, there is a lot of reason to think that you might not be believed when you tell these situations. So I'm not going to falsely reassure you about that, but we come at it with compassion and curiosity. Maybe I'm not going to be believed. So with that in my mind, who am I best to speak to? </p> <p> Who do I think has the best chance of listening to my story and believing me? How can I evidence what I'm saying? How can I keep copies of emails or ask other people who have witnessed the experiences to come with me?  </p> <p> What we do is we just start build up. There will be someone who believes some of this. Who might that be? And how am I going to have that conversation?  </p> <p> I also want you to be really careful what you make this mean about you. Sometimes when people don't believe your story, we start to doubt it. We start to think, oh my goodness, maybe I am imagining this. Perhaps this is normal. That first thought that we went through, maybe I'm just not good enough. This not being believed can really spiral you off into some of the other thoughts that we've talked about in this podcast, and I want you to be really, we aware that that might happen. </p> <p> Somebody else not believing you does not mean you are wrong. It does not mean you're imagining this. It does not mean that you are interpreting things in an unnecessarily negative way. You know what you are experiencing. If that person doesn't believe you, think whether there's somebody else that will believe you. Think about how you can tell your story so that somebody else will believe you too. </p> <p> The seventh thought is, slightly the opposite, I guess, which is “I need to make this right”.  </p> <p> And I often see this with students who are experiencing racism in the workplace or sexism in the workplace. Things that are based on your demographic rather than you as an individual.  </p> <p> Some students, and sometimes the staff indeed respond to this by coping with it themselves, but also saying, I want to improve this. I want to make it better for other people. No one else should have to go through what I go through. I'm going to campaign for better mental health support. I'm going to campaign for better diversity training. I'm going to campaign for more inclusive practices. Um, I'm going to get on this committee and that committee and a representative on this and run training on that, and I'm going to make this better for everybody else. </p> <p> And there's a huge amount of merit in that. There are huge numbers of people who are already disadvantaged by virtue of the society that we live in, who then go above and beyond to try and improve the lot of people across their department. And so I would never say don't do these things.  </p> <p> What I would say is really carefully work out how much you have to give, how much you are willing to give, what toll the work might take on you, what toll the work might take on other aspects of your PhD and your research, and work out what you are willing to do.  </p> <p> This is not your responsibility to fix.  </p> <p> You may have huge sense of duty to improve things for those that come after you, and that is admirable and wonderful and totally understandable given the circumstances. But you should not have to do all the work. That is not part of your position in academia. </p> <p> You are here as a PhD student, as a researcher, first and foremost, and you get to decide that you want to focus on that. Just because you are a black PhD student for example, does not mean you have to do DEI work. You are here to do your research. Anything you do above and beyond that, is at your discretion and you get to pick how much. </p> <p> The final thought that I've seen so many times is everything will be over if I leave. So often people tell themselves that there is no alternative to staying because if you leave, you'll never get on another PhD. And if you never get on another PhD, you'll never have a research career and you will never get references and no one will ever take you seriously because this person might bad mouth you around the discipline. And that you'll be giving up everything that you've worked for. </p> <p> I really want you to pick that thought apart because that thought leads to feelings of despair. It leads to feelings of being stuck, and none of those things help you to stay in this situation, and they certainly don't help you to leave.  </p> <p> So if you find yourself thinking those things, it's understandable. Be compassionate with yourself if you're thinking those things. You have worked incredibly hard to be where you are. This has been your dream for a really long time, and it's really sad and disappointing if that doesn't work out for you, if that isn't the way you wanted it to be. </p> <p> So the first step is, you can experience those feelings. It is sad. It is disappointing, and that is totally, totally understandable. However, I really want you to pick apart the thought that there isn't anything else. Lots of people leave a PhD and go and start someone somewhere else. Lots of people change group, change discipline, change supervisor.  </p> <p> It can be done. It can be super positive. If your supervisor that's caused the problems won't give you references, there are always ways to get references from other people within the department.  </p> <p> I want you to see if you can believe that you could be successful somewhere else, that you could find a supervisor who will take on your work, that you could restart and thrive if you needed to. That it's better maybe to take a year back and be in a more positive environment than to push through in a challenging environment for the sake of your mental health. </p> <p> What the right decision is for you is entirely up to you, but you can always make it work if you wanted to.  </p> <p> So I have a bunch of thoughts that I'd like to offer instead of some of these thoughts, and they might not feel true to you at first, but I had a coach once who used to say, borrow my belief for a while. </p> <p> And so if these don't feel at all true to you, I really encourage you to borrow my belief for a while. I know these are true for you. I want you to practice the thought I deserve to be here. I can create my own future, step by step. I deserve to be treated well and I can look after myself through this process. </p> <p> I believe that for all of you, no matter what situation you are in, and if you don't believe it, borrow my belief for a little while and practice. And as they start to feel more true and you start to be able to look after yourself through this process, and you start to find people who will support you with little bits of it, then you get to pick how you want to move this forward. </p> <p> Whether you want to make complaints, whether you want to just leave, whether you want to get the support you need somewhere else, whether you want to add extra people to the supervisory team. There's so many different options that you can think through.  </p> <p> But my final thought is whatever you decide, decide in advance that it is the best decision you ever. If you decide you're going to stick it out, that you are going to try and bring in other people and get the support you need somewhere else, but stay working with your difficult supervisor, then really believe that this was the best decision for you, and that you are so proud of yourself that you did this, and you learnt how to look after yourself and get support from other places. </p> <p> And if you decide to leave, decide now that that was the best decision you ever made, that you're so proud of yourself, that you looked after your mental health, and you removed yourself from a toxic situation and you found a better place.  </p> <p> Whatever you decide, make it the best decision you ever made, and thank yourself for making that choice for you and for your future. </p> <p> Now you'll notice in this episode I haven't given you a ton of practical support about exactly what to do, about what processes there are available, what complaints, procedures there are, what options there are for mediation, and improving the communication with your supervisor, and, um, creating shared goals and all these different things that you can do when you're struggling and having a difficult relationship. </p> <p> And that's on purpose for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, you have access to all that stuff. You know how Google works. You're going to have postgraduate, researcher handbooks and advice and all of these things at your university. Everybody does, but while you are still thinking these thoughts that this might be your fault or that you should be ashamed in some way, or that perhaps this is normal, you are not going to engage with all of that support anyway. </p> <p> So I haven't gone through all of that because I want you to start by thinking about your own thoughts and your own feelings and to build from there. Once you've gone through the process that I've talked about today, and you're starting to see maybe this isn't my fault, maybe this isn't normal, and maybe I do deserve better, that's when you start searching. </p> <p> That's when you start talking to your postgrad coordinator for advice, and they'll take you through all of the practicalities, all of the options that you have. So you do have that support. You don't need me for that. But hopefully this episode has helped get you and your mind and your emotions into a place where you can really use that cognitive ability that you all have and use those resources that you all have to work out the right next steps for you. </p> <p> I really hope that's useful. My love and thoughts off with anybody who's experiencing difficult supervision. If there's any thoughts you are having that I haven't covered in this episode, please do let me know. As I said, this is really the start of a conversation about some of these challenging environments that there can be in academia. You can get in touch with me on Twitter @drvikkiburns. You can join my newsletter at the PhD life coach.com/work-with-me and you can come along to my monthly free coaching. All the information about that is in my newsletter. So if you are having any of these challenges, please do let me know and let me help you. </p> <p> We will be continuing this conversation in future episodes, so let me know any of your thoughts and in the meantime, look after yourselves. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 20 Feb 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/19-what-to-do-and-think-if-you-have-a-toxic-relationship-with-your-supervisor https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/18-how-to-have-a-great-relationship-with-your-supervisor In this episode I discuss five ways that you can improve your relationship with your PhD supervisor. This relationship is one of the most important aspects of your research experience yet we so often leave it to chance. The good news is that you can improve things so much without expecting them to change at all - find out how in this episode! ***NOTE - this is NOT talking about abusive, problematic and/or unacceptable supervision. I will talk about this more next week, but the strategies in this episode are mainly focused on enhancing supervisory relationships that just don't feel as good as they could right now. <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script>   <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode I discuss five ways that you can improve your relationship with your PhD supervisor. This relationship is one of the most important aspects of your research experience yet we so often leave it to chance. The good news is that you can improve things so much without expecting them to change at all - find out how in this episode!  </i> </p> <p> <i> ***NOTE - this is NOT talking about abusive, problematic and/or unacceptable supervision. I will talk about this more next week, but the strategies in this episode are mainly focused on enhancing supervisory relationships that just don't feel as good as they could right now.  </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> <i> <br/> </i> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode 18 of the PhD Life Coach, and today we are going to be talking about how to have a great relationship with your supervisor. I find this a fascinating subject because I've really seen it from all sides. So obviously I've been a PhD student myself with my own supervisors. I had two supervisors. I've seen it as a supervisor. I've seen eight ish, something like that, PhD students through to successful completion, but I've also seen it as a coach when I hear PhD students talk about their supervisors. I've seen it as a co-supervisor when I've had students talk to me about the other co-supervisor as it were. And I've also seen it talking to my peers and colleagues about their experiences with their students and how they're managing those and how it affects them. </p> <p> So what I've really seen from this kind of multiple perspectives is that no supervisor-supervisee relationship is the same. There's no such thing as a kind of objectively great relationship. Different people want different things from relationships. What could be super helpful from one person is claustrophobic to somebody else. What's kind of hands off and freedom giving for one student is neglectful for another student. What is proactive for one supervisor from their student is overexcited and annoying to another supervisor. Everybody in these relationships is a human being and every relationship is different. </p> <p> That said, I think there is some really, um, I think there are some really basic things that we can ask ourselves and consider that really will help improve whatever relationship it is you are in with your supervisor or indeed your supervisee, if you're listening to this as an academic. </p> <p> I'm going to start with a big fat caveat though. I, in this podcast, I am going to be talking, as usual, about the thoughts that we have, how they create our emotions and the actions that we take, and to some extent our results. And I'm going to be thinking about reframing some of these thoughts. So if you’re feeling is that your supervision is actually wholly inadequate, or is inappropriate or is threatening in any way, is discriminatory in any way, all of these things, I am absolutely not saying that what you need to do is work on your mindset and reframe those things. And in next week's episode, we're going to talk in more detail about how you might recognize some of those issues and how you can seek support and minimize the impact on yourself and on your studies.  </p> <p> The focus of today is thinking about supervisory relationships that don't fall into actually fully unacceptable, but perhaps don't feel like what you came for or feel like they could be better or that you want to feel better about it.  </p> <p> That said, even if you are in one of these really toxic relationships, I would still listen today because I think there'll be nuggets that you'll get that will help you look after yourself while you are navigating the rest of the complications that come from having to untangle a potentially really difficult relationship. </p> <p> So I'm going to give you five tips in this episode to help you have a great relationship with your supervisor.  </p> <p> Tip one, explore what you mean by a great relationship. Like I said at the start, this can vary hugely from person to person. What are you expecting from your supervisor? What do you want them to bring? What do you want them to do? How do you want them to act? How do you want them to make you feel?  </p> <p> And I would actually take some time to grab a piece of paper and a pen and start to write down some answers to some of those questions. What do you want from your supervisor? I want you to get as many things out of your head as possible, because actually we talk about wanting a great relationship, and we don't always necessarily define what that means to us. So just getting some clarity on that situation can really help to start to untangle some of these complicated feelings that we sometimes have about our supervisors and our supervisees. </p> <p> Now, once you've listed these, I want you to have a look at your list, and I want you to ask yourself a bunch of questions. I want you to ask yourself, is this realistic? Can one person do all these things? One I see quite a lot from students that I coach is they want their supervisor to be an eminent expert who can connect them into the discipline and take them around the world and all of these high flying things, but at the same time, they want somebody to be comforting and supportive and attentive and get feedback regularly and to see, um, and to see them in person regularly and so on. And sometimes that can exist in the same person, but sometimes what we're doing is we're asking for quite contrasting things. </p> <p> It's the same as in any relationship. You know, if you are looking for a personal relationship, you might want somebody who's got an amazing job and successful, but who's also super attentive and there when you need them, and never, never has to work in the evenings or the weekends, for example. </p> <p> Sometimes these things are, if not in conflict, but difficult to find all in the same person. So is it realistic? Is it universal? If you showed people your list of what you think a great relationship would be, would everybody else agree? Or are these things that you want in a great relationship but that somebody else might interpret differently or it might not be important to them. </p> <p> Now, that's not to undermine your preferences. Your preferences are your preferences. That's absolutely great, and it's brilliant to figure those out, but accepting that those things are preferences and not necessarily a universal truth about what makes a great supervisor, is a really important step towards figuring out how to either improve your relationship or to improve how you feel about your relationship. </p> <p> I want you then to ask yourself, how are these in line with university regulations? Do you even know what university regulations are? Does your university specify how often you should meet your supervisor? I bet it does, most do, at least in terms of formal recorded meetings. Does your university specify how long your supervisor should take to get drafts back to you if you've submitted drafts for feedback? </p> <p> Most universities have guidance around that. If not, full-on rules, then guidance, recommended durations. How does what you are expecting from your supervisor relate to those? Are you expecting or hoping for more contact than is specified by your university? </p> <p> Again, it's not a problem. Many, many, many supervisors and supervisees meet far more often than the university specifies, but this is a really good way of trying to figure out, okay, am I being unrealistic in my expectations? Is my supervisor even meeting the basic requirements of the university? And if they're not, that's the point to listen to next week's episode and to really think about, okay, how can I move this to a situation where I'm at least meeting the basic requirements? </p> <p> I also want you to ask yourself, is it true that you need all of those things? So if you said, I want my supervisor to make me feel confident, isn't it true that that's your supervisor's job? Or is it something that you can work on in yourself so that whether you feel confident or not is not dependent on what your supervisor has said to you. </p> <p> Is it true that you need your supervisor to be an expert in your discipline and in your method and in science communication and in writing skills and in statistics and in everything else? Or actually does your supervisor just need to be the one who can pull that together and you can get stats training from somebody else, or ethics training from somebody else? </p> <p> So I want you to go through and query whether it's actually true that your supervisor needs to do all of these things. One thing you might like to try is prioritizing, which are the most important things that you really need, and that really need to come from your supervisor. Then you can start prioritizing what you're really asking for here, what you are really looking for. </p> <p> Tip two follows on from this, and this is going to sound like I'm doing this from the perspective of a supervisor, but trust me, I'm not, because it goes both ways. That is, don't expect the person to be anyone other than who they've shown themselves to be. An awful lot of pain comes from expecting somebody to behave differently than the way they always behave.  </p> <p> That you are constantly trying to get more reassurance from somebody. You are constantly trying to get somebody to be tidier than they are. You are constantly trying to get somebody to micromanage you less, whatever it might be. And again, this is not about accepting unacceptable behaviour. </p> <p> But instead, one of the best ways to have a great relationship with your supervisor is to really know them, know what they're really good at, know what they're less good at providing, and to accept that and to accept and revel in and make the most of all the things that they're really good at. And figure out ways to get the support you need for the other stuff outside of that supervisory relationship. </p> <p> If your supervisor is super well connected and brilliant at helping you network and get to know different people and opening up opportunities for you, and making sure there's a huge amount of money in the laboratory so that you can carry out your research, then perhaps you find some of the day-to-day support where you just need some reassurance, you need people to sense-check whether your paragraphs are clear and those sorts of things. Maybe you try and find that support somewhere else.  </p> <p> It's about knowing that your supervisor gives amazing feedback, but it sometimes takes them a while to do it. So ensuring that during that time you've given yourself other things that you can be getting on with so you don't feel like you're being held back by the fact that they've been slow to give feedback. </p> <p> It is about knowing your supervisor and expecting them to be who they have always been. And as long as that's within the realms of acceptable, then we accept it. They're human beings. </p> <p> If you're a supervisor, exactly the same goes the other way. I've seen a lot of supervisors have constant frustration that their PhD students aren't a particular way when that student has never been like that. They've never been someone who's fast at writing or they've never been somebody who speaks up in seminars, but they have a whole ton of other qualities which make them an amazing PhD student for you. </p> <p> We get to accept and nurture all of those sides while helping them develop some of the things they find difficult, but not expecting them to be different than the way they are. </p> <p> My third tip is be really careful what you make things mean. I coach a lot of PhD students. I have free monthly group coaching. If you're interested in that, you can sign up on my website at www.thephdlifecoach.com/work-with-me. and I have just launched a membership at the University of Birmingham where they have 18 months of two sessions a week, of live coaching with me. If that's something that you think your university should do, get in touch, show them my website, tell them all about it.  </p> <p> But during that coaching, one of the things I see a lot is the stories that students generate about the behaviour of their supervisors. So if a supervisor doesn't reply to an email, I see students make that mean that they are a low priority to the supervisor, or they make it mean that they must not be very good at their PhD because otherwise the supervisor would take more time and attention. Or they make it mean they must have written something stupid in their email and the person just doesn't even want to respond, rather than taking it at the face value that they haven't replied to your email. </p> <p> There's a whole lot of reasons that have got nothing to do with you and nothing to do with the relationship as to why they might not have replied to that email. </p> <p> I see the same thing with supervisors who take ages to get their comments back, and we all know they exist. I've been that supervisor sometime, I've seen those supervisors. I've had students talk to me about waiting several weeks, several months for comments on their drafts, for example, and making that mean, “oh, the supervisor must just be too busy. You know, they'll get to me when they can get to me. They're just too busy at the moment”, or making it mean I'm not a priority or I'm not important. </p> <p> And even the one that sounds kind, the sort of understanding, “oh, they're just super busy at the moment. They'll get to it when they can”, even that is a big assumption. You are trying to kind of second guess why, you're creating meaning from the fact they haven't got back to you, when it's possible that the reason they haven't got back to you is because they have forgotten entirely that they said they'd do it. </p> <p> So it might not be that they're too busy and that they'll get to it when they can. It may not even be on their to-do list anymore because they have rubbish systems and they have no idea who they've committed what to. We've seen that. So just be really careful the meaning that you're putting on things.  </p> <p> Again, I feel like I'm putting caveats into every single one of these, but I think it's super important because this is a really, it's a really delicate issue, this relationship between supervisor and supervisee. And unfortunately there have been many occasions where the supervision hasn't been acceptable, the behavior hasn't been acceptable.  </p> <p> So just to be clear, again, if somebody is saying inappropriate things or things that you find offensive or upsetting, this isn't about gaslighting yourself, about that, about saying, “oh, I shouldn't interpret them like that”, but it is thinking. What am I making those comments mean about me, for example. So if you are experiencing inappropriate comments from your supervisor, you might find that you find yourself thinking, “and this means I can't finish my PhD and this means I don't belong in this department and this means that no one will support me”, and those sorts of things. </p> <p> So this is not about talking you out of interpretations that you are making of behavior because you're experiencing what you're experiencing. It's about thinking about what you're making that mean about you and your future.  </p> <p> Tip four, focus on what you are bringing. So all of us spend probably too much time thinking about what other people should do better and not necessarily thinking about what we can do. And sometimes the belief that the other person in the relationship, so the supervisor in this case, is not doing their side of the bargain, sometimes gets in the way of us doing our side of the bargain. </p> <p> So one example where I see this a lot with PhD students is where they believe that the supervisor isn't interested in their research. So they have this belief, it feels very real to them. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Who knows? But the belief feels very real to them. And what that does is it starts to affect how they interact with the supervisor. </p> <p> They start telling the supervisor less often what they're doing. They avoid talking to the supervisor. They don't send them a cool new graph or a cool new document that they found. Um, because. Believe that the supervisor isn't interested in what they do. </p> <p> So focusing on what you're bringing, I think, is really important. What would you do iff you had a great relationship with your supervisor? Try and embody that as much as you can. So if you believed your supervisor really cared about your research, how would you behave? </p> <p> You'd probably update them more regularly with more enthusiasm. You'd probably look forward to your meetings so that you can tell them all about it. You can create that anyway. If you spend less time believing that your supervisor's not interested and more time believing that you are someone who has interesting research, then you can really create an environment where you feel much more interesting and feel like you're doing interesting research. </p> <p> So focus on bringing your side of the supervisor supervisee relationship. </p> <p> Tip five slightly different. Treat them like a sense check rather than like a boss. So there's a massive transition going from an undergraduate, a master's, into a PhD. You go from having really strict assessment criteria, clear assessment information, through to having much more control over the direction of your research, the progress, the timeline, and all of those things. And for a lot of people, understandably, that can be a real challenge and something that you really need to get used to. </p> <p> And again, I've seen this from both sides. I've had students saying, I've really just wish my supervisor would just give me some more guidance. And the supervisor saying, oh, they just don't have direction. They come and expect me to tell them what to do, but really I want them, I want to see them telling me what they want to do. </p> <p> And then sometimes the flip happens that the supervisor decides that the student perhaps lacks direction and needs more guidance, and so they start giving more guidance and then the student feels really controlled and as though the supervisor doesn't trust them. So I want you to really think about here is how can you treat them as a sense check. </p> <p> One bit of advice I always give PhD students is ask yourself, what would I do if I didn't have a supervisor and go to your supervisor with that. So instead of saying, I've got too many things on at the moment. I don't know whether to focus on the paper or on the presentation, go to your supervisor and say, I've got too many things on at the moment. </p> <p> I've got the paper, I've got the presentation. I think it's a priority to focus on the presentation because actually that's coming up more quickly and once that's out the way, I have a good few weeks to focus on the writing. Does that sound good to you, or is there something else I should take into account? </p> <p> Similarly, when you're asking for feedback on writing saying, it's too long. Can you give me some ideas about how to shorten it? That's okay. At least you're giving some specific requests to your supervisor, but much better to say it's too long. I've marked in blue where I think I could shorten it, bits that I think I would remove. Can you have a look and see whether I'm omitting anything that could be really important or whether I'm leaving in things that actually could go.  </p> <p> So when you start to switch it up, instead of saying, what should I do, you are saying, I think I should do this. What do you think? Is there anything I've missed? Massively changes the relationship and sometimes your supervisor will go, nah, sorry, think you're wrong. We need to do this instead. Other times your supervisor will go, yep, cool. Sounds good. Let's go.  </p> <p> Either way, they've seen you take ownership over your project and suggest ways it could be improved or directions for the future, which means you are demonstrating to them that you have the potential to be an independent researcher.  </p> <p> It also gives you both information. It tells you, oh, actually hang on. We are not on the same page with this. Why are we not on the same page? How do we manage that? Whereas when we just go, I think it's too long, what should I shorten? The supervisor's got no idea what you would do if it wasn't for them. </p> <p> If you say, which should I prioritize? The supervisor's got no way of knowing which you would've chosen if it wasn't for them. So treat your supervisor like a sense check rather than a boss.  </p> <p> So the five tips.  </p> <p> 1) Explore what a great relationship means to you. What exactly are you looking for? Is it reasonable? Do you need to get all of it from your supervisor? And how can you nurture the bits that you really, really do need?  </p> <p> 2) Tip two, don't expect them to be anyone except who they are. Not accepting unacceptable behaviour, but know your supervisor, know their strengths and their weaknesses, and make sure you're asking them for the right things.  </p> <p> 3) Number three, be careful what you make things mean. Be aware of the stories we build in our head and the the interpretations that we bring to things. It's not saying you have to reject them, but be aware that they are a story in your head and be careful which ones you choose to focus on. </p> <p> 4) Number four, focus on bringing your side. How can you be the best student in this relationship and be the best version of yourself?  </p> <p> 5) And number five is treat your supervisor like a sense check rather than like a boss.  </p> <p> I really hope you found that useful today. I would love to hear more about how you're getting on with these things. Always contact me on Twitter @drvikkiburns. Um, you can check out my, um, website, www.thephdlifecoach.com to find out more ways to work with me to sign up for my newsletter, all of those things. Hope to see you all at monthly free coaching as well, and you can get information about all of that on my website. </p> <p> So next week we're going to think about what you should do if you've got an actually problematic relationship with your supervisor, where you should go for support, what you should expect, how you can manage yourself in that difficult situation. </p> <p> Look forward to speaking with you next week and thinking more about how we can improve these supervisory relationships. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> Mon, 13 Feb 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/18-how-to-have-a-great-relationship-with-your-supervisor https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/17-why-you-should-never-cross-things-off-your-to-do-list-and-what-you-should-do-instead In this episode I talk about the way PhD students and academics spend so much time looking what they need to do next that they forget to recognise what they've done. I introduce the "well done list" and show you how it can help you build confidence and productivity. <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script>   <p> </p> <p> <i> In this episode I talk about the way PhD students and academics spend so much time looking what they need to do next that they forget to recognise what they've done. I introduce the "well done list" and show you how it can help you build confidence and productivity.  </i> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> I mention a book in the episode called The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy. You can find more about it <a href="https://gapandgainbook.com/" target="_blank"> here </a> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 17 of the PhD Life Coach. I want you to think about your to-do list. Maybe while you're listening to this, you can see it in front of you. Maybe it's at home. Is it on a piece of paper? Is it on your computer? I want you to really visualize your to-do list, and I want you to think about what you do when you complete a task. </p> <p> Do you cross it out? Do you delete it? What happens to those tasks when they've been completed?  </p> <p> In today's episode, I'm going to talk about why you shouldn't be crossing them off and what I think you should do instead. But I want to start by telling you a little bit of some of the things I see when I'm coaching PhD students and academics.  </p> <p> I coach everybody from PhD students through to full professors, and I've really noticed some patterns recently in the things that people are talking about. So the first thing I've really noticed is people struggling with their confidence, feeling that they're not good enough to be at the level they're at, and believing that when they get the next thing, they'll feel better.  </p> <p> So whatever stage people are at, they seem to believe that when they finish their PhD or when they get their first published article, or when they get their first grant or their first job, or their first permanent job, whatever level it is for you, that they will feel more confident and feel like they deserve the place they have. </p> <p> But what's fascinating when you coach such a range of people, as I do, is I see this at every level. So I have my PhD student saying, I'll feel better once I've got a job. I'll be more confident then because I'll know I'm good at what I do. But my people who are early career are looking at the next people and saying, yeah, but I haven't got a permanent job, I haven’t got a tenure track job. </p> <p> Then the people that have got permanent jobs are going “Yeah. But I'll feel better once I've got senior lecturer or associate professor. I'll feel better when I've got full professor”, and then I've got clients who are full professors who still lack confidence in big chunks of the work that they do. </p> <p> The flip side of that is I often notice that the very same clients who think they'll feel better when they reach the next stage, also have a complete disregard for things they've achieved already. </p> <p> So when I ask them what their goals used to be, to imagine a time when they were dreaming of being on a PhD program, or a time when they were dreaming of having their first research job, they often struggle to take themselves back to that. They often downplay the achievement, so they'll say, “oh yeah, I got my PhD, but you know, I scrabbled through. I dunno how it happened. Yeah, it was a bit of a nightmare, but I got there in the end. Anyway. I'll feel better, more confident once I've got a permanent job.” </p> <p> Or instead of downplaying what they've done, they just don't even think about it at all. You know, when I ask them about it, it's the first time that they've stopped thought about all the things that they've achieved up until now.  </p> <p> Now this is something that is talked about in a book called The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. </p> <p> I recommend having a look at it, not necessarily reading the entire book, but I really like some of the ideas in this book. What they talk about is how we often focus on the gap between where we are now and where we want to get to, rather than thinking about the gain i.e. the difference between where we are now and where we were previously. </p> <p> Because this is what I see. It's almost like these academics are on a treadmill where they're only ever looking forwards. They're sort of marching along towards the next goal where they feel that they'll feel happy and they'll feel confident and settled. But as soon as they get, as soon as they get there, the goalposts move. </p> <p> Do you have goalposts on, on a treadmill? Who knows? Go with it. Probably not. But they're going along and they get to the next milestone and they just keep going. Because now they've got that one, they want the next milestone. </p> <p> And it means at no point do they reach this marvellous land where they feel confident and secure in their abilities. And it's just really sad to see because people genuinely believe it'll be better when they get there. And I know people who are there and they're not.  </p> <p> It made me think about climbing a hill. Now I love hiking. I love that feeling of being out in the countryside, climbing up a hill, figuring out the way, sort of pushing yourself, but enjoying the fresh air and the challenge. And one of the best things about climbing a hill is always the view and not just the view from the top, but the view on the way up.  </p> <p> And so one of the things I used to love to do when I was hiking was decide it was time for a little sandwich break and sit on a rock facing the way we came, eat my sandwiches, and look out to see how far we've come. And the car park, wherever you started, always looks so far away and you can get a real sense of satisfaction from sitting and resting and just going “I walked all the way up here. Check me out. That's cool.”  </p> <p> And it struck me that what a lot of my clients, a lot of the people that I see on social media are doing is they're never turning around to look at the view. They're just looking at the next peak. So they're just looking at the hill, just gotta keep going. “I'll feel better when I'm at the top. Keep going. I'll feel better when I'm at the top. Keep going.” </p> <p> And then when they get to the top, and if those of you who have hiked might have experienced this, sometimes you get to the bit that you think's the top and then you see another peak rising in front of you and you realize actually you've just reached a bit of a ridge, a bump on the way. </p> <p> And that's what's happening with my clients is they get to the next peak and they thought it was the peak where they were going to feel satisfied, but actually they just see ahead of them, there's more mountain and they keep going. And so now they're like, “Ugh, right, gotta climb that bit now let's go. Come on, let's go.” And they just focus on what needs to come next.  </p> <p> So when you are climbing towards your next peak, I want you to remember to turn around and enjoy the view from where you are at the moment. Because you've come a really long way, and I am willing to bet that you spend far more time thinking about how far you have to go than thinking about where you are and how far you've come. </p> <p> And this is what takes me back to the to-do list. So the title of this episode is Why You Should Never Cross Things Off Your To-Do List and What to Do Instead. The problem with crossing things off your to-do list is you get momentary satisfaction of crossing it off and then it's gone. </p> <p> You are now only looking at the tasks that are still on your to-do list. You've literally crossed out the thing that you've done. I bet at the beginning when I asked you to think about your to-do list, you couldn't tell me what the crossed out things were. In fact, when I've asked people to do this and actually show me their to-do list, often they can't even read their crossed out things because they scribbled them out so hard or they actually deleted them out of their to-do list system online. </p> <p> And this really emphasizes this kind of treadmill approach of, “okay, done that. What's next? Okay, done that. What's next?” And doesn't give us that moment of actually enjoying where we are.  </p> <p> Why is that so important? Because otherwise the treadmill becomes thankless. At no point do you feel confident because you're still just looking at this gap between where you are and where you should be. </p> <p> And at no point do you say, well done, or congratulations to yourself because you're still short of where you want to be. If we go back to my very first episode where I talked about being your own best supervisor and thinking about your inner voice as essentially your boss. If you had a boss that never said “well done” for the things you've got done, it wouldn't be a very fun place to work. If the second you told them you'd finished a task. They just gave you another task and completely forgot the things that you'd done. It wouldn't feel good. It wouldn't feel like a nurturing place to work yet. That's what we do to ourselves. all the time.  </p> <p> So what should you do instead? You may have heard of an idea called the Done List, and this is where instead of writing down all the things that you have to do, you write down the things that you've done. Now, I like it to go alongside a to-do list. I still find the to-do useful, but a Done List helps you reflect at the end of the day, at the end of the week on what things you actually have done. </p> <p> The other reason this is useful is because often we end up doing a bunch of stuff that never made it onto our to-do list in the first place. Someone comes into your office and asks you something, somebody's broken something in the lab and you go fix it, whatever it might be, that kind of reactive stuff that we all end up doing. It never even makes it onto a list, let alone get crossed out, and then you forget that you've done it and you suddenly get to Friday and you go, hang on, how's this? Where is this week gone? I don't understand what I've done because you haven't made any record of what you've done. And that's where the done list comes in. </p> <p> But we're not going to stop with a done list. People have talked about a done list before. I have another step for you. I want you to make it your Well Done List. So we are not just going to list what you've done because sure, that can help you. That can sort of be a reflection of the tasks that you've achieved. </p> <p> But we are not just our behaviours. We want to actually generate a feeling. And if we're going to generate a feeling, a feeling of confidence, a feeling of pride, then we need to think about what we're thinking. A </p> <p> And so on your well done list, I want you to write: </p> <p> - I am so pleased I got that abstract written. </p> <p> - I'm really proud of myself for responding to those reviewers comments.  </p> <p> - I'm so glad I got my personal development review paperwork finished.  </p> <p> - I'm so glad I figured out where my statistics were going wrong.  </p> <p> So you are really writing not just what you did, but that you are proud of yourself. You are pleased with yourself that you got it done. </p> <p> You are really trying to instil a habit of congratulating yourself for the things that you do. You could even be more specific, not just con sort of empty congratulations. You could even say:  </p> <p> - I'm so pleased that I stuck with that because I was struggling to figure out what was going wrong in my syntax. But actually I stuck with it and I figured it out. </p> <p> - I'm so pleased I did that presentation because I was feeling quite scared beforehand, but I overcame that and did it anyway and I think it went quite well.  </p> <p> So you can start to actually compliment the behaviours that enabled you to do the thing or the thoughts that enabled you to do the thing. So what you are really doing is you are encouraging your brain to pay attention to the things you've achieved. You are reminding your brain to be kind and compassionate and supportive about these things.  </p> <p> If you had people working for you, who'd done some really good work, you’d tell them that and you'd hopefully tell them why you were so impressed. </p> <p> Not just well done, but also I know that was hard for you and you got it done so I'm really chuffed with that Great job. Let's learn to say those things to ourselves.  </p> <p> So I encourage you, have a little play with it this week. Have an experiment with starting a well done list where you congratulate yourself for the things you've got done. </p> <p> I'm actually experimenting with this in my planner. Those of you who've been with me since the beginning will know that my second episode was about why you don't need another planner. But I succumbed and bought a beautiful planner. It's very lovely and if I stick to it the way I am at the moment, I'm going to tell you all about in a future podcast, how I'm using my planner as a well done list. </p> <p> But in the meantime, just grab a piece of paper and start your well done list for this week. Let's start focusing on being pleased with how much we have done rather than beating ourselves up for where we are next. It will improve your present day by changing your mood in the moment, but I also believe it will improve your productivity. </p> <p> If you know that this isn't a thankless task, that when you get this done, you are going to be really nice to yourself, you are much more likely to say, “Ooh, I'll just get this bit done too. Oh yeah, I can just finish that off because then I can write it on my well done list.” So really use it as a way to cheer yourself along and achieve the goals you've set for this week. </p> <p> Let me know on Twitter how you get on with it. I would love to hear some of the things that you write on your well done list. You can find me as usual @drvikkiburns, the PhD Life Coach. Let me know how you get on and give yourself lots of credit for everything you get done this week. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> Mon, 06 Feb 2023 05:45:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/17-why-you-should-never-cross-things-off-your-to-do-list-and-what-you-should-do-instead https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/16-how-to-tell-your-story-and-get-the-recognition-you-deserve-part-3 In the final part of this series, we think about the story you tell about yourself. What story do you really believe about yourself? Perhaps you believe you're slow at writing. Perhaps you believe that you always get distracted. We'll work through why these stories can lead to some really negative consequences and how you can challenge them and build different stories about yourself. This isn't about "positive thinking", it's about focusing on the stories that make you feel good and help you build the life you want. <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <h3> <iframe> </iframe> </h3> </div> <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> In the final part of this series, we think about the story you tell about yourself. What story do you really believe about yourself? Perhaps you believe you're slow at writing. Perhaps you believe that you always get distracted. We'll work through why these stories can lead to some really negative consequences and how you can challenge them and build different stories about yourself. This isn't about "positive thinking", it's about focusing on the stories that make you feel good and help you build the life you want. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Transcript </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 16 of the PhD Life Coach. This is the third of a three-part series where we think about how you tell your story. Now, if you haven't listened to the first two parts of this, don't worry too much actually, because whilst this is connected, it's a little bit more distinct. So in the first session, we thought about how you tell your academic story and why that's important, how that can help you get jobs, get promotions, get awards, and then in part two last week, we really got down into the nitty gritty of how to do that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So if you want to think about that side of things, go back and listen to those. This week is connected but different. So this week we're thinking about the story you tell about yourself. So this isn't you as an academic. This is the story you tell about yourself as a person. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> So what I want you to do is listen to these sentence starters and finish them for you. So how would you finish the sentence… </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I never, blah, blah, blah. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I struggle to blah, blah, blah, blah. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> I always. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> and </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I'm not good at. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> How would you finish those sentences, particularly in this case with reference to you in your PhD or in academia? So you, in that sort of academic, professional context, how would you finish those sentences? I never, I struggle to, I always, I'm not good at. So as an example for me, things I used to believe, stories I used to tell about myself. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I never stick to plans. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I struggle to get going on tasks. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I always get distracted. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I'm not good at mundane paperwork. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And if you ask me now, are those things true? They probably are, to be fair to some extent. But I spend so much less time thinking about them. So what I want to do in this episode is think about what thoughts you have, what the consequences of those thoughts are, and how, if you want to change that story about yourself, how you might think about doing that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So let’s think, how do those thoughts make you feel? You pick your own ones, but for me, the thought I never stick to my plans makes me feel shame. It makes me feel frustration. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Not only are those emotions not particularly pleasant to feel, they lead to actions that don't help me achieve the things I want to achieve. They don't help me live the life that I want to live. So if I'm feeling shame, that usually leads to avoidance. It means I don't want to really think about what I've planned and why it hasn't worked and how I could perhaps plan it differently, were they realistic plans and all of those things. I want to make it go away. I want to moan about it. I want to go on social media. I want to eat food that I think cheers me up. Shame leads to a whole lot of avoidant behaviors essentially that usually result in me not being any more likely to stick to plans in the future. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If I think I always get distracted, then my feeling is maybe frustrated. And again, I don't then try and solve for it. I don't start exploring, how could I address this? I beat myself up. I tell myself I shouldn't. I just need to focus. You just need to focus Vikki. That's all you need to do. You just need to focus. And so again, it leads to either external actions where we sort of physically do something or internal actions where it's thoughts that go round our head. If I think the thought, I'm easily distracted, I also then end up beating myself up about that to some extent. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> How do you feel when you think the stories that you came up with? If you came up with some positive ones, amazing, happy days. Love it. How did that make you feel? What actions do you take from those? So perhaps you responded to, I always with “I always keep to my word” perhaps, and maybe that made you feel proud. What do you do when you feel proud? So really take a couple of minutes to have a think about the sentences that you came up with and how they make you feel. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Now, one thing that's really important to notice here is it's actually not even the thought we've identified that generates the feeling. So let's pick one at mine – “I never stick to plans.” Now the thought I never stick to plans doesn't automatically lead to frustration or shame or any of those emotions that we were talking about. For some of you, the thought I never stick to plans might lead to ambivalence. It might lead to pride because actually you revel in being somebody who makes it up on the fly and does well in those ways. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> The key thing to remember here is the emotion comes from what you make that thought mean? What's the silent bit of that thought? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So if the bit we're saying out loud is I never stick to my plans, what's the silent bit? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I never stick to my plans and I should. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I never stick to my plans so I'm disorganized and my life is chaos. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I never stick to my plans, which makes me unreliable. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> I never stick to my plans and good academics do stick to their plans, so I can't be a good academic. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> One I hear a lot. Is implications for your progress in your career. So when I coach PhD students in our group coaching sessions, I often hear “I struggle to get going on tasks, and so I'm not going to finish my PhD”. “And so my supervisor thinks I'm useless”. And so maybe for those of you who are further through your careers, and “so I won't get promoted, I won't get recognized”. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So really take a minute to think for those thoughts you identified that story you tell about yourself. What are you making that mean? Because that's the bit that's causing the emotion. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If you are struggling to figure that out, what you could try and do is write down some of those sentences that you are having and actually ask your brain, what am I making it mean? There's something about writing that sometimes stimulates thoughts that we didn't even really know were in there. So if you're struggling to think, what am I making that mean? That can be a really good way to open up. And don't think that that means you have to journal every day for 30 minutes. It means grab a piece of paper and a pen and write for three minutes. So that can be a way to sort of uncover some of these more hidden thoughts that you might not spend much time pondering about. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So what do we do with this? What do we do with this recognition that maybe the thoughts we have about ourselves and the stories we tell people about ourselves might be eliciting emotions that actually are holding us back. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> They're stopping us enjoying our lives, they're stopping us getting stuff done. What do we do with that? I would like to offer you three steps to go through in this situation. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So first step is I want you to pick apart the original thought. So if we take “I never stick to plans.” In what ways is that not true? In what ways do you stick to plans? When have you stuck to plans before? In what situations are you more likely to stick to plans? </span> </p> <p> <span> So really pick apart is that initial statement even true? And what evidence is there that it's not true at least some of the time. Because that's a really important point here. Sometimes we say these things as though they're a hundred percent true, whereas maybe they're true 30% of the time. Maybe they're true half the time, but they're almost certainly not true all the time. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So when do you stick to your plans? Really try and pick apart that initial thought that you have about yourself, that initial story that you tell about yourself. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Then I want you to think about the meaning that you are attributing to it. So if you are attributing the “because, I never stick to plans, I won't finish my PhD”. In what ways is that not true? In what ways do people who don't stick to plans finish their PhDs every single day? I very much identified as somebody who didn't stick to plans and probably still do identify that way to some extent. I finished my PhD, I finished my postdoc, I went all the way through my academic career with those beliefs. In what ways could it be perfectly fine that you never stick to plans? That it doesn't mean those negative things at all. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So we're thinking about ways the original thought is not true, we're thinking about ways the meaning you are attributing to it is not true, and then finally, I want you to think what else is true. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Because sometimes maybe it's true, maybe you never stick to plans, and maybe that does mean that you are disorganized. Okay? What else is true? For example, for me, one of the things my colleague Jen Cumming, you'll be familiar with her, if you've listened to my podcast about the strength-based review of the year. If you haven't check it out. It's amazing. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> One thing that Jen always reminds me when I'm moaning about being disorganized is that I am super good at getting things done in a very short amount of time. and she's right. That is also true. So it is true that I don't always stick to my plans. Notice that I've changed that from, I never stick to my plans to, I don't always stick to my plans. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> It is absolutely true that I don't always stick to my plans, but it's also true that I can get an enormous amount of work done in a couple of hours. So what is also true for you? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Because sometimes we're not looking to even make the unhelpful thought not true. Maybe we are just making it something that is true, but that we are not spending lots of time thinking. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So some things that I know are true about me, I can get so much done in a couple of hours. I keep coming back to things that are important to me. So instead of telling myself the story, that I don't stick to things, that I get distracted easily, I tell myself I keep coming back to things that mean a lot to me, and that's true. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That feels really true. That feels just as true as the idea that I get distracted easily. I tell myself, I love getting on with boring admin jobs when I haven't got enough brain to do the other things. And that's true. I actually do, there's something about in the afternoon when I can't really be bothered to record something or write something to be able to just go, I'm just going to tidy up these files, look at me sorting it out. I actually do and I try and tell myself the story, the true story “I love it when things are all organized”. And I do, it makes me all like da da. All neat, all nice colored pens. I've got some new colored pens recently. Love them. And the story, I love it when things are all organized, feels super true for me. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> The story “I'm not good at keeping things organized” also feels super true. But notice the difference in those. If I think the thought, I'm not good at keeping things organized, I feel frustrated, I distract myself on social media. If I think the thought, I love it when things are all organized, I'm much more likely to start sort of tidying things up and putting things away and going do, do, do, and organizing my little life. So those are some of the thoughts that really help me. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Now I want to work you through an example of all of this that I think will be really pertinent to lots of you. So in my online group coaching sessions that I run for PhD students, one of the things I hear a lot is students struggling with writing and I know, academics, this doesn't miraculously fix itself once you get a job. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And I know a lot of you struggle with writing as well, both in terms of finding time for it and in terms of feeling that you are good enough at it. So some of the thoughts I hear a lot from clients are things like: </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> -       I'm not good at writing </span> </p> <p> <span> -       I've never been good at writing </span> </p> <p> <span> -       I can write, but I'm slower than everybody else. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> -       It takes me so much longer to get writing done. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> -       I'm writing in another language so it's harder for me. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> All of these thoughts feel really true, and sometimes if I asked you to, you could probably find evidence that these things are true. But what I notice when I talk to clients is there's that second layer of meaning. There's that invisible part of the sentence that we talked about. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So here the thought I always find writing difficult can lead to, and therefore I might not be able to finish my thesis. The thought I'm slower than other people at writing can lead to “And therefore I'm never going to get my thesis done if I don't give up my evenings or weekends.” The thought I'm not good at this can mean I'm never going to make it as an academic. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So really keep an eye out for those meanings. Those are ones I notice a lot with my clients, but the good news is that we can pick this apart using that three-part method that I mentioned. So in what ways isn't it true that you're slower at writing than other people? In what ways isn't it true that you really struggle with writing? What writing have you got done in the past? When have you received good feedback on your writing? When have you enjoyed the writing process? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> There will definitely be examples of that. So really dredge your memory and try and figure out times when this thought hasn't been true. Times when it's not always true. Times where maybe writing isn't a positive, but it's fine, you get on with it because that's what you're doing. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Then think about the meaning you're putting behind it. Does it really mean that because you are writing in a second language that you are going to struggle to finish your PhD? Is that true? Or do people who are writing in second languages finish their PhDs every single day of the week? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Is it true that you have to give up your whole work life balance because you are slower at writing than other people? Is that true or are there ways of maintaining a work-life balance while also acknowledging that sometimes you can take a little while to get bits of writing done? In what ways would maintaining or good work-life balance make it more likely that you'll keep going and that you'll be more likely to get that writing done even if you do it at your own pace? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And then finally, what else is true? Is it true you really want to write this thesis? Is it true that you really care about the research you are doing? Is it true that you want to make a difference in the lives of the end users of the research that you are doing? Is it true that you find it really satisfying when you see a piece of research? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Is it true, and this is a big one. Is it true that you can write a rubbish first draft? Because often when I ask students, are you good at writing? They say no. But when I say, can you write a bad first draft? They say Yes. And they're like, yeah, of course I can. I can write a bad essay. I can write a bad paper. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Happy days. Let's do that then. Because once we've done that, all we've got to believe is that we can edit it. But often we use this story that I'm bad at writing to mean that we can't even start. I can believe I'm bad at writing, but tell myself the story that I can write a bad first draft, and that is far more likely to spin me into action. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So think about your examples. If you tell yourself that you are currently confused about something, would it be easier to tell yourself “I'm someone who likes to think things through. I'm taking some time to think this through.” If you're somebody who tells yourself I'm not good at small talk, how would it feel different if you told yourself “I'd like to watch things for a while before I join in”? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's all stories. Everything we tell ourselves, everything we tell other people are all stories. And these stories have consequences for our emotions and for our actions and therefore for our results. So choose those stories carefully. Choose how you tell them to yourself and choose how you tell them to other people. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now, in terms of other people, one thing I've really noticed on my own journey is the story I tell myself., it's changed faster than the story I tell other people. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I very rarely tell myself that I'm super disorganized and that means I'm useless. I used to a lot, but I very rarely do that now. Now I'm much more likely to tell myself that I like being organized, to tell myself that if I haven't done it already, I can just get it done now, to tell myself that just because things are disorganized doesn't mean I'm not getting things done. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So I'm much more likely to do those things. However, one thing I've noticed recently is that sometimes I still say, oh, I'm just always disorganized and useless To other people, it's like a habitual response and it's only when people turn around to say, oh, don't say that to yourself that I go, yeah, I don't actually even believe that. I don’t know why I said that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And that's okay too. Changing the way we think, changing the stories we tell about ourselves is a lifelong process is not something that you're going to come on a six week program with me and fix. There's nothing about you that needs fixing. We just get to think a little more about the stories we tell ourselves and what consequences they have, and then we get to decide whether we like that or not, whether those stories are serving us. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And if they're not, what other stories can we tell? And it's not about making up blue sky affirmations. It's not about believing that we are the most amazing beings of all time. It's picking a different story that we also believe is true and giving that equal air time. Giving it equal air time in our heads, giving it equal air time when we tell other people, and practicing those new stories and seeing what consequences they have and whether we like them or not. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And if you want support on that journey, do look me up on the PhD life coach.com where you can see all the different ways that you can work with me at the moment. Thank you for listening, and I will see you next week. </span> </p> </div> Mon, 30 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT 183:934800289 (Victoria Burns) https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/16-how-to-tell-your-story-and-get-the-recognition-you-deserve-part-3 https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/15-how-to-tell-your-story-and-get-the-recognition-you-deserve-part-2 <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <iframe> </iframe> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> <p> <span> <i> This is the second of a three part series about how to tell your academic story. You might want to listen to part 1 before you listen to this episode!  </i> </span> </p> <p> <span> <i> This time, I give you a step-by-step process to move from a busy, haphazard-feeling career to having a structured overview that you can use. From here, you can strategise and prioritise about what to focus on and use the document to apply for jobs, plan for promotion and apply for awards and recognitions. </i> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If you want to sign up for my newsletter and/or enquire about working with me, you can do that here: <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/work-with-me"> https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/work-with-me </a> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 15 of the PhD Life Coach. This is the second of a three-part series about how to craft your own academic story. Often we feel like we're ploughing along, pulled by all the different demands of our jobs, and we don't always feel like we're in charge of our academic story and where we spend our time and what things we actually achieve. </span> </p> <p> <span> So in this three part series, we started last week thinking about why it might feel so much better to have a story and what advantages that might have for applying for promotion, jobs, awards, recognition, and all of that good stuff. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> This episode today, part two of the series, is going to focus exactly on how to do that. But if you haven't listened to part one, which is episode 14, please do go back and listen to that first. It can be really tempting to jump straight to the how to do it. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> In fact, that's what we usually do in our lives. We make to-do lists. What actions do I need to take? Tell me the actions bit and I'll get on with that. And we often don't spend the time thinking about, what do I think about these actions? What do I believe about these actions? How do I feel about them? What emotions am I having? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So I really want you to go back to part one, episode 14. Listen to that first, really understand why this might be useful, and really consider some of the thoughts and feelings you might be having about it before you actually embark on this task. So if you haven't done it already, stop now. Go back to that episode. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If you have listened to that episode, fabulous. Really hope you found it useful. And this session is going to be way more step by step, way more pragmatic and you're going to have some tasks to do. So what I'd suggest you do is you listen to this all the way through, but then I would come back to it and actually go through it one bit at a time </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I'm going to give you each of the steps you need to do, and because I'm my coach, I'm also going to try and anticipate some of the thoughts and feelings you might be having along the way and help you to work through those so that you can do this in a really positive way. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> This is going to be particularly useful for writing about teaching, leadership, administration, any of those things that traditionally are harder to write about in promotions and job applications. Because we don't just get to go, oh, I published this there, I got this much grant income, it is so much harder and so much more important to have a story. However, don't switch off if you are mostly research or you really want to think about crafting your research story, because you really can use these tactics for that side of your career as well. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Often if you are a well-rounded academic, as I would like to call it, someone who does lots of research and who does lots of good teaching, looks after the students, does leadership stuff too. Some of you guys are my favourite academics. This approach can really help you figure out what your story is. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So what are the steps? Well, the first step is going to sound like a strange one. I want you to go digging around in your emails and your files, and I want you to find at least three nice things that people have said about you. So this might be feedback on teaching evaluations. It might be emails thanking you after you've done something. It might be reviews of a book or comments on an article. Anything. Go and find three nice things that people have said about you. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And we do this for two reasons. From a really pragmatic point of view, we are going to be digging around in our files to find evidence that we've had impact, evidence that we've changed things and had influence. So this starts getting you poking around in whatever your archives are. Archives might be a big word for it. Mine were always a bit of a shambles. But your storage systems, whatever they look like. So we need to get poking around in them to be able to do the rest of this. And this is a nice way to start. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The other reason I get you to do this first is just because it's nice. Often as academics we feel like we work super hard and people don't necessarily appreciate us and while sometimes that might be true or at least feel true to you, it's not a mindset that makes this work easy to do. If we are going into this feeling like we're overworked and underappreciated and all of those things, it just makes the whole process a little bit more painful. So let's try and make ourselves feel a little better before we start. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So once you've got your nice things, put them somewhere that you can see them, and then the first main task of this process is if you feel like you're spinning plates, let's figure out what plates we're spinning. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Grab a piece of paper and a pen, and I want you to start listing all the things you do in your current job. PhD students, this might be all the things that you do that are related to your academic work. So it might be if you have classes, anything to do with those, any research responsibilities you have, any community things you do. So if you organize seminars or any of those things, any paid work that you do within the department. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> For academics, this is going to include your research if you do research, teaching if you do teaching, any school administrative jobs that you have, any leadership roles, reviewing for journals, organizing conferences, any of those things. Please at the moment keep them as current things. You will have an opportunity to add past things in a minute, but keep it constrained to things you are doing that are actively spinning plates at the moment. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now, if you have any big administrative roles or you have big teaching jobs, I want you to split those out as well. So don't just write, I'm the module organizer for a module on exercise immunology. I want you to write module organizer for exercise immunology. I coordinate teaching, deliver 30 sessions, coordinate the marking, do the marking for the exam, blah, blah, blah. I want you to split it out. Don't split it out to, I write lecture one, I write lecture two, but split it out to the broad groups of things you do within that, because it's really important for us to understand all the components. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I used to be head of education in my school, so I oversaw all of our undergraduate and postgraduate taught programs and there were so many different bits to that job. And so you really need to spell out the different bits in each of these components. Don't underestimate, this might take you a little while. So when you're listening this through for the second time, so listen to it all once when you listen to it the second time, press pause, write about now, and go and get those all listed. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So when you come back you should be restarting with a list in front of you here. Many of you will be spinning personal plates as well. You may have work outside of your PhD that's nothing to do with your academics sphere. You may have family responsibilities, friends, community work, charity work, hobbies, fun etc. Those things super important. Listing them might be useful on a separate piece of paper, just so that you can see what other commitments you have, but it's not part of this main thing and you’ll see why as we go through. We're using this to structure our academic story. This is not a time management program. This is not about how you fit things into your life. This is about what's the story about you as an academic. So those things go over here and we'll consider later whether any of them do need to be in the story. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now, if you're coming back to this, having made that list, or even just at the thought of making that list, I want you just to take a second to check in and see how you're feeling right now. A lot of my clients, and when I did this, feel quite overwhelmed, we look at our list and go, oh my goodness, that's actually a lot of things. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Maybe you feel relieved that it's actually all out. in front of you and you can see it all in one place. Perhaps for many of you for the first time. Maybe you might feel like I did - my real feeling was a version of vindicated. That sounds more aggressive than I mean, but my thought was, oh, that's why you feel overwhelmed all the time. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Because I'd never written it out like that. And I always used to think that if I was just a little bit more organized, I could say on top of it all, and that the fact that I kept feeling like I was behind was because I was struggling with organization. I was struggling in prioritization, I was procrastinating, and those things were probably true but the reason was I looked at all this and I was just like, yeah, there's too many things. No one could do all of these things. And so there was part of me that actually felt quite vindicated, quite like, oh my goodness, I'm not, you know, I'm not being ridiculous here. There're just too many things. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So really have a think about what you are thinking. I'd love to hear in the comments if you are on YouTube or you can contact me on Twitter @drvikkiburns. Let me know what you were feeling while you were doing this. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Whatever you are feeling, absolutely fine. Try and figure out what thought it is that's creating that feeling, because it's not just looking at the list. You're having a thought about that list. Maybe you feel sad because your thought is “I shouldn't have to do this much” or “I've let this get out of hand”. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Or maybe you feel shame because you're looking at the list and going “actually, there's not much here. I should be able to handle this”. Whatever you are thinking and feeling at the moment, totally normal. Totally fine. Totally human. Okay? I just want you to notice it while we go through. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So we've now all got this big list in front of us. All these different jobs, all these different responsibilities, all these different projects, things we've committed to, things we want to do, and so on. I want you to get another piece of paper and I want you to divide it in four, in like quadrants, okay? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And in the top two boxes, I want you to write case one and case two. So one in each box. In the bottom left, I want you to write “heart”. And in the bottom right I want you to write “legwork” and those are like as little titles at the top of each box, so don't write them in massive because we're going to do lists in this. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And what we're doing here, in the least technical version of this possible, we're doing a mini thematic analysis. So what we're going to do - don't worry if you've never done that before, it's all going to make sense - What we're essentially going to do is we're going to look at our list of things that we're currently doing and see how they fit together and see where they fit. Now those four boxes, case one and case two are going to make up the main part of our academic story. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So I want you to be able to say, I specialize in X and Y. I am an expert in X and Y, in case one, and in case two. Now these need to be relatively narrow. Please don't have, “I specialize in exercise immunology and teaching excellence” because those are huge. I want you to get it down to “I specialize in “response to vaccination and how it's affected by exercise”. That used to be one of my specialties. And in “innovative assessments for undergraduate students”, for example. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> There is an infinite number of different cases you might have here. You may decide to put your research to one side and come up with two cases from the rest of what you do. You might want one research one, one teaching leadership one. You might want two research ones perhaps, if you're predominantly research, but I want them to be quite specific. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So when you're sort of looking at the things you do and the projects you're working on, you start slotting in. Okay, well that one's to do with that stuff, that one's to do with that stuff. That one doesn't really fit so we'll leave it where it is in a minute. So you try and split those out between these two main cases. If you're struggling to decide what those two cases are, don't worry too much. Look at what you are doing and see what things seem to cluster together. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We'll have a chance to review it and decide whether we like it or not later. But I want you to be going, Ooh, there's a bit of a cluster where I'm doing a whole load of work about immune responses to acute stress, for example. So we'll make that a case. Okay. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now these boxes at the bottom, what are they? “Heart” is for the things you do that you don't care whether they will ever fit in a promotion case ever again, you will keep doing them because they're important to you and to your sense of self and to your perception of your role as an academic. So you might have in there being a good personal tutor, answering student queries about careers in academia, mentoring junior staff, for example. </span> </p> <p> <span> Don't feel obliged to put any of those things in. This needs to genuinely be things that no matter whether you never get any recognition, any reward, any promotion for it, you truly believe are important and you will truly continue to do. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So those go in “heart”, and then in “legwork” you put anything that doesn't fit in the other boxes. Now, this could be jobs you've been given that don't fit with your priorities, but you need to do them. It could be academic jobs that you do for money because you need that. Maybe you've been asked to other modules that aren't necessarily your specialty or your favorite thing. All of that stuff goes in there. Anything that you committed to that doesn't really fit with your cases. So maybe you agreed to write a book chapter because you thought it would look good, but it doesn’t really fit with anything else but that was the topic you were asked to write about. Maybe it's reviewing for journals that don't fit neatly within your specialty. All of those things go in the “legwork” box. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> You might end up with things still on your list, most likely if it feels like there should be a third case or a fourth case. But generally speaking, I want you to try and get everything into one of those four boxes. If it doesn't fit neatly into your biggest two cases, it's legwork. Even if you think it probably is a case, at the moment, it's legwork. Because legwork is all the stuff that doesn't fit our priorities and doesn't fit our heart. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We don't love it. We probably see the value in it to some extent, but it's not stuff we're going to do for free forever, just because we love it and it's not stuff that's going to fit into any of the cases. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So you're listening to this for the second time, now's the time to pause it. Go do it. And if you're coming back or just listening through to see where we go, I want you to think about how you feel when you look at this or when you imagine looking at this grid. How are you feeling now? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Was that hard? What did you find hard about that? Did you struggle to narrow it down to two cases? That was always my problem. When I first did this, when I created this as a task for myself to try and straighten out what an earth was going on in my head and my to-do list, I genuinely could have had 6, 7, 8 cases probably, at minimum. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And that was only including the things I was doing now, not starting to look backwards or any of those things. It was hard to try and narrow it down. Other people go “There's not really any cases here. Those things are only tenuously linked. This is all a bit of a scattergun. I don't quite see how it fits together.” </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Maybe you've got one really clear cut case and then a load of stuff and you don't really know quite what your second case would be. Maybe you found it difficult because part of your brain is still telling you that you shouldn't have to think about your career like this. And I get it, I get it. And maybe this isn't the right time for you to be thinking about it, or maybe you want to go back and listen to part one again and remind yourself why you decided to do this. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Maybe you are finding it difficult because you don't think that academia should be as structured or strategic as this. And one thing I would just like you to consider here, you get to decide what your cases are. If you are somebody that believes, and I totally get it if you do, who believes that academia has become too commercialized, has become too self-serving, has become too much about self-promotion and telling your story and cases and blah, blah, blah. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If you don't like all that stuff, that's cool. You can make your cases mentoring other staff. You have a whole case about how you have supported everybody all around you and the successes that they've had and how you've helped them achieve that. You can make your cases about how you've made change in terms of how academic committees work, how teaching works, et cetera, et cetera. You get to decide. These cases don't have to be “and here's evidence that I'm amazing”. In fact, they shouldn't be “Here's evidence that I'm amazing”. They should be “Here's evidence that I'm doing something important”. That could be important in your discipline. It could be important for your students, for your colleagues. It doesn't have to be a self-serving story, and it works a lot better if it's not. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So, if those are the thoughts and feelings that you're having, really see if you could pull together two cases that you feel genuinely good about, that feel like part of that academic community that you want to believe exists, and that you want to help create or reinforce. </span> </p> <p> <span> So we've now got in front of us two fledgling cases, a load of heartwork and a load of legwork. And what we get to do now is decide how we're going to use this information. We're going to look at our cases and say, are these the cases that I want to build? Is there anything from my past that I've let go that I actually wish was a case instead of this other one? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Is there anything where you think, oh, I love this third case, this one that I'm doing bits and bobs of, and that's really what I want to pursue. But there's these other two ones that are kind of bigger at the moment. We get to decide what we want to do about that. We get to decide are any of these two current cases that we're holding ready to be wrapped up? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So if you've got a fledgling new case that you really want to put time and thought into, but you've got two existing quite strong cases that you've been working on for quite a while, how could you wrap one of them up? Tie a little bow on it and declare it finished as a case. This was what I worked on between 2016 and 2023 and my new case builds from here. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now in the program that I work through with my clients, I have a six session, 12 week program for people who want to really dig into their their academic story and how to tell it. I have detailed instructions as to how you can decide which cases to follow, which cases that you really want to strengthen and how to strengthen them. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> In short though, what they is to basically demonstrate that you are creating impact, whether that's in your discipline, whether it's in your sector, in your school, your university, your research area, whatever it is, they need to show why you are one of the go-to people on this particular topic, and how that discipline or university is better for having you there. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Next, you look at your heartwork Firstly, be grateful for your heartwork. You get to do this, you get to make a difference. And I want you to remember that you're choosing this stuff because sometimes we can feel bogged down by answering all the student emails and being there during office hours and all of these things that you might consider your heart work. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And if it's not our heart work, we can decide to put it somewhere else. I want you to think, are there any ways that your heart work could be pulled more towards your cases? So if one of your elements of heart work is that you will always give final year undergraduate students advice about doing PhDs or moving into careers in your discipline, could that become part of one of your cases? Could that stuff actually be used to demonstrate why you are a go-to person in this discipline? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And the other thing I want you to ask yourself is, are there ways that you could still achieve the heart work with a few more boundaries and a little less time? When I was a relatively junior academic, I was wellbeing tutor for the school which meant that I was the first point of contact, but for any student in distress or having problems, and I used to spend hours. Hours and hours and hours with these students, answering their emails, sitting in sessions with them. And I know I helped a lot of students and I'm proud of that work, and it was important to me, and it was something that I would a hundred percent put in my heart work section if I'd known this work then, but I didn't need to spend as much time on it as I did. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The first 10-15 minutes with the student was super, super important. Other than in very extreme cases, the next 15 minutes or the next 30 minutes or the next hour were not as necessary. There were other people that could support these students. I did it because I thought it was important and because I liked it, and as soon as I recognized that I was doing it because I liked it as well, I was able to spend just a little bit less time and the students got just as much support and they turned out just as fine as the ones that I'd spent hours and hours and hours with. They need some of you, but they don't need all of you. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So thinking about. Whether there's any ways that you could put some boundaries around some of your heart work to protect yourself, and to best serve the people that you are trying to serve. That can be a really useful exercise. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then finally, I want you to review your legwork box. Is there anything in there, but actually with a little bit of tweaking could fit into one of your cases? Is there anything in there that with a positive discussion with your head of school, you might not need to do anymore. Now, you might say, that's not going to happen. I have to do these admin jobs. It's the rules. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> But our head of school want us to get our jobs done, but they also want us to be strategic. I talked about this a bit in the last part, and. Now that you are, and now that you are clear on your priorities, you're able to go to your head of school and say, look, these are things I'm building. This is why I think it'll get me awards and recognition. This is why I think it'll help me towards promotion. I've got this job though, and it's really taking up a lot of time and it doesn't fit with either of these priorities. Could we work out a way that over the next year I could transition to a role that's more in keeping with these things. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So notice you are not saying, I don't want to do this work anymore. You're not giving them an immediate, don't want to do it. And you're not saying that therefore I want to be let off to focus on my own things. You're saying, can I transition to a role that's more aligned with these priorities. That makes it a very different conversation. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And most heads of school, most heads of department will at least start those conversations with you. And then you also look at that legwork and you go, which bits of this do I have to do? They're never going to be part of a case. They're never going to be part of my heart. How can I do them good enough? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Good enough is very often good enough. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So that is the sort of analysis we are doing. How strong are my cases? What do I want to move forward with? Where are there gaps? What's my heart work? How can I keep doing that? How can I fit it into cases where appropriate? How can I have boundaries and streamline it while still meeting the needs of my heart. A legwork - How can I fit them into cases? How can I get rid of them, transition them, or how can I learn to just do them good enough and know that their legwork when I'm doing them so they don't expand to fill all the time that there is. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Be really careful again of your thoughts and beliefs here. If you are thinking, there's no way I can change this, I don't have any influence over this, then it's going to be very, very difficult to change things. You at absolute minimum have control over what you choose to think about these things, how much effort you get to put relatively speaking into each of the different things. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Even if nothing changes in terms of your roles and responsibilities, nothing changes in terms of your actual to-do list, you can decide which things get your time and effort, which things get the whole best version of you, which things get your peak times of day, and which things just get done. You get to pick that even if you have control over nothing else. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So from here you can build a plan. Where do you need to patch gaps? Where do you need to really learn how to tell this story? What evidence could you find to back up the fact that you are super influential in this field? That you are making a difference, that you are changing things in your discipline, that you are improving the lot of your students, that you are changing the systems and processes at your university for the better. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If you struggle to know how to write about those things, then get into my website, www.thePhDlifecoach.com and go to the Work with Me section. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> You'll find a link where you can sign up for my newsletter and everyone who signs up there will get sent a structure where it's like basically the outline of a paragraph that you can use to describe a case. So it really takes you through how you tell people what you did, what impact that had, how you influenced other people further, and it gives you the language and explains why you need to say each of the different things. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> It's really, really useful. I used it to get to full professor in the UK. I used it to get national teaching awards. I've taught other people to use it and they've achieved the same things too. So get into my newsletter, sign up, and you will get sent that stuff too. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> to finish, You'll now have the beginnings of a strategy to move forward. The beginnings of a clearer idea of who you are of what you do and why you do the things you do if you found this useful but challenging, I do have places on my program. It's a one-to-one program, but it's highly structured. </span> </p> <p> <span> So we essentially go through each of these tasks in turn with, but with me to support you through the thoughts and beliefs that you're having about it, helping you narrow down what your cases could be, what the barriers are to doing that and so on. And coaching you through some of the actions that you might want to take afterwards to start to shape these for the future. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Again, get into my website, www.PhDlife coach.com/work with me and you'll find how to get in contact with me to set up those sessions. If you are interested in that, I do a free consult call for anybody, a free 30 mins. No hard sales. We just have a chat about it and see whether it will be a good fit for both of us. </span> </p> <p> <span> I hope you found today's episode useful. Next week is part 3, and this is slightly different. Next week, we are going to be thinking not about the story we tell about our career, but the story we tell about ourselves and what influence that has for good and bad on our behaviour and our results. So see you next week for the final part of this series. </span> <br/> </p> </div> Mon, 23 Jan 2023 05:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/15-how-to-tell-your-story-and-get-the-recognition-you-deserve-part-2 https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/14-how-to-tell-your-story-and-get-the-recognition-you-deserve-part-1 This is the first of a three part series on how to tell your story. It's really common, at any career stage, to feel like you've lost track of where you're at and how to get where you want to be. If you're applying for jobs, trying to secure awards or recognitions, or going for promotion or tenure, then these episodes are for you! Even if you're not doing these things at the moment, figuring out "your story" can help reduce overwhelm, ease decision making and lower your cognitive, and actual, work. In this first episode I talk about what I mean by "telling your story" and the many ways it can make your life better. <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> <span> </span> </span> </p> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> This is the first of a three part series on how to tell your story. It's really common, at any career stage, to feel like you've lost track of where you're at and how to get where you want to be. If you're applying for jobs, trying to secure awards or recognitions, or going for promotion or tenure, then these episodes are for you! Even if you're not doing these things at the moment, figuring out "your story" can help reduce overwhelm, ease decision making and lower your cognitive, and actual, work. In this first episode I talk about what I mean by "telling your story" and the many ways it can make your life better.  </span> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 14 of the PhD Life Coach, and for the first time we are doing a three part special. In this episode today, we are mainly going to be thinking about how you can tell your story about what your expertise is, why you are good at what you do, so that you can use that when you are applying for jobs, so that you can use that if you're applying for recognitions, so awards, teaching recognitions, those sorts of things or when you're applying for promotion. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> Then next week, what the podcast is going to do is take you through really practically how you go from having your PhD or career at the moment where maybe the story feels a bit fuzzy, it feels like you're doing tons of different things that don't really add up into something that sounds impressive in job applications or promotion applications, and how you turn that not only into a good story in the sense of being able to describe it, but also a plan for what you're going to do in the future to make sure that you are well set up for all these different milestones that you want to hit. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So that's going to be next week, and then the week after that, we're going to think about how you tell the story of you as a person. What do you tell yourself that you are good at, that you are bad at, and what implications do all those stories have and how do they change the way we behave? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And in that session, we're really going to think about how can we mindfully choose how we describe ourselves and how we describe our strengths and weaknesses and capabilities and histories so that we can have the most positive experience that we can and achieve the things we want to achieve and enjoy the process along the way. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So let's go with how to create your own academic story. I've really experienced this from both sides. There's been several points in my career where I've needed to figure out what my story is, what my narrative is, what am I actually expert in. And then I've used that to get awards and recognition and promotion. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I've also been on the other side. I've also been on job boards, on promotion boards, looking at other people telling their story, particularly when it's people that I know outside of that setting. So, people where I already know how they are as an academic and now they're applying for promotion or something. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And seeing them tell their story in a way that I know doesn't reflect how good they are, doesn't reflect how much they do. That's why this is so important because we all work hard, all academics work hard, and if we don't figure out what our story is, so much of that can just feel like an endless grind that we don't get recognition for, we don't give ourselves recognition for, and we never feel those senses of achievement. Whereas when you have this narrative, it's so much easier to essentially manage your career. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Now what is the advantage, why is it better? Well, firstly, it's having your own sense of a professional identity. So many academics that I work with, and I know I felt like this myself at several points in my career feel like they're a jack of all trades. They've perhaps changed research area since what they've trained in originally. Or they're doing a PhD in the area that wasn't what their bachelor's were in and they're just not quite sure what they are. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> They allow those doubts to mean something about their abilities and about their prospects. They allow it to mean that they're not really a specialist, that they sort of do a bit of this and a bit of that, but they're not brilliant at anything. They allow it to mean that they're probably going to struggle to get jobs that they don't really know where their path leads for them. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I've been at that stage a couple of times in my career. I was very interdisciplinary as a researcher and had quite a lot of doubts about myself from that perspective because I couldn't really call myself a specialist in any one of the areas. After that, I really reconciled myself to the fact that I was a specialist in interdisciplinary science, and actually I'm super proud of that now, the range of places I've published, I'm really, really proud of. But at the time it was a cause of a lot of self-doubt and a lot of imposter syndrome, overwhelm and all these things that don't make you happier and they don't make you more productive. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I also faced it as a teaching focused member of staff. I felt like I did everything, had loads of ideas, enthusiastic, running around, but that I didn't really specialize in anything. I specialized in teaching, but nothing more specific than that. But as I narrowed it down and developed a narrative where I specialized in innovative assessments and curricular civic engagement. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So essentially bringing interactions with the community into the assessed curriculum. Then suddenly, I felt much more confident about who I was and what my expertise was. And when you have that inner sense of calm and clarity, it makes everything else so much easier. So one benefit is your own professional identity. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span>   </span> <span> Now, one thing you might be saying here is “I don't want to be put in a box like that, though, that would limit me. What if I decide I want to do something different?” And I get it. I'm somebody who enjoys doing tons of different things. I have more ideas than I can ever fit into one lifetime, but, there's nothing about having a professional identity or a narrative of your career that prevents you from doing something different. </span> </p> <p> <span> The key is that you know, you are doing something different and you are mindfully taking that on. So if you have a clear narrative, this is what I am and this is what I specialize in, and you get some other amazing idea, happy days. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I mean, as an example, coaching was an excellent separate, didn't fit with assessment, didn't fit with curricular civic engagement, but I was super fascinated by it, so I trained as one. But I did that mindfully knowing that it was different than the narrative that I had at the moment, but that I wanted to explore it, rather than it being a kind of haphazard “ooh, I do some of this and some of that, and oooh, here's a new idea, let's do some of that.” Creating a box, if you will, doesn't stop you stepping outside that box. It just means you know what you're doing and you can therefore make conscious decisions about it. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The second benefit of having a clear narrative is it makes it so much easier to make decisions and ultimately could lead to less work. Now we all need less work. Academia, I mean many careers, but academia's a nightmare for overwork. We have jobs come at us from all different directions. Our seniors can give us jobs to do. People below us can ask us to do stuff for them. Our colleagues ask us to do stuff for them. If you’re anything like me, maybe the worst one, your own brain suggests a whole load of things you could do. Oh, why don't we write this article too? Why don't we do that project? That'll be fun. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So we have all these millions of things and if we don't know a framework on which we decide which ones to do, again, we end up in this big pickle where we are just doing loads of stuff. We are really busy, but it doesn't feel particularly coherent or valuable. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> If you know your narrative, you can look at each task and say, does it fit who I am as an academic? Does it fit my story? Now, you could decide to change your story. That's fine. There's nothing about this that has to be fixed, but it gives you that framework through which to make a decision. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> Now, you might be saying, I don't have that much control. My supervisor tells me what to do. My head of school tells me what to do, and sometimes that's true. Often it's not as true as we like to tell ourselves. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Often if you say to your supervisor, that's really interesting, but I don't think it fits with this and this, what I'd really like to do is this, because look how that all fits together. Often there is much more of a discussion to be had there than you think there is. So keep that in mind. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The other angle is, yeah, sometimes we have to do things that are outside our main narrative, and that's not a problem. But there's some joys in knowing that they're outside our main narrative. Really, then you've got two choices. Do you do things to try and draw that into your main narrative? So if it's an admin role that you've been asked to take on, do you try and tweak it so that it fits your narrative a bit better? Or do you decide to do it good enough? </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Because often as academics, as PhD students, we're high achieving people. We try and do everything to the best of our ability, and there's not time. There just isn't time to do everything to your best of your ability. And if you try to, you won't do everything to the best of your ability, but random chance will decide which things you do well and which things you do. Or pressures from other people will decide which things you do well and which things you do badly. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If you know your narrative and you know that some things are within your narrative, and some things that you need to do are outside your narrative, you can decide how much time and energy you give them. </span> </p> <p> <span> Now, I'm not suggesting you slack off, but there are degrees of how well you do your job. You can tick it over, you can revolutionize it, you can do everything in between. So if you know your narrative and you're being asked to do something outside of your narrative, you can choose how much energy you give that thing. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now, you might also be thinking that it's selfish to be strategic. It's selfish to half ass a job you've been asked to do. It's selfish to say no to things. And this is something I've really struggled with. I have judged myself when I've said no to things or done things badly. I've judged other people, sorry, old colleagues, I love you all, but I have, we've all done it. There is judgment. I'm not going to lie. There is judgment around being perceived as selfish in academia. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> However, you have to look at the alternative. What's the alternative to making strategic decisions about your career? It's doing whatever you are asked to do that you think you can possibly squeeze in. It’s exhausting yourself. It's happening at the expense of your health, your wellbeing, your friends, your family, and your life outside of work. And so maybe it is selfish to be strategic. Maybe we should all be a little bit more selfish. </span> </p> <p> <span> On the other hand, I'd really encourage you to think about in what ways does it benefit other people? For me to be strategic, the reasons I came up with, especially as I became more senior, were saying no to things serves as an example to. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I hated the fact when I was a more senior member of staff that there would be junior members of staff who would see me doing things and think that they have to do all the things that I do. And so I really wanted to model the fact that you don't have to work all weekend and you don't have to work late every night, and you don't have to say yes to everything. So that was partly why I felt it was not selfish to be strategic because then you're a model to others that you don't have to give up your life to be a successful academic. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I was a more pleasant person when I was being strategic. When I was trying to do everything for everyone and trying to stay on top of it all, I was not pleasant to work with. I was snappy and grumpy and demanding and impatient, and I didn't do the fun things. And I got cross with people who hadn't done the things I needed them to do, because I only had about 45 seconds to do that task before I needed to do something else. When I became more strategic, way more nice to work with, way more fun, way more laid back, more forgiving of other people who hadn't done stuff, more likely just to have a chat in the corridor and enjoy myself. Just nicer to be around. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> In terms of your seniors, your seniors want you to be strategic. They want you to contribute to the strategic aims of the university. They want you to contribute to the strategic aim of your department, of your discipline. Yes, they need the place to run. They need you to do things, but ultimately they do want people that they can post about and shout about and tell people about these leading academics they've got in their department. These amazing PhD students, aren't they successful? So they want you to be strategic too. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Another reason why having a clear narrative, and this was really the focus at the beginning, was that it makes it so much easier to get jobs, to get awards, to get promotions. I've done all of those things, but really my insight came from the other side. It came from evaluating people's applications for national awards, evaluating job applications, promotions applications, and seeing how many times people that clearly had done loads of work and were really good at what they did, but it just wasn't memorable and it just wasn't really clear quite who they were and what they did. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And you might say, well, you should look through that. You should be able to see the quality. And yeah, you are probably right. I should, but if I've got one application here where they've worked really hard and done some really interesting things, and there's a super clear, memorable, understandable narrative where I can say, “oh, she's the one that does innovative assessments”, it's so much easier to pick that than it is to look at the one where it's like “she's done some good stuff. There's some interesting things in here. She's clearly worked hard, but she sort of does stuff interactive teaching and also some teamwork skills and some stuff to do with community work and some other stuff as well.” It's just not quite clear who she is. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And you think when you try to describe it's the one that “something”, it's not easy to say what that “something” is. So having that really clear narrative where someone can describe you as, “oh, they're the one that does X,” just makes it so much easier for us to see why you are getting the award, to see what impact you would bring if we employ you, to see why you are worthy of that promotion. It just makes it much easier to know who you are. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now again, there'll be some negative thoughts popping up in your head, and I'm going to try and guess some of them. If there are others, let me know in the comments and I will, try and get back to you. But one that I often get is this, “ugh, I'm an academic. I shouldn't have to manage a brand. I'm not a brand, I'm an academic.” And I get it. None of us want to be those Twitter bros going, “here's 10 things I learned before I was 30” or whatever. No one wants to be that highly curated, commercially focused, really sort of out there, promoting yourself brand or very few people do. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> That can feel really yuck. It can feel really uncomfortable. Again, we judge people who do it and do it a lot, but there are ways to do it so that it still feels really coherent and it feels really in line with who you are. And the thing I found most was it actually made it easier to promote myself and can I explain why? Because I've seen this in a lot of people's applications. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If you do a whole mishmash of things and then you come to write an application for something, then you're sort of telling all these stories of “I did this and I did this and I did this,” and the only way really that I know that you are any good at it all is because you say “and I was really good at this and I won this and I won that.” Whereas where you have a clear story, you don't have to have the “I'm an excellent this, I'm a leading practitioner in that”. You don't have to have all those superlatives because the story tells itself. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> The story is “I specialize in x. On the basis of that I did this. This is the impact that that had. I then trained other people to do that. This has now had this wider impact, da, da, da.” It enables you to tell this much more factual story that demonstrates your impact, whereas when it's a bit all over the place, it relies on you having to sort of go “and I'm really, really good, honest, I promise.” </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And that can feel super awkward to do and it doesn't lead to getting promoted and getting jobs and recognition. Demonstrating your impact is what does those things, and a clear narrative makes that so much easier to see. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> The final benefit that I'm going to talk about today is opportunities. So one of the things that I found as I sort of honed what my professional narrative was as an academic, especially in that sort of teaching focused last 10 years or so of my career was that so many more opportunities came my way. Once it was clear what I specialized in, then it became much more often that people would say, “oh, you need to talk to Vikki about that.” </span> </p> <p> <span> When I was just the teaching woman, I was useful on most projects, but there wasn't any “Oh, you really need to talk to Vicky about this” moments. Whereas once I'd established myself as a specialist, then if anyone in the university was doing something about innovative assessments, they'd talk to me about it because they knew that was my thing. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> They knew that was what I talked about at conferences. That was what I'd written a book about. That was what I'd innovated change in my own program and across the university is, what I'd advise other universities about. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> So once you have that narrative, you find things come to you. As you start telling your story in a way that people go, “oh, she's the one who, whatever,” they then know which opportunities to bring to your attention. </span> </p> <p> <span> So I hope I've convinced you of the benefit of having a clear narrative of what your academic story is. Now, many of you might be thinking, because my listeners go from brand new PhD students to senior academics, so you might be thinking, when do I need to do this? And the answer, whoever you are, is now. If you are a first year PhD student, you can have this preliminary story of who you are at the moment. It doesn't have to be who you're going to be in 10 years time, this preliminary story of who you are at the moment, why you're doing your PhD, why you chose that one, what you want to do, to enable you to pick which things you're going to focus on during your study period. To make sure you get invited to the right things and you start to build name for the things that you do. </span> </p> <p> <span> If you are a postdoc who's maybe changed direction a couple of times and looking for your first permanent post, this is the perfect way to get a narrative that you can then use when you're applying for jobs. If you are an early to mid-career academic, you're perhaps not looking to move, but you want to start getting some awards in your research or some recognitions in your teaching, then you can start creating this story to help you manage your workload, to get more recognition, to be able to apply for these things and so on. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> It makes those applications so much easier. Once I had a narrative and had that story clear. I applied for Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and got it. I applied for National Teaching Fellowship and got it. I applied for full professor and got it, and all three of them used basically the same story, the same narrative, framed in different ways, but having that clear story made it so easy to write all of those things in a way that I had never experienced when I was applying for senior lectureship or my senior fellowship, for example. I got those too, but it was much more painful. So if you are in that early mid-career, having this clear narrative makes all that stuff so much easier. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> And if you are a senior academic, this is useful for you in two ways. One, tell your own story. Where do you want to go next? What's the next steps of your career and how are you going to have that to fit your narrative, but also to help other people below you, the staff that you support and mentor, help them to craft their narratives if you're head of school, head department, you're giving out admin jobs. </span> </p> <p> <span> can you help people have admin jobs that fit their own narratives? You'll have staff that are super more motivated to do those jobs and to do them well if it fits their clear narrative. So you can use this to help yourself, but you can also use it to help other people. </span> <br/> </p> <p> <span> How do you do it? That's the next big question, and that is the question we're going to be talking about next week. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So next week I'm going to give you a step-by-step guide to going from having a chaotic, stressful, pulled in lots of different directions, spinning all the plates career, to having a clear narrative as to who you are and what you do to make decisions in the future, reduce your work, know who you are and get the recognition you deserve. So see you all next week to get working on that. </span> </p> </div> Mon, 16 Jan 2023 05:30:00 GMT 183:934800289 (Victoria Burns) https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/14-how-to-tell-your-story-and-get-the-recognition-you-deserve-part-1 https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/13-what-to-do-when-you-know-you-re-behaving-like-a-toddler Do you find yourself just not doing the thing you intended to do? No good reason but you just don't want to? In this episode, I talk about what to do if you find yourself just behaving a bit like a naughty toddler and saying "no" to all the things that are good for you. You'll get a five step plan to move from resisting starting to getting going on your tasks. <div data-rss-type="text"> <h3> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </h3> </div> <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> <span> Do you find yourself just not doing the thing you intended to do? No good reason but you just don't want to? In this episode, I talk about what to do if you find yourself just behaving a bit like a naughty toddler and saying "no" to all the things that are good for you. You'll get a five step plan to move from resisting starting to getting going on your tasks. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> In the show I mention three past episodes - you can find them here: </span> </span> </p> <p> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/10-how-to-review-your-year-the-strengths-based-way-with-professor-jenn-cumming" target="_blank"> How to review your year the strengths-based way </a> </p> <p> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/12-how-to-set-new-year-s-resolutions-that-stick-with-dr-karin-nordin" target="_blank"> How to set new year's resolutions that stick </a> </p> <p> <a href="https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/bonus-ten-lessons-i-learned-about-doing-phds-by-playing-stardew-valley" target="_blank"> Ten lessons I learned about doing PhDs by playing Stardew Valley </a> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I also mention the </span> </span> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0" target="_blank"> time management lecture by Randy Pausch </a> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Definitely check them out! </span> <span> <span> </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span> Hello and welcome to episode 13 of the PhD Life Coach. I'm recording this as my first new episode of 2023, and having done my strengths-based review with Professor Jenn Cumming and my New Year's resolutions with Dr. Karin Nordin. I'm feeling super motivated for the year and ready to go. I hope you are too. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm sure quite a few of you though are feeling some resistance, especially coming back after holidays, after time off. And even if you are listening to this at a different time in the year, there will inevitably be things where you are feeling like you just don't want to do the thing you need to. And so this week's episode is called “What to do when you know you are behaving like a toddler”. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And what I mean by that is when you know that your inner brain, you're in a voice is just saying, I just don't want to. There's no particular reason why you don't want to do the thing. It's not some underlying fear or you know that you are worried or massive self-doubt or anything. If it's those things, we'll have other episodes for that stuff, but I find there are just times where it's just like, I just don't want to. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I want to sit here and do something fun. I want to mess about on the computer - talking of which, if you haven't listened to my Stardew Valley bonus episode, check that out. It's awesome. I want to mess out on the computer, I want to mess out on social media. I want to watch terrible television. I don't want to do the thing I should be doing, and I'm just kind of metaphorically stamping my feet and not wanting to do it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And, one of the things that made me realize I wanted to make this episode was I was talking to my coach yesterday and talking about how I'm consciously trying to work on the voice I use to myself when I talk to myself, when I'm in those sorts of moods. When I'm just having a bit of a soak, when I just don't want to do the thing that I'm meant to be doing, when I'm acting like a toddler, how do I talk to myself? And the big realization that I'd had just before that coaching call was that it's really about parenting yourself. It's really about the fact that now that we're grown-ups, there's no one to make us do this. There's no one who forces us to tidy our rooms, to eat healthily, to do the work we're meant to do. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> We're somehow expected to do that for ourselves. And it made me really reflect on what can we learn from parenting advice to apply to how we speak to ourselves. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm going to give you a confession. Some of this came out of me spending too much time on social media because for reasons I don't fully understand, the Instagram algorithm seems to think that I need to know about gentle parenting, and it turns out, apparently I did. So I've been hearing quite a few stories recently thinking about gentle parenting and for those of you who don't spend as much time on Instagram as I do and/or who aren't parents and/or who haven't really thought about this stuff, . Essentially there's a line of thought around parenting that there's different approaches and that these often traditionally are authoritative parenting, where you really tell people what to do and you are strict and you're stern. Or permissive parenting, where you're just kinda like, oh no, whatever you want, that's cool, cool. Or sort of a conscious decision to be in between that, which has been termed gentle parenting. And so what I'm going to think about and talk with you about in this episode is why do I think that's irrelevant? Why are we even talking about parenting on a PhD life coach podcast? Why I'm trying these things out on myself, and importantly, how you could think about how this applies to you, so if you want to take these approaches, how would you do that? So those are the things I wanna talk about today. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So why did I feel like this was relevant? Well, usually I was finding that if I was in that sort of “I just don't want to mood” that I would either speak to myself pretty sternly and often quite critically saying, you know, you just need to come on. You need to get on with it. Stop being so lazy. And kind of speak to me in quite a disrespectful way, in definitely quite a bossy, authoritarian way. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now people that know me might not be too surprised to hear that I speak to myself bossily, but that sort of strict “you just need to buckle down and do it” sort of a voice. I'd have that or I would take almost a permissive parenting approach of, “oh well, if you don't feel like it, you don't feel like it, let's not bother”. And I would really flip flop between those two. Being very strict with myself and resenting it, and being very permissive with myself and regretting it essentially. And then moving between those would make the other one worse. So the more I'd been permissive to myself and allowed myself to not do the thing and indulge myself, the further I would swing to being authoritarian, and then the more authoritarian I was being, I would resist it more, act more like a stroppy toddler and being more permissive with myself as a consequence. And it's something I've really kind of worked on without really putting all this stuff into words. And it's really just been in this last few weeks, I've really thought Gosh, this actually could be gentle parenting. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So what do I mean by gentle parenting? I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not an expert in gentle parenting. I get married this summer and I'm about to become a stepparent. Beyond that, I don't have children. I don't pretend to know the joys and pains that you parents go through with small children, although I do have a lot of nieces and nephews, so I see some of that. But I've, I've listened to quite a bit about this stuff. I'd encourage you to look it up for yourself if you want to know more detail. But essentially the premise is that in gentle parenting, you work on ensuring the child feels heard and empathizing, but also being firm around your boundaries and what's going to happen. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And so you're not just saying you've got to do it because I've told you to, these are the rules, get on, I'm your parent, do it. And you're not letting your toddler rule your world. You are finding this middle ground where they feel understood and they feel like their emotions are listened to, but where you still help them to act in their own best interests. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Because that's the problem with toddlers, and even when we're in toddler mode, we don't act in our own best interests. We stamp our feet and decide that we don't want to do the thing and we just want to lays around and eat chocolate even when we know that's not in line with our long-term goals. Because toddlers don’t think about about long-term goals, they think about right here, right now, what do we want to do? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And so I have five steps for how to gentle parent yourself when you notice you're behaving like a stroppy toddler. So step one is noticing. I'm trying to notice non-judgmentally. We all do it. This is always my first step. My first step of anything I ever teach you is to notice it and notice non-judgmentally. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We can't do something unless we notice what we're doing. And if we notice it and beat ourselves up for behaving like a toddler, then we don't get anywhere. We sway into that authoritarian parenting where we're minimizing and saying, “oh, don't be so silly, you shouldn't cry over that” and that's not helpful. So we are gonna try and notice, “oh, look at me. I'm totally acting like a toddler”. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And sometimes that makes me laugh. And to be honest, even that non-judgmental noticing with no other technique, kind of takes some of the sting out of it because I find myself going, “oh my God, you're such a toddler”, and kind of laughing, and that just makes it all feel a little bit better there in the moment. So first step, notice, you're doing it without judgment. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> The second one is you need to listen to that toddler. What are they saying? Why are you behaving like a toddler? What is it about this thing they don't want to do? Are they scared? Are they tired? Are they hungry? Do they need the toilet? What have you not noticed? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Because a toddler has a tantrum when it's thinking something. And sometimes it's something legitimate and sometimes it's something stupid because it's the wrong color cup or whatever, but there's always something, and it's something that's important to them or else they wouldn't be having a tantrum about it.  And sometimes it doesn't feel important to the parents. Sometimes it's like, “my gosh, why are you having a fit about that?” but it feels important to them.  And so the next step is to listen to that, partly because that gives you a load of information and partly because they're never going to do what you want, if you haven't listened to them first. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> You can, in the short term, you can beat yourself into doing things without listening to your thoughts and emotions. But it doesn't work in the long term. We don't stick to that long term. And if we do, it's a pretty miserable existence. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So the second step is to listen to yourself, again, non-judgmentally. Why are you having a little tantrum? Why don't we want to get out of bed today? Why don't we want to exercise? Why don't you want to send that email? Why don't you want to talk to that person? Why are we having a strop? Okay? So make sure you spend a little bit of time just listening to yourself.  Sometimes writing that down can help because it sort of slows our brains down and forces us to actually think a little bit. So first, notice nonjudgmentally, second, listen to your voice. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And now the third one is, this is where you get to put your parent pants on. This is where you get to say, “okay, I've listened. I get it. You're scared of sending this email because you are worried you're going to word it wrong and they're all going to hate you”. Or you, I've listened. You know, you're meant to be exercising, but you are kind of tired and you don't really want to, and the programme you want to watch is on tv and you'd rather just sit down. Okay, I get it, I understand”. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So you get to then evaluate that from your parental position. So in step two, we're really in our toddler mind. Going “okay, come on. What is it? What's the problem?” We're trying to understand that title mind. Now in step three, we're making a decision as a parent, is this concern legitimate and does it change what we're going to do? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So any thoughts are inherently legitimate. So even if being scared is stupid, because there's nothing really to be scared of, if you are feeling scared and you're having thoughts that make you feel scared, totally legitimate. What I mean in this context is do these thoughts and feelings that you are currently experiencing change our plan. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So let's take the example of writing. PhD students always struggle, all academics, always struggle with getting on and getting writing done. It's always a thing. I coach with my individual clients on this a lot. So let's think you are having a bit of a toddler fit about the fact you don't want to write the paper you need to write. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> You're meant to be doing it. It's due to your supervisor soon and you don't want to, and you're having a bit of a toddler tantrum about that. And when you've stopped to listen to yourself in step two, you've gone, “okay, I get it. You're not quite clear on what you need to write. You're not quite clear whether you are doing it the way your supervisor's expecting. And you are worried that your supervisor's gonna think you're an idiot. Okay. Right. Get it. I understand.” </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And now, Step three, you get to decide as a parent, what am I doing with that information? And there's a whole bunch of things that you could decide. You could decide that actually genuinely, this is a reason not to write today. So if, for example, you've checked in and you're just like, I'm exhausted, I've written for the last 10 days in a row. We've produced, I've burnt out, I'm exhausted. I haven't seen fresh air in however long, actually, as a parent, I'm gonna say, “you know what we had planned to write today, but I don't think that's in your best interests.” </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So you, so you decide not in a permissive, “okay, baby, if you don't want to, you don't have to” parent way. But in a, “you know what? Actually, on reflection, now that you've talked me through how you're feeling, I think it's probably not in your best interest for us to follow the plan, so we'll do something different today” </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Or you might decide to adjust the plan. You might decide “okay, I get it. But let's just do this bit”. Or, “okay, yeah, it's pretty confusing. Let's see how we can make that clearer. Let's figure out a way to really spell out what we need to write today so that we can make that as easy for you as possible. We're still going to do it, but let's make it as easy as we possibly can”. So you get to decide how you want to take this forward”. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And again, with writing, it can be quite useful to now come in writing as the parent. So in the listening to yourself, allow yourself to write as a toddler, writing a felt tip for goodness sake, whatever you want. But now you're coming in as a parent, you're writing in a proper pen, and you're saying, “okay, right. What is in my best interests in the moment and my best long-term interests?” </span> </p> <p> <span> So you decide. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then step four is I want you to bring, what I call “firm compassion”. So once you've decided, you are not going to say to yourself, “right, come on, you just need to get on with it”. Always listen out for your voice saying you “just” need to, because that usually means there’s something difficult you need to do and you've not fully thought it through. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So you're not going to be your authoritarian parent. You're going to find a voice that is firmly compassionate. “I get it. This is hard. Of course it is. We knew that when we signed up for it. When we decided we wanted to do a PhD, we knew it was gonna be tough, and you are worried. Your supervisor thinks you're an idiot. That's okay. You're not really clear on what you need to do next. But we do need to do something today. So let's figure out how we can make this as easy as possible. How we can get just a bit done. We'll have some nice stuff afterwards.” </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Do you see that voice? Do you see how it's different from, “oh, well let's not bother today”, or, “come on, you just gotta get on”. So that firm compassion is step four. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then the final step I've already alluded to in that step four, but the final step is how can you make it fun and how can you make it easy? So if you've got a toddler that you need to stop having tantrum and tidy their room, for example you might go, “I wonder if you could pick up all the bricks faster than I can”, or “I'll race you to fill that up”, or “let's do it all laying on the floor and pretending that we are dinosaurs” or whatever. You'd think of ways to make it fun. Or you might think of ways to make it easy. I remember watching a a video on YouTube, which - I'll put the link to it in the show notes because it's super amazing. It's by this academic called Randy Pausch. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> It's really inspiring. It's all about time management. I'll let him tell you the story, but he's somebody who he's not with us anymore. At the time he made the talk, he was experiencing terminal illness and was talking about time management from that perspective. And he was amazing. Anyway, slight tangent, but I will give you him things in the show notes. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And one of the things I remember him talking about was managing his children. When they needed to tidy their room by just breaking it down really easily. They'd say, “I don't want to, dad, there's too much”. And he'd say, “okay, but could you pick up all your clothes and put them in the laundry basket?” </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> “Oh, yeah, yeah, I could do that.” </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> “Okay, brilliant. Could you pick up your Lego and put that in the Lego box?” </span> </p> <p> <span> “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could do that.” </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And he'd do it one bit at a time until suddenly he'd tidied his room. And so you can make it fun or you can make it easy. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The other one that works quite well, not so much with toddlers necessarily, but with us, is how can I make it feel indulgent and luxury? So how can I make this feel a little bit special? So it's like “I'm having a toddler tantrum. I don't really want to do this writing, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to make myself a really nice hot chocolate and I'm going to get a blanket and I'm going to do it in my favourite room and just make it feel nice”. So let's do it. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And that's the last step. So how you stop yourself be when you know you're behaving like a toddler is those five steps. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> 1)You notice it non-judgmentally. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> 2) You listen to what you're having a drop about. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> 3) You decide what things still need to happen. Do you adjust it? Do you encourage 'em to go ahead? Do you stop entirely? Do you modify your plans? You decide with your best parental pants on. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> 4) You exercise firm compassion when you're saying to yourself what you're gonna do. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> 5) And then you do whatever you can to make it fun and easy and a bit luxury. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Let me know how you get on. I would love to hear, and you can either find me on Twitter @drvikkiburns </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> If you're watching this on YouTube, you can drop it in the comments. If you haven't found me on YouTube yet, I put all of these podcasts onto YouTube for people who prefer that. Let me know. I hope you find it useful. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's something I use on myself increasing amount. I have set some resolutions around my exercise training for circus, which I'm super excited about. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span>  </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And I am going to be using this gentle parenting to get myself to do my strength training program and my circus training that I want to do this year. I'll keep you posted on how I get on, and I'd love to hear about how you get on. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> So next time you find yourself having a little strop, I hope you find this technique useful. Take care and see you next week. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> </div> Mon, 09 Jan 2023 06:15:00 GMT 183:934800289 (Victoria Burns) https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/13-what-to-do-when-you-know-you-re-behaving-like-a-toddler https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/12-how-to-set-new-year-s-resolutions-that-stick-with-dr-karin-nordin <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <p> **Vikki: Hello. Just a quick message before the show starts. This is a slightly extended episode because we have a guest on the podcast, Dr. Karin Nordin, which I'm super excited about. We're talking about New Year's resolutions and I did wanna just give you a quick heads up that we will be talking about some weight loss issues. So if that's triggering for you or anything I wanted you to know in advance. We do relate it back to how you can take those lessons and apply them to more academic activities. But just wanted to let you know that there will be some discussion of healthy weight loss in the episode. I hope you enjoy the show.**  </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> You can also find out more about my guest, Dr Karin Nordin in all these places:  </p> <p> https://www.youtube.com/@UCTn-HaKV8vju5G2j6wRTzwQ  </p> <p> https://bodybrainalliance.com/ </p> <p> https://www.instagram.com/karinnordinphd/ </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Vikki: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 12 of the PhD Life Coach. And I am super excited because today we have with us Karin Nordin, who is a behavior change expert and is gonna be talking with us about New Year's resolution. So hi Karin. Welcome.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: Hi. I'm really excited to be here.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: We are super glad to have you here. So for all of you listening, if you're not familiar with Karin’s work I've been following her for a while now and one of the reasons I wanted have her on the show was because she's just this amazing combination of scientific and evidence based, which is an ex professor I love. So she brings all this evidence-base to it, but she makes it really fun and engaging and is really compassionate too. I find that really important as an ADHDer. I'm not good when people are saying you must be super consistent all the time, and so on. And so, her approach has been really, really, really, really valuable for me as I wanted to get her on the show. I'm super glad that you were able to be here. Maybe you can start just by telling us a little bit about yourself and as last week's podcast – well the podcast before Christmas, last week when we're recording this - was about the importance of doing things outside of work. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about some of the fun stuff you do outside of work too. </p> <p> <i> Karin: Sure. Yeah, so like you said, hi, my name is Karin. I have my PhD in a field called Health Communication, which is the study of health behaviour change and how we communicate in a way that helps people change health behaviors. A lot of the original research there was surrounding tobacco, smoking cessation, those kind of like large public health issues, but, a lot of the work that I did with my own dissertation was more around the educational side of things. So I studied growth mindset, self-efficacy. I did some work on public speaking anxiety actually, and so that's where my research half of me, is from. And, I will tell you this since I think it will benefit all of you who are listening to this podcast, is that I had no plans of starting my own business after graduating. I was a PhD student, I started doing some contracting for a company that created nutrition coaching certifications for people, and I got certified because it was free through them. It all kind of spiralled from there. So now I am the full-time CEO of Body Brain Alliance. We have, coaching and education in hopes of getting compassion-first change education into the lives of 1 million people. That is our mission statement. And it's funny you ask about the personal side of things because one of the things that I'm very much working on right now is getting outside of work, having tight boundaries around my life as a CEO, which is very difficult to do. </i> </p> <p> <i> And so I just did my first power lifting meet and I am considering next year running a half marathon. So that's something that I will be working on as well.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Exciting. Fantastic. And thank you for taking the time to tell a little bit about your journey. So with the PhD Life Coach, our listeners are mostly PhD students through to senior academics. There's a few other people who listen along too, but it's mostly that sort of audience. And so I think hearing the different routes you can take is super important. So we are really thinking New Year's resolutions. It’s coming around to that sort of time. What do you see people get wrong? Why don't people stick to their year’s resolutions? </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah, so I think there's, there's really three main things that people get wrong. Number one, I was just talking about this to our coaching clients this morning, is that a lot of people create their New Year's resolutions during, like the last couple of weeks of December from a place of self-hate or honestly from a place of being triggered, right? So we, go to places for the holidays. We're around our parents, we're around our like childhood house or you know whatever you might end up doing. But you go to this place, you're seeing people you haven't seen in a while, and you start to have all these thoughts about yourself, right? About who you are, about what you need to do differently. And we can set this resolution from this very negative place of like, I need to fix myself. Something's not working, I'm broken, and I always tell our clients, don't set a goal or a resolution in this case from a place of disempowerment. You want to set a resolution or goal from a place of empowerment. </i> </p> <p> <i> So I think that's one thing that people do wrong, because then of course, if every time you are pursuing your goal, it reminds you of everything that's “wrong” with you, according to your brain, then no wonder you're going to abandon it because you're trying to get away from those thoughts. </i> </p> <p> <i> So that's number one. Number two is that people don't ask themselves if they actually wanna do the process or the work of the resolution as well as the result. So when I was thinking of running a half marathon, I talked to my coach about it and before we solidified that as a goal, she really asked me, she was like, I want you to think about what that's going to entail. I want you to think about scheduling in time for long runs. I want you to think about the fact that you're going to be more tired on run days and how is that going to affect your work and like, do you really want to do the work? Do you want to go on the journey as well as achieve the result? So that's the second thing. And then the third thing, and this is pretty general, but people do not have a concrete sense of social support. So a lot of people don't have a coach, they don't have someone in their corner they can talk to about personal development or self-improvement. And we know from tons of research that one of the main drivers of health behaviors and sustainability in health behaviors is social support. So putting yourself around other people who are also pursuing new things or getting your partner on board or all those types of things can be really helpful.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Love, love and yeah, totally resonate with so much of that. Particularly the coming at it from a point of trying to fix yourself. That was something that I really, really struggled with over the years. I've got, I've got somewhat better at it, but, yeah, I think that's a really important one to remind everybody about. For everyone listening, you don’t know, we're going to actually do this call slightly differently than you might think. </p> <p> This isn't just going to be hints and tips because we thought it might be best for you guys to actually see this stuff in action. Because often you can hear people talk through, oh, you need to do this and don't do this. And, and yeah, you can try and, you know, implement that yourself. And I know you are really big on how to implement things. </p> <p> But what we're going to do in this episode is you are actually going to help me figure out my New Year's resolutions. So I've given you a little bit of a heads up at the types of things that I'm thinking about and some of my bad habits, but I'm sure they'll come up as we talk. So I'm gonna hand over to you. You are now in charge and I'm scared and very excited.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah. So, so let's start with. Do you have any ideas right now? Like what are your general thoughts about what has popped up, things you might want to pursue next year? Where are you at?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: So, My usual thing is having about 57 million things and trying to figure out ways to make the resolutions cover all of them. So knowing that I need to narrow down, I'd say there's a kind of health related goal. I'm heavier than I was, and whilst from a kind of body confidence point of view, I'm actually pretty good that it doesn't bother me from that perspective, but I do circus, I do aerial silks and the fact is, the heavier you are, the more you've got to carry up those silks. And I'm also getting married in July and my dress doesn't fit, which is quite a sort of concrete goal I guess.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: So tell me a little bit more about what's driving that. So you said you want to fit into your dress and you're doing aerial silks, right? But like when you got the idea of like, maybe I want to try to lose weight next year, when did that happen? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, it's been a gradual thing, I guess because the weight's gone on gradually, it's not a sudden like I've suddenly put on loads of weight. Some of it, I will say I turn 45 this year and there's an element of I don’t want to die just yet. And so that kind of suddenly realizing, oh man, you're actually getting a little bit old and probably need to think about these things comes into it too. </p> <p> So I'm not sure there was a specific moment. Probably same as a lot of people, you know, the weight mostly went on during the pandemic when I suddenly realized I wasn't walking around campus all the time. And so it's that sort of gradual realization and then feeling it every week when I try and climb up for wilks. </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah. I'm curious, like, how do you think you'll feel when you lose weight? What will be different?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: So like I say, I'm not somebody who's kind of like, I'm going to be loads more attractive. I'm going to be loads happier. I don't, I don't believe that. I think I'll be proud of the fact that I've managed to stick to it, more than the actual thing. I don't think I'll be proud that I weigh a certain amount. </p> <p> But if I stick to this, because sticking to goals has always been a challenge for me, although I have usually achieved quite a few things. So not necessarily, but sticking to them in a kind of consistent, the way I planned it way, has always been a challenge. So I think I'll be proud of that. It would be nice if my wedding dress does up, but I mean, I guess a seamstress can deal with that if necessary. </p> <p> And circus wise, there's just a whole bunch of moves that I'd love to be able to do and I know I'll be super happy if I can do those because they're just fun and look cool.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: And you said like you'll be proud that you were able to stick with it. What is it? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Whatever process I decide that I need to do in order to actually lose the weight, if you see what I mean. So that kind of, you know, losing the weight's, the one I've always been able to kind of wing stuff. So you were talking about like half marathons and things. I've run six or seven half marathons. I've never trained properly for any of them, but the fact is if you just do a little bit of running and then get there and wing it and stay enthusiastic, you get around one way or another, which is mostly how I've done them over the years. Similarly writing goals, I mentioned to you before the call that I’m also writing a children's novel, which I quite like to finish next year too, and that's one I can blitz it, it's fine. You can't blitz weight loss. So I feel like weight loss is quite a good goal for me because it's one where I'm going to have to actually learn some strategies where I can - I'm not going to use the word consistent because that's an unrealistic goal for me, but where I can stick to a sort of an approach in the longer term cause I can't blitz it. </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah. And I'm, I'm curious about this idea of like sticking to something. So let's say that you, you know, you've come up with some sort of like diet protocol and let's say you absolutely do stick with it and you stick with it for 90 days and you don't lose any weight. How would you feel? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: This is the point where my client brain and my coach brain kind of go, because my coach brain is like, no, I would be super proud of myself that I've stuck to it. And I think that is partly true. I think I would also be frustrated because I think, not so much because I wouldn't be lighter, but because I think I would be telling myself that I'd done something wrong. Because if I've stuck to it for 90 days and I haven't lost weight, then I stuck to the wrong thing. And I suspect, as much as my coach brain likes to think I wouldn't, I suspect my real human brain would be beating myself up for not having picked the right thing in the first place.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: So I asked you that question just because I think it's important when we're doing resolutions and we're setting goals to figure out like what is the real underlying driver of the goal. So I think for you, it sounds like some of it is this idea of like sticking to something. Right. But I also think there's something else there, because otherwise it would be like, oh, if I stuck to it, yeah, I'll be totally good as long as I stick to it. And you're saying that's not necessarily true, right? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. I guess the other thing, I do objectively want to be somewhat lighter than I am now, just because I've kind of, like I say, I'm probably - I'm now trying to put it into American numbers – two stone for British people, however much that is, 28 pounds, something like that over where I used to be as an adult. </p> <p> And I just don't want that slippery slope. I don't want to be another stone heavier in five years and another stone heavier in five years. I don't want to accept that my middle, middle aged, my body is middle aged, and going to drift into overweightness. So there is an actual objective I would like my body to strong and healthy and flexible and circusy.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah, . Yeah. And so this is where I want to dig into like, and, and if, you're listening to this, I would encourage you to dig into like where the goal is coming from specifically. But I also want to dig into a little bit the idea of identity. Right? So the next question I want to ask you is like – What right now is preventing you from losing weight. Like what are the behaviors you're talking about, you know, how you don't want to continually gain? What are the behaviors that are driving the weight gain?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: They are a lack of organization. So just not having planned out what I'm going to eat resulting in either not having stuff in the house that I perceive I need to eat something healthy or just therefore making a decision in the moment and the healthy food that is in the fridge requires some preparation and some thinking about and some organization versus just grabbing something like toast and lots of butter, that's easy and immediately there. So I'd say mainly a lack of organization because I've been working on the other side of things. But the other side of it is the sort of, “oh, you deserve a treat voice” That's something that I've been working on in my own kind of self-coaching practice and things is that is sort of working on that side. But yeah, most of it is just not having planned ahead and then making decisions from my less higher brain in the moment. </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah. Well, and I want to go into that for a minute, right? Because the reason that we like, dive for those easy options, the reason that we don't make those decisions is because we're not supporting ourself enough in terms of emotional regulation, maybe in terms of social support. And so anytime someone sets a goal, right, we want to try to trace it back to what are the actual behaviours right now that either are stopping you from having done this thing already or would stop you and what is the actual root cause, right? Because you are telling me, okay, I want to focus on weight loss, I want to focus on sticking to a plan. But even if you stick to that plan for 90 days and you lose the weight, if you don't solve the underlying issue of caring for yourself and regulating your emotional needs, a), you're probably not going to be able to stick to that plan, right? And b), you're going to gain that weight right back.  </i> </p> <p> <i> So one of the things that we work on with clients is shifting avoidance goals to approach goals, and so an avoidance goal is like what we're trying to get away from, and weight loss is almost always an avoidance goal. Sometimes though, we can flip it to approach goals by asking you like, what are the behaviours that you actually want to enact in your life? Can we focus on those and then can we let our body do what it's going to do? Because the reality is your body is out of your control, right? Especially as like a woman in like middle age you would call it, right? Like there are all sorts of hormone fluctuations. There's a lot that's outside of our control. </i> </p> <p> <i> But what we can control here is our behaviour, right? So what specific behaviours do you think your future self does? Who’s able to, you know, go to circus and do all these crazy tricks and feel amazing and feel strong and healthy? Like, what is she doing?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: This is so good. I know our listeners are going to be getting so much out of this. I think the main things is planning. I think future me needs to just take a little bit of time to go. Okay. What are you actually eating tomorrow? And… </p> <p> <i> Karin: Okay, hold on. I'm going to stop you there. I'm gonna stop you there.. Because I don't want use a phrase, I don't want use the word “just” right. Because it’s never “just”, something. Even the way you just minimized that tells me that you haven't thought that that's a real obstacle for you and we haven't thought enough about what that real obstacle is. So why is it that you struggle with planning ahead your food for the next day? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Partly I think, because I usually overcomplicate it. So if I'm, you know, if I'm like, oh, I'm gonna plan, suddenly the recipe books come out and it's not necessarily sustainable. And again, that's something that I'm aware of and getting somewhat better at, but it is still there. </p> <p> Some of it is, I think genuinely I just rush from one thing to the next, and sometimes the next is messing around on social media. I'm not saying I'm productive all the time, but I think. I just don't go, okay, right. 10 minutes, let's sit down, we'll work out what we're going to eat for the next couple of days. </p> <p> And I sort of, go, I'm going to do that now. I'm going to do it for, you know, I'm going to stick to doing that.  </p> <p> And then don't. It's reminding me a little bit of something I heard you talking about in one of your previous reels about increasing frequency before you expect consistency. And I think that's something I definitely do is, right, I'm going to plan my meals now, I'm going to plan every meal and I'm going to do this forever sort of thing. </p> <p> Rather than just going, okay, just sit down and plan the next one, Vikki. So I think I probably make it a big thing.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: What I'm hearing from you too is like this hyper obsession on planning, but I would guess that your healthiest self is still making a different decision than your current self, even if she hasn't planned. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Yes. Yeah, I don't usually have an easily grabbable option for when I'm about to make a bad decision. It's either I've planned and therefore I eat healthily or I haven't, and therefore, I don't. </p> <p> <i> Karin: Well, okay, so I'm gonna say two things. One, this is where I would really encourage you to work with a coach, because I'm even hearing you use language like good and bad, good food, bad food, right? Healthy, unhealthy. And that kind of language will derail your efforts every time because it creates a guilt spiral. So until we neutralize food, we're not going to have a healthy relationship with food and until we have a healthy relationship with food, we're not gonna be able to change our weight unless it's like in a very disordered way. So that's where I would encourage you to like work with an actual health coach on that. But the second thing that I am noticing here that I want to point out is that for a lot of you, especially a lot of you listening, we want to think that change is about lining up good days. </i> </p> <p> <i> We want to think that change is about getting those days where you plan and putting enough days where you plan together in a row so that it starts to make a difference, because that is the way it's framed for us. But if you look at the difference between people who are successful in a certain area and people who aren't, what it really is about, is it's really about what decision you make on your worst day. </i> </p> <p> <i> And it's about nudging that minimum baseline ever so slightly in a more empowering step, right? So for you, I would say like the number one thing you should focus on, just from like a nutrition coach standpoint, is probably at first increasing protein or increasing fiber, right? Those are the two things that are like the big levers that we like to pull. </i> </p> <p> <i> So then I would say like, okay, if you said your bare minimum is kind of like toast with butter, right? How can we turn toast with butter into toast with butter and turkey and a clementine. What does that, what comes up when I say that? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I think, what comes up. Firstly, just how fascinating it is having, being, being a coach and still having stuff reflected back at you. So I hope everybody listening is recognizing how much, no matter how much training you have in this stuff you still find yourself thinking and saying things. So I recently had a client say should I be better at this by now? I feel like you're giving me loads of support, but I'm still thinking these things and should I be better?  </p> <p> And I think this is a wonderful example of how even when you've got lots of training in this stuff, you're still in your own head and being your own human makes a difference.  </p> <p> Yeah, I think you're right. I think once, so once swap I have made recently, which has helped quite a bit, is having takeout type food in the freezer. Which is healthier and cheaper than getting an actual takeout. And that is working quite well. I had to fight the thoughts “Yeah but if you do that, you're not doing it properly” in order to do that. </p> <p> But that's actually working quite well. So having sort of little ready meals because I find I don't go so crazy on portion control and having normal size pizza instead of takeaway size pizza and those sorts of things. I could see how that could also translate into the sort of thing that you are talking about. </p> <p> Having those little swaps for the days when I haven't planned and just need something because I'm hungry and it's meal time.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: So there, I think you have like somewhat of a plan, right? I always tell people that weight loss is not a goal. Weight loss is a strategic byproduct of a different goal. And so I think for you, right, instead of focusing on the specific number or getting on the scale all the time or whatnot, what I would encourage you to focus on in, in this arena, is specifically, like what are the habits of my healthier self and how can I pick one little thing at a time that I want to implement in my life and chip away at it? And when I start to get it, you know, so it's a regular part of my life, so it feels a little bit easier then, and only then, can I add like another tiny piece and start chipping away at something else. And eventually you will end up with a very different identity because you will become a person who always has something in the freezer. </i> </p> <p> <i> You will become a person who has these like immediate go-tos that she leans on in these moments. And that person, her body may or may not look different, right? But I think you'll be a lot happier with the result because you will feel strong, right? There's body recomposition that I'm not even gonna get into that happens like at maintenance level, right? There's all kinds of science behind that, and I think that's why I would encourage you to focus on those, the habit formation, the identity grasping rather than a specific goal like weight.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. No, I love that and I love that talk of, I've heard you talk before about identity and what would your future you say. I love that. I'm just thinking. So for the people listening, usually we're talking in the academic realm. We're talking about getting things done. But I think that idea of identity moving into, for example, being someone who writes… So a lot of my clients and a lot of the people that listen to the podcast have big writing goals and those sorts of things. </p> <p> What I love is how the stuff you've talked me through today, you could really easily see how that could translate into a writing habit, for example. And becoming someone who writes regularly and that not necessarily being the number of words you are going to do each week, which is what I've often seen people sort of set as their resolutions. And how that could be more about what would a writer do? How would a writer behave?  </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah. And I want to point out too, that a writer doesn't necessarily mean you write consistently at all. And so I think a lot of people, especially in the academic realm, hyper fixate on the idea of like, I'm going to work on my… like even when I was doing my dissertation, I wanted to be like, I want to work one hour each day on my dissertation. </i> </p> <p> <i> And for me, that did not feel like a compassionate goal because I am a cyclical person. I can go balls to the wall on something and then I'm going to completely be bored of it. And so I think like every goal is going to be coached a little bit differently, which is the power of coaching. Right. And which is why I'm like, I'm never like, oh, you should set goals this way, following this exact formula, because it's going to be different each time.  </i> </p> <p> <i> And so for, for something like writing, my best advice is to let yourself be cyclical. To let yourself like, okay, you have a conference coming up, great. Book yourself a hotel room, go there for four days, do nothing else, and then return to your regular life. That's fine, but we have guilt around that because we're told that we should be consistent and that we should have this like daily tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and that it's somehow better. </i> </p> <p> <i> But I'm like, if the result is the same, like I have the same PhD as someone who wrote every day for a year and I wrote my dissertation in like a three and a half week like crazy spree. So at the end of the day, work with yourself, not against.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah. And I think that's great advice cuz I think within that there's also that thing of accepting that that's your approach. Because what I see and I saw in myself previously, but again, I've worked on quite a lot, is I'm very cyclical too. I can get a lot done in a really short amount of time when I'm, when I'm on it. But I really used to beat myself up. And so whilst in the end, you know, got the same PhD, got the same publications, all of those things, there was all this self-talk alongside it of, yeah, but you shouldn't do it like that. </p> <p> And that was the bit that made it painful. It wasn't actually the doing it in blitz sections that made it painful. It was the way that I was talking to myself about that. And since I've been much more accepting of that's just how I roll then. It's so much, it's so much easier.  </p> <p> I wonder what one of the things that I've been toying with, we've been talking in the previous episodes about focusing less on to-do lists and more on to think lists and coming up with ideas that you want to remind yourself to think regularly and I wondered if you had any perspectives on that.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: From a research standpoint, our brain does like specifics, and so the problem with something like a to think list is that it doesn't have an end point and there's no completion, there's no done, and so if it's empowering for you to go down that road, that's fine, but I would say for a lot of the clients we work with, it would probably be very paralyzing to have something on their list so that they couldn't cross off, right. I think the way that I would shift that is one of the, one of the tools that I use is, time blocking, and I will, before I start a big project, I will block myself time specifically to think about that. So I'll be okay. I'm going to give myself an hour or like two hours on Tuesday where I'm just going to brainstorm ideas for this project, I'm just gonna look into things. So it's not even that I'm starting the project, it's almost like I'm like, I'm boarding the plane that's gonna take off. So that's just like my first thought that comes to mind is I would just be careful with something like that, because you can get really, really lost in that and spend a lot of time thinking, and then nothing ever gets done and you convince yourself, oh, I'm thinking, but it action isn't happening. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Oh, absolutely. I guess I'm not thinking about spending lots of time thinking, I guess, so I. PostIts and things like that that remind me - so one for me is one thing at a time. So that's one of my to thinks is one thing at a time, because my tendency is to go, I need to do this and this and da. And it's like, well, if I'm going to eat healthly, then I need to work up my exercise plan. If I'm going to have an exercise plan, then I need to fit in walking the dog and da da da. And so having that, “One thing at time” is more of a kind of thought that I return to, I guess when I hear my brain going off on one, rather than setting aside a period of time for thinking.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: And I think that gives, like, that gives your brain something very intentional to focus on. Right. Because if I'm gonna pick on you for a minute, but one of the things I've noticed on this call is that several times you have spent time describing to me how you are. You're like, I'm like this. I do things this way. I'm very blah, blah, blah. And I have ADHD too, and I hear this from a lot of ADHers. What we will do is we will overexplain our behaviour. We're like, oh, I have ADHD, so I'm like this, so I operate this way. So I'm always on a hundred, a hundred things at once. </i> </p> <p> <i> And what that can turn into is both a fixed mindset and a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Because we tell ourselves I'm this way and so we are completely blind to any evidence of when we're not acting in that way. And we're telling ourselves that if that's something that we want to change or alter, we can't do anything about it. Right, so before this year, I very much had a narrative of like, I always want to focus on a thousand things at once. I have to have a bunch of different goals, otherwise I get bored. And this year I said, you know what? That may be how Karin was, but that is not how Karin is anymore. And so I'm going to choose to believe that I'm an essentialist. </i> </p> <p> <i> I'm going to choose to believe that I go all in on something that's really important to me. And if you look at this year, that's exactly what I did. I picked three goals. I have been all in on those goals all year long, and I have not been distracted by anything else. And it's purely because I allowed myself the opportunity to believe that about myself instead of grasping tightly to my safe old identity of this is how I operate.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I love that. Yeah. And I can really, I can really see that in myself and how that manifests. And in fact, people have said, yeah, but you've got so much done. You can't be someone who doesn’t get things done. So yeah, I think that's really, really useful and such a useful thing for everybody listening to think about. What messages do you have about yourself that you just believe are just true? And that might be standing in the way of your resolutions and things </p> <p> <i> Karin: And how are you describing yourself to other people is really important too, right? Because what we say to other people is they then expect that of our behavior. So I'll give you an example when I started my PhD, I was moving in with three guys that I sort of knew, they were in my department, and they had an extra room, so I was like, sure, I'm going to live with you. Great. And they had reached out to me and I was still, I was living in Alabama at the time, I was moving to Virginia for grad school and they were like, Hey We were just wondering like what you need for your first week, like what your schedule's going to kind of be so that we can figure out stuff with like the house. </i> </p> <p> <i> And I told them, I was like, no problem. I was like, I work out a lot, I eat a lot of protein. And so the thing I'll need is like, I'll need a lot of space in the fridge for all that protein. And I, you know, if you want to come to the gym with me, I'll be going to the gym every morning. Was I going to the gym every morning? </i> </p> <p> <i> No. Was I someone who ate a lot of protein? No, but I absolutely set that expectation. I started telling them that I was that person. And so when I got there, I had no choice but to follow that. And so instead of going into the new year, like reinforcing all these things about your past self, can you start talking about the self that you want to embody as if that person is already here, as if you already believe that. </i> </p> <p> <i> Because there are studies that show that it is not our mindset about a trait, nor is it like our self-efficacy about a trait that helps us, that helps us like actually get that. It is essentially pretending, it is putting ourselves in a situation where we're forced to embody that trait. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Love. Let's finish You mentioned your half marathon. What are your resolutions? How are you like embodying that?  </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yeah, so I actually don't have them completely figured out yet. I try to avoid solidifying anything until January just because I know that I am also a person with lots of ideas and so I'm going to have lots of different ideas. </i> </p> <p> <i> So I don't know currently what they are going to be. I do know that I am signed up for a half marathon in March and I am signed up for another power lifting meet in April. So I will be doing a lot of like cross training, training for both at the same time, which will be exciting for me in the first quarter. </i> </p> <p> <i> But beyond that, I'm not totally sure what the rest of mine are gonna be.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. Before we finish, you just want to take a second, so that people can find you on social media and so on if they want to find out more.  </p> <p> <i> Karin: Yes, absolutely. So if I have three things that I'm gonna tell you about really quick. Number one is we have a future self mapping mini course. It's completely free and it helps you identify your core four values and your core four habits that you can focus on in order to become your 2.0 self. </i> </p> <p> <i> So if you're feeling a little bit directionless, that's a really great place to start, plus it’s free, so it's honestly the best place to start. The second thing I will tell you about is I have a monthly membership. It is $35 a month and it is called Change Academy. I do a two hour deep dive workshop on the science behind a specific change topic every single month. </i> </p> <p> <i> So I would highly encourage, that's the entry point for a lot of people for us and we have an online community. You can like meet other people who are using the same goals as you. We do popup accountability events. We do like tidy with me, that kind of thing. So it's a fun place to be. </i> </p> <p> <i> And then I'm not sure what the availability will be when this airs, but we do at least currently have 2023 coaching spots open in Alliance coaching. Like I said, I'm not totally sure. We usually do sell out, but check our website. And worst case scenario, you can put yourself on the wait list and if that's for someone, you know, if you're really looking for radical self transformation, that is what I would, that is what I would go for. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Amazing. And I will put links to all this stuff and to your Instagram and your YouTube and everything in the show notes. So thank you so much. You've given me me so much to think about. If you are listening, I would really recommend that you go back to the beginning of this episode and listen to the questions that Karin asked me and answer them for yourselves. Because when you're listening to somebody else getting coach, it's really easy to get caught up in the story of me and my weight loss. But go back and listen to those questions and see if you can answer them in relation to your own goals because I know you will get tons out of it just as I have. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Jan 2023 12:56:58 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/12-how-to-set-new-year-s-resolutions-that-stick-with-dr-karin-nordin https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/bonus-ten-lessons-i-learned-about-doing-phds-by-playing-stardew-valley <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <p> Even if you've never played Stardew Valley before, you will still love this episode! I will take you through ten important lessons to succeed in your PhD, using tenuous Stardew metaphors to explain them! Enjoy! </p> <p> (Please note you may prefer to watch this on YouTube so you can see gameplay too) </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello and welcome to this special bonus episode of the PhD Life Coach, where I'm going to be telling you the 10 lessons I learned playing Stardew Valley that I think will help you in your PhD. Now, if you've never played Stardew Valley, don't like commute games, don't switch off. There's still going to be tons of value for you here, and you might even find a new game to play. </p> <p> If you love Stardew Valley, you're going see a lot of familiar ideas and think about them in a way that I think you won't have thought about them before. So Stardew Valley is essentially a farming simulator game. You inherit a small farm from your grandfather and you get to grow crops and develop the farm and answer challenges as you go along. </p> <p> It's not something I ever thought I'd enjoy. I'm not a big computer gamer, I have to say. But my fiance and stepdaughters play it, and they have got me slightly obsessed. So let's go.  </p> <p> So the first thing you have to do in Stardew Valley is pick what farm you want to base your game in. And they all have different qualities. The Hilltop Farm is known to be challenging, but it's got lots of mining opportunities. There's monsters at the Wilderness Farm. Forest Farm has lots of forageables, but less space for farming and things like that. </p> <p> And it's the same when you are choosing where to do your PhD. You could go to a research intensive institution where you've got super high flying supervisors, loads of resource, really big team. You could go somewhere smaller or with a more up and coming supervisor. where perhaps you're more limited on resource, but you get more one-to-one attention and support. </p> <p> You might go somewhere with a really diverse range of subjects. For example, if you want to do more interdisciplinary work. There's no right answer here, but you need to think about what are your goals, what are your strengths, and what do you need support with so that you can pick the farm or the university that works for you. I'm going to pick the Four Corners Farm because it has a little bit of everything.  </p> <p> So we're waking up on the first day of our PhD, the first day of our farm, and as you can see, we come out. And to be honest, it's all a bit of a mess. It's tricky to know where to start. We could clear some of this green stuff that's in the way that's filling everything. We could decide that we want to chop down some of this wood, even maybe chop down some of the trees. </p> <p> But it's really hard to know exactly what to do. So lesson two is stuff everywhere is normal. Not knowing what to do first is normal. You're not meant to know at this stage of your PhD, but what I would always recommend is to get something planted. So in Stardew Valley, you might have noticed when we woke up, there was a little parcel. </p> <p> You get given 15 parsnip seeds to start yourself off, and you get a little instruction up here that tells you that you need to plant these in tilled soil. And so what I always advise to people who are starting out in Stardew is to get something planted quickly. So you could spend ages clearing all this stuff, but the best thing is to get something in the ground and going. </p> <p> And I think the same is true in your PhD. Try and get something planned where you can be actually working on it and seeing some progress early on. Now, that might be doing a small lit review on a really constrained area of research or planning a short presentation about the options there could be for your methodology, for example, but something that feels concrete so that even if you do nothing else in your first few weeks, you get that thing done. </p> <p> We are going to give these a little water. so that they will grow. And you can see I could have spent all day wandering around seeing what was going on, clearing all the mess, getting organized, all of those things. But actually they're growing now. It's 8:30 in the morning, you can see up in the corner there and I've done something productive for the day. So lesson two, get something planted and try not to worry about the fact that everything's everywhere because that's normal. </p> <p> Now I've brought you to a different farm, one that I am not very much further on with, a few days further on with, to show you lesson three. And lesson three is don't plant too much too early. You can see I've actually planted quite a lot of vegetables in this. Some of them are actually ready to harvest already. </p> <p> So look, I've got some hot peppers, but I'm still at the very beginnings of my farm career here. I'm still a very new PhD student, and what that means is I've got a rubbish watering can. I have to water one plant at a time. I don't have any sprinklers yet, and I've planted so many things that I actually just get really stressed and bored trying to maintain all of these different things.  </p> <p> There is a time in your career when juggling multiple projects will be an important part of what you do. The beginning of your PhD is not that time. So try to limit what things you plant in those early stages, because at some stage you're going to have to water them all. Now, later on you might decide to introduce some new projects when you've got a better watering can, when you've upgraded it, when you've got sprinklers. In academia, I think sprinklers are known as PhD students and postdocs, i e people that can keep your projects watered and working while you are doing something else, but at the moment, really try and constrain and just plant a few things that you can focus on. I'm going to leave these because it's boring. </p> <p> Lesson four is play according to your goals. There's a whole bunch of different ways that you can play Stardew Valley. You can focus on fishing in your ponds or in the rivers. You can focus more on foraging. There's all sorts of different things you can try and do. My fiance likes to industrialize everything, knock it down, replace it with concrete and get huge factories going. My youngest stepdaughter loves to make it all beautiful and spends a lot of time fishing. My eldest stepdaughter just likes spending everybody else's money and seeing if she can wind them up. Sorry, Jess, but it's true. Whatever your goals are, you can play Stardew in different ways. </p> <p> You can spend different time in different parts of your farm and set yourself different challenges. And the same is true in your PhD, depending on whether you've come to do a PhD because you love the subject or because you want to be an academic or because you want to go into industry, set your goals, and set the things that you focus on depending on what you are trying to achieve. You don't have to do it all. </p> <p> So I'm taking you now to what's called the Community Centre, which is a real cornerstone of early Stardew Valley playing. And in the Community Centre, there's a whole bunch of different challenges, things that you have to collect and you win things for doing them. So as an example, we're going to go over here to the fish tank. </p> <p> So here, I'm collecting different fishes. You can see I've already got some of them. I still need a Tiger Trout there. I still need a Walleye to finish the night fishing bundle and if I manage to complete all of these, I get a glittering builder folder removed, which is quite a useful thing to happen. If we go in here to the boiler room, I've got different things I need to collect, and if I can just find either an emerald or a diamond, then I am nearly ready for the mine carts to be repaired, which means that I am able to get around town much faster. Now, for me, what the community center really represents is some of the cornerstone things during a PhD. </p> <p> So regardless of what your goals are, there are certain things about doing a PhD that you either have to do to get the qualification itself or that will really set you up well regardless of what you want to do. So these might be publishing, doing original research. It might be getting funding. </p> <p> Try and figure out what are the cornerstone things that everybody needs to do in your type of PhD and figure out how you can prioritize them. So as an example in Stardew in the Community Centre you are seen that I wandered up to this room over here, which has got crops in it. So I. But in the, when it comes summer, I need to make sure that at minimum I plant some tomatoes, some peppers, some blueberries, and some melons. </p> <p> Because otherwise, I'm not going to be able to complete this. I might not plant many others, but I definitely need those. Figure out what those cornerstones are in your PhD.  </p> <p> Be careful though, because lots of different opportunities are going to come your way. So in Stardew on Pierre's notice board here, there's no help required at the moment. </p> <p> But often there'll be challenges posted on here saying, can you take a melon to Jody? Can you take a fish to Lewis? Or whatever? There's Lewis. Hi Lewis. And what you can find is that those challenges can really take up a lot of your time and distract you from some of the cornerstone activities of completing the Community Centre. So just be mindful that just cuz something's been stuck on a notice board, it doesn't mean you need to do it. That is true in Stardew and in your PhD. </p> <p> Now that we've had a little wander round on the beach, I'm going to take you to another farm so that I can give you the remainder of the lessons that I've learned. </p> <p> So now you'll already see we are waking up in a much fancier house. And I have the best outfit on in the world with my little pink cowboy hat. This is my husband, Alex. So things have progressed quite well. I even have a baby up here. Here's my baby. Gonna give him a cuddle. There we go. And that's him looked after for the day. </p> <p> Easy, if only it were that easy. So you can see my farm looks very different than the ones we were in just now. I've got all my beehives, I've got flowers growing around the, I've got tea saplings around the lake. In my barn here, I've got all my animals. So here's my pigs and my sheep. </p> <p> They're not very happy because they haven't gotten any hay, but I will deal with that later. So you can see that it's a really well developed farm. And the problem with this is it can be inspiring. It's like looking at a more senior PhD student's thesis. It can be super inspiring to see all the fish ponds that they've laid out, all the research that they've done, the articles that they've written. </p> <p> It can be inspiring. It can also be super intimidating. You take a peek inside one of their barns and you see their lab work chugging away like this, and you're like, oh my goodness, I'm never going to be this far along. So lesson six is be cautious when you're looking at done PhDs, they are living in a completely different stage to you and remember that when you are judging yourself. </p> <p> Try to remember to take inspiration rather than to make it mean something negative about you.  </p> <p> Now, the other thing I want you to remember with that is that with games like this, there are things called “mods”. So you can put in your own little bits of computer program or that other people have written that give you certain advantages. </p> <p> So, as an example, my fiance Andy, he has a tractor mod. So when I'm walking around manually collecting things like this, having to find my tools and individually get these little worms out the ground that I'm gonna dig up over here, he has a tractor. He can just blast through all this in two seconds flat. </p> <p> That gives him massive advantages. And so sometimes when I look at his farm, I go, oh my goodness, I'm so behind. You've been playing for the same amount of time as I have, and you've got so much money and so much happening. But then I remember he is playing with different mods.  </p> <p> Now in academia, those mods could be things like having parents who work in academia already. So you've always known this world. They can be things like being male, being white, being cisgender, heterosexual, all of these things that make it more likely that there are people similar to you working in your environment and more likely that people in academia will understand your culture and your norms and your behaviour. </p> <p> So when you are looking at other people and you are comparing yourself to their work, just remember they have different mods to you and you don't necessarily even know what their mods are. But we are not all starting from a level playing field and we have to remember that when we are comparing our work to each other’s. </p> <p> Now I've gone to the mines because I want to show you a couple of things that I have mods, and that's the other thing is to remember, we all have our own mods too. So the two mods I've had, you've already seen me using one of them, which is I have something called access to Chest Everywhere. So instead of having to walk up and find the wooden chest that's got the right things in, I can access them from everywhere. </p> <p> I love it. It's a mod. It's a cheat. It's not part of the main game, but it really helps me and it stops me getting quite as frustrated. The other mod I have is really cute. I have, you see on the right hand side here, there's health bars and energy bars. I'm getting attacked by some monsters, and you'll see they don't really change. </p> <p> They should go down. I used to play this game and I would get to these stages in the mines and I would be fighting away and I would lose track of time and realize I hadn't eaten any food and my little character would die in the mines. And when you die in the mines, you lose things out of your backpack, you lose energy, you get told off by the other villagers and things. </p> <p> And my lovely fiance didn't like me being sad, and so he gave me a mod where my energy and health just completely replenishes itself. And you know what? I feel guilty about that for a while because it felt like I wasn't playing the game properly or whatever. But I decided in the end, you know what “this allows me to enjoy the game. </p> <p> This allows me to have fun to play to my strengths”, and so I've decided I don't care. And it's similar, some of you listening to this may have disabilities where you get particular support with things. And sometimes I've had a lot of students in the past with disabilities who get certain arrangements, who feel guilty about using them. </p> <p> They feel guilty about getting extensions or getting support in the laboratory or whatever it might be, because they feel that it, it sort of minimizes their achievements.  </p> <p> I would really encourage you as lesson eight to remember to use whatever mods you need to use. This is your PhD, your goals, your individual human, wonderful self. </p> <p> Use whatever mods you need, whatever support you need. If you feel stupid because you need your Mum to phone you in the morning and make sure you're out of bed because you're not so hot at that, who cares? Let's do what we need to do. Use whatever mods enable us to enjoy and thrive while we do our PhDs.  </p> <p> And that also kind of relates to my lesson nine. So we are going to come out of the mine and we are going to jump in the mine cart because I've activated the mine carts in this farm. We're going to pop home and as I appear here in the bus stop, there's a bus that will take me to the desert. I've even in here got an obelisk that takes me directly to the desert. I've got a boat elsewhere that will take me to Ginger Island. I've got this beautiful farm and I always thought I'd be perfectly happy with my game once I got to this stage, but actually there's elements at the beginning of Stardew that I really miss. </p> <p> I miss working towards the Community Centre, having really clear defined goals, having to prioritize with my money because I didn't have loads of it. You see now I've got one half million G, so I've got tons of money at the moment. I can buy whatever I want and it takes some of the challenge away, to be honest. </p> <p> So remember, whatever stage of the game you are at, whatever stage of Stardew or your PhD you are at, there's advantages and a disadvantages. And lesson nine is to learn to love the stage you are at. If you are at the beginning of your PhD where you are getting to do loads of reading and you're getting to really immerse yourself in something quite specific and you're not being pulled in 10 different directions, try not to spend time beating yourself up for the fact you're not further along. Try and take joy in the fact that you can focus on this one thing for now and really enjoy it. If you are towards the end and you are looking back on times that felt simpler and like you're way too busy, because you've got to write up, try and enjoy the fact that you have actually had this amazing experience and now you're in a position where you get to juggle lots of different things and you get to write it up and see it published. Try to enjoy the stage you're at.  </p> <p> The final lesson from Stardew comes with a slightly shocking admission, which is that I have played an obscene amount of Stardew Valley. </p> <p> Mum, I know you'll be listening to this. Please press stop now and don't listen to anymore. But I have played somewhere north of 300 hours of Stardew because the annoying thing with Steam is it shows you how many hours you've played. I would not think for a second I'd done that. If you'd said to me, you will play 300 hours of a computer game, I would laugh at you. </p> <p> But the thing with Stardew Valley is to play one day takes about 20 minutes. And so it's so easy to go, you know what? I can play, I, I can squeeze another day in. Should we just have, do one more day and I want you to remember that. You can get a lot done when you accumulate things in 20 minute chunks. </p> <p> So if you are finding that you don't feel like you're making any progress and you find it hard to get going on things, remember you are going to finish Stardew Valley and you are going to finish your PhD one day at a time. And if I can accumulate 300 hours of Stardew time by doing 20 minute days, one after the other, you can accumulate an enormous amount of research and writing and productivity one 20 minutes at a time.  </p> <p> So I hope you've enjoyed my little tour of Stardew Valley and the 10 lessons that I've learned. How I hope you've had a wonderful holiday. You should be in the midst of it by now, so I hope you have time to enjoy yourself. </p> <p> The merchant is waving goodbye and I am going to say goodbye too. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> Mon, 26 Dec 2022 05:00:01 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/bonus-ten-lessons-i-learned-about-doing-phds-by-playing-stardew-valley https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/11-how-to-rest-over-the-holiday-period <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <p> How many times have you intended to rest and ended up working over the festive period? Or intended to work and then not quite got around to it? In this episode I give you a framework to figure out how to make a plan that works for you. Let me help you have a happy holiday! </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the PhD Life Coach. If you're listening to this brand new, it is the week before Christmas. We're in the midst of holiday season and we are going to be thinking about grabbing some rest over that period. Now, I remember when I was a first year PhD student and I was super keen, had had a really busy autumn term, but was feeling really excited about everything and I spoke to my supervisor. A wonderful wise professor and said to him, what should I read over Christmas? I felt like I'd been doing lots of ethics applications and helping my third years in the lab and things like that, practical stuff. And I felt a bit behind on the literature and I said to him, what should I read over Christmas so that I can be ready for next year? </p> <p> And he said, I'll write you a list. And I was like, excellent, fantastic. And I waited and he came back to me the next day and handed me a little folded piece of paper and when I opened it up, it had three or four novels written on it. He was like, they're great novels. Read some of those. Relax, enjoy your Christmas, come back in the new year, ready to work. </p> <p> And I always remember that because it would've been so easy for him to set me a reading list or you know, encourage me that I, I really needed to crack on. But instead he really recognized how important it was for us to rest. And you'd think after an interaction like that, that had such impact on me at the time and since I would be really good at resting over holidays and figuring out what I'm doing in terms of when I'm working and when I'm not. </p> <p> But for years and years I really struggled with it and I call it the problem of neither. I wonder whether any of you have experienced this, that when I don’t make decisions about exactly what I'm doing over the holiday period, whether it's Christmas or summer or the sort of spring break, Easter holidays, or whatever you call it, whatever time of year it is, when there's traditionally holiday period time off, I would think that I needed to catch up on some bits of work, but also how important it would be for me to get a rest and recover.  </p> <p> And so I'd sort of half think about it, but not make any decisions, and then I'd end up with the problem of neither, which is that I would spend the entire holiday period thinking that I should be working, but not working, or then working and thinking that I should spend time with my family. And so I ended up with neither. I ended up not being productive and getting stuff done, and I ended up not having nice, relaxed holiday times either.  </p> <p> And for me, the thing that really helped with this and where I'm way better with the winter holidays now than with any other holidays is one year and I can't remember when exactly I decided to make a concrete rule. Now my birthday is just before Christmas. So Christmas and birthday have always kind of gone together for me, and I decided, you know what? </p> <p> I don't work between my birthday and New year. I don't work. That's just the rule. There's no messing about on the 23rd thinking, oh, I could just check some emails, getting bored on the 27th from thinking, oh, I'll just get a bit of work done on that paper. I don't work between my birthday and New Year. Now, I'm not suggesting that that's the rule for everybody, although I think everyone should have my birthday as a holiday </p> <p> I don't think that's the rule for everybody, but what I would really suggest you think about is what are your rules? Because the more you can decide that in advance, and the fewer decisions you have to make, the easier that holiday period can be. So what we're going to think about in this episode is what are the thoughts that make us work during this period anyway? How much work do you actually need or want to do, and how do you decide? And then I'm going to think through some questions that you could ask yourself to really work out what your boundaries are going to be, where they sit. </p> <p> And I'll talk through some other boundaries that I have as we go through. But first of all, let's think about the thoughts. Why do you work? Why do you work during the traditional holiday season anyway? For some of you, it might be because of your own internal expectations, especially if you are an academic, so you have a teaching load as well as your research. </p> <p> You may well feel that the holidays is the only time you get to focus on you and things that are good for your career. So there might be a pressure that this is the only time that you can get that done. It might be that you are telling yourself you haven't done enough this semester. And this can be true from PhD students through to full professors that you look back over your autumn semester and you can, and you think that you haven't done enough.  </p> <p> Now hopefully if you listen to last week's episode where we thought about reviewing the year from a strengths perspective with Professor Jenn Cumming. If you haven't listened to that episode, do go back and grab it because it's an amazing episode. And so hopefully if you've listened to that, you'll be feeling more positive about what you've got done this year already. </p> <p> But for a lot of us that thought, I haven't done enough, I should have finished this. I should be further along with that can be a real driver for feeling like you need to work over the holidays. </p> <p> There's also the perspective that we are looking ahead to next year, next semester, the next calendar year, and thinking that we really need to get ahead. Perhaps we've got teaching in that semester that we haven't delivered before. Perhaps we've got big projects coming into culmination, whatever it might be. If you are feeling overwhelmed about that new year, it's really easy to tell yourself that you need to be working during the holidays to get ahead of that.  </p> <p> For some people, it's about other people's expectations. A feeling that your supervisor or your boss expects you to be working during the holidays or a more general belief that academics don't take time off. </p> <p> So sometimes you go on Twitter and we hear about people who are, oh, I can't remember the last time I took a full day off, and whilst usually they’re moaning about it, it can really reinforce this idea that this isn't something that academics do. Academics don't take holidays, and therefore, if I identify as an academic, I want to be an academic, I am an academic, then maybe I need to be like that too. Maybe that's just normal. </p> <p> Or maybe you want be working during the holidays, maybe actually you enjoy that. Some parts of your job are actually your hobby and the thing you love, and so actually knowing that other people work too is the justification that you need in order for you to work during the holiday too.  </p> <p> Sometimes there can be stuff about the expectation of families here as well, expectations about whether you should be working or not. And to be honest, those can go in both directions. You might have family that think that you have a bit of a slack life as a PhD student or an academic, and actually you want to be showing them “No, no, seriously, it's hard. But others might expect you to be able to drop everything for the entirety of the school holidays and don't understand why you have things to do. So family expectations can be a big part of it as well.  </p> <p> And a big part, and this is what led to my problem of neither that I was talking about at the start, is avoidance of. I'll just see how it goes. and that avoidance of actually making a decision about it. </p> <p> And that can sound like freedom, that “I'll just do what I feel like on the day” can feel like freedom. And some of you might clinging to that really hard, but I would really urge you to think carefully about that. The problem with a “I'll see how I feel on the day” is you are making decisions, you are making self-regulatory choices, throughout the entire holiday period. And we know from research that that's really fatiguing.  </p> <p> So I would really, really urge you to stick with this podcast and think about the framework that I'm going to offer you for deciding and really consider making at least some decisions about what your boundaries for Christmas are going to be.  </p> <p> Others of you, and particularly those of you who have families, who are responsible for the present-buying, the decorating, and all of these things, you might feel like all you're going to be doing is swapping one lot of work for a different lot of work, so you might as well just get on with it. </p> <p> That is real. Those of you with big families where perhaps labour in your home isn't evenly distributed, or maybe you're raising children on your own and it can feel like, “well there;s no point making any decisions about this, it's just gonna be head down for Christmas. I need to get all this stuff organised to make Christmas happen and be wonderful for my family. I need to get on and get my work done and there's not any time for me”. Even with those thoughts, I'd really encourage you to come with me on this framework and figure out where you can put boundaries around your rest of Christmas too. Because we know that there's a ton of research that shows that when you are more rested, you are more creative, you get more work done more quickly, your mood is generally better.  </p> <p> We know that rest helps with all of these things yet so often we just sort of stick our heads in the sand and plough on and just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. “I just need to get this done. I just need to get that done” when actually stopping to rejuvenate, stopping to replenish ourselves, means that we enter the new year refreshed and excited about our work instead of this relentless feeling that it never stops.  </p> <p> So, here are the questions that I think you should ask yourself before Christmas. </p> <p> The first you need to explore those thoughts. So I went through a whole list of things that you might be thinking about other people's expectations, your own expectations of what you are, what academics are, the thought that you haven't done enough, the thought that you need to get ahead of the future, the thought you don't deserve rest even, or that you don’t know what you’d do with rest. </p> <p> So maybe some of you won't be going home for the holiday period. Maybe you're an international student, international member of staff, you don't have people locally. Maybe you are estranged from your family or just don't go back. Maybe you feel like actually you've got a long period of time where you could be working. Even with you guys again, I'd like you to go with me on some of these decisions and really think through what works for you. </p> <p> So think about those thoughts and I want you to think to what extent are they true? So the thought that you haven't done enough this semester, and so you need to get it finished. To what extent is that actually true? In what ways isn't that true? In what ways have you done loads of things that you perhaps aren't giving yourself credit for? </p> <p> So to give you an example, I ended up yesterday round at my mum's house discussing with her and my stepdad about my business and the progress that I've made so far since leaving academia at the end of August and one of the things we did was really try to go through all the decisions that I've made, because sometimes, like you guys, I beat myself up that I should be further along and I haven't done as much as I wanted to. </p> <p> But then when we were talking about it, it was like but you've made decisions about software, you've made decisions about marketing, you've made decisions about business strategy, about your focus, about the order of things you're going to do things in and that's huge and that's cognitively demanding. </p> <p> And yes, sometimes that looks like me wandering around the house not doing anything very useful, or it looks like me scrolling on social media or taking the dog out for too many walks or whatever it might be. But all of that cognitive load is huge. And I bet if you've got things like that too, things that you are not giving yourself credit for that actually took a lot of your time. Why it's totally understandable that why you are exactly where you are and that there's nothing to catch up. </p> <p> For those of you thinking you need to get ahead of next year. Is that true? If next year's going to be hard, is the solution to get ahead of it, to get stuff organized, or is the solution to look after yourself and your mental and physical health and go into the new year feeling excited rather than exhausted. </p> <p> If you believe that there isn't anything for you to do over the holidays, like I say, if you're on your own or you don't have lots happening over the holidays, is that true? Are there other things that you could be doing that would rejuvenate you and you'd enjoy? </p> <p> So after you've asked yourself, is it true, some of you with some of it will say, yeah, it is true. And if you do what you then ask yourself, okay, if it's true. So what? What do we have to do with that? So if you are thinking, okay, maybe I haven't got enough done this semester. Maybe you haven't, but what if that's ok? </p> <p> What if you got done what you got done, and that's just where you are and you still deserve a holiday? Because one of the really important things I want you to remember is that rest is not a reward for productivity. Rest is a necessary condition for all humans. No matter how much you want to get done, how little you want to get done, how lazy you are, how energetic you are, rest is a ne is a necessary thing. </p> <p> You don't have to earn it. You don't have to have done enough this semester in order to rest. You can have had a really slow semester where actually you felt like you're chasing your tail your whole time and you're really behind and you can still rest. In fact, you're probably the person that needs the rest the most. </p> <p> Because usually when we're like that, it's a sign that we're exhausted and you might not register how exhausted you are, but maybe you are someone who needs the rest more than anybody.  </p> <p> So we really challenge these thoughts, challenge the thoughts that all academics work during the holidays. This is just normal. Challenge the thoughts that my colleagues will judge me if I don't work over the holidays. Challenge the thoughts. I'll be letting my students down if I don't work over the holidays. Really question them, really decide are they true? Do they serve me? Do they help? And I would say for the majority of cases, Ttey're not true and they don't help. </p> <p> So how do we actually decide? Because like I said, I'm not expecting all of you to take off my holiday to New Year. Not always feasible, especially because grant awarding bodies, I don’t know about around the world, but in the UK, still insist on having early January deadlines for grant applications, which I think should be outlawed, but that's a whole other story. </p> <p> So some of you might have big grant deadlines in the new year. I accept that. You may not have had a chance to get to it. I get it. You may have things due. Editors seem to set January as a hand in date, maybe because of this kind of general expectation that holidays is when academics get stuff done. If you're an editor, you're in charge of this stuff. Let's get rid of that. Just saying happy to consult on that if anybody wants, but you have a big deadline in January, still ask yourself these following questions  </p> <p> My questions are </p> <p> When, what, where, who, why, and how. Okay. Just the standard “w” questions that “how” sneaks on into, standard “w” questions. But I want you to ask yourself about them. </p> <p> I want you to ask yourself them about this upcoming holiday.  </p> <p> So when is it okay for you to work? And there's no right answer to this. Depending on your circumstances, depending on what you need to do, that might vary. But try and make that decision in advance. So I decided, I'm actually extending mine slightly this year. So part of my leaving academia and setting up this business is about work-life balance. My partner, as I've mentioned before, is a teacher. I want to have school holidays off. So apart from the occasional consult, which I am allowing myself to do, I'm not working from the 16th of December is the last day of term for my partner and our daughters. </p> <p> So I'm not working from the 17th until I'm looking at my diary until first. So Sunday is the first. I'll start work on 2nd of January, and that's my boundary. And I've mentioned an exception to that. I'll come back to how you decide on your exceptions, but what works for you? That may not be feasible for lots of people, but maybe you decide “I don't work between… If you are, if you celebrate Christmas, maybe you don't work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, boxing Day, full stop. No emails, no writing, no relevant reading, nothing. I don't work Christmas Eve, Christmas day, boxing day. That's the rule. If you celebrate other holidays, maybe you decide on those dates. So really think about what dates work for you. </p> <p> Maybe you have your kids some of the time, but not other times. You know, maybe you, you don't work while you've got your kids with you and you do work when they're back with another parent or another caregiver, for example. Depending on your family situation, when are you going to work? Write it down. Have it as an actual thing that you've decided. </p> <p> It really removes the cognitive load to know, “no, it's okay. I'm not working today. It doesn't matter what I feel like I don't work on this day.” </p> <p> The second question is, what, and this is where I told you I already have a little exception to mine. What work are you willing to do during this period? And that could be, what work are you going to do on the days that you are working </p> <p> over the period and what work would break your rule almost. So one thing I've seen people do and I've tried to implement when I was a working academic as well, is only doing selfish work. Now, there shouldn't be a concept of selfish work because all of it is our job, and it's a very academic thing to believe that some of our work is selfish. </p> <p> But what I mean by that, and I think most academics will understand what I mean is, where I did decide that I would do some work during the holidays was where I had a paper to write, a grant to write, something that I enjoyed and something that would directly benefit my career. So I'm a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. </p> <p> Some of you working in the UK will understand what that means. It's the highest qualification that you can get around teaching in higher education. I wrote my P F H E A application during part of a holiday season. Again, I put some really strict boundaries around it, but that was something I was like, you know what? </p> <p> I want this, I think I deserve this. This will help my career progression. And I decided that I would do that. I still had my boundaries around it. Not doing it between Christmas and New Year. But outside of that period, but in the university holidays, I decided that I would do that sort of work. </p> <p> When I was a working academic, I also had periods of time when I was full blown, just. Off email, didn't look at it at all. And other times where I said that I would be on email, but I would only be responding to emergencies and by emergencies it, I didn't mean I need this for my grant. I meant mental health crises, those sorts of things. </p> <p> So I would respond to my students during some of those periods, but not all of them. You get to decide. And what I would really urge you is don't make that up as you go along either. Decide now what things are you going to do, what things are okay things to do during the work bits of this holiday season, and what things aren't. </p> <p> And I would really encourage you to put yourself at the front of that list. It is not selfish to prioritize the things that you need for your career. The things that often get wedged out when you're at everybody else's beck and call, that's not selfish. It's sensible. Ironically, it's what you're going to get rewarded for, so technically it's what our universities want us to be doing, but it often feels like there isn't time. So really decide what you are going to do.  </p> <p> Where. So think about where you are going to work, if you're going to work. Where are you going to be during the holiday season and where are you going to work if you're doing that? </p> <p> So especially if you go away, are you going to just decide for that whole period I'm away, just not working full stop? Or are you going to decide “I am going to work but how I'll do it is while I'm at my mum's, I will go in the spare room for two hours in the morning to do my work, crack out what I need to get done and finish, and I'm doing it only when I'm sat in the spare room. </p> <p> Or you decide there's nowhere that you can work in the house. So for two hours on these days, you're going to go to a local coffee shop and crack out the work you'd get done. If you don't decide where you are working, there's a massive tendency to be on email in your phone, and that just puts you in that messy middle where you are not working, but you are not present and having a holiday either. So you're not getting the big important stuff done, but your brain is in work. Your family will know that your brain is in work. You'll not have the rest from it. So decide where you are going to work.  </p> <p> One thing that you can do to really put some boundaries around that is to take email off your phone. If you have your work, email off your phone, disconnect it for the Christmas, disconnect it for the holiday period, so that you have to only be working in the times and places that you have designated as that as work time. </p> <p> So this one really depends on what stage of academia you are at, but who are you willing to do work for over the holiday period? So I've talked a little bit about making a good chunk of it you, that it's you that you are working for, but maybe you will make some other additions to that. I had holiday periods, and I'm thinking not just about Christmas now, but other times of year where I would I would set aside some time of that holiday period where I'd review drafts for my PhD students. Because I love my PhD students and I don't want to be the one that holds them up. Or where I would respond to panicking emails from undergraduate students because we've got exams in January, for example. I would do that. </p> <p> What I wouldn't do is respond to emails demanding basic administrative information, timetabling stuff, anything like that. Then it's like, no, you should ask me sooner. You can wait to January. That's fine. So I put boundaries around it based on who I thought needed me the most, who I thought I enjoyed the work, and was really quite strict about that. </p> <p> Actually, that was something that I feel quite good about that I would ignore emails that weren’t from those people. So who are you willing to do work from? Just to really emphasize here I'm talking about the days that I decided that I would work during the Christmas break. So typically we would finish for Christmas around the 14th, 15th, something like that. </p> <p> And so I would have that kind of first week where I was, it was university holidays. The students had gone, I wasn't teaching, I didn't have meetings, those sorts of things. But it was before my birthday and so I was still working. I would make some really careful decisions about who I would do work for during that time. </p> <p> Similarly, there are years where I would decide that actually I would do a couple of days between Christmas and New Year, and I would make decisions about who I would do that for and what work I would do. So really think about that.  </p> <p> And then I want you to think about how, how are you going to work? And some of this we've touched on when you're thinking about where you're going to work, when you're going to work, things like that. But also, how are you going to make this feel nice? How are you going to only set yourself a manageable amount of work so that you actually end the holidays feeling accomplished? </p> <p> One of the things I used to do with summer breaks is set myself the most. Absolutely unreasonably ridiculously long to-do list. Papers I was going to read, grants I was going to finish, teaching I was going to get ahead of, all of this. It doesn't happen and all it feels overwhelming and so it's harder to get on with, or you work really, really, really, really hard and still finish the holiday feeling rubbish. </p> <p> So how can you make this nice, make it achievable? How can you make it feel pleasant while you are working? Can you have a blanket? Can you have a mug of nice drink? How can you make it feel like, actually, okay, I'm working during the holiday, but I feel cozy and spoiled. I'm using it as an opportunity to do my reading or things that I love about my work. </p> <p> I'm going to say for the 10th time, this is not saying that you should work through your holidays. Have days where you have no work at all. These are for the days where you've decided I am going to do some work, or it's needed to do some work. How are you going to make it lovely for yourself?  </p> <p> And the final one is why, and this is perhaps the most important of all, is deciding why you are working and making sure that it's a reason you love, because if your reason why you are working is because you're behind, because you haven't done enough, because everybody else is better than you, everybody else is more on top of you. It's going to feel rubbish while you are working. And there's nothing worse than feeling like other people are out there celebrating with their friends and family, and you are the one working because you are rubbish and you are behind and you haven't done enough. </p> <p> So figure out a why that you love. If you are going to work, that big “if” again. If you are going to work, figure out a why that you love. I'm going to do this work in this pockets of time, in this place, and I'm going to do it because I deserve my principal fellowship at the Higher Education Academy, and that will help with my career. </p> <p> I'm going to work in these time slots in this place, and I'm going to make it lovely by having snacks with me because I love my discipline and I don't often get a chance to just read. Do you see what I mean? Make reasons you love.  </p> <p> For those of you who are juggling lots of things at Christmas, this is particularly important for you because there's an enormous guilt around any decision you make, particularly if you are somebody who has responsibility for children at any time, and particularly if you are the primary person that makes Christmas happen. So for you, I want you to really spend time on this why? And you can spend time on the why for all aspects of what you do over Christmas when you are resting. Why are you resting? You're not resting because I'm knackered and I'm sick of you all. That's not a helpful thought. </p> <p> I'm resting because I deserve it and it's lovely. Why are you spending time with your family? Not because you are obliged to do the Elf on the bloody shelf that no one actually needs. Why do you do Elf on the Shelf? Don't do it. Don't create these things for yourself. But why are you doing it? You're doing it because you want to give your children the joy of the festive season. </p> <p> Not because everyone will complain and think I'm rubbish if I don't. Why are you working? Because you deserve that intellectual time, because that then allows you to get promoted or whatever it is. Make sure it's reasons always that you love, whichever bits that you are picking King. </p> <p> Think ahead if you're listening to this, it's the 19th of December. That's the day of release. We are nearly at Christmas. We're in the midst of the festive season. There are so many different religious and cultural activities and rest of alls happening over this period. So whatever you celebrate, whatever the special days are for you, I wish you absolutely wonderful winter holidays, wonderful festive time with the people that you care about. Take a few minutes now to plan out when, what, where, who, how, and most importantly, why you're going to do the things you do over this break period. And let's all start 2023, feeling a little bit more rested and a little bit more cared for. </p> <p> Next week there is going to be a silly bonus episode which is all about why doing a PhD is like playing Stardew Valley. If you haven't found Stardew Valley, it's a computer game that I waste an inordinate amount of time on, thanks to my stepdaughters. But it's a funny little episode. Just to reassure you, I'm recording it in advance because I won't be working between my birthday and New Year, and I hope you won't be either. </p> <p> Have a wonderful festive season. </p> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 19 Dec 2022 04:45:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/11-how-to-rest-over-the-holiday-period https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/10-how-to-review-your-year-the-strengths-based-way-with-professor-jenn-cumming <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <p> **Hi everyone. Quick note before the show starts. This is a special extended episode because we have a guest, Professor Jenn Cumming, and she is taking me through a review of my year using a strengthbased approach, and you'll hear all about what that means in the show and why it's so useful. S <span> o you are gonna get to hear quite a lot about me and my life, and in doing so, learn how you can take a strength based approach to reviewing your year two. She'll explain why that's so important and exactly how you can do it. It's. Gonna be an amazing episode. So grab a pen and paper so that you can take notes.  </span> <span> I know you're going to want to. Jenn's microphone was a little bit dodge. We thought it was okay, but it hasn't turned out that great. You'll be able to hear her absolutely no problems whatsoever, but it's not quite up to the usual quality.  </span> <span> I know it won't affect how inspiring and useful you find this episode, though, so enjoy the show.**  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> You can find out more about my guest, Professor Jenn Cumming, in all these places:  </p> <p> @drjenncumming </p> <p> https://www.sprintproject.org/ </p> <p> and the two tools she mentioned are here:  </p> <p> https://www.viacharacter.org/account/register </p> <p> https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/254033/strengthsfinder.aspx (there is a charge for this product, but it may be available through your workplace too) </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 12 of the PhD Life Coach. And I am really excited because we have a special guest today. She is a leading psychologist and one of my best friends, so welcome Professor Jenn Cumming. Do you want to tell us a little bit about who you are and then we'll get on the show. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Thanks Vikki, it's so exciting to be part of your podcast, so thanks so much for inviting me to be a part of it. I've known Vikki for over 20 years now, so she is slightly biased when she says I'm a leading psychologist, but I've worked at the University of Birmingham for over 20 years. And I'm a sport and exercise psychologist and currently a professor there as well as a chartered psychologist. So I've been working for a long time in terms of helping people to be able to really recognize and enhance their potential and, through this podcast, hopefully we can talk about how we can view this in a really positive strength-based way.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Fantastic. And Jennn says, I'm biased. I am biased, but I am also right as usual. And one of the things I love most about Jenn's work is she has been involved in sports psychology with elite athletes, enhancing performance, but then has taken loads of the work that she did there and applied it into really, really vulnerable populations as well. And I know she'll tell you more about that work at the end of the show, but it means she's bringing this huge wealth of experience, of helping a whole variety of different types of people identify their strengths and use that to achieve their goals, enhance their wellbeing, and generally live good lives. And Jenn touched on this slightly in her intro, but the purpose of today is really thinking about reviewing our year.   </p> <p> So one of the things that can be really useful to do at the end of the year is to think back over the year, what have I done, what helped me succeed, all those sorts of questions so that we can really reflect on how the year has gone and then use that information looking forwards. And we have got a podcast coming with another special guest thinking about New Year's resolutions. </p> <p> But this episode is really thinking back across the past year. So I'm going to hand over to Jenn because we are not just going to talk about this. We're not just going to tell you how to review your year. Jenn is actually going to support me to review my year so that you can see how it's done. You can hear me kind of reflecting in action so you really see how it goes and you can then take the questions that Jenn asks me and think about them in your own lives too. So Jenn, you are in charge, which is exactly the way I like it.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Thanks Vikki. I love being in charge, as you know. So what's exciting about this today is that normally this is something that I do for myself, usually around this time of year, December. And I guess just to say that December is a bit of an artificial time point to reflect back in our year. I think everybody has a different sense of what the year is for them. So I know lots of people who work in education, academics, for them it could be the academic year, so you might be looking back on your year, maybe it's in the summertime for you because September is when you kick off your next academic year. So it just so happens we're talking about it now and it ties really well into what people like to do in terms of New Year's resolution. So, Vikki, we had a bit of a chat about this and you know, I've been doing this for the last couple years and you've been kind of wanting to know sort of how I go about doing this. </i> </p> <p> <i> So I think this is a great opportunity to share that. But I guess to say for me, this is an evolving thing. So each year I have some questions that I think back on and I like to look back on my responses from previous years. But each year I do it slightly different. So we're going to give it a go and see, see how, how we get on today.  </i> </p> <p> <i> But maybe the first thing in terms of thinking about looking back on your year is that we want to think about it in terms of what has gone well. So I think often at this time of year and when we're thinking about New Year's resolutions, we're often thinking about maybe what we're lacking in our life or bad habits we have that we want to break and essentially trying to look ahead in terms of what we want fix about ourselves. And that's quite a deficit, negative way of, of thinking about our year. And so I think we're already pretty skilled at doing that sort of thing, but actually, what's sort of missing, maybe a more balanced way of doing it, is to focus on what's going well, what's going, what's going right. </i> </p> <p> <i> So when we take stock of things and think about what we want to do more of, then we can come at it from a more strength based perspective. So that's how we're going to do it today, if that's okay with you.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: That sounds, yeah, that sounds perfect. And thinking about all the populations you've worked with and stuff, why is a strengths based approach a good way of doing this? </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. one of the reasons why I really like that, especially for taking a kind of a backward glance in our year, is that if we just focus on what's going wrong, then it can be wrapped up in a lot of sort of negative emotions. So feelings of guilt or maybe shame, wanting to fix that bad habit, whatever it is, like spending too much time scrolling on our news feeds and our social media, or, you know, maybe we haven't got as organized as we want it to, whatever it is. Then it comes from a place of shame or guilt, and that's never a good place for motivation for change. </i> </p> <p> <i> So we're starting to think about how we might want to move forward and do things differently. If we're already starting from a negative place, then often the way that we cope is more starting down, blocking, avoiding, and so it's really, really hard to make successful changes to what we do in our lives if we're coming from that perspective to start with. So if we flip the script and look at it in a more positive strength based way, then I think you're going to find yourself being more motivated and excited to make those changes and to move forward. And so you get to test this out today and be your own kind of personal test case, but certainly there's lots of research evidence to also support the fact that when we get better at reflecting on, recognizing, and using our strengths, that can have a whole lot of benefit, including helping us to feel more motivated. But then we also get the win-win of also having better wellbeing at the same time. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Love it. I'm already feeling motivated. I'm so excited. I love listening to listening to you speak. and I guess the other thing to say is, you know, as we said at the beginning, we've known each other a really, really long time. And you know that I am a recovering highly self-critical person, I'm an awful better than I was about that, but yeah, it's certainly always been my tendency to look at what I did wrong. I was always the kid who got 98% on her science test and got very stressed about what the 2% was that I missed. That was the first thing I used to look for in the test. So I think this is also is something that we both know will be really, will be really useful for for me. </p> <p> And I'm sure a lot of people listening, it's really common in academia to have that kind of self-critical perfectionistic approach. So I think it'll be really useful for other people too. So, cool. What do I need to answer?  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Brilliant. So, um, how are you going to record this down? Do you have a piece of paper? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I have a piece of paper, yes, I have a piece of paper. For people listening, Jenn hasn't told me any questions in advance, so everything I do today is going to be completely off the cuff. The only thing I did do is I like to remind myself of the year and what I've historically done is have a little look back at my diary to see what I did. Because I left university and lost access to my email and calendar, I couldn't do that this time. So I went back through the photos on my phone, which has been very lovely. </p> <p> So the only thing that I've got pre-prepared here is a little bit of a stuff I've done in each month according to my rather overloaded iPhone photos folder. Other than that, I'm going to find out these questions at the same time our listeners do . So yes, I have paper and pen.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: And there's that nothing, I think any, anything kind of magical or special about the questions, but the idea is just to kind of prompt yourself to look back,. And I would say too, that it isn't just about work. This is an opportunity to look at things in a more holistic way. So think about it in terms of work, family. Think about it in terms of, you know, maybe your physical, your mental health. </i> </p> <p> <i> In other words, everything's on the table. There's no rules saying that you only have to focus on one of your life in fact it’s better if you try to look at all of at the same time.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Cool, I can do that.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: And I guess the other, the other thing to maybe keep in mind too is we could make endless lists but actually focus on what's most meaningful and important to you. </i> </p> <p> <i> So we're gonna start on what's worked well in the last 12 months. And so let's start with something a bit fun, which is what are the things that right away pop into your mind with your favorite memories? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Well, Jenn knows this, some of my listeners will know this. 2022 has been quite the year, I think it's fair to say. So my favorite memories of 2020 have to start with my wonderful then boyfriend Andy asking me to marry him, um, in springtime. So that is absolutely a top highlight of the year. I also moved house, so moving back closer to my family and being back here has been a huge highlight. </p> <p> I had my inaugural lecture, so in the UK as Jenn knows, but for listeners, when you get made professor you get to do your inaugural lecture, which is kind of about your life and all those sorts of things. Jenn and I both got my professor in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, so I finally only just got round to doing mine and that was a real highlight. It ironically ended up being my first lecture as a professor and my last lecture before I left. So that was a real moment. Starting my business was another big thing, having my first paying clients and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, I would say those are the… they feel like quite big life things, don't they? </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And those are fantastic memories and I bet Andy when he listens to this, will be really relieved that the proposal is number one.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Of course!  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: But I think also maybe to say too is that when we think back on our memories, they don't always have to be the big stuff. It can be some small stuff, but it's the things when you think, you know what, sometimes you look back on those pictures on your phone or those moments that pop on your social media feed where you're just like, these were the small things that they were, they were special and important. And actually, with this question, I love to start off with because right away I could see, as soon as I asked it, you smiled and I can almost see lift in terms of like, Ooh, this is gonna be fun. And so just getting down those memories, maybe like trips that you've taken or, you know, activities that you've done. Just, just those things.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: So I have a couple of examples I think of small things. So my dog, Marley, that you know, is highly reactive to other dogs. He's a super good boy, but he is somewhere between scared and excited with other dogs and we knew moving back here, my mom has a dog and we were going to need them to be able to be in the same house and this was a massive source of stress. We did tons of work, slowly introducing them and things like that. And, this year, the early part of this year was the first time that they were able to walk around my mum's house both off the lead and just ignoring each other and I nearly cried. Um, so that is a real memory for me. </p> <p> Also, Andy, my fiance has teenage daughters, my stepdaughters and I'm officially allowed to call them that now because he checked and I'm very excited. So I have lots of happy memories of us absorbing into being a family of four. So there's, there's a lot of small things there of us just playing stupid computer games together and things like that, that are definitely very dear to my heart too, even though they're just small things. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And taking stock of that, pulling it all together starts to paint a really lovely picture of a year and focusing on the happy memories. Sometimes, the way our brains are wired is that it's easier to recall the negative stuff that happened than the positive. We have to work a little bit harder at it. </i> </p> <p> <i> And so starting with that question puts us on a really good front moving forward because it now helps us to move straight into the next one, which is what are the things that you achieved in the last 12 months? So in what ways do you feel like the years been a success?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Okay. So that, that automatically gears my brain towards more work things. And you'll probably advise me in a minute that there's probably other ways that I could define success too. But from a work perspective, I finished two coaching qualifications this year. I'm super proud of that because I did it alongside what, you know, is a very busy, full-time job as an academic. So that was, that really took enormous amount of my time and effort and things. </p> <p> And I was going to say, sticking to things isn't always my strong point. I do finish things. I'm trying to remove the belief that I don't stick to things because I do, I'm trying to sort of reduce that in my head, but to have committed to those and com and completed them, I'm really, really proud of that, so I'd say that is a success. Um, I'm also, I'm also mostly pleased with where my businesses at, at the moment. Inevitably with a brain like mine. I want to be going faster, but, I've had amazing clients who've said really nice things about what they've, what they've achieved and the changes they've experienced through my coaching. </p> <p> Some of that's in my free group coaching. Some of that is in my individual paying clients. And so that feels like a massive success when I have clients who renew their packages with me because they want to carry on, where they can see the progress they're making and they want to carry on working with me, that feels like, like huge success as well.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And you know, our brains often go to the work things and so those are the big things. I'm also thinking of the stuff that you did to get that going. So the fact that you developed some skills around building a website, getting a podcast going, there's lot, lots of things that you, that you achieved this year that helped you to get to those big moments, where you pass that course or you got that business going. So maybe just take a few moments to, to think about not just the outcomes that you got, but some of the things that you had to develop to help you get to get there. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Yeah, I think that's really important because I think we often only measure it in terms of the end goal being achieved, but as soon as you said that, you're absolutely right. There's been a whole lot of structural stuff. You know, you move away from a university and suddenly you're like, hang on, I don't have Zoom, I don't have anywhere to put courses. </p> <p> I don't have any transcription software. I need to figure out all this stuff. And I have had to do all of that to, to get the business to where it is at the moment. And yeah, I think in terms of the preparing and completing the coaching courses, I had to fit it in the gaps and I had to put time aside for it. </p> <p> And I had to prioritize doing practice coaching and going to the sessions and listening to all the bug hours, hundreds thousand of hours of other people coaching that I've listened to. And that does mean that there's other things that I haven't done this year and I'm quite proud of that. I'm quite proud that I sort of focused in this year much more than I, I have done in previous years. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: And that is so excellent that you can look back and pick out those things because sometimes when we think back, you think, oh, what did I actually achieve, but you forget all the things that you had to put in place to get to those, those outcomes. You're thinking, where did all my time go? That that's where your time went. And so taking stock on not just the outcomes, but the things that you did to get there, the, the processes is, that's how I refer to them, can be super, super helpful. And I'm so glad that you're talking about what you're most proud of, because that's also a really good way to kind of help you work out what is the most meaningful things to you. </i> </p> <p> <i> And when you start to run out of ideas, another way to help unlock more things is to kind of look at it from a different perspective. So I'm going to ask you to think about how the people who are closest to you would look at your year and say, what did you achieve? So what, what do you think they would answer? And how would that be different from one ones you just gave. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: You're gonna make me cry now. I know Andy would say that I have created our home here. So one of the things I do do is sort of go, oh my God, I didn't make enough progress in my business in September. It was my first month being full time and Andy always reminds me, you literally did everything because he works an hour away from here. </p> <p> He's deputy head. He has a really busy job. And so I was the one who was coordinating the people putting in the carpets and putting up the utility room cupboards. And we moved from an old house to a modern house and lots of our furniture was really old. And so there was quite a lot of buying of furniture and those sorts of things. </p> <p> And these were all luxury problems. I don't want to present this as stressful. We've been super lucky, but it was a lot of decisions and a lot of coordinating. We’re in a new-build, so it’s making the snagging list and making sure they actually do the snagging list and all of those things. I know Andy would say that a really big success is that home feels like home and that's, that's really important to all of us.  </p> <p> I know my family would say, so my, my sort of family of origin would say that, my decision to move back here was a big success. So for those of you who don't know, I moved to Birmingham as a undergraduate student when I was 18 and never left.  </p> <p> So I went from undergraduate to professor in the same department and have lived in Birmingham that whole time. So like 26 years. No one ever thought I would move back to my village and whilst I was working in universities, that just wouldn't have ever been possible. And, I moved back partly because I wanted that change of lifestyle. </p> <p> but I also moved back because my family are really, really important and they're here and some of their health isn't as good as it could be. And then I've got nieces and nephews growing up all around this area and I wanted to prioritize that. And I know that came, not that I wanted to prioritize. It came as a shock, but the fact that I was actually going to do it and move back was a really good shock for the family. </p> <p> And so I think there's some success there around being able or willing to make that really big life change to, to come back here.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And, and these are huge, huge things. Being able to make big life decisions, to be essentially a project manager of a massive project moving house, setting up a new home that involved lots of skills and lots of achievements. </i> </p> <p> <i> And, uh, you know, I'm so glad that you, you picked up on those things by just thinking about it from someone else's perspective, because right away it shifted you off of work and onto home, family and other things. So, so sometimes actually looking at from different perspectives can help us to unlock things that we haven't quite seen for ourself, but also to get maybe more balanced view on it as well. </i> </p> <p> **Strange squeaking in the background** </p> <p> Vikki: Can you hear that? Marley is dreaming </p> <p> <i> Jenn: He wants to be on the podcast?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Well, I mean, Marley is always a success in my life. . In fact, I'd say 80% of the photos on my phone are me and Marley, so he is a clear success too.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: So the, the next question for us to think about is, and, and some of it you've answered already, but I'm going to ask it anyways. Sometimes a little repetition is useful because it might help us to uncover things we hadn't quite got around thinking about on the previous one. So, this one, it's around what were important projects completed.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Important projects completed. So definitely the coaching qualifications, definitely the, you know, you referred to the house move as a project, so, um, and bold definitions of projects. I guess it was, say that for sure. Um, setting up this podcast was a massive project. </p> <p> Um, so it now is something that sort of ticks over as part of my standard work week. Um, but the whole, how am I gonna do it? How am I gonna record it? How long is it gonna last? What's it gonna be? All of those things. Making the little artwork for the icon and all that stuff. I hope you like it, I'm super proud of it. </p> <p> So those are big projects. We're starting to plan the wedding. That's going to be a project. I have a venue and a dress and a photographer, so that project is underway. The other thing I think I have, because it feels so long ago, because I think they, you can tell me if other people experience this. </p> <p> I sometimes find when I'm reviewing my year, I struggle with the first half of the year cuz it just feels so long ago that I think in my head I neglected a little bit. I had 25 dissertation students this year all doing their own projects, and I love them all dearly. If any of you are listening, I miss you. </p> <p> But that was huge. So I think finishing out last academic year and wrapping up a 20 year career and sort of finishing things off, handing things over was actually more of a project than I probably recognized looking back. Because it feels like ancient history now.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And, well done because, Sometimes the things that happen more recently are the easiest things to remember, but by gathering up the photos, prompts can be really useful tools for this type of looking looking and so, people do it differently. Some have paper diaries, online diaries, you know, social media feeds, but essentially you probably have this record of your year without even realizing it. So just pulling that all together as you work through this type of reflection can be useful. </i> </p> <p> <i> But also say it doesn't have to be exhausted either. Because already I think you've picked up on some of the most important things for you and that's, really, that point because already I get the sense it's filling you with this like, wow, actually there's so much more to this year than I really am giving myself credit for, </i> <i>  because my immediate thoughts were like these two or three things, but actually you've come up with 7, 8, 9, 10 things just through those first three questions and that's really the point.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: And I love that idea of almost triangulating different sources because I can imagine, PhD students listening to this, academics listening to this might go to monthly reviews with your supervisor, things like that, members of staff do annual performance reviews. So I can imagine going to those sorts of documents for what projects you've done and things. But actually we all know that just keeping that particular piece of kit functioning in the laboratory because it breaks down every 10 minutes and you worked out why and got it sorted. </p> <p> Those things don't necessarily go on progress forms, but were huge projects, you know, getting your ethics applications sorted or whatever it might be. So I love that idea and just wanted to highlight for people listening, that, that idea of looking in several different places where you might have a record of what you've done this year.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: I think that's a good point because everyone will have their own kind of repository. When I started doing this type of review a couple years ago, I think I realized that what I was writing down was mostly work stuff and so actually this has really helped me to start to think about actually I need to record the good stuff that's happened in my life as well. And so when I take stock, I'm thinking about those things and not just the work stuff, so that that's another way to also maybe able to move it, move it forward, but, and it helps us to maybe take the next step into our questions. </i> </p> <p> <i> So we've really focused the first bit on, on more of the outcomes. I've started to prompt you around the processes, but now we're going to dive more into processes. Okay. So, so let's start by asking you about the good habits that you have developed or maintained over this year. So, I'm not interested in the bad ones,  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Because you know my bad habits already. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: I I do, yes, I do.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: You've seen them firsthand.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: But we're taking a strength based approach and so I don't think we often take stock of the good habits because maybe they're so automatic we’re taking them for granted. When actually you have to work to get them there. And good habits are just as easy to lose as bad habits, so let's name them, let's identify them so that you can feel really proud that you have these good habits.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Okay. One thing that jumped out as you were talking is I think I've been really brave this year. I don’t know whether being brave is a habit, but I'm going with it. I jumped into both of the coaching qualifications and was like, yeah, going to do it. It's alongside my work, it's huge, but I'm going to do it. </p> <p> Obviously the decision to move, the decision to leave work, to go full time on the business, let's frame it as a habit of taking big steps, quite boldly. Um, I sometimes overthink them beforehand, but when I do it, I'm quite happy to, to do it. So I think that's one, and that's now helping me too, in that I'm feeling quite comfortable now being bold about approaching people, about the PhD training courses that I'm going to be offering at universities and things like that. </p> <p> I feel quite happy to just message people and be like, hello, this is amazing. Your students should have it. Let's talk. So I think, does that count as a habit? Is that the sort of thing?  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: You know what? I think we can, because you know, a habit is something, I think a behavior that you develop and then when you can start to use it easily without having to think about it too much, then it's become a habit. </i> </p> <p> <i> It's also one of your strengths, so we'll come onto strengths in a minute. So, you know, being brave is an important quality that, that you have and you are able to use that quality to help move forward on big, big goals. So it really is part of the important processes that you've had this year, but let’s think too about even the small things, the things that you, that you do maybe on a daily basis without even thinking about it, but sort of support you in being healthier, being happier, being more productive. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: This is gonna sound like a funny one, but it absolutely is a habit I stand by, I am really good at resting. So resting is probably not the right word. I am really good at boundaries around work and fun stuff. So one of the things that I saw is that academia can become all consuming. </p> <p> It can become everything you do. There's no time to do anything else. There's no time to have any hobbies. You just can't do it. And I have always had the habit of doing other things. And so I've always had that habit that if I don't have things booked for an evening I've done circus, I've done comedy, I've done all sorts of random things. </p> <p> And I think that was really important in academia. I know I've talked on the podcast before about how that was part of what helped me to be able to leave because my whole identity wasn't wrapped up in academia, but it's also helping me now, you know, anyone who's set up their own business knows that it's really easy for it to become all consuming. </p> <p> But I think a habit I do have is that mostly when I shut down in the evening, I've shut down and I'm not going back and doing work things. I'm not eating into family time with work. I need to get better at the starting in the morning bit of it, but I'm really good at stopping in the evening bit. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: But as, as a good habit. It's something that brings you all kinds of benefits from what you've just described. And, one of them is that it's given you the opportunity to try out different activities and it doesn't almost matter what the activities were. It's not, not having done the activities, the habit, the habit is actually being able to separate work from life and then creating the time to be able to enjoy different things. </i> </p> <p> <i> And I know from, I, obviously knowing you well, but they've given you new people in your life. They've given you new skills. They've given you, you know, I think also strengths that you hadn't realized in terms of like performing with CircusMash. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Maybe I'll post that video online.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah, that'd be great. That also leads us straight into talking about your strengths and your qualities. So, you already mentioned a couple of them, but what are the ones that pop into your mind in terms of what do you think are your greatest strengths? </i> </p> <p> Vikki: So on top of the ones I've said enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is always a strength. Um, it's something that, I don't know, just make, keeps things feeling positive. I know it's something that people around me generally enjoy. Sometimes it's a bit much. My dad used to talk about getting Vikkied when I was too over enthusiastic. But mostly I think people feel like it's a bit infectious and they, they leave feeling more enthused than they started. </p> <p> So definitely enthusiasm. What other strengths? Another strength, and again, might not sound like a strength at first, is, I do overthink, but I also don't care too much. So one of the things with, for example, making this podcast is I could be super perfectionist about it. I could script it all out. I could record it five times to make sure it's perfect. </p> <p> I could spend hours and hours and hours researching all the most up to date research to make sure that absolutely everything's evidenced all the way through I could do all of those things, but actually I think it would then be a really struggle, real struggle to produce a weekly podcast, and you'd probably lose some of the humanness of it. </p> <p> So I think a strength of mine is that I'm quite good at going put it out there, that I will do, happy days. People like it. Without sort of going. did I say Um too many times? Was it too personal? Was it too impersonal? Was it boring? It's like, okay, it's done, people will find it valuable. It's useful. Let's get it out. So I think that's probably a quality that's proving quite useful at the moment as well.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And knowing you as I do, I absolutely, totally agree and, and one of the, one of the things we talked about, having different perspectives be really valuable. So thinking about it from, one of your best friends, maybe that's where I can help you out with be more strengths as well. So I think it's also okay to ask the people around you to say, well, what, what would you say are my greatest strengths? And for me, I would say that some of your greatest strengths is your creativity. </i> </p> <p> <i> So you've got incredibly creative mind and you are such a good problem solver. So if anybody's got a problem, you can come up with a solution and usually your brain's jumped five steps ahead to work out exactly how it should be done. I mean, not too many people have that, that ability. So there's so many strengths, but one of the things that I've found in, in my own work is that helping people to reflect on strengths can be a skill in and of itself. </i> </p> <p> <i> And, there's lots of things out there that can help. So there is, uh, for example, the Values in Action website where you can fill out a very long survey to work out your signature strengths. And there's also the Gallup Strength Finder. So some people use, use that to work out. Um, what are your strengths? </i> </p> <p> <i> They're very different strengths on these two different tools. But, one of the things that we've done on our own website, so it's Sports Psychology Reaching New Territories, the SPRINT project. And on there we've got a tool for helping you to reflect on your strengths in a way that makes it really meaningful to you because you come up with the labels for your strengths. </i> </p> <p> <i> It's not predetermined things that you get on these other websites, which can, can be very useful if that's something that you struggle with. But, on this strengths tool, it helps you to create a profile of your strengths with the idea being that once you have an idea what those strengths are, you are in a better position to use them. </i> </p> <p> <i> And so the more we use our strengths, then the stronger the strengths get, then we start to also be able to use them to offset maybe areas that we wanna develop too. And that's, that's really quite a lovely way. So in other words, we do know that when we use our strengths, some of our weaknesses take care of themselves without actually having to pay attention to them. </i> </p> <p> <i> Where we put our energy and attention is often where we see our success, but sometimes the weaknesses just take care of themselves then.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I love that because I think before I got more involved in the kind of coaching and that side of things, I did still focus, despite your advice over the years, I did still focus on the things that I needed to get better at doing. I was a little bit obsessed that I didn't have enough of a routine, that I wasn't good at sticking to habits. I wasn't consistent. I needed to be organized and capable and on it and those things. Um, And there was a period of my life where in the attempt to fix those things, I was squishing some of the things that were best about me. </p> <p> And I loved the idea. I can really see how creativity, problem solving, enthusiasm, it’s very kind of you to say I have those strengths, but those sorts of strengths, how they could really make it not that necessary for me to have really consistent, organized, highly structured practice. </p> <p> And that actually, if I keep being creative and problem solving and being enthusiastic about it, I'm going to get loads of things done that are important and valuable. So yeah, it feels different, you know, I can, I can feel in myself a like, “yeah, I can do more of that. That would be great” kind of thing. </p> <p> And I hope our listeners are starting to, you know, we're going to give you the questions afterwards, you’ll be able to get them from Jenn. But even as you listen, I hope you are starting to think, okay, what would be my strengths?  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: So, moving on then, we talked about your strengths. We talked about how you've used some of those strengths. So let's move on to a different kind of question. I'm gonna ask now, when you think back on your year, what was time well spent and what was money well spent. </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Oooh I love this. Time well spent was Andy. Um, I, it would. So I was single for a really long time, as you know. And so I had a really rich life outside of work. </p> <p> Tons of different friends, tons of different activities that I was doing and things. And when I met Andy and things I thought could get serious and amazing, um, I did have to make some decisions about how I was going to do my time and it would've been quite easy to see him once or twice a week, try and keep up all my previous hobbies, all my previous everythings. </p> <p> And it's not that I ditched everything by any stretch, but I thought it could go somewhere and I put time into it and I'm obviously super, super glad that I did because everything is wonderful. So I think that's probably the biggest thing. That's probably the thing where there was the real decision about how I was spending. Time. Um, and now I'm just in this last few months, I'm just so able to see my family for like 15 minutes just because I'm bored and not getting any work done. So I'll walk over with the dog and say hello and have a cup of tea and come back. </p> <p> And being able to put time in like that is, is really, really meaningful for me. I think I'm pretty good at keeping up. Old friends as well. So obviously I've moved away from Birmingham, so lots of people there, like you are becoming further away and things like that. </p> <p> And I always wish I'd put more time in, but any time I spend connecting with people like you and other old friends that are around the country that I don't necessarily get to see face to face as much as I would like. any time I spend on that always feels like good time. Um, my wedding is going to be filled well with you and with, um, several people that I've known for 30 years, 40 years, and that's really lovely. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Putting time into relationships as a is a really big one. So money well spent then </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Whew. We spent a whole ton of money putting stuff into the house. We've been pretty sensible with that though, so I, I feel like that's money well spent because we've, we've not been excessive on it. So that is good money spent. I've spent money on coaching. I have individual coaching and in my opinion, that is always money well spent. An enormous amount of what I've not just achieved, but the kind of the way I've lived for the last few years has been because of those individual and group coaching programs that I've been part of. So I will shout out Kristin Carder, Focused and the I have ADHD podcast is amazing. Paula Englebretson, I've also had individual coaching from. I am now joining Karin Nordine’s program, and so I'm spending money on that too. </p> <p> So definitely check out all of those if you're listening. So that money spent on personal development has been great.  </p> <p> The other thing that was money well spent, and Andy will not forgive me if I don't mention it. Andy has always claimed to be a minimalist. He moved in here with very little stuff other than tools. </p> <p> He is now, partly thanks to me, the proud owner of an absolutely obscene amount of Lego, like obscene amount of Lego. And so he would want me to say that all the money I have spent on Lego was definitely money well spent because it made him very happy.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And I'm definitely sensing a pattern in terms of, um, you know, really this year being a lot about relationships for you and how, how actually so much of what we talked about in terms of time, money, achievements has come down to that. </i> </p> <p> <i> And I think one of the nice things about doing this kind of reflection is that you do start to see those patterns in terms of what has been the focus of your year. And it often all starts to make sense to you, like, yeah, that that's, that's why. But rather than getting into the cycle of like, where has it gone and what have I done no, actually, I hope that by talking this through, you can start to see how full and busy and exciting, but also very meaningful and important are the things that you've done and why you've done them and how you've done them. </i> </p> <p> <i> And it gives yourself more credit than you probably realized.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Definitely. Because one of the things I did realize as I went through my photos was that I haven't done as many cool and fun things as I usually do. So I volunteerws for the Commonwealth Games, which is one thing that I have completely forgotten to mention so far, which was a really big and amazing thing. </p> <p> But usually I volunteer on adventure races, I do paddleboard polo tournaments. I do all sorts of random bits of pieces. And when I was looking at the photos, my initial reaction was a bit like loads of really, really good stuff. Don't get me wrong, 2022 is gonna be a year that goes down in my memory, like a proper milestone year. </p> <p> But there was part of me that was a bit like, but you haven't done those things. But when you say it like that, the theme around relationships and stuff and that you can't focus on everything, all the year because then it's not a focus, but actually I'm like, you know what? </p> <p> That's cool. There hasn't been as many stupid, ridiculous adventure things, partly, pandemic driven, it has to be said, but there hasn't been as many of those things. But that's okay because if you'd told me… I mean, mate, the conversations we've had, if we'd been told 18 months ago that I would be engaged, running my own business, not working academia, both of us would think that we're absolutely, you know, that was just not on the agenda. </p> <p> And so, so yeah, I think it's really, interesting to try and pull out what's your theme of the year like that and really recognize how big that's been </p> <p> <i> Jenn: And if you had just only focused on what hadn't gone well, then actually probably would've come away with very different feelings about the year. </i> </p> <p> <i> Than by taking a look at it in this way. Already, you're starting to go. Oh yeah, that bit’s okay. I've done it in previous years, but this year it's been about other things. It's been about other things and actually it's been about wonderful, exciting things that have helped my life feel fuller and different and yeah. </i> </p> <p> <i> Which is so exciting and leads me straight into the next question, which is, and I think you're gonna enjoy this one. Who has supported you, nurtured you, and who have you enjoyed supporting and nurturing?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Oh, okay. This is, I'm pulling overwhelmed faces for those listening on the podcast. So many people which is really lovely to look back and think. </p> <p> So obviously Andy and the girls and my family here. People like you, people like, I'm not going to list off all my friends, because then if I forget somebody, then I'm going to offend them, but the list would be too long. I've been supported by old friends. I've been supported by colleagues in the department where we used to, where you work, where I used to work. So yeah, I particularly value, I think the, the support that my parents have given me, because I think it would've been very, very easy for them to tell me leaving a secure professorship at a prestigious university to set up your own business, because you want to is a ridiculous idea. It would've been very easy for them to be like, oh, what are you doing? And they have been all in on all of it and that has been, that has been huge.  </p> <p> And then who have I enjoyed supporting? I mean, hopefully all of those people back, hopefully my family, you, my other friends. I feel like they're all really reciprocal relationships and I hope other people feel like that too. </p> <p> I've loved supporting my clients, whether they're the freebies that come on to my group coaching on Wednesdays or whether they're, um, my paid clients. Um, I loved supporting my students while I still had them and I miss them. And I love this podcast. I hope that the people who listen to this podcast feel like it's support too, because that's how it's intended to feel. </p> <p> So I hope that people would agree that I'm, I'm supporting the people listening to this podcast too.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And, and of course we won't forget Marley in all this.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Oh yes. He supports me. Oh my goodness. I can't forget the four-legged one. He’s sat down there as we speak. He is within two meters of me at all times. And even though there are occasions where I want to leave him on the doorstep for somebody else to take away when he's just barked at another dog again, um, he's, yeah, he's absolutely a support for me all the time.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: And I think that's one of the nice things about focusing on this question, it brings a whole new dimension to our year as well. It just gives a kind of warm, buzzy feeling of all the support going both ways you receiving and you giving. And just that recognizing of that is, is just a lovely moment when we reflect back  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: So I feel super positive, but just to play devil's advocate here. There may be people listening who don't feel they've been well supported this year. So for me that question is wonderful because it brings me warm fuzzies and I genuinely can't think of anybody that I wish I had support from that I don't. So for me that's an entirely positive question. </p> <p> And I guess with any of these questions, how would you advise somebody who looks at those and goes “I don't feel like I have been supported or I don't feel like I have had any good habits. So I don't feel like I have had any successes.”  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Yeah. And that's where some of the coaching, self-coaching can come into play.  <span> So, what I would then ask the person is just to give a sense of that on a scale like one to 10? </span> </i> </p> <p> <i> So let's say one is the worst it could possibly be in terms of how you spent your time and ten is the best it could be. So of course those are arbitrary, but it's what's meaningful to you. And I'd ask the person where, on that, on that scale would they be, and it could be that they tell me, one, they could say, actually I minus one, they could say, actually maybe it's about a five, but whatever the number is, we, we can then work from that. It might need some creativity to work it out. So for example, on the, the relationship question who supports and who do you support? </i> </p> <p> <i> It may take a bit of creativity, but there will be something there. And it's a starting point to work from. And the reason why I believe in it's because, having worked for a long time on a project with young people experiencing homelessness, you would think this is a group where social support is an issue. </i> </p> <p> <i> And for some it would be really difficult for them to come up with answer to those questions. And we do an activity called a dream team, where we get them thinking about different people in their lives and who supports them and using the analogy of the football team. So for example, who's their team manager? </i> </p> <p> <i> Who's their coach, you know. But for some they couldn't always name a person. So sometimes it was a pet or sometimes it was an object. So I guess we don't have to have a very fixed definition of these things too. There's no hard and fast rules. </i> </p> <p> <i> We can come at it in very creative, very broad ways to make it meaningful, important to the person. Because remember I said at the beginning, that's actually kind of the key rule that we're following here. And so we can also, we can also, you know, park the question too. We don't need to have to answer it right now too. </i> </p> <p> <i> We can come back to it another time that, that, that's okay as well. So in other words, we don't have to just automatically assume who that just because our first instinct is that we can’t answer it, doesn’t mean that with a little bit of more digging reflection, you might be able to get there. </i> </p> <p> <i> It's just that our answers may not be what we were expecting at the beginning.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I love that and I love the idea of being creative with it. Things that ping into my head, I could imagine people feeling that they're supported by the person who sells them their Starbucks in the morning or even, you know, if you're someone who's really into mu, you know, you feel supported by Taylor Swift because her songs make you really think that people understand you or whatever it is. I could imagine people feeling supported by people they don't even know. Perhaps people feel supported by people they follow on Twitter because they just see that somebody else is struggling with the same things that they are. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: And you don't need to have a fixed notion about what that means, but actually being flexible and really trying to embrace it in, in that sort of way. </i> </p> <p> <i> And I think you can unlock all kinds of answers for yourself. So it could be something as small as I'm commuting and the nice person who works at the train station looks like when I'm strugglingwith my bags opens the gate for me that kind of small thing can make such a big difference. </i> </p> <p> <i> So let's, let's move on to another one and in this one again, thinking back on our year and thinking back to times maybe when we experienced obstacles, setbacks, and what I want us to focus on is what are the things you did to overcome them? </i> </p> <p> <i> So it doesn't really matter what the obstacle setbacks were, but what were the things that helped you overcome them?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Ooh, okay. I mean, all that support, so all the people around me definitely. Constraint. And I know for, you’ve know me long enough will know that that has been a long time coming and something I'm working on, but one thing that has definitely helped is really learning to believe, and I now think I'm at a stage where I can say, I do believe, that I don't have to do everything. That I can generate the life I want with fewer things than I thought I did. And I, when I say things, I don't mean stuff. </p> <p> I don't mean I've never been someone who needed to buy lots of things, but I mean, I always have thought I had to have 50 different hobbies and 50 different friends and 500 projects going on at work. So constraint has really helped. I don't think I would've got through spring and summer the way I did if I hadn't accepted that because I was doing those coaching qualifications, I had ridiculously busy academic term, and I had the wonderful Andy, that other things were going to have to give and that that was okay. So I think constraint helped enormously.  </p> <p> I think a healthy dose of blind optimism has helped. A sort of just belief that this will all work out, that the world needs the service that I want to provide through my business, and therefore that one way or another I'm gonna make this work so that I can support PhD students and academics. </p> <p> <i> Jenn: Excellent. And you know, through these different questions, but ask them in different ways, I think what we've done is hopefully revealed to yourself a long list of strengths. So we start off with bravery, we end up with optimism, but there's a whole long list in between. Actually thinking back on our year in very positive strength-based ways, but using different perspectives, using different kind of questions, sometimes we have some overlapping answers, but actually we come up with all kinds of really good interesting stuff. </i> </p> <p> <i> So how, how are you feeling now about your year having, having done this reflection?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: More emotional than I thought I would be. Really positive. It's interesting how much it's making me spin forwards and think about exactly what you intend. Thinking about how I can use those and maximize going forwards and what do I want, and not even more of necessarily, but how can I just keep doing those things and, and recognizing those things. </p> <p> Because I think it's really easy, and I'm sure listeners will resonate with this, it's really easy to take for granted the things that you find easy and the things that come somewhat naturally to you. So some of those qualities I've talked about, things like constraint are things that I've really worked on and so those are things that I feel super proud of. No one will tell me that's easy because that's something I've struggled with my whole life and I feel like I'm really making progress with. Whereas being brave enough to just jump in is something that my parents will tell you I did a lot as a child usually into something muddy or off something I shouldn't be jumping off and so some of those things I think it's easy to take those for granted. And so I think this sort of process that you've taken me through of identifying what those are and kind of going “actually there's a lot of people that those would be the things they consider their weakness that they would like to change about themselves”, I think it's really nice to sort of, to recognize that. </p> <p> So it's make you feel very satisfied and motivated, which is good.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: That is exactly the aim of it. And because you're absolutely right. The next step, which is beyond this kind of podcast, is start to think about what is it that you want to continue doing? What is it that you want to maybe start doing more of? </i> </p> <p> <i> Because maybe there strengths still to be uncovered, strengths still to be developed. Maybe there's strengths that you could use in different ways for different things. Like a strength you might just use for work, maybe you could be using over here for your family or relationship or vice versa. So the next step would be to start thinking about it. </i> </p> <p> <i> And one of the ones I like using is this just a basic Stop Start Continue. We don't need to be complicated here. just have a way to build on this reflection because right away our brains start to move forward and think, okay, so what's next? What's going to happen next year? Where do I want to move towards? </i> </p> <p> <i> What is it I want to achieve? And so before you even do that, use this reflection to help you create the vision of what 2023 is going to be for you. And that's when you start to think about how is it that you're going to use these strengths to achieve what's coming up next for you? You know, you got a wedding in the future, you’ve got a business you're continuing to plan build, but there'll be other things up ahead and how, how can these strengths be to really help you get the most out of your year?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I love that. And I know our listeners will be feeling just as motivated and energized by that as well. And I really hope all of you listening take the time to really sort of ponder some of these questions for your own lives so that you can identify your own strengths and the things that you've got through this year and the things that you've achieved and enjoyed, so that you can go into 2023 feeling as excited and motivated as I do right now. Thank you so much, Jenn.  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: You're very welcome. And I would just say as one final step before you sign off, which is when you finish the reflection, you need to celebrate having done this review because this it’s been mentally and emotionally, something to go through. </i> </p> <p> <i> I brought you around from, um, the start going, this is interesting, this is different to, ooh, this is quite emotional, to wow, I learned something about myself. So how are you going to celebrate? Doesn't have to be a big thing, but how are you going to celebrate having done this review?  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: I'm going to celebrate the way I always do, which is by telling Andy and telling my Mum. And you've already made me think I have, you know, I have my two teenage stepdaughters now, you've already made me think that these would be really interesting questions to ask them too. So I think I will be celebrating myself. I've always been jealous, you know, I have always been jealous of your amazing reviews and bullet journals and your ability to stick to all of those things and have this incredible, like, catalogue of the things you've done over the last 10 years and stuff. </p> <p> And so I don't underestimate how much doing a review like this is, is important and something to celebrate. So I think that's, that's really important and I will. So what I was going to say though is thank you so much. As usual, you're amazing and I hope you'll come back on the podcast at some point in the future, cuz I know you have a million things that you could contribute and that our listeners would love to hear from. </p> <p> If they want to hear more from you in the meantime or find out more about this, how would they go about that?  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: You just need to come along to visit our website, which is sprint project org. We've got blogs, we've got tools, everything's free, and people find it really, really useful. </i> </p> <p> <i> So anything you hear today will, you'll find the tools to help support you through it.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Amazing. And on Twitter, you are @drjenncumming Is that right?  </p> <p> <i> Jenn: @DrJennCumming on Twitter.  </i> </p> <p> Vikki: Perfect because Jenn also in another life gives amazing advice about writing and writing routines and structuring your writing and all those sorts of things. So if you want to know more about that, make sure you're following her on Twitter too. I will put her Twitter handle and the links in the show notes on my website. So thank you so much, Jenn. I really appreciate it. And thank you everyone for listening. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> </div> Mon, 12 Dec 2022 05:45:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/10-how-to-review-your-year-the-strengths-based-way-with-professor-jenn-cumming https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/9-how-to-cope-with-annoying-comments-at-christmas So many of my Twitter followers told me that they hate the annoying questions they get at Christmas, so I thought I would share some coping strategies! In this episode I give you the A, B, C, D, and E that you need to remember when someone asks you "so, when will you finish your PhD?" <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <div> </div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <p> <span> So many of my Twitter followers told me that they hate the annoying questions they get at Christmas, so I thought I would share some coping strategies! In this episode I give you the A, B, C, D, and E that you need to remember when someone asks you "so, when will you finish your PhD?"  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> <br/> </p> <p> Hi everyone, and welcome to episode nine of the PhD Life Coach. I have very vivid memories of telling my grandma that I had got my first major grant. I was interested in how stress and exercise affect immune response to vaccinations, and I just got my first six figure grant. I was super excited and I remember telling her about it, um, over a Christmas celebration, and her exact words were, “why would they give you all that money to do that?” </p> <p> She didn't mean to be mean. She really didn't mean to be mean, but I was mortified. I was so embarrassed and I found that I couldn't explain to her why they'd given me all that money, even though I knew that this was a really interesting and important piece of research. Another time, my Nanna, so my dad's side, in fact, I say another time - every single holidays, my Nanna on my dad's side would say to me as an academic, oh, it must be lovely to have the long holidays, now the students have gone. Oh, it must be lovely to have three months off, now the students have gone home. And every time I was, no, I work when the students are on there. Oh, do you do ok? </p> <p> And I look back and I remember these fondly, but at the time, they drove me mad. I started talking about that on Twitter last week and just got inundated with messages from some of you guys about the things that your families say to you over Christmases or indeed some of you said all year round, but I think it's particularly pronounced over the winter break when we're more likely to be spending time with our families of origin and old friends and things like that. </p> <p> So this episode is going to be about how can we manage that situation? How can we cope with our own emotions? How do we know what to say when we're hearing things like, “so when are you gonna finish your PhD?” “How is writing going?” “What are you gonna do with that after?” “Why can't you just graduate when you plan to?”, “You look really thin/fat/tired, are you okay?”, “You just want to be a student forever,” “It's not really real life, is it?” </p> <p> Those were all comments that people in my Twitter feed came up with that they experienced from their families and friends over the holidays, and they were already starting to dread hearing. And what you hear will vary. So I come from a very supportive background. My family have always been super proud of me for my academic achievements and stuff. So I didn't really get the, “oh, you're wasting your time and get a proper job” type comments.  </p> <p> But at the same time, I come from a family that isn't steeped in kind of academic world. My parents don't have degrees. My sisters did degrees but don't work in academia and so I got a lot of questions that came from not really understanding working in at university and doing a PhD and those sorts of things. </p> <p> Others of you, I know there's tons of people who are doing PhDs who work in academia, who parents are academics too, and that can bring you a bunch of advantages for sure, but I guess it can also lead to potentially even more annoying questions because they know the world you're living in and maybe that adds pressure, that adds judgment, it adds critique. </p> <p> Perhaps your family don't support your choice to do a PhD or to work in academia. Maybe they think you should get a proper job, that you should be getting married by now or all of those sorts of things. I've had those comments in my Twitter feed as well. So, the first thing to say is this will really vary depending on your family background, but regardless, the emotions that these conjure up can be really challenging and can lead to behaviours in ourselves that we don't necessarily like. </p> <p> So what I want to do today is really go through some concrete strategies that you can take to manage all of this stuff over Christmas, but we’re going to ask the magic question, which is, what are you making this mean? Because usually the problem is not the questions that they're asking. The problem is usually what you are making it mean. So where you are being asked, when are you going to finish? Usually we make that mean we should have finished sooner, or the answer should be less time than it actually is. When we're asked, what are you going to do afterwards, we make that mean “You don't think I've got good prospects afterwards.” </p> <p> So do you see how that just adds a layer of emotion to it, that might be in the question, that might be what they mean, but it might not be either. </p> <p> We all know that childhood homes come with baggage and however supportive your upbringing was, there will be elements where all it takes is for your parents to say one word and you fly into defensive mode or you snap at them because it just pushes your buttons. Those of you who have trauma in your background, then that's even more pronounced. </p> <p> Um, but we all have some element of baggage and that means that when what can sometimes be quite innocent questions come to us our immediate reaction is to take that to mean something about us as a person. And from there, that could induce anger, it could induce snapping, it could make you flippant, it could make you sad or withdraw. Um, it could make you attack back all sorts of different responses from what we make that mean about us. </p> <p> So the first step before we go into any of the other stuff is to take a breath. When you hear that question, take a breath. Whatever thoughts you are having about it are fine. There's nothing wrong with you for feeling defensive or for feeling sad because of these questions, but we don't necessarily need to act from that emotion. </p> <p> We don't necessarily need to react to what they're saying. And so just taking a breath before you say anything can really just take the edge out of this.  </p> <p> I know that that's easier said than done, and I know that because I still snap back. People listening to this that know me in my personal life know that I still snap back, but I also know that it works much better when I don't. </p> <p> It works much better when I take that breath to let the thing go or to decide how I want to respond rather than responding in the way that kind of instinctively happens.  </p> <p> So once you've taken a breath, what happens then? Well, I've got the A, B, C, D, E of what you need to do in this situation. So A = acceptance, and there's two bits to this. </p> <p> Acceptance of yourself and acceptance of your family members. Now family, I'm meaning anybody who you will be seeing over the winter break who you have some sort of historical link with. So this might be close friends, family. Pick the people that's right for you, but I'm just going to use the word family to encompass that. </p> <p> So it's acceptance of yourself. It's acceptance of your family members. So starting with yourself. A lot of the pain here comes from the fact, a lot of the pain here comes from the fact that people say things that are our deep fears. So they say, when are you going to finish? And if you ask me when am I going to finish my dinner? </p> <p> Well, I start eating at like six. I finish my dinner at like quarter past six, something like that. Asking me when I'm going finish it, it doesn't mean anything. If you ask me when am I going to finish the online course that I’m developing for the PhD life Coach, which I am, keep your eyes open, then I might be a bit “Soon! Ok. Ill, I'm working on it”, because part of me wishes I was a little bit further along with it than I am right now. So one thing you can do before the Christmas period is spend a bit of time going, okay, why do these thoughts wind me up? What do I need to accept about my current position before I go home? </p> <p> I accept that this PhD's going to take me another year of write up that I didn't think I was going to need. Um, I accept that I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do after it, but I'll figure it out.  </p> <p> I accept that I do look kind of tired, but I'm working really hard at the moment, and I'm going to start trying to take care of myself a bit better. So do you see that you can start to work on in yourself accepting the truth behind these questions so that when someone asks them, they feel much less of a personal attack. </p> <p> So that when somebody asks you, when are you gonna finish? You don't need to go into the details of whether that was longer than you hoped for or how you're gonna fund yourself through that. If you've accepted that that's the position, then it's much easier to give a much more level reply. So it's accepting yourself. </p> <p> Accepting your family members is the other part of this A of acceptance. And that is, and this is a general life lesson - So much pain comes from expecting people to behave anyway other than the way they always behave. </p> <p> Now that's not saying you accept their behavior and think it's okay, but it's accepting that they are gonna behave the way they always behave. Because that’s what we all do. We all change a bit, but you know, mostly we behave the way we've always behaved and you can, again, take so much sting out an interaction. Maybe you know that a particular family member thinks that you just need to get a real job because, you know, what's the point in all this high falluting educational stuff, accepting they are going to ask you something like that and that you get to choose how you respond to that, can really take a lot of the passion out of this. </p> <p> A lot of the toxicity comes from us thinking they shouldn't behave like that. They shouldn't say that, it's not fair. They should understand this. They should see how much I want this. They should understand. What if we just accept that they don't, and then we get to choose what we do with that. </p> <p> If I could change other people's behavior, I would, trust me, but we can't, and we are, we are fighting something that doesn't change and creating problems for ourselves when we don't accept that. Now I said that you don't have to just blindly accept that this is all okay and put up with everything like a doormat, because that leads us onto B, which is boundaries. </p> <p> Now, when we accept that people will behave the way that they always behave, we don't tell ourselves we have to put up with that. We just expect them and accept that they will behave like that. So what we can then do is put boundaries in for ourselves, and this is a really key emphasis. Boundaries are for you. </p> <p> They are what you will do if they do something. We don't have boundaries that are, “they must do this” because again, unfortunately we don't get to control other people's behaviour. But we do get to say, if you do X, then I will leave. This is what again, what you get to decide in advance, and a lot of this will come down to thinking about the motivation behind the comments that your family are making. </p> <p> So this boundaries part is really for where you think that it comes from a toxic place, where it genuinely upsets you, where they are genuinely trying to hurt you. Unfortunately people do have family members that they will see over the holiday period who are like that and that's where your boundaries might be – “I don't really want to talk about my PhD during Christmas.” </p> <p> And if somebody then continues to talk about it saying, “oh, sorry, I don’t know if you heard me before. I don't want to talk about my PhD over Christmas. Let's just enjoy the holidays.” And if they continue to ask about it, you can explain that you'll go in another room or you'll leave. Or you can offer a different topic for conversation. You can set boundaries around what you will or won't talk about. </p> <p> If you want to be able to talk about it, but you don't want particular things to discuss, being able to say, “I'm happy to talk about my PhD with you, but let's focus on the cool stuff I'm finding out. I don't really want to think about when it's finishing”. And then if they continue, you can just not have that conversation. </p> <p> You can choose. If somebody keeps asking me when I've said that I'm not going to answer those, you can just look at them and start a conversation with somebody else. You can decide what those boundaries are for yourselves, how you will behave if certain situations come up. </p> <p> The third one is really for people who are in much more my situation, which is where you have a loving family who care about what you do, but aren't necessarily in that world. So they ask questions out of interest, out of concern, out of genuine support, but accidentally press buttons that they didn't know were there. </p> <p> And this is C. So we've had acceptance, boundaries, we're now going to C, which is comedy. See how you can make a joke out of it. So one thing that I'm going to do on Twitter, and I'd encourage all of you to do, is to come up with a bingo list. Make yourself a Bingo card even, of all the things that family members could say over Christmas. </p> <p> I'm going to put one on Twitter for you all. You can let me know how you get on, yell bingo when you hit a full row. Try and make a joke of it. Try and make it okay. Somebody's going to ask me how long it takes. Somebody's going to ask me what I'm going to do afterwards. Someone's gonna use the words real world.  </p> <p> Whatever it is, see how you can make jokes out of it just to take that pressure off a little bit. As I've said, this is only where you believe that it comes from a really good place from your family. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you have an actually toxic relationship with that person or an actually fraught relationship with that person. </p> <p> But it can really help you take it that little bit less seriously. As I say, tweet me the best ones. See if you can go for a quantity over a time period. How many of these will you get asked in an hour over Christmas dinner? For example, you could start betting with your friends. Who's going to be the first person that asks me when I'm finishing and you can start to bet which of your extended family members it's going to be. Turning it into comedy rather than something that genuinely bothers you can be super helpful.  </p> <p> D is for diplomacy - and this you could use across the spectrum really from supportive but hitting buttons accidentally through to a bit more toxic - is plans and phrases in advance. </p> <p> Now, I've mentioned a couple of them before about not wanting to, um, to speak about it, but you could also have some more subtle diplomatic answers. And this can be really useful in a whole range of situations. So things like, oh, that's so interesting. Full stop. That's often useful where someone's expressing an opinion about whether your work is useful or interesting or not. Oh, that's a really interesting perspective. And leave it there. Wouldn't that be nice is another one. So if somebody's saying, are you going to get an amazing job after this? </p> <p> Oh, wouldn't that be nice? Will you be finished by September? Oh, wouldn't that be nice? Leave it there. You can plan these things. I guess we'll see. What are you going to do after this? I guess we'll see. When are you gonna finish? I guess we'll see. how's it going? It's going. It's progressing. Yeah, good, thank you sometimes is sufficient. People usually don't want to know the details. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Great. Thank you. </p> <p> Another option is to say, oh, thanks for your interest in this, anyway, what have you been up to? How's work going and twist it around. So planning these kind of stock phrases in advance so that when somebody says the thing that you know is going to wind you. You take a breath, like I said at the beginning and you say, I guess we'll find out, won't we? Anyway, are those mince pies, I haven't had one yet.  </p> <p> Okay, so diplomacy, and then E is for empathy. And again, this is where you are getting comments from misguided relatives more than people who are actively hostile. But why are they asking you? Are they just interested and don't realize what a hot topic it is?. I would say that a lot of the time that's the case. </p> <p> They're genuinely just wondering when you're going to finish. They're not saying you should be finishing sooner. They just don't really know anything about a PhD or anything about academia and they don't really know, um, when you'll be finished. So is it just that they don't know?  </p> <p> Is it coming? Because they're worried when they're asking you, what are you going to do afterwards? They're not saying, what are you going do afterwards, you big weirdo who went and spent three years studying something that I don't understand and feels a bit pointless to me. They're saying, what are you going to do afterwards? </p> <p> I really want you to be happy and to have a career that is successful and nice. You know? Are they worried about you? Are they confused? Do they not know? Sometimes, um, there's things that we take for granted. The fact that a PhD takes a certain amount of time in different countries. So in the UK it's usually three to four years, but often there'll be a write up period on top of that. </p> <p> And people don't necessarily know that. Maybe in their heads, the PhD's three years and they don't understand why you haven't finished. When in your head you're like, of course I haven't finished. No one writes up in that time. I've got this right. I've got the write up period. So are they confused? Could that be where it's coming from? </p> <p> Are they intimidated? Sometimes people ask you passive aggressive questions about the real world and things because they think that you think they're stupid. So sometimes people create whole stories in their heads about what you think about them, and if you come, in their view, swanning in with your PhD and your fancy academic job, in their heads, they could be interpreting that as you having judgment over them. </p> <p> And so they almost get the jibes in first about you not being in the real world and all those things because actually they're making it mean something about them.  </p> <p> Is it just they're proud? Actually are they asking all these questions because they're super proud of you and they don't really understand what you're doing and so they want to know more. </p> <p> So E is for empathy, thinking about why they might be asking the questions they're asking, and trying to use that as a basis from which to respond. Why is it totally understandable that they're a bit worried or confused or perhaps feel threatened by what you're doing? It's then much easier to do all the other things that I said. </p> <p> It's much easier to make it comedy. It's much easier to be diplomatic, and part of that empathy could just be actually responding directly to what you think their real feelings are. So if you think that them asking you about when you are finishing is them being worried about you and whether you're doing okay, you can actually address that directly. </p> <p> “Oh, thank you for your concern. No, honestly, it is fine. It is taking a long time and it's tough, but I'm doing okay. I know it feels like a really long time to you, but honestly, genuinely this is normal.” So you are sort of almost responding to that. So understanding what that person might be thinking and kind of really trying to read behind the question can often help. </p> <p> So those are my recommendations. A, B, C, D, E, acceptance, boundaries, comedy, diplomacy, and empathy. Start planning it now. I can see on Twitter people are already starting to dread the things that they're going to hear at Christmas. Get this stuff in place now.  </p> <p> Building it up before it happens will make it worse. If you are dreading it now, when it happens, you are going to be fuelled and ready to explode. So instead, working on some of these thoughts, people are going to say these things. I'm okay with where I'm at. I've got boundaries. It's actually quite funny. I've got my diplomatic responses planned. I have empathy for where they're coming from. </p> <p> This is fine. This is just people saying some things to me. This is fine.  </p> <p> So get your plan in place now so that you can relax and enjoy your Christmas break. Now coming up on the podcast for the rest of the time between now and the break, we are gonna be talking about reviewing your year. Super excited about this one. </p> <p> I have a guest visitor and I will tell you more about that soon. And we are also going to be talking about planning your rest and relaxation over Christmas. I know that it's a real challenge for lots of PhD students and academics to properly take holiday. And so the last one of these before Christmas is going to be really thinking about how can you make it so that you feel comfortable with the amount that you will work and the amount that you will rest so that you enjoy both parts of it and don't spend your Christmas thinking you should be doing one when actually you're doing the other. So keep an eye out for both of those.  </p> <p> In the meantime, I am going to be working on that course that I mentioned. So if you are interested in hearing more about that, make sure you get to my website, get on my newsletter on the Work with Me button, and you'll be one of the first to hear about it. See you next week. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> Mon, 05 Dec 2022 05:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/9-how-to-cope-with-annoying-comments-at-christmas https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/8-how-to-build-your-own-academic-community <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <iframe> </iframe> <p> So many people feel isolated in academic and like they "should" have more of a community than they do. In this episode, I talk about the benefits of having a community inside and outside of academia and the barriers there might be to building a community. I then go through some really simple tips to help you build an academic community, step by step. </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> Transcript </p> <p> Hello and welcome to episode eight of the PhD Life Coach. Before we get on with the topic for today, I just want to tell you about something new I've started, which is called Ask Marley and me. So I was starting to get more and more questions from students and academics on Twitter about all aspects of academic life, and I want to be able to help as many people as I can. </p> <p> So what I'm going to do is I'm going to answer those questions on video, post that on Twitter and YouTube and you'll get a short little snippet that hopefully helps you get some clarity around your questions. It's called Ask Marley and me because Marley is my black Labrador. He is asleep down there as we speak and I'm not gonna lie, he doesn't really help in answering the questions, but he does look very cute in the videos. So drop me your questions and I will see how I can help you. </p> <p> So in this episode, we're really going to focus on building academic community. Because in my coaching practice, a lot of my clients report feeling quite isolated in their academic world, not feeling part of a broader community, whether that's within their department, their discipline, or even personal and social communities. </p> <p> Especially following the pandemic, I think it's much more common for people to feel that they're working on their own, that they haven't necessarily got people that they can rely on and talk to where they feel part of a wider group. And if you are feeling like that, I want you to know that that's really normal. </p> <p> There's so many people that I work with, that I see on Twitter, who are experiencing the same sorts of thoughts, and the good news is that there is something you can do about this. So what we're going to think about today is why community is important. I'm going suggest there are two different types of community that you should cultivate, and I'll go through what they are. </p> <p> And we're going to spend time thinking about what the barriers are to doing it at the moment. I'm also going to make sure there's some really concrete strategies in there, so things that you can do if you want to slowly build more of an academic community. And I know what this feels like. You might think that somebody who has stayed at the same academic institution for their whole career, like me - I came as an undergrad and left as a full professor - that I've never really had to build that community because it was just sort of a consistent thing and it really wasn't like that.  </p> <p> One of the things with academia is that it's really quite transient and people graduate or move to other places. They get in relationships, take new jobs, and actually the community changes quite regularly. </p> <p> And so I've really found a number of times in my life that I've had to reinvent the community around me and had to make conscious efforts to make that happen. So if you worry that for other people, this sort of just naturally falls into place, please believe me when I say it's totally normal to need to make some effort around this and to actually build this community carefully yourself, and I'm going to support you through doing that.  </p> <p> So before we start though, I want you to think about why community is so important, because it's not just a kind of fluffy feel-good thing. There's real research that talks about the benefits of having community. So as an example, we know that one of the basic psychological needs is relatedness. </p> <p> That feeling that you are part of something, that other people care whether you are there or not, they're looking out for you and so on. And we know that people who feel more related are more likely to feel intrinsically motivated to engage in a behaviour. </p> <p> So for example, with exercise, I used to be an exercise scientist. When we think about trying to motivate people to exercise more, we know that if people are part of an exercise group or sports club where they feel part of a group, they're much more likely to continue to attend that group, to adhere to the exercise behaviours. And the same is true in academia. If you feel part of your community, whether that's your department or your academic discipline, you are much more likely to feel intrinsically motivated to do all the work associated with your PhD or your academic job. </p> <p> That's one reason community is really important. Another is that community can really help you create a sense of self. One of the things we see is, my clients talk to me about not quite feeling like they're an academic, that they're the same as other people. And one thing that community with other people who are doing the same things as you can help you build that sense of self. </p> <p> That research is something that people like me, like people like us do. It becomes normal. It can really help you to build that identity as an academic and being part of a group of academics. And so a community is really important from that perspective as well.  </p> <p> Having an academic community can also help you to have people who empathize with the challenges. Sometimes we feel like we're the only people who struggle with procrastination or feeling like we're not good at writing or being bored of our lab work or whatever it might be, and having that academic community is a really good way of having people who understand. They get it, they've been there, they know what it's like, and they make you feel normal. </p> <p> The other thing the community might do is actually help you with some solutions to some of that stuff by sharing their own experiences. You have all these people that are maybe six months ahead of you, two years ahead of you, who can share with you how did they get past that barrier. Not only is it normal, but it's surmountable. There's something you can do about.  </p> <p> They also connect you to other people. They might say, oh, did you know about so-and-so in that other department? They're doing something similar to you. Why don't you talk to them? Or, oh, you are trying to use that software. Why don't you speak to so and so? They're really good on that software and I'm sure they'll help you with it. So they kind of connect you to other things that are going on.  </p> <p> In a broader sense, our communities aware we can relax and have fun and be ourselves. And this doesn't necessarily need to be within your academic community. And we're going to talk more about that later in the podcast because there are a lot of people who don't necessarily feel that they can bring their whole selves to their academic community. </p> <p> But a community in that broader sense is a really important place to have that downtime, to feel that you can be your whole self, and just relax and have fun, and not have to be an academic all the time.  </p> <p> And a really important part of that is having a wider community that helps you feel understood. So not just understood as a PhD student, an academic, and the challenges associated with that, but understood as a wider person. Whether that's understanding your hobbies, understanding your culture, understanding your sexuality, understanding the all the wonderful different bits of you that make you, you. </p> <p> Having a wider community that understands all those facets and enables you to be your true, authentic self is really, really important.  </p> <p> What that really started to raise for me is how, actually, I think we need two different sorts of community. We need people who get it, who get the academic life, and we need people that get you. </p> <p> Now, it might be for a few of you, you have one group that does both of those things. Maybe you have a really tight group in your PhD program where you started together and you really bonded over your academics and over your social lives.  </p> <p> But for most people, that's not necessarily the case for most people. You can't cover all facets of you in one group of people, and that is okay too. You don't. To, I would really try and I have always tried to nurture two types of community, the academic community, and a broader community.  </p> <p> And you might find that you have some overlaps, like in a Venn diagram. Some of my very best friends are people who are from my academic life and my personal life. They're friends outside of that. But there's a whole bunch of people that form part of my academic life who aren't part of my wider life. And as I discussed last week when we were talking about hobbies, there's a whole bunch of people that I have a wider life with, with my circus and my training and all those things who don't have a clue about my academic life. </p> <p> I would actually encourage you not to try to do this in a single community. There's something really strong in having an element of redundancy in your communities, so knowing that if something goes wrong here, you've got these other people. So if there is some sort of falling out, you've got this other group as well. </p> <p> How can we go about building these two types of community? Well, whenever you are thinking about changing any behaviour, doing anything new in your life, what I want you to think about is the barriers that you might come up against. Because it's really easy to say, right, I'm going to build a new community and plan what you're going to do. </p> <p> But if you don't anticipate what barriers you might come up against, then it's not necessarily going to be effective.  </p> <p> So some barriers that I hear from my clients and that I've experienced myself – the first one is other people have already got a community. One thing I hear more than anything else from my clients is that they feel isolated, but everybody else is in a group. </p> <p> There's this belief that everybody else is settled into a community and trust me when I say that is simply not true. I've seen people from the same groups say it about each other, that they think the other people have it and they don't. When actually there's a lot of people struggling with this. </p> <p> So the first thing I, first thing I want you to do is think about what are the implications of thinking, something like that. When you think other people already have community, what comes up for you? Usually, There's an “and” to that sentence, there's other people have community and that means they wouldn't want to be friends with me or other people have community and therefore I'm weird and should have community, but I don't. </p> <p> So the problem is not usually that we believe other people have community. The problem often is what we then make that mean as well. The problem then comes that we make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you believe that other people already have community and there's something weird about you because you don't, and that they don't need other community because they've already got friends, then you start to behave in ways that make it much less likely you are going to build community.  </p> <p> So if we think other people have already got a community, we're much less likely to reach out to them. We're much less likely to make small bits of effort. We're less likely to turn up at things.  </p> <p> So what I want you to think about is how would it be different? How would you feel different? How would you behave differently if you thought that other people felt isolated too? If you believed that at least some of the people in your direct academic world also feel isolated, what would you do? I think it really changes the way that people feel. I think it brings out an empathy, and from empathy, it's much easier to reach out to people to make small sort of advances, to like say, how are you? Or ask someone to go for a coffee . So really try and reframe that and think what if other people felt isolated too? What would I do?  </p> <p> The next one I want us to think about is the thought I'm being excluded, and I want to say up front that we're going to be really careful around this one because we're always going to analyze “is this true?”. But we also have to be open to the fact that for some people in some groups it could be true.  </p> <p> So this is not necessarily one we're gonna try and mindset ourselves out of.  </p> <p> So if you find yourself thinking I'm being excluded, the first question from a really compassionate place is, is this true? Is it possible I'm misinterpreting? </p> <p> Is it possible that there's something else going on here and I'm reading more into? But if when you ask yourself that, the feeling and response you get from yourself, No, I actually am getting excluded. I really do think I am. You don't need to gaslight yourself. You shouldn't gaslight yourself by trying to talk yourself out of that. </p> <p> That's not something we're going to mind set ourselves out of, because we know, unfortunately, in academia, people do get excluded and that that doesn't happen randomly either. That exclusions can happen at a structural level to historically marginalized groups. So rather than trying to mindset ourselves and believe that maybe I'm not being excluded, is it possible I'm not being excluded?and all those things, if when you ask yourself that, you're like, no, no, I, I actually am. I actually think I am, what I want you to ask yourself is, what am I making that mean? </p> <p> Because there's a whole lot of damage that happens in our structures and the prejudices and biases that exist in academia and beyond academia. There's a whole lot of damage that happens by being on the receiving end of exclusion, but then there's a whole level more damage that's done when we make that mean something about us. So when we make that mean that I don't belong here. They're excluding me, therefore, I can't succeed here. They're excluding me, therefore, I can't have a future in academia, or I can't have a community here.  </p> <p> I sometimes see people go, they're excluding me, so I just need to get my head down and get this done. And it's those thoughts I want you to think about. </p> <p> Are you creating more damage for yourself by making this mean something about you, when actually it means something about the structures that you are existing within? And I want you to see whether it could be different by acknowledging how that exclusion makes you feel. Actually giving yourself space to feel disappointed by that, to feel angry about that, to feel hurt. </p> <p> So not trying to get rid of those feelings, but actually validating them and allowing them, but also to then think thoughts like, I can meet part of my community needs here. These people might never be my friends, but I can make sure I'm connected to the things that I need to be connected to. So I can meet part of my needs here. </p> <p> Or I can build community my way. So the structures here are biased against me. That makes me angry, that makes me sad, that makes me disappointed. But I can do community my way. Notice I'm not going to, “and I can fix it and I can make it better”. Because I think sometimes we put a lot of pressure on people who are already disadvantaged by the system to also fix this and to improve the community in their schools. </p> <p> And if you have the capacity and the spoons, the effort to be able to do that, all strength to you. But if you don't, then that's okay too. And thinking instead I can build my community my way, might be another approach that helps you.  </p> <p> The next thing I want to move on to is this notion that I don't have time to build community. So again, is it true? Is it helpful? The questions we all ask ourselves. When we are thinking about, I don't have time, one of the first ones I want you to go to though, in the, is it true thing, is making sure we actually know what we're talking about here. So if you are saying, I don't have time to do something, ask yourself, how long does this take? </p> <p> Often we say, I don't have time for anything. I'm super busy. I've got a thousand things to do. But how long does this thing take? To give a really flippant example, I sometimes don't do the washing up because I haven't got time because I've got to get back and do my work. And then you time yourself doing the washing up and it takes like four minutes and you're like, girl, come on. You've got four minutes, let's go.  </p> <p> And it's the same with this. So if you're telling yourself you don't have time, what's the teeny, tiniest short thing you could do that would build a little bridge? How can I build little bits of community in the time that I do have. If I'm at a seminar anyway, how can I build a little bit of community while I'm there? If I'm on an online meeting already, how can I build a little bit of community while I'm there?  </p> <p> And remember, there's lots of different places where community can be. So we are not necessarily talking about attending every departmental event and socials and seminars and all these things that departments put on for people. </p> <p> Online can be a community. Twitter can be a community. There's loads of different places that can be communities. So for example, in my Ask Malia Me series, a Twitter account called The PhD Place, who I would recommend you all follow, messaged to ask who are the best people that you can follow in academic Twitter? </p> <p> And I talked all about, there, how you can find different types of people for different types of communities. So even places like Twitter are great places to build community, assuming Elon hasn't killed it by the time you're listening to this episode.  </p> <p> But think of all the different types of communities and how you can fit in tiny little bits of time that enable you to believe you can build a community within the time you have available. </p> <p> Another thing I hear a lot of people telling themselves is, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at making friends. I don't do small talk. And again, these things might be true. You might be somebody who takes a while to get to know people, who feels awkward at first, who doesn't enjoy talking to people for the sake of talking to them, and again, the first step is some acceptance.  </p> <p> That's okay. That's totally normal too. In fact, I'd say within academia, it's super common amongst lots of people. Other people might think I'm not good at it from the other direction. I have a tendency to get overexcited, babble, interrupt a lot, and bulldoze people, and then I worry about. But again, there's a whole lot of people in academia who do that too.  </p> <p> So however you are, however you interact with people, you can still build a community your way. You can find people who are more similar to you. You can find people who perhaps are a bit different, but who love you the way you are.  </p> <p> You don't need to be good at it. This is not something anyone's ever going to give you a badge for.  </p> <p> One thing I would always say is focus less on impressing people. Focus on being interested in other people. Loads of people who don't consider themselves good at this stuff have friends, have communities. You can build this in a way that works for you.  </p> <p> The final thing that I see really getting in people's way is telling themselves that it's not important. Now, this is related to I don't have time, but there are some people who say, I would love to, I see why it's important, but I just don't have time. </p> <p> There are other people who say it's just not a priority. Sometimes this is people who have got friends outside of academia anyway, so they kind of feel personally supported and looked after already. Other people, it's that they feel that they've got a group within their department already and they don't need anybody else. </p> <p> I would really check in with yourself that you are getting all of those benefits that I mentioned before. It's really unlikely the same people will do all of them. If you can recognize that all of those things are important, and you don't need to get them from the same people, suddenly it's easy to see, oh, okay - It's important to build bridges with them because they're gonna connect me to this stuff. It's important to build bridges with those people because I can really relax and have a laugh with them. It's important to build bridges with these people so that when I feel like my head is going to explode, because I've been writing for 12 hours and nothing is on the paper, I can talk to them and they'll get it.  </p> <p> So I want to finish with some really concrete strategies for you. First tip is to put yourself in the room. That might be a real room or a virtual room, but if you are not there, it's really hard to even begin to build a community. And I want you to ask yourself if that feels uncomfortable. And if it feels uncomfortable - and again, this is a tactic I want you to use other scenarios too - if it feels uncomfortable. Is it the sort of uncomfortable where you feel like it's uncomfortable and I'm going to have to be kind to myself and look after myself, but if I do this, I'm going to be really proud and I'm going to be okay? </p> <p> Or is it the sort of uncomfortable that just makes you panic and feel unreasonable? If it's the latter, that's okay. We just take a step back. How can you put yourself closer? To a room, what sort of room might you feel more comfortable in? Perhaps that's online. Perhaps that's actually large groups where you don't have to say as much and you can just sort of lurk in the background. </p> <p> So think about what sort of real or virtual room might you feel comfortable in. If it's the former, that it does feel a bit uncomfortable, but you think you can do it. Think about what boundaries you're going to put around that. It's like, okay, so I'll go to this thing in the department, but I don't have to stay more than quarter of an hour if it's just a bit too much for me.  </p> <p> What challenges are you going to set yourself? So I'm going to go to the thing into the school online, let's say, and. I'm going to say three things in the chat, or I'm going to go to the face to face meeting and I'm going to talk to one person that I've never spoken to before.  </p> <p> So setting yourself tiny bite size challenges is a really good way to start to slowly move towards having a little bit more community.  </p> <p> It may be that you've realized that your home department isn't it? So some people come to a department not really knowing much about the community or who have really high hopes for what the community might be and it ends up feeling like you don't fit.  </p> <p> Maybe it's a very male department and you identify as, more feminine. Perhaps it's a department that has particular political views that you don't feel you fit with. Perhaps it's a department where you are one of very few people of colour or where there are very few people who talk about any sexualities except for heterosexual relationships. </p> <p> There's lots of reasons why your academic community might not feel like the place where you want to be building your community. So what you can then think is, where else can I build an academic community? Where can I find PhD students who are in a different department perhaps, where can I find people in my discipline who are at a different university? </p> <p> Online is always an option. Events is another. Now, I know conferences aren't always accessible to people, but they are often local events, local things in your universities, and so on. Some of my very best friends in my academic discipline, so I used to be a stress immunologist, are people that I have met at events, and we've actually only spent probably 15, 20 days together in total ever in our lives. </p> <p> But we've been friends 20 years because we kind of had little random conversations and then spent a bit of time going to a seminar together and then got to know each other a little bit more. And then they introduced us to other people. And I've got my little group now who, as I say, I've known since I was 22 years old and they were all over the world, the wrong side of the Atlantic as far as I'm concerned, because I would love to see them more. </p> <p> They're not part of my department, but they're part of my academic bubble. They're part of my support system and if they're listening, I love you all dearly, and you know who you are. So, then building on that, where can you find your non-academic community? Where can you find people that empathize with the other parts of you? </p> <p> Now, over the years, this has been different places for me. You've heard me talk about the circus, and that's been a really important part of my non-academic community. Other times it was British Military Fitness, doing like burpees in the park. I met some of my very, very best friends there. So thinking about at different times in your life, there might be different parts of your life that you want to emphasize. </p> <p> For some of you it might be cultural groups, it might be religious groups. Think around where you can find those non-academic communities.  </p> <p> And then once you put yourself in the room, I want you to think what tiny behaviors you could take that make it more likely, you'll build some connections.  </p> <p> So one thing I always recommend is to look for people around the edges. Often when we're in a room, we look at the kind of the noisy, popular ones in the middle who are all chattering and having fun. Have a look around the edges, especially if you're feeling nervous. Are there other people who are looking like they might like somebody to talk to?  </p> <p> I always look for somebody who's doing something. So those of you listen to my previous podcast know that I've just recently joined a new circus place. I'm very much still at the getting to know people. I wouldn't call it my community yet. I'm building little bridges and seeing how it goes in this particular circus place. And one of the things I did was I looked out for people who were like putting the mats out and I just went and said, can I help you? </p> <p> Because before that I was sort of standing at the edge, looking like a bit of a lemon, not talking to anybody, and I wanted to build some bridges. but it felt a lot just to go and say, hi, I'm Vikki, good to meet you. And so I asked them if they wanted some help and they wanted help and so I helped them put the mats out and we kind of got chatting a little bit because of that. </p> <p> So often you can look for people who are doing those sorts of things. Oh, can I help you sort the badges out? Oh, can I help you with the food? Helping people with a task is a really low risk way of getting talking to somebody.  </p> <p> Also really be aware of your tendency to get into other people's heads. So most of us spend a lot of time thinking what other people might be thinking that, oh, are they going to think I'm too pushy, or are they going to think I'm too awkward, or I'm too weird. I would really suggest that you try and remind yourself to behave in a way that you think is nice and appropriate and let them have their opinion. </p> <p> Most of the time, people aren't thinking about us anywhere near as much as we think they are. So if we can just adhere to our own principles and allow them to think what they think, usually we end up building far more bridges than we ever realize.  </p> <p> So to conclude, when you think about your community, I want you to think about people who get what you are doing, and people that get you as a person. I want you to put yourselves in situations where you can build little tiny connections and to support yourself to do that. And I want you to remember that every community is made one interaction at a time. </p> <p> So take a little bit of time this week to think what interactions you can plan now and how you are going to support yourself through them so that you can start to build a community that helps you thrive and enjoy and succeed. </p> <p> <br/> </p> </div> Mon, 28 Nov 2022 04:30:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/8-how-to-build-your-own-academic-community https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/7-how-to-avoid-the-end-of-year-panic Has the pre-Christmas panic hit you yet? That feeling of having four thousand things that you simply have to do before you break up for the winter holiday? In this episode, I channel my inner Charles Dickens and help you figure out how to be kind to your past self, to your present self, and to your future self during this busy month. Let’s finish the year with more enthusiasm and less stress. <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> <iframe> </iframe> <iframe> </iframe> <div> <p> <span> <span> Has the pre-Christmas panic hit you yet? That feeling of having four thousand things that you simply have to do before you break up for the winter holiday? In this episode, I channel my inner Charles Dickens and help you figure out how to be kind to your past self, to your present self, and to your future self during this busy month. Let’s finish the year with more enthusiasm and less stress. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Transcript </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <i> <span> <span> In this episode I mention </span> </span> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol" target="_blank"> A Christmas Carol </a> </i> <span> <i> <span> - if you're not familiar, this is the book I mean! </span> </i> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Hello and welcome to episode seven of the PhD Life Coach. I am going to start with a fact that you may or may not want to hear. This podcast is coming out on the 21st of November, 2022, which means that if you are listening to this live, you have approximately 20 to 25 working days till Christmas. This varies a little bit, depending on whether you're in the US and have Thanksgiving off as well, exactly how close you run up to Christmas, but it's in the ballpark. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Twenty to twenty five days. I have 20. I'm finishing in time for the school holidays. I want you to notice what emotions that brings up for you. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> For me, there's an element of denial. What? No, we can't be that close to Christmas. No, no, no. We can't be. Don't say it. I don't wanna think about it. So there's that kind of denial thing. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> There's also elements of shame that pop up, and I wonder if any of you experience this. I thought I'd be further along by now. I can't believe it's nearly Christmas and I still haven't done X, Y, Z, whatever that is for you. Are you feeling bits of shame or guilt? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> There's definitely a chunk of overwhelm of, oh my goodness, I've got right, 20 days. I still need to do this. I still need to do that. How am I going to do this? I'm never going to get that bit done. Oh, my word. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And then there's an element of panic of, I literally can't do all these things. There's no way. I'm just going to have to ditch them. What can I ditch? I'm going to ditch this. I'm going to ditch that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Which of those emotions do you feel when you think about how many days there are left til Christmas? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And if you're listening to this at some other time of year you've come back to this, think of, you know, maybe you've got the end of term coming, you've got till a deadline or something like that. Something that's maybe that kind of period. And the first thing today is all those emotions are completely normal. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Totally normal. Because the thoughts that we have in these settings make those emotions inevitable. We think. There's no way. How's that happened? You think thoughts that make this feel like it's a shock or it can't be true? We think thoughts about how we should have done things differently. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We think that we should have started this thing earlier. We should have progressed further. So we have all these should thoughts that lead to shame and to guilt. We have all these thoughts about how simultaneously we have to get everything done and we can't possibly do it all. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Have you ever thought both of those thoughts at the same time? I know I have. I've talked about that in previous podcasts. So these thoughts of, There's literally nothing on my list I can't do without letting people down, but also there's no way I can get all this done before Christmas are inevitably going to lead to feelings like overwhelm, and as we've discussed before, the problem, we're feeling overwhelmed as it goes one or two ways, and often both. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> You go into frantic action, not really thinking about it, flying through, trying to do as much as possible, and sometimes that feels productive. But often what happens is you're sort of running around like a headless chicken, doing things that are maybe less important, putting off the more important things, or not even really thinking about that, or you start to procrastinate. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Because if you can't do it all then and it just creates these uncomfortable feelings, then inevitably you start procrastinating in order to avoid those feelings. And then once you've kind of gone through the overwhelm and the panic really hits, then you're thinking thoughts like, I just can't do this. Or I need to ditch things. I just need to ditch things. Whatever. I'll do that later. I'll do that later. </span> </p> <p> <span> That doesn't need to happen before Christmas. That doesn't need to happen before Christmas. And you just sort of chuck them over the horizon, chuck them forwards. I'll worry about it later. I can't do that now. There's no way without really thinking those things through. So it's really understandable that you're feeling these feelings because you're thinking these thoughts and these thoughts are super common too. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I think one of the things about working in academia and being a student is we have these sort of designated chunks of our year even more so than most people because we have our terms, our semesters, the holidays, and so we're sort of always working on these chunks and so these sorts of thoughts and emotions probably happen quite regularly, but I feel like Christmas and that winter holiday is really one that really generates it for a lot of people, because it's the time when we feel real social pressure, real family pressure and personal desire to really put things down for a while. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> But at the same time, it comes at the end of a period where there's often been loads happening that you want to finish. The way I really want to frame this for you, and I want you to think about, is about the different versions of you. So you may not have thought about this before. There's current you, there's the you that's living today. There's past you and past you is everything from the “you” you were yesterday and last week all the way through to the child you were, the teenager you were and so on. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So there's current you, there’s past you and there’s future you and you will be “future you” tomorrow and in a week and a month and a year. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> One of the things that I really noticed when I was planning this episode is that when a big deadline, when a kind of time pressure hits, we start being mean to all three versions of ourselves, we start telling past us that we should have done more, and being really dissatisfied with past us and what we did. We start being really mean to current us because we expect ourselves to be able to work in this highly pressured environment where we're constantly telling ourselves that there's more to do and we'll never be able to do it, and we should be able to do it. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> While at the same time not really being super clear on exactly what the priorities are and we are mean to future us because we start chucking a whole load of stuff into the future with not much thought or guidance. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I know we've all experienced that thing of opening up the to-do list in January and going, oh man, I'm going to have to actually do this now. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Because what I want to do in this episode is to think instead, what could we do? What could we think more importantly, that will mean that we are kind to our past selves, that we're kind to our present selves and we're kind to our future selves, while also doing the things that we've decided are important. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And there's some quite simple strategies that we can take that I'm gonna talk you through over the next 15 minutes or so that make this period so much more pleasant and more productive at the same time. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Let's start with our past selves, because a lot of the pain comes from the fact that we, we beat up our past self. We tell ourselves we should have done more. We tell ourselves that if I hadn't just slacked off that day, or I hadn't done such a rubbish first draft, that I would be further along than I am. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So our first step is acceptance. Our first step is looking at our past self and saying, you know what? You did what you could do. It's been tough. You've all got reasons it's been tough. It's a weird year again for everybody, for a whole variety of reasons. There might be things that you'd do differently if you knew things then that you know now, but the fact is you didn't. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> You did the best you could with the circumstances that you were in and the thoughts that you were having at the time. You did your best and that's okay. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I bet there's a whole bunch of stuff from this year that you're super proud of yourself for doing. Take a minute to think of those. Instead of spending all the time beating yourself up for the things you haven't done, take a minute to remember what you did do this year, the cool stuff that you've done, because I know you have so let's be kind to past us. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And that's partly because it feels loads better. But it's also because it's actually easier to get on and do things if you know that you are going to be kind to yourself in the future. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So if we are looking back and beating up past self now future you is probably going to look back and beat up this, you. And that doesn't feel good, and that doesn't make you want to get on with things. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So acceptance, as I discussed in the previous podcast, isn't about just letting ourselves off the hook and never getting better at anything. It's about understanding that we did what we did under the circumstances we were in, and that's okay, and we just move forward from there. So that's your first step. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The second step, and this one's always challenging, so I'm really gonna try and take you through it step by step, is we need to be kind to our presence selves. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> There's nothing worse than having a boss that gives you an unreasonable workload, that doesn't help you prioritize, doesn't help you have clear instruction,s doesn't give you the resources that you need. Some of us might feel like we already have that boss in our supervisors or our universities, but when that boss is yourself, that's even worse. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So what we need to do to be kind to our present self is we need to decide. And I'm going to give you a bunch of things that I want you to decide on, and when I say decide, I want you to write it down because one of the things with decisions is they're only as useful as they are made. So if you kinda make a decision, I'm probably going to focus on this, but then tomorrow you rethink it and decide to focus on something different, that's not a decision and that doesn't help you. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And I know that because I do this to myself all the time. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So part of where the inspiration for this episode came from was me looking at the diary and going, oh, it's not long till Christmas. And I kept rethinking what I was going to get done between now and then, and I'd come up with one idea, and then I'd see some thread on Twitter from some person who tells me I have to post this many times, or whatever. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I thought, oh, oh, actually, yeah, maybe I could do that as well. I could get that in as well. And so one of the things I spent time doing yesterday was actually planning out, okay, what am I actually gonna do between now and Christmas? And I really struggle with decision making. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> It's one of the things I find hardest because my brain has 4,000 ideas at all times and I want to do all of them because I'm super enthusiastic, but then I get brain freeze. So decision making is something I really have to consciously make myself do. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So I sat down yesterday and I worked out, okay, you got four working weeks from the moment this podcast is released and what are we going to get done in each of those weeks, what are the priorities? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I'll take you through the steps that that took for me. The first was deciding how much am I willing to give? So, I'm in quite a lucky situation now. I run my own business. I'm answerable only to myself, and I realize that's a hugely luxurious position compared to how I was even six months ago when I was still working in academia. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And some of you might be like, oh yeah, it's, it's completely different. I've got a hundred different people who are dependent on me for 40 different parts of my job, and I get it. I spent 20 years working in academia. I know what it's like. I remember at one stage working out that I had something like 27 different major roles and to-do lists associated with all of them. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> It was ridiculous. I get it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> But at some point you have to decide how much am I willing to work? And if you think that that's too difficult, you are already deciding because there are times when you go to bed, there are times you sleep, there are times you eat. But you decide based on exhaustion in the moment or lack of focus in the moment. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So what I would really encourage you to do now is decide between now and Christmas, I am willing to work from this time to this time. I'm willing to work late on that day, maybe you'll say. I'm willing to work early on that day, maybe you'll say. I'm willing to work three hours on a Saturday, maybe. Maybe you'll decide I'm willing to work nine till five and that all you’re getting, because that's all you are paying me for. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Whatever you decide is up to you. Maybe those of you, they're part-time students, part-time members of staff. Maybe you'll decide I'm willing to work seven in the morning till 12, but after that, no. My afternoons are for my kids, my family, for whatever else. So there's no right answer to that, but decide now what you're willing to give. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then we need to make decisions about the tasks and everyone just goes, oh, prioritize, give you the little Eisenhower matrix of, you know, important, urgent. It's not that straightforward, is it? Because what's urgent for somebody else? Feels urgent for you because they need it, but it's not necessarily important to you. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And often the things that are most important in the long run are the things that aren't urgent right now. And they're the things that usually are the most important to us. So I'm going to do a whole other podcast about why I don't love the Eisenhower matrix. If you're not familiar with it, it's the urgent and important thing, and it's like urgent, important. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Do those now. Important you know, schedule, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Delegate Ditch, not a fan. I'll tell you why in another podcast. But for now, I want instead to give you a series of questions to ask yourself that will perhaps help you to prioritize a little bit. </span> </p> <p> <span>   </span> </p> <p> <span> So the first thing is I want you to identify what tasks are you just deciding you're not going to do. Because whatever bit of your brain is telling you optimistically in the back, no, but I have to get it all done. You can't, you're literally not going to. I know you guys, I know your brain, I know myself. You're not going to do all the things that you think you're going to do before Christmas, so let's decide now. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Which ones are you just not going to do? And of those things, which are you just not going to do ever? Who could you write an email to today and say, Thanks for inviting me to do this. On reflection I’ve decided it doesn't fit with my current workload. Really grateful for the opportunity but not going to be able to. Thanks. Bye. Who could you send that to today? So what things are you just not gonna do? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What other things are you not going to do until later. And I want you to start thinking that now, because I guarantee a week before Christmas you are going to start frantically chucking things into January. So let's decide it now so we don't have the panic in the runup. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What things are you realistically not going to do before January? This is all about being kind to our present self. Let's not put ourselves through this farce that we are going to work really, really hard and get it all done because we are not, and if we do, we will probably burn out. So we are trying to be our own best supervisor, like I talked about in our first podcast, and be really clear and specific. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What are we not doing now? What are we not doing ever? The next one that we often miss out is, what are we gonna do badly? And I'm going to suggest to you the things you do badly are the things that are pointless, but have to be done. We all know there's quite a lot of those at universities. Stupid forms that somebody's asked you to fill in the same bit of information that you've been given somebody 10 times already and they want it again in a different format, whatever. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What can you do quickly and badly or just quickly? Sometimes we have tasks in our head - I need to give feedback on a draft or something - and we're like, oh, I need to spend five hours on that. I need to give detailed feedback on every section, whatever. Talk to your students, say to them. Would you rather have quick and dirty feedback on whether you are roughly on the right lines before Christmas, or would you prefer to have detailed feedback on your draft in January? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I guarantee at least some of them would rather have quick and dirty feedback now so they can keep moving forward over Christmas. Get more detailed feedback later. If you're a PhD student and you're like, there's literally nowhere I'm going to finish this draft with my supervisor before Christmas, it’s not going happen. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Ask your supervisor. Would you rather have a full draft in January or would you rather have a detailed plan or a written draft for half of it before Christmas? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Okay, so what tasks can you do quickly? What tasks can you do badly? So more quickly than you thought you would to a different scope, to a different quality than you originally thought you were gonna do because those, you can really go in and write. </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm gonna bash these out quickly. I don't care if this email's well written or not. I'm just gonna get it sent. I don't care whether I've reformatted the form because it looks really messy because the fonts don't match because it's a stupid form. Anyway, I'm just gonna fill it in. Send it in. Boom. There you go. Good. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> What things have you got on your list that are like that? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Decide now and then think what's the one or two things that would really move the needle for me that would really. Make me proud. Now it's your thoughts that make you proud, but what would really help move me towards my goals? Oh, it would be so good if I could just get a draft of that done or if I could just get my ethics submitted or whatever it is. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> What's the one or two things like that? Cause what we're doing is we're gaining clarity in our present situation. We're helping present self really have a very clear idea about what they need to do, and we all know it's so much easier to get on with work if we know exactly what it entails. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Deciding specifically is being kind to your present self. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And the sort of thoughts I want you to have here are things like, I will do what I can do, and that's okay. I can make this clear for myself. I can do this one step at a time. I'm good at my job and this is what I'm deciding. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And that's a really important one. I'm good at this and this is what I'm deciding, and you write it down and your job then is not to second guess that for the rest of the month. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Your job then is to say, that's what I decided. I'm good at my job. And that's what I decided. I'm cracking on with this. I'm not doing that. I'm getting this done badly. Let's go. Okay, so we're being kind to our present self and we're reinforcing that with the thoughts that we have about it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then we also wanna be kind to our future selves. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> We want to avoid this frantic chucking things into January with no real regard for the fact that that's still us. That's still, we are gonna be that future self. So, How can we be kind to our future self? Now, if we decide now when we've still got a month to go, we can be much less frantic about it. We can say, okay, I'm actually going to write that grant as soon as I get back in New Year, or I'm going to design those lectures when I get back in New Year. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> But what you can do is you can spend 10 minutes now going, how can I make that easy for future me? I'm going to write little crib sheet. I'm going to find the files that I'm going to need so that when I come back, I've got a folder on my desktop that says, write this lecture and in it is the slides that somebody used last year and two key readings and da, da, da. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So spend 10 minutes when you've decided you're not going do it now, making it easy for you to do in the future. Okay? There's also the thing of managing people around you. So when we're being kind to our future selves and we're saying we are going to do that thing later, and we want to make that as easy and pleasant for them as possible, the other thing is trying to keep people in that loop. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So, you can let people know now that you are going to be doing that thing later. Often again, we push it to the last moment. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to. And then at the last minute we send a message, Hey, I'm really sorry. I'm just not going to get it done. Let's send that message. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now. Let's be kind to our future self so we're not feeling guilty having to send these messages later. Hi. I've been reflecting on my workload over the next month. Realist. I'm not going to get this to you now until January. Is there anything that would be useful in the meantime? How can we rejig things so this works for you in January, so you have those conversations early rather than sort of leaving future you to deal with the mess when you suddenly can't do it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Okay? So the thing I want you to really think and remind yourself of here is I will still be me next year. Okay. Sometimes we have huge higher expectations of future us. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We're going to be so much more productive and so much more on it and motivated and all of these things. No. It's still going to be you. Hopefully we're going to, you know, with all this coaching and stuff, we're going to be a little modified version of us, a little upgraded version of us, but we’re still going to be us, and we're going to have to actually do this. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So let's be kind and make it as easy as possible. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So that is some tips for being kind to your past self, being kind to your present self, being kind to your future self, and how that can make this whole period much more positive, much more productive, much more enjoyable. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The final thing is there's other people in your world, And that makes life good and it makes life complex all at the same time. </span> </p> <p> <span> And one of the things that I've really noticed in myself and in my colleagues is that when you are under pressure, it can really bring out the judgey in other people. So I don't know about you, but the more stressed I get and the more behind I feel, the more snippy I get at other people who haven't given me the things I need. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So whilst I'm simultaneously going, well, I had far too much to do, I couldn't fill that for me. I couldn't do this, I'm also at the same time going, well, if they'd just asked me sooner, if they'd given me more notice, if they'd actually got their comments back to me, I could have done this. I get judgey at other people because I'm being judgey with myself. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now, hopefully we've called down some of the judginess on ourselves anyway, but regardless, keep an eye out for the fact that over the next month you might get super judgey with other people. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And so I've got some thoughts for you here too. Other people are struggling too. So when it's the people that you get kind of bitter about them not doing it, not working as hard as you, not being as committed as you, not taking it as seriously as you, other people are struggling to, and you never know what's happening behind the scenes. Remind yourself of that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If on the other hand, you find yourself at the other end of almost being too compassionate, that you want to solve for everybody else's problems, you want to take things from them, you don't want to ask them to do things because they've got too much already. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Another thought I want to offer is I can't control their feelings. They think their thoughts and have their feelings. And you can behave in a way that you believe to be true and ethical and good for you, but you can't control other people's feelings. That's not your responsibility. That's not within our power. And when we try to, we usually cause more problems than we solve. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Another point I want you to remind yourself is that other people have to prioritize too. So, Sometimes we get grumpy that people aren't doing the things we think they should be doing, but we're not doing the things that they think we should be doing. </span> </p> <p> <span> So sometimes we just have to accept, other people are prioritizing too, and maybe this thing's not a priority for them. And if you can accept that, then you start to figure out, okay, well do I need them involved in this project? Can I move it on without them? Is there a way to make it easier for them? Is there a way to make this more likely to happen? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So one thing I always did was if somebody needed something for me that wasn't a priority for me, but was a priority for them, I'd try and arrange meetings to do it. So I'd say, look, let's just get in a room and do it, because then I will do it and it’s done. Whereas if you wait for this to come to the top of my to-do list, it is never going be the top priority for me. So let's just book it in. We'll do it. It's outta the way. So reminding yourself, other people I have to prioritize too. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And the final one is remembering that a whole lot of pain comes from expecting people to behave any way other than the way they've always behaved. We waste so much time and energy thinking and talking about how somebody should behave different than they do. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> They should do this faster. They shouldn't be like that. They should say this. They shouldn't say that. They shouldn't treat me like that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> All those things might be true, but expecting them to be any different just sets you up for thoughts that are going to make you feel frustrated and annoyed, aggrieved, all of these things, people are going to behave the way they behave. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> That's not to say we should accept unacceptable behaviour and taking a moment to think, is this full-on actually unacceptable behaviour that I need to say something about, do something about? Or am I just expecting them to fall into line with my priorities and my standards for behaviour? If we can just sit back and go, of course they've done that, they’re so and so, they always do that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Yeah, I'll work around that. I'll do this, I'll do that. Whatever it is, just takes so much of the frustration and sting out of these interactions. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So really try and keep some of those thoughts in mind. Have a think for yourself, what thoughts work for you, what helps you manage and just keep the heat out of what can become a little bit of a pressure cooker in the run up to the holiday season. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And finally, I want you to make some sort of prompt that you stick post it notes or reminders on your phone, whatever it might be, to remind you to celebrate your way. So what I want you to be saying all the way through this, every time you finish something or every time you make progress on something, I am so glad I chose to get that done. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> I'm so glad I put two hours into getting that sorted. I'm so glad I got that form just gone in 10 minutes because it was stupid and it's now off my plate. I'm so grateful that I did this. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Whatever it is, put something somewhere to remind yourself to talk like that because you become your own reinforcing prophecy. </span> </p> <p> <span> Even if it feels stupid at first, the more you keep saying to yourself, I'm so glad I got that done. I'm so glad I chose to do this. I'm so glad I did that. The more you start to seek that, so the more you carry on doing your tasks because you know you are going to get rewarded, even if it's only the reward of hearing yourself congratulate yourself. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> In this last four weeks, five weeks, be kind to your past self, be kind to your current self, be kind to your future self. It's almost like the Christmas Carol. I've only just realized that it's almost like the Christmas ghosts, isn't it? And if you're not familiar with that, put it on your to-do list to read or watch over Christmas, Be kind to all versions of ourselves and congratulate yourself for what you do get done. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span>  </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> Let's sprint into Christmas and enjoy the stuff we get done and the time that we give ourselves by not having the frantic panicked finish. </span> </p> </div> </div> </div> <div> <p> <span> <span> Has the pre-Christmas panic hit you yet? That feeling of having four thousand things that you simply have to do before you break up for the winter holiday? In this episode, I channel my inner Charles Dickens and help you figure out how to be kind to your past self, to your present self, and to your future self during this busy month. Let’s finish the year with more enthusiasm and less stress. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> <br/> </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Transcript </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <i> <span> <span> In this episode I mention </span> </span> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol" target="_blank"> A Christmas Carol </a> </i> <span> <i> <span> - if you're not familiar, this is the book I mean! </span> </i> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Hello and welcome to episode seven of the PhD Life Coach. I am going to start with a fact that you may or may not want to hear. This podcast is coming out on the 21st of November, 2022, which means that if you are listening to this live, you have approximately 20 to 25 working days till Christmas. This varies a little bit, depending on whether you're in the US and have Thanksgiving off as well, exactly how close you run up to Christmas, but it's in the ballpark. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Twenty to twenty five days. I have 20. I'm finishing in time for the school holidays. I want you to notice what emotions that brings up for you. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> For me, there's an element of denial. What? No, we can't be that close to Christmas. No, no, no. We can't be. Don't say it. I don't wanna think about it. So there's that kind of denial thing. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> There's also elements of shame that pop up, and I wonder if any of you experience this. I thought I'd be further along by now. I can't believe it's nearly Christmas and I still haven't done X, Y, Z, whatever that is for you. Are you feeling bits of shame or guilt? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> There's definitely a chunk of overwhelm of, oh my goodness, I've got right, 20 days. I still need to do this. I still need to do that. How am I going to do this? I'm never going to get that bit done. Oh, my word. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And then there's an element of panic of, I literally can't do all these things. There's no way. I'm just going to have to ditch them. What can I ditch? I'm going to ditch this. I'm going to ditch that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Which of those emotions do you feel when you think about how many days there are left til Christmas? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And if you're listening to this at some other time of year you've come back to this, think of, you know, maybe you've got the end of term coming, you've got till a deadline or something like that. Something that's maybe that kind of period. And the first thing today is all those emotions are completely normal. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Totally normal. Because the thoughts that we have in these settings make those emotions inevitable. We think. There's no way. How's that happened? You think thoughts that make this feel like it's a shock or it can't be true? We think thoughts about how we should have done things differently. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We think that we should have started this thing earlier. We should have progressed further. So we have all these should thoughts that lead to shame and to guilt. We have all these thoughts about how simultaneously we have to get everything done and we can't possibly do it all. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Have you ever thought both of those thoughts at the same time? I know I have. I've talked about that in previous podcasts. So these thoughts of, There's literally nothing on my list I can't do without letting people down, but also there's no way I can get all this done before Christmas are inevitably going to lead to feelings like overwhelm, and as we've discussed before, the problem, we're feeling overwhelmed as it goes one or two ways, and often both. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> You go into frantic action, not really thinking about it, flying through, trying to do as much as possible, and sometimes that feels productive. But often what happens is you're sort of running around like a headless chicken, doing things that are maybe less important, putting off the more important things, or not even really thinking about that, or you start to procrastinate. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Because if you can't do it all then and it just creates these uncomfortable feelings, then inevitably you start procrastinating in order to avoid those feelings. And then once you've kind of gone through the overwhelm and the panic really hits, then you're thinking thoughts like, I just can't do this. Or I need to ditch things. I just need to ditch things. Whatever. I'll do that later. I'll do that later. </span> </p> <p> <span> That doesn't need to happen before Christmas. That doesn't need to happen before Christmas. And you just sort of chuck them over the horizon, chuck them forwards. I'll worry about it later. I can't do that now. There's no way without really thinking those things through. So it's really understandable that you're feeling these feelings because you're thinking these thoughts and these thoughts are super common too. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I think one of the things about working in academia and being a student is we have these sort of designated chunks of our year even more so than most people because we have our terms, our semesters, the holidays, and so we're sort of always working on these chunks and so these sorts of thoughts and emotions probably happen quite regularly, but I feel like Christmas and that winter holiday is really one that really generates it for a lot of people, because it's the time when we feel real social pressure, real family pressure and personal desire to really put things down for a while. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> But at the same time, it comes at the end of a period where there's often been loads happening that you want to finish. The way I really want to frame this for you, and I want you to think about, is about the different versions of you. So you may not have thought about this before. There's current you, there's the you that's living today. There's past you and past you is everything from the “you” you were yesterday and last week all the way through to the child you were, the teenager you were and so on. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So there's current you, there’s past you and there’s future you and you will be “future you” tomorrow and in a week and a month and a year. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> One of the things that I really noticed when I was planning this episode is that when a big deadline, when a kind of time pressure hits, we start being mean to all three versions of ourselves, we start telling past us that we should have done more, and being really dissatisfied with past us and what we did. We start being really mean to current us because we expect ourselves to be able to work in this highly pressured environment where we're constantly telling ourselves that there's more to do and we'll never be able to do it, and we should be able to do it. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> While at the same time not really being super clear on exactly what the priorities are and we are mean to future us because we start chucking a whole load of stuff into the future with not much thought or guidance. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I know we've all experienced that thing of opening up the to-do list in January and going, oh man, I'm going to have to actually do this now. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Because what I want to do in this episode is to think instead, what could we do? What could we think more importantly, that will mean that we are kind to our past selves, that we're kind to our present selves and we're kind to our future selves, while also doing the things that we've decided are important. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And there's some quite simple strategies that we can take that I'm gonna talk you through over the next 15 minutes or so that make this period so much more pleasant and more productive at the same time. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Let's start with our past selves, because a lot of the pain comes from the fact that we, we beat up our past self. We tell ourselves we should have done more. We tell ourselves that if I hadn't just slacked off that day, or I hadn't done such a rubbish first draft, that I would be further along than I am. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So our first step is acceptance. Our first step is looking at our past self and saying, you know what? You did what you could do. It's been tough. You've all got reasons it's been tough. It's a weird year again for everybody, for a whole variety of reasons. There might be things that you'd do differently if you knew things then that you know now, but the fact is you didn't. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> You did the best you could with the circumstances that you were in and the thoughts that you were having at the time. You did your best and that's okay. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I bet there's a whole bunch of stuff from this year that you're super proud of yourself for doing. Take a minute to think of those. Instead of spending all the time beating yourself up for the things you haven't done, take a minute to remember what you did do this year, the cool stuff that you've done, because I know you have so let's be kind to past us. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And that's partly because it feels loads better. But it's also because it's actually easier to get on and do things if you know that you are going to be kind to yourself in the future. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So if we are looking back and beating up past self now future you is probably going to look back and beat up this, you. And that doesn't feel good, and that doesn't make you want to get on with things. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So acceptance, as I discussed in the previous podcast, isn't about just letting ourselves off the hook and never getting better at anything. It's about understanding that we did what we did under the circumstances we were in, and that's okay, and we just move forward from there. So that's your first step. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The second step, and this one's always challenging, so I'm really gonna try and take you through it step by step, is we need to be kind to our presence selves. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> There's nothing worse than having a boss that gives you an unreasonable workload, that doesn't help you prioritize, doesn't help you have clear instruction,s doesn't give you the resources that you need. Some of us might feel like we already have that boss in our supervisors or our universities, but when that boss is yourself, that's even worse. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So what we need to do to be kind to our present self is we need to decide. And I'm going to give you a bunch of things that I want you to decide on, and when I say decide, I want you to write it down because one of the things with decisions is they're only as useful as they are made. So if you kinda make a decision, I'm probably going to focus on this, but then tomorrow you rethink it and decide to focus on something different, that's not a decision and that doesn't help you. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And I know that because I do this to myself all the time. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So part of where the inspiration for this episode came from was me looking at the diary and going, oh, it's not long till Christmas. And I kept rethinking what I was going to get done between now and then, and I'd come up with one idea, and then I'd see some thread on Twitter from some person who tells me I have to post this many times, or whatever. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I thought, oh, oh, actually, yeah, maybe I could do that as well. I could get that in as well. And so one of the things I spent time doing yesterday was actually planning out, okay, what am I actually gonna do between now and Christmas? And I really struggle with decision making. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> It's one of the things I find hardest because my brain has 4,000 ideas at all times and I want to do all of them because I'm super enthusiastic, but then I get brain freeze. So decision making is something I really have to consciously make myself do. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So I sat down yesterday and I worked out, okay, you got four working weeks from the moment this podcast is released and what are we going to get done in each of those weeks, what are the priorities? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And I'll take you through the steps that that took for me. The first was deciding how much am I willing to give? So, I'm in quite a lucky situation now. I run my own business. I'm answerable only to myself, and I realize that's a hugely luxurious position compared to how I was even six months ago when I was still working in academia. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And some of you might be like, oh yeah, it's, it's completely different. I've got a hundred different people who are dependent on me for 40 different parts of my job, and I get it. I spent 20 years working in academia. I know what it's like. I remember at one stage working out that I had something like 27 different major roles and to-do lists associated with all of them. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> It was ridiculous. I get it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> But at some point you have to decide how much am I willing to work? And if you think that that's too difficult, you are already deciding because there are times when you go to bed, there are times you sleep, there are times you eat. But you decide based on exhaustion in the moment or lack of focus in the moment. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So what I would really encourage you to do now is decide between now and Christmas, I am willing to work from this time to this time. I'm willing to work late on that day, maybe you'll say. I'm willing to work early on that day, maybe you'll say. I'm willing to work three hours on a Saturday, maybe. Maybe you'll decide I'm willing to work nine till five and that all you’re getting, because that's all you are paying me for. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Whatever you decide is up to you. Maybe those of you, they're part-time students, part-time members of staff. Maybe you'll decide I'm willing to work seven in the morning till 12, but after that, no. My afternoons are for my kids, my family, for whatever else. So there's no right answer to that, but decide now what you're willing to give. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then we need to make decisions about the tasks and everyone just goes, oh, prioritize, give you the little Eisenhower matrix of, you know, important, urgent. It's not that straightforward, is it? Because what's urgent for somebody else? Feels urgent for you because they need it, but it's not necessarily important to you. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And often the things that are most important in the long run are the things that aren't urgent right now. And they're the things that usually are the most important to us. So I'm going to do a whole other podcast about why I don't love the Eisenhower matrix. If you're not familiar with it, it's the urgent and important thing, and it's like urgent, important. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Do those now. Important you know, schedule, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Delegate Ditch, not a fan. I'll tell you why in another podcast. But for now, I want instead to give you a series of questions to ask yourself that will perhaps help you to prioritize a little bit. </span> </p> <p> <span>   </span> </p> <p> <span> So the first thing is I want you to identify what tasks are you just deciding you're not going to do. Because whatever bit of your brain is telling you optimistically in the back, no, but I have to get it all done. You can't, you're literally not going to. I know you guys, I know your brain, I know myself. You're not going to do all the things that you think you're going to do before Christmas, so let's decide now. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Which ones are you just not going to do? And of those things, which are you just not going to do ever? Who could you write an email to today and say, Thanks for inviting me to do this. On reflection I’ve decided it doesn't fit with my current workload. Really grateful for the opportunity but not going to be able to. Thanks. Bye. Who could you send that to today? So what things are you just not gonna do? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What other things are you not going to do until later. And I want you to start thinking that now, because I guarantee a week before Christmas you are going to start frantically chucking things into January. So let's decide it now so we don't have the panic in the runup. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What things are you realistically not going to do before January? This is all about being kind to our present self. Let's not put ourselves through this farce that we are going to work really, really hard and get it all done because we are not, and if we do, we will probably burn out. So we are trying to be our own best supervisor, like I talked about in our first podcast, and be really clear and specific. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What are we not doing now? What are we not doing ever? The next one that we often miss out is, what are we gonna do badly? And I'm going to suggest to you the things you do badly are the things that are pointless, but have to be done. We all know there's quite a lot of those at universities. Stupid forms that somebody's asked you to fill in the same bit of information that you've been given somebody 10 times already and they want it again in a different format, whatever. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> What can you do quickly and badly or just quickly? Sometimes we have tasks in our head - I need to give feedback on a draft or something - and we're like, oh, I need to spend five hours on that. I need to give detailed feedback on every section, whatever. Talk to your students, say to them. Would you rather have quick and dirty feedback on whether you are roughly on the right lines before Christmas, or would you prefer to have detailed feedback on your draft in January? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I guarantee at least some of them would rather have quick and dirty feedback now so they can keep moving forward over Christmas. Get more detailed feedback later. If you're a PhD student and you're like, there's literally nowhere I'm going to finish this draft with my supervisor before Christmas, it’s not going happen. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Ask your supervisor. Would you rather have a full draft in January or would you rather have a detailed plan or a written draft for half of it before Christmas? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Okay, so what tasks can you do quickly? What tasks can you do badly? So more quickly than you thought you would to a different scope, to a different quality than you originally thought you were gonna do because those, you can really go in and write. </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm gonna bash these out quickly. I don't care if this email's well written or not. I'm just gonna get it sent. I don't care whether I've reformatted the form because it looks really messy because the fonts don't match because it's a stupid form. Anyway, I'm just gonna fill it in. Send it in. Boom. There you go. Good. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> What things have you got on your list that are like that? </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Decide now and then think what's the one or two things that would really move the needle for me that would really. Make me proud. Now it's your thoughts that make you proud, but what would really help move me towards my goals? Oh, it would be so good if I could just get a draft of that done or if I could just get my ethics submitted or whatever it is. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> What's the one or two things like that? Cause what we're doing is we're gaining clarity in our present situation. We're helping present self really have a very clear idea about what they need to do, and we all know it's so much easier to get on with work if we know exactly what it entails. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Deciding specifically is being kind to your present self. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And the sort of thoughts I want you to have here are things like, I will do what I can do, and that's okay. I can make this clear for myself. I can do this one step at a time. I'm good at my job and this is what I'm deciding. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And that's a really important one. I'm good at this and this is what I'm deciding, and you write it down and your job then is not to second guess that for the rest of the month. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Your job then is to say, that's what I decided. I'm good at my job. And that's what I decided. I'm cracking on with this. I'm not doing that. I'm getting this done badly. Let's go. Okay, so we're being kind to our present self and we're reinforcing that with the thoughts that we have about it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And then we also wanna be kind to our future selves. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> We want to avoid this frantic chucking things into January with no real regard for the fact that that's still us. That's still, we are gonna be that future self. So, How can we be kind to our future self? Now, if we decide now when we've still got a month to go, we can be much less frantic about it. We can say, okay, I'm actually going to write that grant as soon as I get back in New Year, or I'm going to design those lectures when I get back in New Year. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> But what you can do is you can spend 10 minutes now going, how can I make that easy for future me? I'm going to write little crib sheet. I'm going to find the files that I'm going to need so that when I come back, I've got a folder on my desktop that says, write this lecture and in it is the slides that somebody used last year and two key readings and da, da, da. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So spend 10 minutes when you've decided you're not going do it now, making it easy for you to do in the future. Okay? There's also the thing of managing people around you. So when we're being kind to our future selves and we're saying we are going to do that thing later, and we want to make that as easy and pleasant for them as possible, the other thing is trying to keep people in that loop. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So, you can let people know now that you are going to be doing that thing later. Often again, we push it to the last moment. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to. And then at the last minute we send a message, Hey, I'm really sorry. I'm just not going to get it done. Let's send that message. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now. Let's be kind to our future self so we're not feeling guilty having to send these messages later. Hi. I've been reflecting on my workload over the next month. Realist. I'm not going to get this to you now until January. Is there anything that would be useful in the meantime? How can we rejig things so this works for you in January, so you have those conversations early rather than sort of leaving future you to deal with the mess when you suddenly can't do it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Okay? So the thing I want you to really think and remind yourself of here is I will still be me next year. Okay. Sometimes we have huge higher expectations of future us. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> We're going to be so much more productive and so much more on it and motivated and all of these things. No. It's still going to be you. Hopefully we're going to, you know, with all this coaching and stuff, we're going to be a little modified version of us, a little upgraded version of us, but we’re still going to be us, and we're going to have to actually do this. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So let's be kind and make it as easy as possible. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So that is some tips for being kind to your past self, being kind to your present self, being kind to your future self, and how that can make this whole period much more positive, much more productive, much more enjoyable. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> The final thing is there's other people in your world, And that makes life good and it makes life complex all at the same time. </span> </p> <p> <span> And one of the things that I've really noticed in myself and in my colleagues is that when you are under pressure, it can really bring out the judgey in other people. So I don't know about you, but the more stressed I get and the more behind I feel, the more snippy I get at other people who haven't given me the things I need. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So whilst I'm simultaneously going, well, I had far too much to do, I couldn't fill that for me. I couldn't do this, I'm also at the same time going, well, if they'd just asked me sooner, if they'd given me more notice, if they'd actually got their comments back to me, I could have done this. I get judgey at other people because I'm being judgey with myself. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Now, hopefully we've called down some of the judginess on ourselves anyway, but regardless, keep an eye out for the fact that over the next month you might get super judgey with other people. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> And so I've got some thoughts for you here too. Other people are struggling too. So when it's the people that you get kind of bitter about them not doing it, not working as hard as you, not being as committed as you, not taking it as seriously as you, other people are struggling to, and you never know what's happening behind the scenes. Remind yourself of that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> If on the other hand, you find yourself at the other end of almost being too compassionate, that you want to solve for everybody else's problems, you want to take things from them, you don't want to ask them to do things because they've got too much already. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Another thought I want to offer is I can't control their feelings. They think their thoughts and have their feelings. And you can behave in a way that you believe to be true and ethical and good for you, but you can't control other people's feelings. That's not your responsibility. That's not within our power. And when we try to, we usually cause more problems than we solve. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Another point I want you to remind yourself is that other people have to prioritize too. So, Sometimes we get grumpy that people aren't doing the things we think they should be doing, but we're not doing the things that they think we should be doing. </span> </p> <p> <span> So sometimes we just have to accept, other people are prioritizing too, and maybe this thing's not a priority for them. And if you can accept that, then you start to figure out, okay, well do I need them involved in this project? Can I move it on without them? Is there a way to make it easier for them? Is there a way to make this more likely to happen? </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> So one thing I always did was if somebody needed something for me that wasn't a priority for me, but was a priority for them, I'd try and arrange meetings to do it. So I'd say, look, let's just get in a room and do it, because then I will do it and it’s done. Whereas if you wait for this to come to the top of my to-do list, it is never going be the top priority for me. So let's just book it in. We'll do it. It's outta the way. So reminding yourself, other people I have to prioritize too. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And the final one is remembering that a whole lot of pain comes from expecting people to behave any way other than the way they've always behaved. We waste so much time and energy thinking and talking about how somebody should behave different than they do. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> They should do this faster. They shouldn't be like that. They should say this. They shouldn't say that. They shouldn't treat me like that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> All those things might be true, but expecting them to be any different just sets you up for thoughts that are going to make you feel frustrated and annoyed, aggrieved, all of these things, people are going to behave the way they behave. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> That's not to say we should accept unacceptable behaviour and taking a moment to think, is this full-on actually unacceptable behaviour that I need to say something about, do something about? Or am I just expecting them to fall into line with my priorities and my standards for behaviour? If we can just sit back and go, of course they've done that, they’re so and so, they always do that. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> Yeah, I'll work around that. I'll do this, I'll do that. Whatever it is, just takes so much of the frustration and sting out of these interactions. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> So really try and keep some of those thoughts in mind. Have a think for yourself, what thoughts work for you, what helps you manage and just keep the heat out of what can become a little bit of a pressure cooker in the run up to the holiday season. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> And finally, I want you to make some sort of prompt that you stick post it notes or reminders on your phone, whatever it might be, to remind you to celebrate your way. So what I want you to be saying all the way through this, every time you finish something or every time you make progress on something, I am so glad I chose to get that done. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> <span> I'm so glad I put two hours into getting that sorted. I'm so glad I got that form just gone in 10 minutes because it was stupid and it's now off my plate. I'm so grateful that I did this. </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Whatever it is, put something somewhere to remind yourself to talk like that because you become your own reinforcing prophecy. </span> </p> <p> <span> Even if it feels stupid at first, the more you keep saying to yourself, I'm so glad I got that done. I'm so glad I chose to do this. I'm so glad I did that. The more you start to seek that, so the more you carry on doing your tasks because you know you are going to get rewarded, even if it's only the reward of hearing yourself congratulate yourself. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> In this last four weeks, five weeks, be kind to your past self, be kind to your current self, be kind to your future self. It's almost like the Christmas Carol. I've only just realized that it's almost like the Christmas ghosts, isn't it? And if you're not familiar with that, put it on your to-do list to read or watch over Christmas, Be kind to all versions of ourselves and congratulate yourself for what you do get done. </span> </p> <p> <span> <span>  </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> Let's sprint into Christmas and enjoy the stuff we get done and the time that we give ourselves by not having the frantic panicked finish. </span> </p> </div> Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:39:29 GMT 183:934800289 (Victoria Burns) https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/7-how-to-avoid-the-end-of-year-panic https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/6-why-you-deserve-and-can-have-a-life-outside-of-academia It's so easy to believe that you don't have time for a life outside of academia. The pressure and the never-ending to-do lists mean that even having fun feels like one more thing you need to fit in. In this episode I talk about the benefits of having hobbies outside of academia, including how I found myself hanging by my ankles being rescued by people half my age. I also talk about how you can coach yourself to believe that you deserve that time to yourself. <div data-rss-type="text"> <h3> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </h3> </div> <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> It's so easy to believe that you don't have time for a life outside of academia. The pressure and the never-ending to-do lists mean that even having fun feels like one more thing you need to fit in. In this episode I talk about the benefits of having hobbies outside of academia, including how I found myself hanging by my ankles being rescued by people half my age. I also talk about how you can coach yourself to believe that you deserve that time to yourself. </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span> <span>  </span> Hello and welcome to episode six. Hope things are good. For those of you who listened last week to my podcast about acceptance, I'm taking Marley to the vet today. That will make no sense to you, if you didn't listen last week, so if you haven't, go and check in, have a look back.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But I'm taking him to the vet and yes, my mom texted this morning to remind me about the appointment, and yes, I was still very polite because I know sometimes I do need reminding. I hope you guys have been working on your acceptance of strengths and weaknesses this week too and are starting to notice how just reframing some of that stuff can really make a difference in how you're feeling. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> This week I'm going to change tack a little bit and think about the importance of having a life outside of academia. Sometimes we hear about academics talking about how their job is a vocation, how really it's their hobby too, how in their spare time they read things to do with their subject.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And I'm not here to say that's wrong. But I am here to encourage you to think about that wider life outside of academia.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> On the other hand, you could be completely convinced about the benefits of that already, but just not see how you could ever fit it in, especially if you're holding down family life, if you're looking after children, you're going for promotion, you've got temporary contracts, you're finishing up your PhD, whatever it might be, you might feel like you have no time for a life outside of academia.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I understand that too. I can see how that makes it really, really hard to find time. I do have to admit my own privilege here, some might not see it as a privilege, but in this context it's a privilege. So I don't have biological children, so I haven't been bringing out children while trying to go through academia and have a life outside of it, and I totally accept that gives me way more spare time than most people who are bringing up families.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But I also know loads of single academics who work in their spare time, who still don't have hobbies, still don't do things outside of academia either because their passion for it is all consuming or because they never quite prioritize it over the never ending to-do lists that we all experience.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And so what I want to do this week is really think about some of the benefits of a life outside academia. And I'm going to share with you all about how I ran away to join the circus, kind of, and how I'm bringing that back into my life now.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We're gonna think about what thoughts might help you to build this life outside of academia, to find time for that life outside of academia. But let's start with why. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I've come up with six reasons why we all need life outside of academia. To be honest, the first one is actually all you need. The first one is just because it's fun. I'm going to go through some more kind of tangible benefits, but we shouldn't need those. You are entirely entitled to do some stuff because it's fun. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We live in a world that really espouses productivity, that talks about side hustles and investments and using your weekends to invest in your future self and all this stuff. Yeah. You know, you can do some fun stuff with that, some interesting stuff with that. But what about doing pointless things because they're entertaining. You deserve that too.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> When was the last time you did pointless things because they were entertaining. When we hit the pandemic, I was living alone at that stage and I was very aware that I'm a very extroverted person, I'm a very active person who likes doing lots of things, and that I was about to be locked in a house 24 hours a day with no one there. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I basically planned adventure camp for myself. I had face painting sessions. I bought a recorder to reteach myself the recorder like I used to play at school. I got art stuff out, all sorts of things. I was bad at all of them. It was solely so that I was consciously building fun things into my life, even though couldn't go out anymore, I couldn't go and do the fun things that I was doing previously.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So first reason you deserve fun. It might feel a long way down the priority list, and I'm going to give you a whole load of other ways to justify it to yourself in terms of other benefits, but you don't need those. You can do it just because it's fun. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Second reason is mental health, just to get out of the academy, just to get out of this world where people are still talking about what papers they've published, what they've achieved this week, how rubbish all the meetings are, how academia shouldn't be this way, blah, blah, blah. All these things, to get away from that to people that are talking about things that are completely different and to talk to them about things that are completely different, can have huge benefits for your mental health. It's just that reset where you are not regurgitating the same stories, you're not still thinking about work. Because as much as you love your friends from work and some of my very, very best friends are people I work with, we still often talk about work. It does you so much good to have other friends outside of that, and other things that you do outside of that, and to just not talk, work for a while. Just talk. About your hobby, about the random thing that you're doing. Super good for just taking a little bit of pressure out, reducing the amount of time those anxious thoughts are running around your head. So, excellent for your mental health as well. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Third one, and randomly, I didn't expect this and it's certainly not why I did it, but you can gain some transferable skills from doing it. So I spent time working for a corporate team building adventure race, which is every bit as amazing as it sounds. We go to incredible places around the UK and across the world to put on huge puzzle and navigation-based adventure races. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Awesome. And I worked as a marshal on those. So basically I was bossing around lots of people dressed in jumpsuits, having a great time, and I did it solely to make some friends, which isn't always easy as an adult, meet new people, get out in the outdoors, have a fun holiday. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> What I hadn't expected was the things I learned through doing it. So one of the things I learned, which doesn't sound like it'd be useful in academia, but has been, is how to move large numbers of people around in an efficient way. So we would need to get like 250 people from their cars to the start line with a mountain bike that was ready to go and racked with all the things they needed, on time with the right paperwork, et cetera, et cetera. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That meant we spent a lot of time thinking about signage, thinking about logistics, thinking about where we needed to position marshals to make this happen, to think about the psychology of how you get people moving, how you create a sense of urgency and I actually took loads of that and transferred it into some campus based inductions that now still run at my old university, where students are running around campus trying to find answers to challenges as part of their welcome week activities, to show them where things are on campus and get them to get to know each other and so on. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The reason I was able to do it, and I wasn't intimidated for the idea of 400 first years running around campus doing different tasks was because of this additional work that I had done. Now, if you'd asked me when I took it on, will you learn anything useful for work? Absolutely not. That was not why I was doing it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But sometimes you pick up things that you never even know that you are going to pick up, so that's another reason to do things outside of work.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The fourth is the benefit of being a beginner again, and this is where the circus comes into it. So I used to live in Birmingham and near where I lived, there was this huge mural on the side of what looked like an old community centre or something. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Huge purple mural with people doing tricks like on a hoop hanging from the ceiling and from silks hanging from the ceiling. And it had the big sign “Circusmash” and it looked amazing. And I'd gone past it a few times and thought that looks really cool. But not done anything about it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And it was the year I was going to turn 40 and I thought, you know what? I want to try that. Let's try. And I looked them up and they had some beginner classes and I managed to con my wonderful friend Helen, into coming with me. She's always up for doing something new and it was amazing. So much fun. So completely out of the typical academic experience, and I was a total beginner. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> They're showing you how to wrap your feet in the silks in a special way so that you can climb up them and as someone who could never climb the ropes at school or anything like that, this was just something I'd never done, something I'd never envisaged being able to do.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I was having to get used to the fact that I was rubbish at this because I was. And they were brilliant at giving you cool things you could do that looked good in photos, but weren't actually that hard. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But I was still watching these other people train and thinking they're amazing and I can't get more than a foot off the ground without squealing and that was such an important experience in academia. We kind of rise up and through and we get to a point where we're used to being quite good at things. So I know imposter syndrome and all those things, but generally people who are in academia are pretty high achieving. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So even though we have these bits that we worry about, we are used to doing well. We're used to people telling us we're good at things and it was really eye opening and really useful to be a complete beginner again. Partly I think it's just humbling. I think it's good for you. I think we should all put ourselves in situations where we feel a bit uncomfortable, but it also really built my understanding of some of my students for example. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I had got to the stage a little bit, especially with things like presentations, where when students came to me and said, You know, I'm really nervous about my presentation, I wouldn't dismiss them as such, but I would reassure them in a way that probably didn't take account of the strength of their feelings.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I would say, ah, don't worry. It won't be that bad. You'll be fine. We're super friendly. You've got nothing to worry about. Things like that. And I realized that these beginner sessions where I was doing things that felt a bit scary or felt like I wouldn't be able to do them, even though the teacher was telling me I could, I was suddenly on the other side of that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I was suddenly having teachers say to me, Don't worry, just wrap it like this and you can't fall. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm hanging upside down, what is happening here? And it really helped me understand much more, and remember much more, the anxiety and uncertainty of being a beginner. I think that is super good for all of us. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Also, and it's connected to that, really reminded me of the different skills people have. So again, academia unfortunately can be pretty hierarchical. We sort of assume we're going to learn from the people above us. You know, when you're a PhD student, you assume that your supervisor's going to teach you stuff. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> When you're a junior academic, you look to maybe professors in your department for advice and sometimes I think we forget the skills that people have outside of academia, whether they're academics who have other skills, or people for whom academia's just not their world. And I think it's really easy to forget the whole breadth of talent and knowledge and skills that people out there have and that our students have. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So I'm at circus and I'm with people who are 20 years younger than me most of the time, and quite a few of them are students. And on one hand I'm senior to them at work, but here they're totally senior to me here. They're teaching me how to do basic things before they fly up silks and do amazing tricks like six meters in the air. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That's really good to remember as well, that these people who sometimes we get frustrated if they haven't done their assignments or they are late coming to class, for example, have got these whole other lives and these whole other skills, and we might not be their top priority. And there's so much that we can learn from the things that they're good at too. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So we've got: </span> </p> <p> <span> 1)   intrinsic motivation just doing it because it's fun  </span> </p> <p> <span> 2)  doing it because it's good for your mental health to have that break  </span> </p> <p> <span> 3)  doing it because there's a possibility you might get transferable skills </span> </p> <p> <span> 4)  doing it because it's good for you to be a beginner again </span> </p> <p> <span> 5)  doing it to remind yourself of all the skills that people outside of academia have got. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Two last ones. One's a bit stupid, One's a bit more serious. Ther more stupid one is do it because we deserve to do joyous childish things. So one of the things that I've really seen is that a lot of academics pick hobbies that are quantifiable still. They pick hobbies where they tell us how many books they've read on Twitter, or they pick triathlons. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Why are so many scientists, triathletes? I don't, Well, I do understand it's because you can have spreadsheets and you can weigh stuff and make your kit lighter, and you can plan your nutrition and you can plan your training and you can monitor your improvement and you can see your gains and all those things. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Same as why so many go and do CrossFit and all that stuff. And again, I'm not saying those hobbies are bad. Those hobbies, definitely better than no hobbies, but it's not quite the same. I was crashing out of some move that you've done on silks, falling on the ground with your ankles still tied up, your head is still on the ground and having fits of laughter while people half your age are trying to untangle your feet so that you can get down. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That's much more silly. That might not be your version of silly. Your version of silly might be doing fun crafts where you don't worry at all about whether they're good or not. You don't try to make things that you can sell in your side hustle on Etsy, but you paint old cardboard boxes just because it's fun. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So really thinking about, are there hobbies that I can do that are just ridiculous, that just stop me taking myself too seriously? That remind me what it's like to be a child.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And that's a great place to go. If you are not sure how to find these things, think back to what you enjoy doing as a child. Are there any fun things that you haven't done in years that you could go, you know what, I haven't done that for ages. Let's do it. Let's go.  </span> </p> <p> <span> The final one about why you need a life outside of academia is a little bit more serious, and I've only really recently realized that I did this inadvertently, which I'm really proud of myself for, but I didn't realize I was doing it at the time, and that is my sole identity has never ever been academia.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I've been in academia my whole life. Those of you don't know my background. I came to Birmingham University as an undergraduate student and never left. I got offered a PhD straight out of my undergrad. I did that and then I got offered a postdoc out of that. I got offered a lectureship out of that and I progressed through to full professor over about 25 years, and I left in August this year. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And, people were surprised, I think it's fair to say, because I think for a lot of people, they don't know what they are outside of their job. They're an academic. Their status comes from being an academic is what they do, it's what they're good at. Outside of that, they might be a mother or father, parent but often that's it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> They're a parent. They're an academic and they don't have or make time for anything else, and that's not necessarily terrible, but it leaves you in this position where if you realize that academia's not what you want to do forever, that's a huge challenge to your sense of identity.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That makes it very difficult to figure out how to walk away. And I realized, in retrospect really, that everything that I had been doing outside of my PhD when I was doing that and outside of every stage of my academic career, actually made walking away really easy.  </span> </p> <p> <span> I've done all these different things and I've got all these groups of friends who are completely different to me and that's been huge because that means I know I can have a life outside of academia. I know how to be friends and relate with people from all different backgrounds, and that means I can do anything I want.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I don't need to get my status from the fact that I can have professor in front of my name. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I don't have to get my sense of worth from how many papers I've published this year or what my impact factor is.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I have things I'm working for outside of my job. I have things I do just for stupidity outside of my job, and I have friends who don't actually even know what I do for my job, I think, and that made it super easy to walk away. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So whether you want to ever leave academia or whether you just want to know that you are staying because of an active choice rather than because it's all you've ever been, I really recommend you think about how you can build an identity outside of that.  </span> </p> <p> <span> Now we've really focused in, in what I call “the action line”. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> This week we've really focused on things you could do and why you could do them. So if you've listened to this and gone right, okay, yes, you've sold me this sounds good. I've been stuck in academia for too long. I need to have a life. I'm bored of not having a life outside of academia, what sorts of thoughts do you need to have,  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Well, let's think about the thoughts that you might be having that are getting in the way of that.  </span> </p> <p> <span> I haven't got time. I'm sure that's one for the vast majority of you.  </span> </p> <p> <span> I don't know what I would do. </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm not good at anything. Those might be thoughts.  </span> </p> <p> <span> I don't know if my partner or family would support me in doing something else. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You might be having all of those thoughts, and what I want you to notice is the emotions that those thoughts generate. They probably generate feelings of maybe being a bit hopeless or feeling disappointed that you're not going to be able to do things, maybe even trapped that you've created this world where you've got so much to do, you can't make this space for yourself. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The irony is when we create those sorts of emotions, the actions we take make it even less likely we're gonna fit these things into our lives.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So what I would encourage you to do is really ask yourself, in what ways isn't that true?  </span> </p> <p> <span> In what ways do I have time to do something fun?  </span> </p> <p> <span> In what ways might my family support me to do this? </span> </p> <p> <span> In what ways do I know things I might enjoy.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Just turning it around in your head gets your brain curious and gets you to start thinking.  </span> </p> <p> <span> -    Well, I mean, actually to be fair, I don't do a lot on a Saturday night. Maybe there's something I could do then </span> </p> <p> <span> -    Or actually there is that two hours on a Saturday morning where the kids are in swimming and I could probably go somewhere as long as it was close by. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It starts getting you into that kind of problem solving mode. If you haven't listened to my first podcast about how to be your best supervisor, do go back and listen to that because we look at the importance of generating a curious mindset where you look at these issues not as barriers, but as curious little issues to solve, and you kind of try and puzzle them out. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So that's the first step always - try and see in what ways are these barrier thoughts not as true as you're telling yourself they are.  </span> </p> <p> <span> The other thing to ask yourself is, what else could I think?  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So often one of the biggest challenges my clients have is they think they need to stop thinking the other thought. So you might think that you need to stop thinking, I don't have time for hobbies in order to go and have a hobby. And I don't believe that. You can still think you don't have time for a hobby.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I pretty much thought I didn't have time to do circus and I didn't have time to take a week off to go and work for my adventurous company. I pretty much thought I didn't have time to do those things my entire career. I probably didn't have time to do those things, but I did them because I told myself.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> They were fun and I wanted to do fun things.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I told myself work could go on forever if I allowed it. I think that's a big one. So I don't have time to do these things is one thought whereas work will go on forever if I allow it is another thought. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And that brought out my slightly stubborn side where I was like, This job is not going to own me. I love this job and there's times when I will work super crazy hard for it to move something along, but it's not going to own me. There's bits of me that are mine and that I am going to protect and one slightly flippant thought that really helped me is I'm never going to have time, so I'm doing it now.  </span> </p> <p> <span> Because if you wait for the time, when you have enough gap in your schedule for this, it'll never come. You just need to pick a time and put it in your diary. Make the arrangements you need to make and tell yourself, I do circus on a Monday. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's important to me.  </span> </p> <p> <span> This is what I want to do.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And I didn't do it consistently. So also, don't beat yourself up if there's times where you fall off it and you go, You know what, I can't make it. I for sure did that, but those would be the smaller bits of time, because that would be for a little while, I'd start to notice my mental health suffering, I'd start to notice my physical health suffering. I'd start to miss my friends. I'd want to see my circus buddies, and so I've made the time again.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I also noticed, and it's a little additional benefit for you, it made me more efficient at work. If I knew I had a class at six, I got finished before. I just did because I knew I wanted to be in my class. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Whereas the days I didn't have a class booked, I would find myself just kind of carrying on, working not as fast as I could, maybe faffing about on some things that maybe weren't urgent right now. Jobs expand to fill the time we give them, so that's an extra bonus for you. It made me work more efficiently. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The important thing is you don't have to stop thinking that you don't have time. You don't have to stop thinking that other people will think you're ridiculous for wanting to do this. You just need to find something else that's true as well.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So thoughts I will offer you are: </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I deserve to have fun. </span> </p> <p> <span> This is only x hours a week. I can find time for that  </span> </p> <p> <span> One if you do have children - my kids should see me doing fun things </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> I think often we think we have to be there for our children. We have to look after them at all times, and sometimes I think it's really good for them to see their parents go, I'm going to go and do this thing. I'm bad at it. It's funny. I fall off, I look ridiculous, but it's fun and I'm going to do it. I'm going to enjoy. I'm going to go and do artwork, and I'm going to come home with terrible pieces of art every week, and I'm going be super proud of myself anyway. I think that's great for kids to see.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So find a truth that's true for you and whenever you find yourself thinking the negative thought, we're not going to tell ourselves off. We're not going to criticize ourselves for thinking, I don't have time.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We're just going to notice that and say, Yeah, but I want to. Or, Yeah, but it's good for my kids to see me doing this or, Yeah, but I deserve this time. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So we're just going to nudge ourselves back to the thought that leads to us taking these behaviours.  </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Because as someone who's left academia, I cannot tell you how important it was to have a life outside of academia. It enabled me to succeed within universities by keeping me happy, keeping me relaxed, keeping me healthy, and it enabled me to leave when the time was right. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So pick your life. Start with small things. Remind yourself why they're important, and remember, there is always more to you than just your academic career. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> </div> Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:55:40 GMT 183:934800289 (Victoria Burns) https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/6-why-you-deserve-and-can-have-a-life-outside-of-academia https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/5-how-accepting-where-you-are-is-the-first-step-to-getting-to-where-you-want-to-be So many PhD students and academics struggle with perfectionism and imposter syndrome. By having such unrealistic standards, we make it much more painful and, ironically, much less likely that we'll actually meet our goals. In this episode we talk about how self-acceptance can help you be a lot kinder to yourself and find a gentle and effective route to success. <div data-rss-type="text"> <div> </div> <script> //<![CDATA[ //]]> </script> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> <span> So many PhD students and academics struggle with perfectionism and imposter syndrome. By having such unrealistic standards, we make it much more painful and, ironically, much less likely that we'll actually meet our goals. In this episode we talk about how self-acceptance can help you be a lot kinder to yourself and find a gentle and effective route to success. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> This is the blog I mention in this episode. </span> </span> </p> <p> <a href="https://www.thegratefulacademic.com/blog-1" target="_blank"> The grateful academic </a> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If you are interested in the circus too, in Birmingham I trained with </span> </span> <a href="https://www.circusmash.co.uk/online-courses/?gclid=CjwKCAjwtp2bBhAGEiwAOZZTuDdDNGQpUehlN66f0FqOAAUvzBgPerJpjhB6guJ76pSqFPpeytgfYxoCBxMQAvD_BwE" target="_blank"> Circusmash </a> <span> <span> and </span> </span> <a href="https://www.fpsfitness.co.uk/" target="_blank"> FPS Fitness </a> <span> <span> ! </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Hello and welcome to episode five. Hope you are all having a good week. Take a moment before we start to think about your week and tell me something - actually, if you're in a position to say it out loud, I want you to say it out loud - tell me something that you are really pleased that you've done this week. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Often we focus on the stuff that we haven't done. We focus on the things that we're finding difficult. What have you done this week that you are really proud of? It doesn't have to be submitting a paper or anything massive. It can be I actually got up when I intended to get up for two days this week, and that's quite good. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Anything at all? Tell me things that you've done this week. For me, I've stuck to my exercise plan this week. I was quite realistic about my exercise plan, so I'm quite chuffed with that. So I kept it manageable and I stuck to it. And I've also planned the outline of the course that I'm developing at the moment, which is gonna help you guys so much and I'm super excited about it. And I'm looking now at a massive piece of cardboard that's, I don't k now, a metre and a half square, something like that. It was from a cardboard box, from a dresser that we just bought, where I've plotted it all out in Sharpies and I'm really excited to get recording and share it with all of you. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So those are things I'm really proud of this week. I hope you've taken a moment to be proud of things too. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> Now the other thing that I've decided this week that all links into the topic of today's call is that I am going to rejoin the circus. That sounds crazy. I wasn't technically in the circus, but for about three or four years back when I used to live in Birmingham, I was part of circus organizations doing mainly aerial silks. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So my mom calls it climbing the curtains where you climb up, they're usually like three or four meter high silks, and you do tricks and stuff up there. I was part of Circus Mash and FPS Fitness. If you're want info, look them up. They're amazing and I had a wonderful, wonderful time. Got an injury, haven't been  back, and that was about a year now. I've had lots of good reasons for not going back, so I'm trying not to beat myself up too much about that. But I am starting a new class in where I live now tonight. So, not tonight when you're listening to this, but tonight when I'm recording this and I'm super excited and I'm going to be sharing my journey of returning to circus. Now, in next week's episode, I'm going to be talking about why joining the circus was one of the best things I ever did for my academic career, which sounds weird to say so tune in next week if you want to know more about that. But what this really got me thinking was about the need in everything we do to accept where we are now. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I don't want to give you any false impressions that I was really, really good at silks, but I was okay. I was somewhere between an improver and an intermediate, I would guess. I would show people videos of what I did and people who were naive to the circus would be like, Oh my God, you are amazing. People who knew circus stuff would go, Oh my God, look at your bent knees. So I was in that kind of territory where I looked good, as long as you didn't know too much. A bit of a Monet - I looked good from a distance. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> And one of the things that I've really realized is that I need to really accept where I am now, if I'm gonna get back into it - I promise this is going to become relevant to academic work in a minute, go with me - I've got to really accept where I am now in order to train, because if I try to go straight back to doing the tricks I was doing 18 months ago, A, I probably won't be able to, B I'll probably injure myself and C I'll probably fall because that's the downside of silks, there's nothing holding you up. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And so I'm heavier than I was. I'm not as strong as I was. I'm not as flexible as I was and I haven't rehearsed the moves for over a year now. And I'm working really hard on accepting where I am. Now, I want you to imagine, that I go to my circus class tonight, and I have literally no idea how it's gonna be, so this might happen. Let's hope not. I'll tell you next week! </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Imagine I walk into that to the circus and the trainer says, Here you go, these are the moves you're gonna do. And I'll be a bit like, do you want to know anything about where I'm at? No, no, it's fine. We're doing these tricks tonight. Just crack on. I'll be like, but, but I, I don't think I can actually do that. And the trainer says, No, no. Stop making excuses. Everyone does these tricks. Off you go. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> But I haven't even told you about my injury. I really damaged my ribs a year ago and couldn't walk for like a week. Really?  And they say just get on with it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I would probably leave at that point, but imagine I tried. And I fail. I couldn't do it. And then the trainer says to me, Well, you could do it if you weren't so lazy and you'd been training since last year, like you said you would, you're just obviously going to be lazy forever. I wouldn't go back to that circus. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> You translate that to any sort of personal training or gym experience, you wouldn't go back to that training space. You wouldn't put up where somebody talking to you like that. And you'd also understand that not only is it not nice, it's a stupid way to train somebody, to make up a program and say, do this because that's what everybody else does without taking any time to think about what you're actually good at, what you are less good at, what you still need to learn and work on. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> What I'm hoping tonight is that they will be compassionate to where I've been, because I do feel an element of guilt that I haven't carried on with my conditioning through my injury and that sort of thing. That they'll be compassionate and non-judgemental, that they'll help me figure out where I'm at, help me figure out what things I can still do, and build my confidence around those and hopefully gimme some praise. I do love stickers and praise and all that stuff. And they'll help me figure out which things maybe are tricks that are not for at the moment, but help me figure out how I can get back.   </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Because I also don't want them to just go, Ah, well yeah, you know, you probably just need to do all the beginner things now. It's fine. You know, you're kind of old, you're kind of heavy. You're not really circus are you? Just put a foot lock on and do some little tricks. You'll be fine. (That's one of the most basic things you can do in circus). I don't want them to do that either, because I want to improve. There's nothing wrong with where I'm at, but I want to improve. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> That's what I want in a teacher. I want them to understand where I'm at and to support me to improve. But isn't it funny how when we think about how we talk to ourselves, we don't take that approach. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> How many times have you told yourself you should be better at something by now? I should have learned how not to procrastinate by now? I should have learned how to get a paper written by now. I shouldn't find this difficult. I've done this before, or I shouldn't find this hard. Everybody else does it. And at the same time, we sort of think, Okay, maybe I shouldn't be beating myself up, but if I stop beating myself up, then I'm just going to accept that I'm a bit rubbish at doing this and I won't progress. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So what this episode is really about is the importance of that acceptance, of self-acceptance, figuring out what happens when we don't accept ourselves, how we are. And how much better it can be if we do, and how that can help us not only be happy now, but also to progress. And we're going to finish up with some tips as to how you can develop more self-acceptance. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And two things I want to say now. One, this is part of a conversation that I've been having with an academic called Dr. Sarah Allsop, who works the University of Bristol. She runs the Grateful Academic. If you haven't seen her blog before, check it out. There's some amazing articles in there, some of which she wrote and others which other guest bloggers have. A version of this podcast today is going to be a blog on there soon so do go and check that out. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The other caveat that I'm putting right up front here is this is very much still a work in progress for me. I'm aware my mom listens to this podcast, so does my partner. So do my friends, and they will laugh at some of the things I'm going to be talking with you about because I am still really working on some elements of self-acceptance, and I'll tell you some stories about that as we go through. </span> </p> <p> <span> But let's start. What's the problem with a lack of self-acceptance? Why can't we just bully ourselves into achieving our goals? Well, there's several. The first is we make unrealistic plans. So when I was at the worst of my lack of self acceptance, about maybe three, four years ago, I would just make super unrealistic plans about how I was going to have this amazing routine and I was going to stick to it every morning, and I was going to work this time and not that time, and I would always get everything done on time and I'd do all these things and it was totally unrealistic. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It came from a place where I thought I was only acceptable, if I could do all those things. That actually the version of me that's real, the version of me that gets overwhelmed, that over commits, that procrastinates, all those things that that was bad me, and that as long as I could be good me and not do any of those things, then I would be okay. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I'd make these crazy, unrealistic plans that were entirely based on me being someone other than who I have clearly proved myself to be and then I would beat myself up for not sticking to them. And it was a really painful cycle. And that leads to the next issue. The next issue is that when it is a really painful cycle like that, you start to blame yourself hugely. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So instead of going, Oh, maybe I'm making unrealistic plans, you go, No, no. It's just because you didn't get on with it, you're just lazy. You just need to get on with it next time. Come on, this is your fault. You're in control of this. You can do this. This is perfectly easy stuff. Get on. And so you start doing this sort of self blame and inducing shame, and we all know that good positive action never comes from emotions like shame. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It also becomes this negative soundtrack. This is the part that I'm really still working on because I don't feel a lot of the shame that I used to and I'm much more accepting that I am the way I am and that sometimes I will go super fast and plan an entire course in a day like I did yesterday and other times I will faff about and not get a great deal done. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm much more accepting of that, but I still am trying to get rid of the negative soundtrack that I've sort of imprinted into my brain where I apologize a lot, I tell myself that I'm useless quite a lot, and it becomes this sort of refrain in your head that is hard to turn off. I'm good at not taking it seriously now, but it's still there. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> It makes it super hard to change your behavior when you're doing it from a place of not really accepting how you are. It's that unrealistic exercise plan. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> The final thing, and this was the bit that I've noticed changed the most, is it makes you really defensive to criticism. I remember being in a meeting with some very senior members of my school. I was Head of Education at the time and it was during pandemic, so it was super stressful for everybody. We were trying to, on the fly, reprogram everything, sort of work out how an earth we were going to deliver our programs and so on. And some of the staff with every good intention in the world were saying, It would've been really useful to know about this bit sooner. We need to be more consulted on that bit, da, da, da. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And what they were saying was totally justified. But because I was still in a place where I was telling myself, You should have done this sooner. You are so lazy, I got super defensive. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It wasn't really because of what they said, it was because of what I was making it mean. I was making these perfectly valid comments, mean that they thought I was bad at my job. Worse, I made it mean that they didn't like me, which felt even worse. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But it made me really defensive to that criticism whereas, I've noticed as I've worked on this, that I'm much better at going, Yeah. Would've been way useful, wouldn't it? Yeah. Sorry. Didn't, and people take that so much better. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I've even noticed it change interactions in my family. I have adhd, so I sometimes quite often forget routine tasks. I forget setting up dentists, booking my dog into the vets for his annual checks. And this morning I got a message from my Mum saying, Have you booked Marley into the vets yet? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And once upon a time before I did more work on self-acceptance, I would've reacted with, Mum, for God's sake, I'm a grown woman. I'm perfectly capable of doing this, back off, stop nagging me. And she's adorable. She's the best person in the whole world and all she's trying to do is help me. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Now, because I'm so much more accepting of the fact that I do find that challenging, my reaction was yes. Thank you. Appreciate the reminder. I'll do it today and I am actually going to do it. By the time this comes out, I'll have done it, Mum. Okay. [Note from Vikki – she has booked it! Yay!] </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But that has come from self-acceptance. Before that, I was super defensive to criticism, and I want you to think how you react when people criticize you for something that you criticize yourself for. I bet it's similar. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That was one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode is because it's been so powerful for me and I see so much lack of acceptance in academia that I wanted to try and help you guys with this too, if you were experiencing similar things. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So let's backtrack a second and think about what self-acceptance really is. For me, self-acceptance has two main components. It has one component where you accept that you have strengths and weaknesses and you understand them. Now, this is the bit that I've made the most progress on. I absolutely know that my strengths are around ideas, creativity, enthusiasm, the ability to make stuff up as I go along, the willingness to make a fool of myself and not worry about what people think. So I have a ton of strengths. My weaknesses are generally around routine tasks, sticking to organizational tasks, a tendency to get overexcited, overcommit, a tendency to get overwhelmed, a tendency to struggle to get going on something. So I have pretty good understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. I understand environments that make them better. I understand environments that trigger them. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> So in terms of accepting strengths and weaknesses and understanding what they are, I'm doing pretty good on that after two or three years work. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> How are you on that? If I asked you to list your strengths and your weaknesses, could you do that? Would you be able to explain why their strengths, why their weaknesses? Would you be able to explain in which contexts your strengths work best and in which contexts your weaknesses become most pronounced? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If not, that's something you might wanna spend a bit of time pondering on, because that's the first step to self-acceptance. What are we accepting? The second thing, and this bit's still a work in progress for me, is accepting that you are valuable regardless of your strengths and weaknesses. Now, I believe that cognitively very strongly, but there's still part of my brain that says, Yeah, but you'd be better if you were more organized. So I've still got niggling bits of non-acceptance that I'm still working through, and that's okay because we're all humans and we are never going be perfect at all this stuff. The process of working on it is almost as valuable as actually achieving the thing you're working towards. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So to what extent do you believe that? Do you believe that you have value regardless of your weaknesses, or do you still think you need to be better in order to be successful in academia, you need to be better in order to get your PhD to get your promotion. </span> </p> <p> <span> Now, one of the pushbacks I always get when I talk about self-acceptance and I've pushback on myself, is people who believe that self-acceptance is going, Yeah, I am. What I. And there's nothing I can do about it. I don’t know why I'm talking like that now, but you know what I mean? That kind of like, yeah, take me or leave me. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> This is what I am. You might think that because, you know, I've self accepted a tendency that I get overexcited and overcommit and overwhelmed, but I'm just not going to bother to constrain my focus because that's my tendency. That's what I'm like and I love myself and that's all good. What I've learned is that the opposite is true. When I hadn't accepted that I'm someone who gets over excited overcommits and then gets overwhelmed. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I'd make all those unrealistic plans and I wouldn't ask support and I wouldn't tell people I was struggling and I'd procrastinate loads because I was feeling shame about it. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Whereas actually a place of acceptance is much easier to develop from because I'm more realistic about what I can expect, I am cautious. I hear myself when I'm like volunteering to do something and then go, Oh, hang on. because I know you Vikki Burns. I know you and what you're probably going to do, let's think about this before we commit to that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span>  I've just moved to a new area back where my family home is based and I did not agree to take on a Brownie pack with my little sister, which I'm very proud of because it was a very tempting offer. It would be super fun to work with my sister on it, but I know, I'm starting a new business, I'm establishing a new home. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I want to get back onto my fitness routine, and I don't want to over commit. So I said no. And I did that from a place of self-acceptance that I understand myself, and I understand that that would, at this stage in my life, be a route to getting overexcited and overcommitted. And I said, no. And she understood, which was lovely. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So when you accept, you're much more likely to be able to have those conversations because I didn't think this was bad, I wasn't super apologetic to my sister. I wasn't like, Oh my God, is there a way I could possibly do it? I was just like, Sis, no. Would love to, you know I'd love to, but I know me and I can't. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So self-acceptance isn't fatalism. If you know where you are and accept that position, you can support yourself compassionately to develop from there. It’s what I'm hoping will happen at Circus tonight. That they all suss out exactly where I'm at, what I can do and what I can't do, and help me develop a realistic training plan that I can follow to get back in the air and enjoy flying again. And I will hopefully be sharing that journey with you guys so you can laugh at and enjoy and cheer me on as I succeed and fail and enjoy the process. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So if you are thinking that you criticize yourself a lot, that you spend a lot of time telling yourself that you should be better or should be further along, I've got some tips that might help you. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The first one is accepting that criticizing yourself is a really hard habit to break. I've been working on this stuff pretty consistently for a few years now, and I still do it. My partner still says to me, Oh, you're being really mean to yourself today, Vikki. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You will likely still have thoughts about how you wish you didn't have your weaknesses and how much better you'd be if you didn't have those. But, you can learn to take them less seriously. You can learn to focus on them less. You'll notice they appear less often and you'll notice that you snap out of it more quickly. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So now whilst they do still pop up for me, when somebody says, usually my partner, you're not being very kind to yourself right now, Vikki, I'm more likely to go, Oh yeah, no, you're right. Okay. What else is true? This is also true. And snap myself out. So, whereas in the past I'd have been like, Shut up, just leave me alone, now I'm like, Oh yes, thank you for reminding me that that's what I'm doing because yeah, that doesn't help, does it? And I snap out of it much more quickly. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> One approach to that. I was talking to one of my friends, Nick, about this stuff and he told me that he reminds himself I'm an imperfect human just like everyone else. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And he had it written on a post-it note and I loved that. I am an imperfect human just like everybody else. We sometimes expect a level of perfection from ourselves that we don't expect from anybody else. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> We are all humans. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and we all can add value and be valuable people with all of those strengths and weaknesses. So thinking of ways, whether post It note, note to yourself, whatever it is, of reminding yourself of that can be really, really useful. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Third tip is try and notice when you start comparing yourself to others. Notice when you think, Oh, so and so's so much better at this than me so and so's further along. Because one thing that can make it really hard to accept ourselves is seeing other people being good at the thing that we are not so good at. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I have lots, as I've talked about before, lots of highly organized people in my life and I used to spend quite a bit of time going, Why can't I just plan a menu for the week where I know what I'm gonna eat and look in some recipe books and things, because that's what my friend Cheryl does and she's amazing. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And why can't I just do that? And I know except that I don't do that. That's fine. We'll talk about food planning another day. But it took stopping, comparing myself for that to really sink in. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So one little thought that I want you to keep in your head on that is I'm on my own journey. A conversation I had with a lot of my project students, dissertation students, PhD students when I was an academic. You are on your own journey. It's easy to look across and see other people progressing faster, getting papers published, finishing their experiments, whatever it might be, and thinking that that means something about you. So the little mantra I'm on my own journey can really help. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Another tip, is to think of yourself as a small child. You were that little child once and you had strengths and weaknesses then too. I was a somewhat bossy child, I think it's fair to say. And you know that had it’s challenges. My family will tell you. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> But you need to remember, if you are criticizing yourself, you are criticizing that little child. I wouldn't walk up to a five year old and say, You're so bossy. Stop being so bossy. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I'd think of ways to focus on the strengths that that showed and support her to work on the weaknesses, but to understand them and to know that she has value, even if she's bossing around everyone in the playground. One day you will look back with the same nostalgia and kindness on the you of today. So remember to speak to yourself in a way that is kind and compassionate. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The final one is to take a breath and ask yourself, how would I react if this was true, and that's okay? So maybe it's true that you should have started writing sooner. Maybe it's true that your first draft was rubbish and needed completely rewriting. Maybe it's true that the lecture you delivered wasn't very clear and the students fell asleep. What if all of those things are okay? How would you react differently if you just said, Yeah, I should have started it sooner. Yeah, my first draft was rubbish. My lecture was boring. It just was. What would you do? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You'd probably think, Okay, what can I do now then? How can I get some more support? How can I get further training? How can I practice a bit more? You might explore, what was it that meant I didn't start this task earlier? What led to me writing a rubbish first draft? So you'd look at it with some curiosity. You'd try to figure out how to move forwards quickly now. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> To finish, I would really encourage you to try and figure out what are your strengths and weaknesses and try to spend some time thinking why that's totally okay. Why you are completely whole and completely human and completely valued and valuable with all of those strengths and weakness. and how you can use that acceptance and that understanding to plot your next path forwards. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> </div> Mon, 07 Nov 2022 05:00:00 GMT 183:934800289 (Victoria Burns) https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/5-how-accepting-where-you-are-is-the-first-step-to-getting-to-where-you-want-to-be https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/-how-to-write-the-thing-when-you-re-not-writing-the-thing We all have times where we need to get on with writing our thesis/paper/promotion materials/grant, but we're not. We procrastinate, we tell ourselves we don't have time, we worry that we're not good enough, when really we want to write it! In this episode, I'll help you uncover the 7 thoughts that are stopping you getting on, and 7 thoughts that you might want to think instead! <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <p> </p> <iframe> </iframe> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <i> We all have times where we need to get on with writing our thesis/paper/promotion materials/grant, but we're not. We procrastinate, we tell ourselves we don't have time, we worry that we're not good enough, when really we want to write it! In this episode, I'll help you uncover the 7 thoughts that are stopping you getting on, and 7 thoughts that you might want to think instead! </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> <i> Twitter accounts I mention in this episode are:  </i> </div> <div> <i> <a href="https://twitter.com/WriteThatPhD" target="_blank"> @writethatphd </a> – for lots of links to writing resources </i> </div> <div> <i> <a href="https://twitter.com/drjenncumming" target="_blank"> @drjenncumming </a> – for lots of advice about writing and critiquing strategies </i> </div> <div> <i> <a href="https://twitter.com/verymessyjamie" target="_blank"> @verymessyjamie </a> – who supports PhD students to find more balance, ease, joy and clarity.  </i> </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> <div> Transcript  </div> <div> Hello and welcome to episode four of the PhD Life Coach. This week we're thinking about how to write the thing when you're not writing the thing. So how to get on with whatever writing project it is that you have ongoing at the moment. And I have a massive confession to make, which is that this episode has been a little bit of a learning process for me in that I've had to practice a whole lot of what I preach. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I have been putting this off. I came up with the idea. I knew what I wanted to write about. I knew what I wanted to therefore talk about, and I've kind of drafted it and I recorded a version and then I decided that I didn't like it and it needed redoing. And I put off really thinking about it and I procrastinated on spending the time to think how I was going do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I really became aware of how much I was avoiding re-recording this episode. And one of the things that's so interesting as you develop in this work is not that you don't ever procrastinate and that you don't ever feel overwhelmed, it's that you start to observe your brain. And so I started to observe that I was massively avoiding doing this. And that was a bit weird because I really want to record these. I'm really excited that my podcast is now out there and people are listening to it. So thank you to everyone who's downloading this. It's been really cool. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> But there was part of me that was starting to feel a bit nervous about the fact that people were listening to this and a bit judgey about myself and what I was talking about. Things that I'm sure you've experienced too when you are getting on with writing something, whether it's part of your PhD, whether it's writing promotion materials, if you're a member of staff, writing a big grant, an important paper, whatever it might be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I had to really like think through, what am I thinking? And what can I do about that to get this done? And ironically, I ended up using tons of the stuff that I was advising in my first draft of it. This is real life in action for you guys.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I really want you to think about is often when we are trying to get something written, we think that we need technical guidance. We need somebody to tell us how to write the thing, how to write a paper, how to write promotion materials, how to write a grant. And that stuff is super useful. So the first thing today is I am not gonna say that you don't need that kind of technical guidance. You absolutely do. There's tons of support for it. Two that I would hugely recommend, one I found relatively recently called @writethatPhD on Twitter. They link to millions of how-to guides that are really, really useful. The other person that I would really recommend is one of my very good friends and colleagues, ex-colleague at University of Birmingham, Professor Jennifer Cumming. You can find her on Twitter @Drjenncumming. She regularly tweets guidance about how to go about thinking critically, how to write critically, how to structure your writing, how to make it sound academic and professional. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I would really recommend both of those for the technical side of things, but that's not the only thing we struggle with often. It's what we think we're struggling with, but we also struggle with the self management side of things. How do we actually get on with writing it? How do we get past all those thoughts that prevent us getting on that make us want to procrastinate and instead get the thing done.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to focus on that side of things and it really refers back to my very first podcast episode, which hopefully some of you have listened to called How, To Be Your Own Best Supervisor. One of the tips that we gave in that was to choose your thoughts, not to just accept the thoughts that fly into your head as they come in unconsciously, but instead to decide what you're thinking about something and particularly where it's something challenging like this. So we're talking here really about writing, but you can probably apply this to presentations and teaching and anything else that you're kind of putting off getting ready for. </div> <div> What we're going to do today is we're going to think of seven thoughts that you are probably having about writing, why they don't help and what you could think instead. So let's go.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What we're going to do with each of these is come up with a thought and we're gonna ask two questions. We're gonna say:  </div> <div> 1) Is this thought true? </div> <div> 2) Does this thought help?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Because often with our thoughts, we take for granted that they're true. We don't stop and go, actually, is that true? How is that not true? Are there any ways in which it's less true? So we get to really grill those thoughts and figure out if they're true or not. </div> <div> And then we also get to think, does thinking this help? There's a whole bunch of thoughts out there that they might be true, but it's probably not helpful to spend loads of time thinking. So we're thinking, is it true? Does it help?  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Let's have a look at the seven that I've come up with. You think whether any of these are things that you are thinking at the moment. As we go through this, try and have in your mind a piece of work that you are trying to do at the moment and think, Have I thought this? Is it true for me? It doesn't help me.  <span> The first one. Which I'm guilty of so often is:  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <b> I should have done this already, or I should be further along.  </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> That idea that wherever you are at, if past you had just been a bit better, a bit more on it, a bit more organized, a bit more disciplined, then you'd be in a better place. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now, this really doesn't help because thinking I should have done this already usually leads to feelings like guilt where you feel bad that you haven't done this specific thing. It might even lead to feelings like shame, where it's more about you as a person, that you are somebody who doesn't get stuff done or so who's lazy or those sorts of thoughts. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So thinking I should have done this already leads to those sorts of emotions and we know we try and avoid those sorts of emotions. That can really massively lead to procrastination. So ironically, and I know we've all been there, the thought I should have done this already makes it much less likely that you'll actually get on and do it. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> It just because we're trying to avoid those emotions, we don't want to engage with it and so we avoid it even more. A thought I would recommend instead is something along the lines of, <b> I am where I am and I know the next step </b> . The reason that's so important is it really starts to introduce an element of acceptance. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I'm going to do a whole episode of acceptance next week because I think it's so important, but accepting that this is where you. Maybe it's true that you should have done more. Maybe it's true that you'd intended to do this last week. It's definitely true for me that I didn't plan to do this today. I planned to do this early on in the week and I didn't. So it's true. Does thinking it help? No.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Think - I am where I am and I know what the next step. One of the ways I got on with this today was I knew that the next step was reviewing the transcript of the draft I didn't like and twisting it around into something that I did like. I knew the next step, and so that made it something that I could then get on with. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The second thought that can hold people back is:  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> I don't know how to do this </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> That's where looking for guidance can be helpful. But sometimes that becomes a bit frantic. Again, it becomes a bit, I just need someone to show me how to do this. Rather than actually focusing on what you do know. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you find yourself thinking, I don't know how to do this, an alternative thought to bring into your head is <b> what I do know is… </b> , and start writing that stuff. So often my individual clients will say things like, I know how to do this at undergrad level, but I don't know how to do it as a PhD student, I know how to write my thesis, but I don't know how to turn it into a publication. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I know how to write papers, but I don't know how to write promotion materials. So people are seeing that they've got some experience, but are allowing themselves to believe that, because they don't how to do this specific new thing, they can't make progress. So if you can start from what I do know is blah, blah, blah, blah, then it suddenly becomes much easier to move forward. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you start, instead of being at a blank page, you start having down a structure of the things you do know and more specifically the things you don't know. Because if you are telling yourself, I don’t know how to do this, it's very hard to get support for that because how does someone tell you how to do the whole of this? But if you can get to, I do know how to structure this out, and I do know how to do those bits, but I don't know how to make my figures good enough for publication, for example, then suddenly, you know what you need to get advice on, You know what resources you need to look for. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You know what specific questions you need to ask people. The other thought that really helps with this one is <b> I'm capable of learning this </b> . So you don't have to know it.  <span> Whatever stage of our academic careers we're at, there's going to be stuff we don't know how to do. There's going to be new stuff. It's one of the joys of academia is that you are learning stuff all the time, but it can challenge your sense of self when you're used to being good at things and then suddenly you don't know how to do this thing. </span> </div> <div> If you can reinforce the thought, I'm capable of learning this, then it becomes much less challenging. It's like, Okay, I don't know how to do this, but that's okay. I don't need to know how to do this. I'm gonna figure it out. I will learn. I will find the right people to help me.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The next one is:  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> I don't have time to make it good enough. </b> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And this is another one of those ironic ones where actually the fact that we're telling ourselves we don't have time usually makes ourselves feel overwhelmed, which makes us procrastinate and avoid. And so then we create it so that we don't have time or we have even less time than we did when we first started this. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> What I would suggest instead is again, that acceptance. I have the time I have. <b> This is how much time I've got and it's going to be as good as it can be in that time. </b> Another thing that helps with that, especially if you're someone who tends to look at the whole thing and get a bit overwhelmed. That's something I struggle with quite a bit. <b> I have the time I have and I do it one step at a time. </b> So instead of focusing on whether you've got enough time, you figure out what's the journey you need to take within the time you have. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes it means that maybe the scope will be less or the length will be less, or maybe the quality won't be as high as you wanted it to be, but it's complete within the time. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So trying to think, I have the time I have and I do this one step at a time can really help in that situation.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another thought that everybody has and is totally human is: </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Imagining the voice of the people that are gonna read this.  </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> So in my case, this was one of the things that really held me back on this one was imagining you lot listening to this and thinking it was rubbish. Oh, maybe this isn't that useful. Now I know that's not true. I know that there are thousands of PhD students and academics who are struggling to write the thing they're intending to write and who would really benefit from this work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I've benefited from this work. My clients benefit from it. There's no reason you should think this podcast is rubbish, and if you do, maybe this one isn't the right one for you. Maybe some of my other podcasts will be more useful for you and that's okay. But it did paralyze me for a bit, this sort of imaginary conversation with my listeners that I don't even know who you are. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And I'm sure you have the same thinking about what your supervisor's going to say, what the reviewers are going to say, what your head of school's going to say. So what really helped me here and might be useful for you is thinking, yeah, <b> they might, but it still needs to exist. </b> So notice I'm not going, Oh, they're going to love it. I'm gonna get billions of listeners. My supervisor's gonna think this is the best paper ever. I'm not going down this kind of imaginary “Oh yeah. But they might. They will love it” route, because we don't have any control over what other people think about our work. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We don't. I don't get to pick what you guys think about my podcast. You can think whatever you like. Some of you will love it and some of you will think it's really obvious and some of you will think it's too difficult and some will think it's too formal.  <span> Some will think I talk too fast and some will think I talk too slow. Fine. You get to pick.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <span> But what I can tell myself is, you guys might think it's rubbish, but I've decided I'm doing this and I've decided I'm keeping it up. So episode four needs to. And it is on the way. So I'm very pleased.  </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> The other thing you might want to think at this stage, and it comes from another person on Twitter who does lots of support for PhD students and academics. Jamie Pei the messy PhD coach, and that is that <b> this is the messy stage </b> . Often what we are doing when we're writing is we are beating ourselves up, that we are not producing perfect text first time, when actually that's not the stage you are at. So reminding yourself that you are in the messy stage can really help.  <span> Then you can get that first bit going, get yourself moving, get on with it, which leads me beautifully to thought five, which is: </span> </div> <div> <span> <br/> </span> </div> <div> <b> I just can't get on. </b>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Sometimes we allow ourselves to get almost stuck in this sense that I'm procrastinating on this thing, I just can't get going on it. And the problem is, again, it might be true, it probably is true, but thinking to yourself, I just can't get on with this thing is really difficult to then get on with a thing because we like to be right. We've talked about this before. Our brains love to be right. We tell ourselves we can't get on with this thing, we probably won't. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So again, have a think. What could we think instead? One I love is <b> I can make this fun </b> . So usually when we're thinking, I just can't get on with this thing, our sort of our gut reaction is to then think I just need to force myself to get on with this. I just need to stop being ridiculous and get on with it. But bullying yourself into getting things done is a really short term way to achieve things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You might get some stuff done right in the midst of bullying yourself, but you are going to stop. It's not comfortable. It's not going to make you want to write regularly if you have to bully yourself into doing it. Whereas if you can think I can make this fun, then suddenly it becomes a whole lot easier. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So for me, I thought I can make this fun by basically picking seven thoughts and deciding that I was just going to just chat around them rather than trying to script this. And it is so much more fun just talking with you guys than it is trying to plot out a formal script of what I'm going to.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another way I've done in the past, I had a PhD student who was struggling to get the structure of his paper right. It was really good, but he had some bits of repetition and we kept sort of saying, it just doesn't seem to flow. And all of us were getting a bit frustrated with it because we were struggling to explain exactly what was wrong and he was struggling to therefore fix it. And what we ended up doing was, I thought, Right, we just need to make this fun. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> We're all getting scratchy here. Let's make this fun. And we actually ended up printing out on pieces of paper, single sided and chopping it up into paragraphs, so we were able to kind of go, Ooh, in this bit, in this bit, you talk about the same thing. Let's put those together. Actually, hang on, you talk about that over here as well. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Hold on, let's put that there too. And we moved all these pieces of paper around, we had highlighters and post-it notes, and we moved it all around and reorganized what his introduction could look like, in that kind of really physical, fun way We ended up laughing. We were moving around the table. It was so much more enjoyable than just sitting in front of a computer, getting frustrated with the fact that it didn't flow and we couldn't figure out why. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So thinking I can make this fun really brings a kind of creative approach that makes it much more likely that you'll get on with it and enjoy it than even if you kind of just force yourself into doing it.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Another one that I want you to be aware of is what you make it mean if something's difficult. So one I often hear clients talk about is: </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> If I'm finding this hard, it means I'm not good enough. </b> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Or it means I'm not good at writing. It means I don't deserve to be in my position, whether that's PhD, student, academic, whatever. So if I'm finding this hard, it must mean I'm not meant to be here. And it's such a common thought. Honestly, all the PhD coaching I do, virtually everyone feels like this at some stage but again, that leads to feelings of disappointment, shame, maybe hopelessness, and all these emotions that don't lead to actions that are going to move you along. So instead, when you find yourself thinking, if I'm finding it hard, it means I'm not good enough, I want you to think about the thought. <b> I'm willing to find this difficult. </b> </div> <div> <b> <br/> </b> </div> <div> Notice how that changes. We're all doing really hard work. Whatever part of academia you are in, you're doing stuff that most people don't ever do. Most people don't ever engage in research and teaching at the level that people in academia do. Whether you are a newbie PhD student all the way through to a senior professor, we do hard things. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> If you can just tell yourself that you are willing to do hard things. You're willing to stay in that slightly confused state, to stay in that slightly uncomfortable state. When you are wrestling with a paper and you don't know how to make it feel like it makes sense, or you don't know if this bit's clear or not, or whatever, then if you can tell yourself, I'm willing to find this hard and stick with it, then suddenly it's not about whether you are good enough to be here or not. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> You're willing to stay with it and you will figure it out.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The final one, and I see this all the time, particularly with students, but with my academic colleagues as well, is: </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> I don't know enough yet.  </b> </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So often there's this thing that I just need to read a few more papers. I just need to know a little bit more. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I sometimes fall into this one, but probably less so. Occasionally I'll sort of dig around on the internet, like I need to know a little bit more. Usually I'm willing to go with it, willing to wing it as my colleague Jenn Cumming, that I mentioned to you before, might say, but a lot of people feel that they just need to know a bit more before they start writing. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I don't know enough. And again, that can really limit you because the issue is you will only know enough when you think you know enough. There's no right answer to how much is enough before you should start writing. And so until you've decided, you know enough, then you will never start, and it's a moving goal post. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The more you read, the more you'll think you don't know enough, so it can really hold you back and tie you up in knots. It's totally normal, so don't beat yourself up for thinking it. But if you can try and move that thought along into some thoughts, that can help with a little bit more progress, you'll find it enormously helpful. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And one I would love to offer is: </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> <b> Writing is thinking. </b>   </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> I want you to try and have the thought that writing is thinking. If you are thinking, I don't know enough yet, that's a cue to start writing. And what you start writing is what you do know, what you don't know, what you're confused by, what you still need to figure out, what you need more of, where you need extra references. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Whatever it is, you start writing all this stuff. If you think, I don't know which side of the argument I sit on, let's write it both ways. There's no such thing as wasted writing. Writing is thinking. Every time you write something, your thoughts will develop further. Some things will get clearer, some things will get less clear, but it's all thinking and moves you towards where you want to be. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you're thinking, I don't know enough yet, start writing the thing you want to write and write down in it “and in here I need to put in some stuff about the method that we are going to use, except I haven't decided what that is yet”. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> “So I really need to talk to my supervisor. It'll probably be this or it'll be that”. So you are writing down this thought process, then you'll go onto the next bit. Where you describe your participants if you're writing a method section, for example. You're like, Oh, I do actually know this bit. I can write this bit. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So by getting on and writing it, you really figure out what bits you do know and where you need further development. Sometimes it's when you start to explain something that you realize that you didn't understand it after. So sometimes you've thought, Oh yes, yes, I know this. And then you try and write a paragraph about it and that make that much sense and you're like, Oh, maybe I don't know this as well as I thought I did. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And that's when you go back and you figure out the bits that you didn't know. So anytime you find yourself thinking, I don't know enough yet, remind yourself that writing is thinking and it would benefit you to write at every stage of your career.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So those are my seven thoughts that you should try and notice when you have and try and shift. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So if you find yourself thinking: </div> <div> - I should have done this. Try and switch to I am where I am and I know the next step.  </div> <div> - If you're thinking, I dunno how to do this, focus on what you do know and tell yourself that you are capable of learning this.  </div> <div> - If you think you don't have enough time to make it good enough. Again, acceptance, I have this time and I can do this one step at a time.  </div> <div> - They are gonna think it's rubbish. Whoever there you might be. You can tell yourself, yeah, they might, but it still needs to exist.  </div> <div> - If you're thinking you can't get it on, think I can just make this fun.  </div> <div> - If you're thinking, I'm finding it hard, and that means you're not good enough, remind yourself that you are willing to find this hard.  </div> <div> - And if you are thinking, I don't know enough yet, writing is thinking, remind yourself of that all the way through. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Now when we are thinking about this sort of thought work, what often happens is people go, Oh, but I still think the stupid thought. I know it's not helpful, but I keep thinking it. Oh my God, I'm rubbish at this.  </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> And then you start beating yourself up for that as well. There's not helpful, we don't need to do that. You will keep thinking the unhelpful thoughts. I thought all the unhelpful thoughts when I was procrastinating recording this episode. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> The point is not to stop thinking those thoughts. The point is to stop taking them so seriously. Stop believing them to be true. And just notice when you do so that you can offer yourself a different one. “Oh look at me. I'm thinking that again. I'm thinking I should have done this before again. That's okay. I know that doesn't help.” </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> So I am where I am. Let’s crack on. That's how I got this episode recorded, and I know it's how you can move on with the piece of work that you've been struggling with too. Let me know how it goes. If there are any thoughts that come up for you regularly that I haven't covered today, please do drop them into Twitter for me. </div> <div> <br/> </div> <div> Send me a message, come along to my free group coaching and we can talk them all through. Maybe I'll use them in future episodes. Thank you so much for listening and see you all soon. </div> <div> <i> <br/> </i> </div> </div> Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/-how-to-write-the-thing-when-you-re-not-writing-the-thing https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/how-to-swim-when-you-re-drowning-in-emails <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> </p> <div> <iframe> </iframe> </div> <p> <iframe> </iframe> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <i> If you feel like your inbox is an endless swamp of thankless tasks, this is the episode for you! Today I talk about the problem with how we think about our emails and how we can make them much less painful. This is not your usual productivity hacks! </i> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> **Also, here is the " </span> <span> <b> <i> <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-time-wellness/id1508161403dcast/" target="_blank"> Part-time wellness" podcast </a> </i> </b> </span> <span> <span> with Chelsea Uithoven that I recommend in the podcast** </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span>  Hello and welcome to episode three of the PhD Life Coach. What would you say if I asked you to show me your email inbox now? Would you be like, Yeah, sure. Have a look. There’s a few you haven't replied to, but other than that, all under control. No worries. Would you have that lurch of shame? Of dread where you're, No, you can't look in there. There's so many messages I haven't read.  </span> </p> <p> <span> How would you feel right now if you looked at mine? I'd let you look. It's kind of full of delivery notes for things that we are buying for our new house and lots of different emails from different coaches that I follow and things like that. It's kind of messy, but not as bad as it used to be when I was an academic, I have to say. </span> </p> <p> <span> So this episode is all about email and it's one of the things that people talk about most when they're an academic, whether you're a PhD student or through the full professor, wherever you sit in the academic tree. We all think we have too much email and I want to get right up front. </span> </p> <p> <span> This is not going to be a how to hack your email sort of episode. This is not going to be a try this system, try labeling it like that, try tagging it, like that kind of a session. All that stuff's good. You can look into that stuff if you want to, but really we are going to try and get to some of the root causes of why email causes are so much pain and what we can actually do about it beyond looking for more and more solutions. It's a little bit like last week where we were talking about planners and how planners don't necessarily fix the situation. </span> </p> <p> <span> If you haven't listened to that episode, check out episode two about why you don't need another planner. But today, emails.  </span> </p> <p> <span> So I want you to think about how you think. About your emails, what thoughts you have when I ask you about your emails. Ones I hear myself come up with, and ones that my clients come up with are things like I'm drowning. It's endless. I'll never make it through all these emails. I shouldn't have to do this. That's a big one. There's too much email. I can't do my job. And there's elements of, everyone wants a piece of me as well. So think about which of those thoughts you have. I bet you have at least some of them most days. </span> </p> <p> <span> I certainly did. And I want you to then think about what effect those thoughts have. Because those thoughts may well be true. You may well have an endless supplier of emails. It may well prevent you doing other parts of your job, but we're going to think about more practical solutions later. But even if those things are true, I want you to think about what effect that has on you. </span> </p> <p> <span> So when I was still an academic, I was a full professor until August, 2022. And I definitely didn't master the whole email thing, and I'm not sure anybody does. I would get very overwhelmed, with my emails. And so thoughts about them being endless about never being able to get through them. </span> </p> <p> <span> All those sorts of things can really make you feel overwhelmed, and when you're overwhelmed, it causes procrastination. This was something I saw in myself a lot. I would avoid doing my emails, I'd even avoid people who had sent me emails that I knew I hadn't replied to out of this overwhelm of just how many there were, and it stopped me kind of getting on and dealing with some of the ones that were there. </span> </p> <p> <span> I'm sure that's something you've experienced as well. Another thing I saw was that resentment, frustration almost, that I shouldn't have to deal with all of this, this, this thought that I shouldn't have this many emails, it's in some way wrong, would lead to lots of frustration, resentment, and again, that didn't lead to me getting on with things that led to me getting cross, it led to me venting.  </span> </p> <p> <span> So you, wherever you go in a university, you'll find people moaning about having too many emails. And I'm all for letting emotions out. I'm all for processing our emotions, but venting isn't necessarily processing them. Venting where you end up feeling at least as cross, if not more crossed than you started, isn't releasing that emotion. It's not processing that emotion. If anything, it's reinforcing it and making it a habitual emotion that you always feel resentful about your emails.  </span> </p> <p> <span> The other thing I think that these sorts of frustration and overwhelm, even shame can lead to is what I recently heard referred to as frantic action. </span> </p> <p> <span> So Chelsea Uithoven who runs the Part-time Wellness podcast, which I would really recommend, once again, it is aimed at people with adhd, but I think there's tons of good value in there for people no matter what your brain makeup is, whether you consider yourself neurotypical or neurodivergent. She referred to it as frantic action, and this is the sort of action that comes from a place of stress, of overwhelm, of shame that just sort of, Oh my God, I just need to get it done. </span> </p> <p> <span> And I thought that was a really, really interesting phrase for it, because sometimes it feels like these emotions generate good productivity from us, that we go and get lots of stuff done because we're feeling stressed and anxious and things. But often when it's that sort of frantic action, it doesn't feel good. </span> </p> <p> <span> And it often doesn't involve pausing and thinking, is this actually the best way of dealing with this? So it's bashing through loads and loads of emails without thinking about whether there's a way you could actually reduce the number of emails you've got, or whether there's ways that you could avoid filling up other people's. </span> </p> <p> <span> It's just, I need to get through these bash bash bash. Okay. So, and that's why thinking about how we think about things is so important because our thoughts about email generate these emotions, which then dictate our behaviors. So we are going to think about what thoughts you could have about emails that would be more helpful. </span> </p> <p> <span> But before we do massive disclaimer. We, in this style of coaching, we often think of circumstances is inherently neutral and that it's only made positive or negative by the thoughts that we have about them. And I do believe that to some extent, but I'm going to give you my get outta jail free card here. </span> </p> <p> <span> I also believe that academics, everyone at universities have too many emails. We have tons of emails that, if we processed them the way we sometimes tell ourselves or other people tell us, we have to process them, would use up portions of our day, that probably would take away from other parts of our. Okay, so this is not going to be an a podcast where I say, If you just think like this about emails, you'll be able to get them all done and it'll all be fine. </span> </p> <p> <span> That's not what this is about. This is not a passive resilience sort of a podcast. That's not what I'm here for. What I'm here for though is to stop you making it more painful than it needs to be. And to get you into a mindset where you can accept the bits that are inevitable and actually get on with them in as pain free way as possible and actually change the bits that are rubbish and shouldn't be the way they are. </span> </p> <p> <span> Okay? So we're not building passive resilience here. We are just not layering on any more rubbish than we have to. So what I want you to really kind of ponder on is not just your views about emails, but what do you make it mean about you? So when you think, I've got so many emails, I'm so behind on replying to people, what do you make that mean about you as a person? </span> </p> <p> <span> My guess is there'll be a big portion of you that will make that mean that you're not doing your job very well, that you're not good at this, that you are letting people down, that maybe you're being selfish because you're prioritizing other things. We make these circumstances mean something about us, and that leads to even more difficult emotions than your kind of frustration and resentment, those sorts of things. </span> </p> <p> <span> That starts leading to things like shame, where we are judging ourselves as a person, and that makes it even harder to get on with these things, makes it even harder to like ourselves and have good mental health.  </span> </p> <p> <span> The other side is, making it mean something about your institution or your sector. So I see people fall one or two ways. </span> </p> <p> <span> They either make it mean that they're not good enough and that they just need to do more, and that other people are able to manage this and if they just work harder, they'll be able to do it. Or they make it mean that academia is broken. I have so many emails. Academia is not what it used to be. </span> </p> <p> <span> Shouldn't be like this. It's all rubbish. They make it mean something about the sector, and that then leads to hopelessness and things like that, leads to anger at the changes in the sector. And again, those sorts of emotions usually only lead to venting, moaning about it, and essentially becoming part of the problem. </span> </p> <p> <span> So what I want us to think about is, what do we even mean by being on top of our emails, and what thoughts could we have about our emails that make it less painful and more effective at the same time?  </span> </p> <p> <span> So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to think back. If you haven't listened to my first episode yet, I want you to go back and listen to that at some point where we talk about how to be your best supervisor, how to manage yourself the best you can. </span> </p> <p> <span> Two of the things I talk about in that are compassion and curiosity, and that's what we're going to channel while we address this problem. And I've really, I want you to think of is that this is one issue we're thinking about, email. That's something that people find challenging, but actually the approach we're taking, you can take with anything that you find challenging in your job. </span> </p> <p> <span> So we are thinking about the problem of email. If you're finding something else difficult, you can do the same strategy. So our strategy is compassion, curiosity and compassion starts with acceptance. It starts with the fact no one's on top of their email. Course they're not. Do you think anybody who's like, Oh yes, I get a perfectly manageable amount of emails, it's fine. </span> </p> <p> <span> All good. No one is on top of their emails, and what that means is our definition of “on top” is completely stupid. Okay. If everybody's behind, we are not behind. It's just where we are. This is just how we do it. That's fine. You're not a bad academic because you haven't replied to those students. The system isn't broken because your manager sends you too many emails. </span> </p> <p> <span> We get a bunch of emails. We have thoughts about it. We do some actions. Okay. No one is on top. We don't have to make this mean anything about ourselves and our capabilities. We don't have to make this mean anything about the system being inherently broken. We can just accept that at the moment, we get whatever number of emails a day, and we need to figure out a way of managing it better than we are doing at the moment. </span> </p> <p> <span> Okay, so compassion is coming at it from the point of view, accepting this is what it is, and accepting that's totally understandable where you are at with it. It's understandable that it's difficult to go through a whole bunch of emails, usually about loads of different topics. You know, if you're a PhD student, you probably get emails from your supervisor, maybe participants if you're doing human studies, archivists, all those sorts of things, technicians perhaps. </span> </p> <p> <span> And then you get all the emails from the university, which are meant to help you, but often just pile up in your inbox. So about the career service and about the wellbeing service and the whatever else service that you have access to and the events that are happening, and da da. It's no wonder it's hard to process this stuff. </span> </p> <p> <span> There's load off 'em and they're all about different things and all of them require you to think. It's not a surprise. It's okay.  </span> </p> <p> <span> So some of it is that kind of compassionate thinking that of course this is a bit hard and that's okay. I can get some of this done. That's the next bit is rather than thinking, I'm terrible if I don't get this all done, I'm letting these people down is thinking I can answer some of these. </span> </p> <p> <span> I go bash through ten now, let's go. I'm actually really looking forward to helping this student. Let's sort that one out. Because often when we think about email as this catch-all term, no one likes doing email. Do you like responding to a collaborator about a paper you're writing? Yeah, you probably do. </span> </p> <p> <span> Do you like answering questions from a student? Yeah. Often you like that too. Do you like receiving your emails about events? Yeah, sometimes they're interesting events. That's nice. Actually, when we look at what most of our emails about each of them is not that bad. It's just we look at them as email this huge task. </span> </p> <p> <span> So when you look at it with compassion towards yourself and towards the emails, but I actually, those ones are ok. There's always some irritating ones. Of course there are, because we have thoughts about them too. But a whole bunch of your emails are probably parts of your job, parts of your studies that you do actually want to do. </span> </p> <p> <span> So remembering that we're thinking with compassion all the time.   </span> </p> <p> <span> Then once we're coming from that compassionate place of, it's understandable that I find this hard but I do want to do it, so let's figure this out. We then start to move into curiosity. We start to see this as a challenge that we can try and work around. </span> </p> <p> <span> And we can try and come up with solutions for. And again, just to reiterate, this is not going to be me giving you loads of hints about hacks that you can use to process your emails faster because the way you solve this problem isn't just by coming up with loads of new systems. That might be, you have no system whatsoever with how you manage your emails, then there are a few things, and I am gonna mention one or two.  </span> </p> <p> <span> But lots of it is about thinking about, okay, how can I, how can I nix this problem at the source? How can we actually make it so there's less emails?  </span> </p> <p> <span> So, starting out, first, it’s Know yourself. Know what elements of this you're good at, what elements of this you find more challenging. </span> </p> <p> <span> So to give you an example, one that I've always found challenging is during a meeting I'll say to somebody, Oh, I've got a cool thing. I'll send it to you after this. And I write it down. So don't come at me with you to do lists and stuff. I write it down. I do. I write it down. But then after the meeting, I go off and do something else, and then I never come back to that bit of my to-do list. </span> </p> <p> <span> And so I never send it. And then I feel bad. And this was something that I really struggled with for quite a while, and I would tell myself, No, you just need to make sure you do it afterwards. That kind of discipline-based approach where I say, No, you just need to do it straight after the meeting. Just make sure you do it straight after the meeting. </span> </p> <p> <span> But discipline approaches rarely work. And I would still get distracted. I'd still went off to do something different. And so I thought, Okay, let's think about this. Curiously, let's think about this from a place of compassion. If I find that difficult, I'm just going to send it in the meeting. And so now what I do, even if I'm in a one-to-one meeting, I just say, I've got a thing. </span> </p> <p> <span> Give me two minutes. I'm going to send it to you. Now, just hold that thought. We're going in. And I send it to them straight away. And you might think, well that's a waste of time because that person's now got to watch you send an email. And it's true, they do. And I say to them, I know this means you’ve got to just watch me send this, but trust me, this is the most efficient way of getting this done. </span> </p> <p> <span> And actually people have been super understanding about it and if anything are super grateful because whilst it takes two minutes to watch me send this email, they would probably spend five minutes tomorrow going, Oh, I could really do with that thing that Vikki was going to send me. She hasn't sent it to me. </span> </p> <p> <span> I wonder if I should remind her, but actually she is really busy, so I don't want to bother her and da, da da. Or sending an email to follow up and getting it from me then. So actually waiting two minutes while I do it right now, and being able to check, they can open it. Check I've sent everything I've said I would, actually works way better. And I came to that because I accepted myself and my tendencies and instead of trying to make myself different, I went okay, with me as I am, how could I do this better? And that was one of the ways that I could do it better. So that’s know yourself. </span> </p> <p> <span> The next thing is know the issue. First thing is, how many emails do you actually get. We all talk about, we get too many emails. How many do you actually get? Knowing the answer to that really helps you sort of figure out, is it objectively more than you can manage? Are you just dramaing this up in your brain and making it into much bigger than it is? Or are there objectively loads and loads of emails? And if there are, where do they come? What proportion of them come from where? You'll probably find you have three or four sources of a big chunk of them. You'll probably find that there's types of sources. </span> </p> <p> <span> So you might find that you've signed up for email lists. You might find there's particular people that send lots of emails, particular groups of people. And once you know those things, then you can start looking for small solutions. So one thing I found was that at different points in my academic career, I had more or fewer emails. </span> </p> <p> <span> So while I was head of education for our department, I got objectively billions, obviously not actually objectively billions, but lots of emails. I would get two, 300 emails a day, and that's a lot to process when lots of them have got big tasks in them and things like that. At other times I had fewer, but I still in my head at all times, I thought I got lots of emails. </span> </p> <p> <span> So knowing, have you actually got lots compared to usual is is really useful. And figuring out where they come from. Because if you can figure out where they come from, you've got a whole load of strategies ahead of you. So, unsubscribing to particular lists. Some people are a fan of setting up rules, so they go to particular folders. </span> </p> <p> <span> My one caution with that, if you're anything like me, I don't look at those folders. So I would sometimes set up folders so that a particular type of email would always go into those folders, and then I'd find those folders and remember they existed like two months later and be like, Oh, there's a whole load of emails I haven't replied to in there. </span> </p> <p> <span> So that can. You then need to make sure that you remember or schedule your time to go and look at those folders. One system that did work very well for me, and again, it was all connected to this thought about acceptance and not being perfect, and that was the Yesterbox system. So this came to my attention through a very good friend and colleague of mine called Emma Flint, who is an academic at Aston. And she didn't invent it, but she brought it to my attention. And yesterbox’s principles, if you Google it, you'll find all the rules that go with it or whatever, but the basic principles are answer esterday's emails. That's it. Can write a book on that apparently, but no, just answer yesterday's emails because the thing with yesterday's emails is a fixed number of emails. </span> </p> <p> <span> So you can look and see exactly how long you're gonna need to deal with all of those. Today's emails are not fixed because you don’t know how many more are going to come today. So if you try and finish today with an empty inbox, it entirely depends on what happens towards the end of the day. If you look at yesterday's emails, you know you got 47 emails yesterday, you've got 47 emails to answer. That really helped.  </span> </p> <p> <span> It also stops you getting into that kind of ping pong where if you reply immediately, they reply immediately and it just keeps going. So yes, the box is a system that I have found very useful. So if you know the actual issue, you can look for smaller solutions. The other way I want you to look at this though, is to say, what's the bigger issue here? </span> </p> <p> <span> So we've said, knowing ourselves, knowing the issue, but now dive in, say, what is the bigger issue here? Are you involved in too many things? So is the reason you've got too many emails because you're involved in too many different roles, is it because the meetings you're involved with aren’t efficiently running, so loads of things are done by email rather than by discussion?  </span> </p> <p> <span> Is it because there are certain people who copy you into too many messages? And if there are. What's the bigger issue there? So often we moan about people who copy us into too many emails, but are they copying us in because they're worried to make a decision for themselves because they're worried they'll get blamed or something like that. </span> </p> <p> <span> Are they worried that people will feel left out and that actually this is their attempt to include you? Is it that the issue isn't so much that you're copied into all of them. It's that it's not made clear what you're meant to do with it. In which case, can you have a conversation about that? </span> </p> <p> <span> Can you have a conversation with your research group, with your supervisor, with your PhD students, whatever situation you are in about how you send and structure emails to make them more useful for each other. </span> </p> <p> <span> This really reminds me of a billboard I once saw. So this was quite a few years ago now. I was on the M6. I was driving and there was a huge billboard and it, I was stuck in traffic and the poster said To everyone else, you’re traffic. Now I can't remember who was an advert for, so I wasn't a very good advert from that perspective, but it really stuck in my head because so often in traffic we sat there going, Oh, if all these cars got outta the way, I'd be able to get on my journey. </span> </p> <p> <span> But then, to everybody else, you are the problem. To everybody else, you are clogging up their way and the same's true with email.  </span> </p> <p> <span> Have you ever on a Friday afternoon, gone, You know what? What will really help my brain space is to clear my emails before the weekend. I'm going to clear my emails before the weekend, and sometimes that's deleting emails, but often it's replying to emails. </span> </p> <p> <span> And so what we're essentially doing is clearing our inbox by chucking it into other people's inboxes. Now imagine. I've got a new, very empty garden at the moment. I've moved into a new build, it’s just weeds and mud with a little tiny bit of lawn coming through. Imagine if I cleared that by just throwing my weeds over the fence. </span> </p> <p> <span> I don't think my neighbours would love that very much, but that's essentially what we do with our emails. We clear our emails by chucking them into somebody else's emails, often without much thought for how we can do that effectively. So another part of this compassion and curiosity is stopping and going, How can I send fewer emails, rather moaning about how many emails I get? </span> </p> <p> <span> How can I send fewer emails? How can I send better emails? A few things that I found really useful are trying to keep 'em shorter. I once got told by a colleague that my emails were too long and no-one read them which was nice! Sometimes it's good to get blunt feedback. And after that I really made an effort to make it shorter. </span> </p> <p> <span> To make the actions really clear. Other things you an do, make sure you use the subject line effectively. So don't just leave it as “re” whatever the last conversation two weeks ago was. Change that so that it's really clear. Reattach things. So particularly PhD students, if you're sending stuff to supervisors and you are saying, just following up to see if you've done comments on my manuscript. </span> </p> <p> <span> Reattach it. Don't say, have you done comments on my manuscript that I sent you last Tuesday? Because now your supervisor's got to wander off to last Tuesday. Same for supervisors, this all goes for you too. If you're sending something to your students, have you read the paper I sent you? Or whatever? </span> </p> <p> <span> Reattach it. Make it easy for them. Have everything in one place. I had, I've had many wonderful PhD students in my time, but I had a PhD student who was particularly good at doing this, Jo, and she would send me emails where she'd reattached the thing I needed to do, she'd remind me when the meeting was.  </span> </p> <p> <span> It was all dead subtle, it didn't sound like she was saying, I'm reminding you of this. She'd say, looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday at 3:00 PM for example. So just reemphasizing, it'll be great to go through my method section comments with you. So again, emphasizing what it was we were doing so that I could definitely prepared for it. </span> </p> <p> <span> And she'd reattach all the things that I needed. And it just meant that instead of having 10 different emails from her, that kind of reminded me of the different things we might do in that meeting. One email that she structured out that had everything we were gonna do when we were meeting what time reattached things I needed. </span> </p> <p> <span> It reduced my email traffic. It made it so much easier to be a better supervisor for her. So think about how can you do that. If you have people who routinely send you emails in dribs and drabs who cc in too many people, things like that, how can you have a conversation with them to try and reduce this at source? </span> </p> <p> <span> Okay, so to conclude email is just a tool that we are using. There is probably objectively far too much of it flying around. But how we think about it really affects how we do our jobs and how well we can deal with this issue that we're all managing. If we can stay in a place of compassion for ourselves and remind ourselves the fact there's no way to do this perfectly, we are all managing within this system, and then come at it from curiosity as to, but how can I make this a little bit better. Then we're all much less likely to be drowning in our emails and focusing instead on how can we help each other swim.  </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> </p> </div> Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:20:54 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/how-to-swim-when-you-re-drowning-in-emails https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/you-dont-need-another-planner Whether you're a PhD student or an experienced academic, life in a university can be tough. If you're feeling overwhelmed, undervalued, or out of your depth, the PhD Life Coach can help. We talk about issues that affect all academics and how we can feel better now, without having to be perfect productivity machines. We usually do this career because we love it, so let's remember what that feels like! I'm your host, Dr Vikki Burns. Find out more about working with me at thephdlifecoach.com <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <iframe> &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;iframe src=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;https://www.buzzsprout.com/1992545/11523015-2-why-you-don-t-need-a-new-planner?client_source=small_player&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;iframe=true&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;referrer=https://www.buzzsprout.com/1992545/11523015-2-why-you-don-t-need-a-new-planner.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-11523015&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;player=small&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; loading=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;lazy&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; width=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;100%&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; height=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;200&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; frameborder=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;0&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; scrolling=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;no&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; title=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;The PhD Life Coach, 2. Why you don&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;apos;t need a new planner&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; </iframe> </p> <iframe> </iframe> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Do you find yourself searching for the perfect planner that will just help you get it together? In this episode, I discuss why we all want the perfect planner, why it won't solve our problems, and what we can do instead! </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> **Also, here is the " </span> <a href="https://imbusybeingawesome.com/category/podcast/" target="_blank"> I'm Busy Being Awesome" podcast </a> <span> <span> with Paula Engebretson that I recommend in the podcast** </span> </span> </p> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span>  Hello and welcome to episode two of the PhD Life Coach, where we are going to talk about why you don't need another planner. Now, I feel a little bit hypocritical doing this episode because I have been the absolute queen of planner buying. Planner starting and planner dropping as well. I still have the remnants of various planners around my house. So sheets of sticky stickers, half used planners, things like that. And so it really made me think about why. So many people selling these planners, why do we think that we need them and why do they often not work? And most importantly, I'm going to also spend some time thinking about, well, what can we do instead? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> When we have that urge to buy a planner and think that it's going to be the solution to all of our workflow problems, what can we do instead? But let's start with, what is the temptation of planners in the first place? Well, for me, it's really selling a dream, isn't it? It's selling a new version of yourself, a new version of your systems, where in this version, when you've got this planner, you're much more organized, you are calm. You remember to reply to your emails, you get things done on time. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> It's this like fantasy land that this new planner will take you to. It's almost an opportunity to be somewhere else to drink something healthy at 5:30 AM while planning out your day before you go and exercise all that kind of aspirational productivity stuff that we all consume every day. It really buys into that idea that you just need this one more product and everything else will fall into place. You're buying into a lifestyle. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But I think it's more than that too. I think it's also that when you are looking for a planner, there's usually something you're avoiding doing. Now, I don't know about you, but I never put in my diary, Thursday at 2:00 PM spend 45 minutes looking for a planner. You know, in a kind of proactive, that would be a really useful thing to do kind of way. I never did it like that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I would start looking for planners when I was really behind, when had things that were overdue where I was feeling guilty about messages that I hadn't sent, where I was looking at my desk and it was at a carnage, and that's when I would suddenly go, what I need is a new system. Sometimes it would be planners that you can buy online, like physical planners. Other times it would be getting into all these different softwares that you can download now, setting up your notion workflow or whatever it might be. Getting really obsessed with how that could look and what it could be like. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And it was always at that time when really there were other things that were more important to be doing. That's because looking for a planner like this is really what we call a buffering activity. You don't like the emotions you're experiencing when you're looking at the things that you had planned to do or that need doing and in order to try and make that go away, you do something that's easier, but still feels productive. So searching for a planner is really easy to convince ourselves that that's important, that it's progress, that is going to help us be better, but it's not hard. It's quite fun. You know, you scroll through Amazon, you scroll through whatever blog sites you go to, looking for ideas of different productivity systems and how things can be better next time. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's one thing we call passive action. So rather than spending the time to take a big chunk out of a task that you are worried about, you spend the time in passive action of searching for the perfect system. It's a little bit like I'm at the moment trying to think about exercising more than I do, and I'll sometimes spend time planning what exercise I might do. You know, if I was getting to exercise at home, which of these videos would I use? Which series of exercises might I do, etc rather than getting up and doing some exercise in that 10 minutes. So you get caught in this like buffering activity that feels productive, but doesn't actually get anything done. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So, What's the problem there? Maybe we just look for planners and that's the buffer and, well, first part problem is that we don't get the thing done that we were sort of distracting ourselves from. The other problem is what happens after you order this planner. So I've spent quite a lot of money on planners in the past, and they arrive and they're shiny and beautiful, and you're filled with a promise of how wonderful your life's going to be now. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's a bit like getting a new school book. I don't know if you remember that, when you start a new school term. I look back, I've still got. I keep a lot of clutter, let's just say that. I've still got some of my school books and I noticed in the first few pages there was beautiful handwriting. Gorgeous. And then as it goes on, it gets more and more messy. More and more scruffy pages, missed out mistakes, etc. And I'm like that with planners. And I think most of us are, at first, we fill them in beautifully and we maybe even waste time, spending so much time making the planner beautiful. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But then over time you find yourself falling off the wagon a bit, not using it as consistently and again, that wouldn't be too bad. Maybe a bit of a waste of money. It wouldn't be too bad if it didn't then come along with a whole load of feelings of guilt because I don’t know about you, but when I've done this in the past, I then start getting into, Oh my God, I can't even stick to this. Oh my God, you know, I've wasted money again. I'm stuck to it again. Why can't I just do this the way other people do? And it sort of becomes this kind of negative thought spiral, that usually, ironically, culminates in me thinking I need a different planner. The, the problem is I didn't find the right planner, and if I found the right one, all my systems would come under control. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I want you to think about the last time you considered getting a new system, whether sometime online system, printed system, whatever it might be, and whether you had similar challenges. I know when I speak to my clients, a lot of them talk about having exactly the same sorts of things that I'm talking about. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> What I really want to emphasize that the problem here is not that you want a planner, the problem is not that you think that a planner is going to solve things for you. The problem's not even the thing you want to solve for. The problem is the thought that makes you think you need a planner. And I'm going to say that again because that was a bit complicated. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The problem is the thoughts that you are having that make you think a planner is going to help. So I'm going to give you some examples of what I mean by that. The first thought might be - if I had the perfect planner, I could fit it all in that thought. If I just had the perfect planner, I could fit it all in, might make you feel rushed. Or it might make you feel guilty that you don't already fit it all in, or it might make you feel sort of pressured or something like that. If I just get the right planner, I can fit it all in another thought that might lead to getting thinking you need a planner is something like my life's chaos and I need to sort it out. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> This is one I used to tell myself a lot. Oh, okay. Everything's all over the place. I just need to sort it out. I just need to sort it out. And that would make me feel really overwhelmed and it would sometimes make me feel a chunk of shame as well. Like how am I not more on top of this by now? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Another thought is, I don't wanna let anyone down. I keep forgetting things and I don't wanna let anyone down, so I need a new planner so that I don't let anyone down. And you can imagine that leads to feelings like anxiety, worriedness, all of those. And then there's also an element, have a think about whether this resonates for you. But there's also an element of “she” uses a planner. You can think who the she or he is for you. She uses a planner and I want to be like her. One of my best friends. In fact, many of my best friends, I have really organised best friends. That's an interesting thought to ponder on. But the one I'm thinking about in particular, hyper-organized, super good at sticking to bullet journaling. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I love her to pieces and she's amazing and she sticks to bullet journaling and she produces these beautiful bullet journals and she actually uses them regularly and I love it for her so much, and I'm still a bit jealous of it. I would still love to be somebody who does what she does and who sticks to these things. I have since become not resigned. Accepting. Accepting is the word. Accepting of the fact that I'm not, and that that's okay, and that I'm good at different things and that, that's all great, but one of my drivers for wanting to find the perfect planner was sometimes seeing her planners and being like, I want to be like that. I want to do that too, and that can sometimes make you feel inadequate or just make you feel like you're just not quite good enough. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The problem with those thoughts is that they lead to feelings that don't feel very good. None of us want to be rushed or overwhelmed or anxious or inadequate or any of these things, but also our actions are driven by our feelings. We don't talk about this that much, especially in academic circles. But the way we behave is driven by the emotions that we're having. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And if we are feeling rushed, we're feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and adequate, then we are not going to take the actions that are going to lead us to achieve our goals. No matter what planner we get our hands on, if we're feeling rushed, we don't prioritize, we make mistakes. If we're feeling overwhelmed, we often just can't start and end up distracting ourselves with something. </span> </p> <p> <span> If we are looking for a planner to fix these feelings, it's just not going to happen because the fact is changing your circumstance, just getting a new planner, isn't going to make those feelings go away if you keep thinking that you're not doing enough, that things are chaotic, that you need to work harder. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We're looking for an external solution to a problem that's really driven by the thoughts that we're having in the situation that we're in. So, what do we do instead? Instead of going out onto the internet looking for more planners? What do we do instead? Well, we need to identify what the real issue is here. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> If you are telling yourself that there's too much to do and you can't get it all done, why is that a problem? Why is it a problem that you can't get it all done? What are you making that mean about you? Often we are making it mean things like, and then my boss will find out and realize I'm not good enough, or then I won't have much value if I'm not doing lots of things. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We make it mean stuff about us. If we think that we're not as organized as somebody else, we make, make it feel like we have no value, that we don't contribute. We have these sort of so-what thoughts underneath the need to get everything done. And instead of looking for a planner, I'd really invite you to just dig out what those thoughts are. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Why is it a problem that you are not doing everything on your to-do list? Why is it a problem that you're not using every minute of the day productively? What are you making that mean? This is where we need to sit and the reason we look for planners is because it's not very comfortable to sit here. It's not very comfortable to sit and realize that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The reason you think you need to do everything is because you don't think you'll progress unless you get all these things done or because you don't think people at work will like you if you start saying no to things. But turning off Amazon, stopping looking for the planners and staying here for a moment helps you realize what the real issue is and a planner's not going to fix that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's a little bit like, have you ever tried decluttering your home? It's been an ongoing process for me, and it's something that has enormously helped. And I used to think that the solution to my mess was more storage, and so I would buy all the storage solutions you can imagine, the IKEA folders, the little boxes that, you know, new cabinet, all sorts of things so that I could keep my stuff organized. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And it wasn't until I started realizing that actually I didn't need more storage, I just need less stuff. And I started just slowly, gradually filtering things down. So I had fewer things that I actually started to address the issue in the first place. And it's the same here, thinking about what is the real issue? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And the issue is always what you're telling yourself. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> When you find yourself in that situation and you find yourself realizing that the problem here is that you are telling yourself that you're not of value unless you get everything done. One trick I'd invite you to try is thinking about your most firm, but compassionate friend. So not somebody who just goes, Ah, yeah, you are amazing. Let's go out. Forget it, don't worry. Not somebody that's like, Well, yes, you should work harder, but somebody who's sort of firm and compassionate. If you don't have someone like that in your life, that's quite normal too, but you can start to conjure up these voices for yourself. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I want you to start telling yourself things like you are already a value. If you don't finish your to-do list, you're still of value. You deserve rest. You deserve support systems to get done what you want to get done, but you don't have to do it all. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You can do a bit at a time and you don't have to be perfect. One thing I have in my house is a to do list that I found amongst my dad's stuff after he passed away in 2017. I found it in the final page of his Filofax, because he had a Filofax apparently in 2000. Nineties throwback, don't ask, but I found a to-do list and it just really resonated with me that he was never going to do the things on that to-do list and how little any of them mattered. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It was like “clear out garage” and it's like no one cares. I kept that to do list because it really puts into perspective a lot of the things that we think we absolutely have to do. So if you find yourself looking for an external solution, whether it's a planner, whether it's other organizational systems, really take a moment to try and be compassionate to yourself and where you are at at the moment rather than looking for the thing that will enable you to do it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I have a couple of extra practical steps. People always love practical steps. The first one is if you are convinced that you need a planner, I have two recommendations. One recommendation is do it on a good day. So don't look for planners when you're in the midst of overwhelm. When you're in the midst of stress, you will not have good perspective. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You will be unrealistic about what you will actually stick to. Look for planners on a good day. Look for planners when you've got a bunch of stuff done and have it as an actual practical tool that you're looking for. So now you're not looking for something to fix an emotion. You're looking for an organizational system that might actually improve things. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Because at no point am I saying that a better system might not help. It really could help. And in future episodes, we'll think about what some of those systems could be, but you want to be coming at that decision from that very pragmatic perspective of what is a realistic task or tool management system that will actually help me manage these things, make it easier, from the point of view of a logistical problem to be solved rather than an emotional sticking plaster to make me feel better. So only look when you're feeling good. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> The second one is be realistic about what you are going to stick to. So one of the things that I've noticed in more recent planners, which I think is a real turn up, is planners that don't have fixed dates on them. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So I have a beautiful planner, so it is blue and it has lovely gold edges and it's all very fancy. I love it. And the very first date in it is the 1st of March, 2020. If only we knew then what we know now! And I'm still only a quarter of the way through it because I use it for a little bit. So within a few pages, we're at March, 2021. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We flick through, we've got some May, we've got some September, December, 2021 and a little bit more March. I don’t know what it is about March that makes me think I need to use my planner. And I haven't used it since the 29th of March, 2022. But because it's not dated, I come back to it. And the other thing that has enabled me to come back to it more than anything else is the fact that I've really worked on coaching myself to not feel shame about the fact I don't use it consistently. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> In the past, I would've got rid of that and bought a shiny new one. And this time I'm going to stick to it. All those things we tell ourselves. I haven't with this I've accepted. I use that planner intermit. Other times I'll scribble in my notebook. Other times I'll just wing it. Other times I'll put stuff in Outlook and I've accepted, I'll use it intermittently. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> When it feels nice to write in it, I write in it. When I don't, I don't. And that's actually enabled me to keep it for a lot longer and to use it far more than I would've done if I'd had this kind of perfectionist thing that I have to stick to it. In fact, you can even, that's more of a haphazard thing for me that I use it sometimes, don’t use it other times, not in between. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You can even plan to use things intermittently. So A friend and colleague of mine Paula Engebretson, if you haven't found her podcast “I'm busy being awesome”, I would highly recommend her. She is a coach for people with ADHD. But even if you don't have adhd, she has loads of tips that are super helpful for organizing yourself and doing it in a compassionate and thoughtful way. </span> </p> <p> <span> And one of the things I've heard her talking about, which always really resonates with me, is the idea of not expecting yourself to stick to the same system. That you might actually plan to have a planner like that and plan to use it for one month, and then at the end of that month to plan to use a different system that you now find interesting. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And as long as you're not spending tons of money on every option, you're not spending hours and hours finding the perfect solution. Then actually that can be a really good way to keep yourself engaged. So actually having a new system, but making it easy and simple and accepting that you will change can actually be quite a positive way of using a planner because you are removing that layer of, Oh my God, I haven't stuck to it again, I'm so useless that so many of us have. So really think about those things. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> The final tactic that I want to introduce you to is a to-think list. That sounds strange, doesn't it? A to-think list. Everybody writes to do lists. We write down the actions that we need to take in order to achieve our goals. Whether those goals are small things, whether they're lists of jobs we need to do around the house, whether they're major work deadlines and things like that, we write down things we need to do. There's a billion podcasts out there that will tell you how to organize your to-do list into small bite size chunks, blah, blah, blah, blah, prioritize this and that, et cetera, et cetera. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Fine. And we'll talk about that at some point, I'm sure. But what that doesn't do is thinking any way of you as a human being with a heart and a brain and a soul and a body and all of these things. And it doesn't allow for the fact that, like I said earlier, what we do is driven by how we're feeling and how we're feeling is driven by what we're thinking, and that's something we have control over. </span> </p> <p> <span> We often don't think about having control over our thoughts, but we have control over which thoughts we focus on. And so what I would really urge you to do the next time you're thinking you need a new planner is not to think so much about how you're going to keep track of all the things you want to do, but instead start thinking about what are the things you need to think. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> What are the things you need to think at the start of a day, during the day, the end of a day that will enable you to feel better and to get the things done? These might be things like, the work I'm doing is a value. It might be, I'm looking forward to the things I'm going to do today. Sometimes it can be at the end of the day, giving yourself recognition. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Yesterday my partner came home and did some jobs around the house that he had been intending to do for a while, and I noticed that two or three times he said to me, I'm so glad I got the garage door painted and it just really struck me that he was really celebrating the fact that he'd got it done and how little people usually do that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So one of the things that I've jotted down in my to think list is to think how grateful I am for the things that I have done. To think that I've chosen the things that are on my to do list. I chose to do this, let's go. I'm good at this. Let's get on with it. Those sorts of things. So remember, if you find your brain telling yourself that you need another planner, pause. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Figure out what problem you are trying to cover up with a planner. What's the emotion you are trying to avoid and think about how you can really support that by thinking about what thoughts you could choose to support yourself and how you can move forward in a much more intentional way than just finding another planner. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> </p> </div> Mon, 10 Oct 2022 10:10:22 GMT websitebuilder@1and1.de https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/you-dont-need-another-planner https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/be-your-own-best-supervisor This is a video about how to be your own best supervisor. There is no voice you hear more often than the voice inside your head, yet we often spend very little time thinking about HOW we speak to ourselves and the effect it has. When did you last call yourself useless? Lazy? Stupid? In this episode we think about how we can notice our negative self-talk and start to be our own best supervisor. <div data-rss-type="text"> <p> <span> <span>  </span> </span> </p> <iframe> </iframe> <p> <br/> </p> <p> <span> There is no voice you hear more often than the voice inside your head, yet we often spend very little time thinking about HOW we speak to ourselves and the effect this has on us. In this episode, we think about how we can notice our negative self-talk and start to be our own best supervisor. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Transcript </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode one of the PhD Life Coach. I am so excited to be here. My dog Marley is by my side. I'm hoping he will lie still and quiet, and I am ready to go. I'm Dr. Vikki Burns and I started the PhD life Coach because during my 26 years in academia, from undergrad to full professor, I saw so many people struggle. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> I want you to think about the last time you asked a colleague or someone in your PhD program how they were. My bet is that they said some version of, Yeah, busy, good, but busy or, ugh, drowning. Think about the last time you were asked that. What did you say? I bet you said busy. I used to have a PhD student who I adored, and when I asked him how it was going, he'd always reply “It's going…” with a little grin and like a little wiggle with his eyebrow. Whoever I talk to is the same. Whether it's a new PhD student or a member of senior management: </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> -       we don't have time to do all the things that we want to do </span> </p> <p> <span> -       we feel like we're not doing things well enough </span> </p> <p> <span> -       we worry that other people don't think highly enough of our work </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> -       we're tired, overwhelmed, and often just getting by instead of loving this academic career. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I bet you feel like that. Because that's the weird thing, right? We're all living our past self’s dreams. However long you've been in academia, you once dreamt of being where you are now. You worked so hard to get onto your PhD program and now you're struggling to get going on the work. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> You push to get a teaching position and now you dread trying to balance lecturing and administration with your research. You exhausted yourself to get the big promotion and take on a management role. And now you worry that everyone hates you and your decisions. Or maybe that was just me. I doubt it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We're all exactly where we wanted to be, but often it doesn't feel the way we thought it would. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I know this because I saw it all the way through. I kept thinking that when I got to the next level, people would have it together, that I would have it together. But the more I progressed, the more it stayed the same. I went on courses, early career staff, mid-career leadership, senior leadership courses, and we all had to like reflect on our experiences and these are super high achieving people. These were amazing, amazing colleagues. But everyone still felt like they had too much to do, they did worried whether they were good enough, and they still got stressed about whether they'd make the next step at every level. </span> </p> <p> <span> People kept saying, we just need to get past this bit and it'll be better. I just need to get my PhD done and it'll be better. I just need to get past the end of teaching or finish my marking and it will be better. I just need to get this grant in, this conference done, whatever it is, and it will be better. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And I rapidly realized that none of those things make a difference. The PhD, the promotion, the paper, the grant, they don't make you feel better, because almost as soon as they're done you are onto the next thing and feeling stressed because you haven't done that one yet. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That's why the PhD life coach is for everyone, PhD student through to senior academic, because we all struggle and it doesn't just miraculously feel better when we get to our next goal. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That sounds like terrible news, but actually it's brilliant. Trust me. Honestly. What it means is we don't have to finish our PhDs to feel better. We don't need to get promoted or get that paper published or the grant in to feel better. We can work on feeling better right now, and as a little tangent to the main focus of today. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Just to let you know, this isn't going to be one of those podcasts that's about, Oh, let's just all get more resilient and put up with all the bad things about academia. It's not gonna be that. It's also not gonna be an academia is broken, let's burn it all down podcast. Instead, I want us to learn how to stop making it harder for ourselves than it needs to be and how to make it a little bit easier for those directly around us. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If in the process of it all we can change some of the toxic practices that are going. Happy days. Let's do it. But let's start with just making a little bit of space in our brains before we explode. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So on that note, let's get going. We are going to start today with a topic that really underpins everything else that we'll talk about over the next few weeks and months. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And that is being your own best supervisor, whoever we are, we have people in charge of us, whether you're a PhD student, you've got your supervisor, if you're a postdoc, you've got your principal investigator, perhaps. If you are a lecturer, you've got your head of department, head of school, whatever you call them in your institution. Even if you are a pro-vice chancellor, you've got your vice chancellor above you. I really hope we get some vice chancellors listening to this too. I think they need it too. And if we do, even vice chancellors have people in government across the network that are above them, as it were, and we all have opinions about what those supervisors, those managers, those leaders should be like. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> We know what we want from them. In fact, if you Google what are the best qualities of a PhD supervisor or a manager, you'll find loads and loads of articles about what to look for in a leader. But what people never seem to talk about is leading yourself, about the fact that you will hear your own voice inside your head far more than you'll hear the words of anyone else. </span> </p> <p> <span> The way you treat yourself will have more impact on you than anybody you're currently working with. So it's not to say we're not going to talk at some point about managing your bosses. I got a whole lot of stuff to say about that, about how to manage up, how to make it a lot easier than it is, how to work out what's toxic versus what's something that you can figure out together. We're gonna do all of that stuff. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But first I want you to think about the voice inside your head, the things you say to yourself, because when I think about the meetings I have with my individual clients, they tell me, they say things to themselves that you would never tolerate anybody else saying to you. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I want you to think about the person directly in charge of you. OK, PhD supervisor, Head of Department, Vice Chancellor, or whatever it is. Okay? And I want them you to imagine them saying to you, Yeah, you're probably just not good enough. I mean, I don't know if you know why you're here. You should probably give up. Everyone thinks you're an idiot. You're never gonna get this all. I mean, the world will fall apart if you don't get it done, but you're never going to. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If they said those things, you wouldn't tolerate it. Or if you did tolerate it, you would at least moan about it. You would say, they shouldn't speak to me like that. It's not fair. It's not right. It's not nice. Doesn't make me work harder, doesn't make me get more stuff done, and it definitely doesn't make me enjoy living and working here. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> But we say these things to ourselves all the time. I know I did. My habit, and I'm a lot better at it now than I was because I've worked on it through this coaching process, is two voices. One that said you have to do all the things. And the other one that said, there's no way you can get all of these things. So they will be simultaneously like fighting it out in my head. You have to do all of these things. There's no way you can get them all done. And then a sneaky third one would come in saying, and you should have done it already. </span> </p> <p> <span> Okay? There's no way you can drop it. There's no one else that can do it. All of it has to be done now, but it's impossible to get it all. Imagine having a boss who says that to you. You've gotta do all the things. They're all important. Gotta do them all right now, and there's not enough time. You'll never do it, and you should have done them before. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> It's ludicrous. But it was what I was saying to myself all the time until I started doing more of this coaching work and really thinking about the thoughts that I focus on and the things that I say to myself. So that's why I decided that this first session is gonna focus on being your own best supervisor. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And to keep it simple, I've got seven qualities for you, Seven things that I want you to nurture in yourself that I think will make you the best supervisor that you can be. Some of them are things that you might have seen when you search for like what to look for in a good supervisor, good manager. Some of them might be a little more unusual, so let's go. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <ol> <li> <span> Be curious </span> </li> </ol> <p> <span> The first one, and this is one of the more unusual ones, is that you want to be curious. Not curious about the research or the teaching, but curious about yourself. Why you do the things that you do, why you find things difficult, why you find other things easier, why you get stuff done, and why you don't. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> One thing I really want to point out here is when we are being curious, we're not being judgmental. We're not going, Oh my God, you didn't finish that again. You're going. Okay, hang on. I lined up six things to do today and I only did two of them. Okay, that's interesting. I wonder why that is. Not, oh my word, tomorrow you're gonna have to work harder. You're so useless, you're so lazy. Or how does everyone else get this done? I can't do it, but I wonder why I didn't get those things done. Because when you come at it from a point of curiosity, you start to engage your problem solving brain. You start to think. Hmm. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Actually, maybe my list wasn't that realistic in the first place. So maybe the problem started there. That was often my problem. I'd list like 20 things that I needed to do that day, get 10 of them done, but beat myself up about the 10 I didn't do. And when I'd show the list of people, people were like, Yeah, you were never gonna do all those things Vikki were you. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> But I was still beating myself up for not doing. So maybe when we are being curious with ourselves, we think maybe I do need to spend longer thinking how long things will take. Maybe I need to spend a little bit longer working out what are the crucial must-do-today things and less time just listing everything. Maybe I could put times next to them. Maybe I could just focus on a few of them. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Maybe you'd start to reflect, Eh, actually people interrupt me during those times, so perhaps it was unrealistic to plan something for them. Or actually, how could I stop people interrupting me during that time? I wonder what I could do about that. I wonder how I could carve out some time where I won't get interrupted. Do you see how when you come at it from this curious perspective, instead of judging yourself, instead of being mean to yourself, you're seeing it just as a little problem, little challenge to be solved, and you are much more likely to just experiment the next day and go, Okay, well maybe if it went like that yesterday, maybe I'll try it like this today. Let's see how that goes. So number one, quality, curious.  </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> 2. Be encouraging </span> </p> <p> <span> Number two, and this is one that you are more likely to see if you search for some of the best qualities of a leader or a manager or being a supervisor. And that's being encouraging, having faith in you. So often people, you know, they find something difficult, they don't know something, and they make that mean that they've really failed, that they shouldn't be here, that this isn't right for them, they're not good enough. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> All of those sorts of things. And again, those things don't motivate you to work hard, or if it does, it doesn't motivate you from a good place. It kind of motivates you from a sort of a desperate place of, Okay, I'll just work a bit harder. I'll, you know, I'll give up sleeping. I'll give up weekends. I'll, I'll just go a bit more. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Where what we really want is somebody to say, It's okay. You're doing really well. This is good. I think you can do this next thing, let's crack on. Come on, you can do it. Or You've done really well today, let's have a break and then we can come back to it. We want people around us who are encouraging. We want people to spot us when we're at our lowest and have faith in the fact that we can keep going, that we can get where we want to be. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> But why can't we be that voice for ourselves? Why can't we have that faith in ourself that encourages us when we find it difficult, just reassures us and pootles us on a little bit, or encourages us to have a rest? So number two is encouraging. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> 3. Be compassionate </span> </p> <p> <span> Number three, and it connects to that massively, is being compassionate. Now, just to point out, this isn't being a complete pushover. This doesn't mean just going, Oh, well, I'll lay in bed all day and scroll on social media. It's not about being a total softie yourself. It's about having compassion for yourself saying, Actually this is hard. Getting your PhDs hard, getting your professorship’s hard, all of these things, they take a lot of work. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> They're tough going. That's where everyone doesn't do them. And some days I'm going to work better than others and some days it's going to be a struggle and that's okay because I've got a human brain and a human body and that means I can't do everything. And that's okay. And it's true of everyone. No one can do everything. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> That's a compassionate voice. That's a voice that supports you to get done what you want to do, and not even forgive yourself, but accept the things that you don't get done. Sometimes I think the thing that stops us being compassionate with ourselves is we feel like if we are too compassionate with ourselves, that we'll just give up. We just won't do anything. That's not true. And it's not only two options. People seem to think we've got this option of being compassionate where we just go, Oh, well I'm gonna eat chocolate in front of the telly, or we are mean to ourselves and kick ourselves to get stuff done. Actually, there's a middle ground. There's a middle ground where we can say, Okay, yeah, it's difficult. Yep. It's been a tough day. Let, let's just get this little thing done. Or let's just take a little bit of time. Okay? Cause I've got faith in you and I think you can do. So that's the third one. I want you to think about how you can create a more compassionate voice in your head. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> 4. Let it go </span> </p> <p> <span> And the fourth one, and I haven't come up with a single word for this, so if you think of one, let me know in the comments. Let me know on social media. You want to let things go. So again, imagine you've got a boss you've been working with for a few years and you make a mistake, you're late for a deadline. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I once forgot to turn up for a lecture, whole lecture theatre full of students and I wasn't there. Email started coming in. Yeah, very awkward. So imagine you do something like that, you lose something, you turn off the freezer, if you're a science student, whatever, you break the bit of equipment, you lose the archive, whatever it is, okay? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And you tell your boss. If your boss says, Yeah, typical, you do that. You did this two years ago too. You were useless then. That deadline. You miss that deadline too. You're late for that one. You always do this. You just do. It's you. It's a pattern. We wouldn't like that supervisor, but we do that to ourselves all the time. We do one thing that we perceive as wrong and we extrapolate it to everything we've ever done. We think back to all the times that we've been late, all the times we've forgotten to do something. We make it this big pattern. So when you are being your best supervisor, we need to learn to let things go. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> If we make a mistake today, that's all it is, it's a mistake today. We don't have to remind ourselves of all the things we perceive we've done wrong in the past, all the things we’ve done before. We can just focus on today and let that past stuff go. Now I'm gonna take a moment before the next one just to go on what might be a tangent. Let's go. We'll see. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I can imagine some of you listening to this feeling a little bit skeptical, going well, yeah, that's all very well. But how do I just change my thoughts? I've been thinking these things. I've been beating myself up since I was 12 years old. That's one of the problems, it’s one of the reasons I work with people in academia. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> High achieving people who have generally been mean to themselves since they were at school one way or another. So you might be thinking, Okay, yeah, I can see this would be really nice. But I can't imagine what it would be like to speak to myself like that, and I don’t know how I will remember to do it. I've got you. If you're feeling like that, you are right. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> This is the first thing I'm gonna say. It's not easy. Changing thought patterns, changing these habits that we've had our whole lives is really hard. So just trust me that the first step is just to notice as we go through more and more sessions talking about this stuff, we are going to go into more detail about exactly how you spot a thought, work out what effect it's going to have, and think of different thoughts and so on. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> We're going think about all those things, but at the moment, just try and get in the habit of noticing when you do these things, noticing when you're not being compassionate, when you don't let it go. All of these things, just notice and be kind to yourself. That's part of the compassion too. Don't start beating yourself up for beating yourself up, because that's a whole other spiral that we can do without. Okay. Just notice and go, Oh yeah, probably better I don't speak to myself like that. I'm going to be kinder to myself than that. Okay, so. Let's move on. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> 5. Choose your thoughts carefully </span> </p> <p> <span> Fifth one. Kind of connected to that, kind of connected to the tangent, so maybe it wasn't as much of a tangent after all, but that is, choose your thoughts carefully. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> All sorts of thoughts fly into our heads all the time. We don't have to listen to them. Again, that's gonna be a massive focus. This, this podcast is thinking about how, just because our brain has offered us a thought, we don't have to spend loads of time. Okay. I want you to think about what names you call yourself. I had a habit. I'm a lot better at it now through this coaching, but I had a habit of calling myself useless. I still do it to some extent. It's something my partner calls me up on. He notices when I do it. I know I'm not useless. I'm objectively not useless. I've been really successful if I do say so myself. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I have been. But the words, Oh my God, you're so useless run through my head, in the past, multiple times an hour, literally probably every three or four minutes that would run through my head. Now, a couple of times a day maybe. So I have a tendency to leave things lying around and then not remember where my keys are and stuff like that. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> And my immediate thought is, Oh my gosh, you're so useless. You’ve lost your keys again. I call myself useless far more than I want to. We need to start identifying those names. And then not letting us do it. I've made so much progress on this. I still hear it pop into my head, but I don't believe it anymore. I don't take it seriously and I don't spend time dwelling on it. I sort of find myself going, Okay, but I can find my keys. It's fine. It's all good. It's so much less painful. You think about what the word is for you. Some people it's, they call themselves stupid. Other people they call themselves lazy. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Notice how many times you call yourself these things, notice which is the one for you, which is the one that you want to work on. And at this point, I'm not even asking you to stop. I'm just, it's asking you to notice. Sometimes, one of my old coaches used to say, If you are banging your head against a brick wall, the first thing you have to do is just notice that you're banging. Then you can start to stop regardless, just by noticing. We're just going to tone it down a bit. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> 6. Be resourceful </span> </p> <p> <span> Sixth one is about being resourceful. So people often talk about what they want from a new boss, a new supervisor, a new manager. They want someone who's connected, someone who's influential, who can help them get stuff done, who can notice what development needs they have, connect you to people and things that might help, all of that stuff. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I was recently talking to a client about wanting this from her supervisor. Those are amazing qualities in a supervisor, but it can be an amazing quality in yourself too. So when you've been curious and you've been compassionate, the next step is, Okay, how can I be resourceful? Okay, so I'm finding this thing difficult. That's fine. What can I do about it? Who is there out there that can help me? Who could I ask for advice? Or where can I get more training? Or who could give me support with this? Who might have done this before? What can I read? Are there any episodes on the PhD life coach podcast about this? Are there other people I can speak to that could help? </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> So being resourceful, for example, one of the things I spotted, so I was at an amazing university where there were so many resources for students and staff, wellbeing services, training services, online resources. All sorts and people just didn't know they existed. It was all the way through my PhD up to senior professors who had access to this incredible leadership training, and often people didn't know it was there or they didn't think they had time to go and access it or they didn't prioritize going through it. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> So when you are being your own best supervisor, be that resourceful person, stop and think. What advice would I give someone if this was them? Often we're better at giving advice to other people than we are to ourselves. If a student or client came to us, a colleague came to us and said, Oh, I'm struggling with this. Where would you figure out to send them? See if you can do that to yourself. You can be resourceful for yourself. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> 7. Have direction </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> The seventh quality I want you to have is about direction, having direction. We all want supervisors, managers, bosses that are clear about where we're going, what the big picture is, what the next steps might be. Both of those things are important. The big picture, where are we trying to get to, but also the specifics of what specifically do I need to do next? </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> What's your big picture? Are you clear about where you're going? Often people are good at one but not the other. They're good at what the next four steps are, but not what the big picture is of where we're heading to. Others have got that big picture there, but no idea how they're getting there. And if you are not clear, on those specific next steps, on the big picture, it's really hard to keep working hard. It's hard to keep doing stuff if you're not sure of the direction that you're going. So the seventh quality I want you to nurture in yourself is having direction. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> And again, we're going to have some sessions about how to work out all these things out, how to work out what your big picture is, how to establish the next steps. So we had curious, we had encouraging. Compassionate, letting it go. Still need to think of a better word for that, but go with it. Choosing your words, being resourceful and setting the direction. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> Conclusion </span> </p> <p> <span> Those are the seven things that I think we all need from our supervisors and managers, but much more importantly that we all need when we're supervising ourselves. The voice in your head, you'll hear more than any other, so make sure it's the best one. It can. If this all seems interesting, but massive habits to break, don't worry. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <span> Like I said, we are going to go into each of these in turn over the next few weeks. We're going to think about how to spot those habitual thoughts, what impact they have on your feelings, your behavior, how they impact the results that you are getting, why you are where you are. And most importantly, we're going to figure out how you can change it. We're going to figure out how you can speak to yourself better, how you can give yourself more direction, get the support that you. </span> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> This is all about us enjoying this academic life that we've created, that we've dreamt of, but making it exactly what we want it to be. Making the rest of our lives what we want them to be and having some fun along the way. </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> I really hope you've enjoyed this first episode. I have loved talking with you, and I look forward to speaking with you next time. <br/> </span> </p> <p> <span> <br/> </span> </p> </div> Mon, 03 Oct 2022 10:10:21 GMT https://www.thephdlifecoach.com/be-your-own-best-supervisor